You can have several of these types of responses within one response to the client, such as: “you are tired of being taken for granted.” (Feeling and content reflection). See the workbook for more details.

Feeling Reflections: 

• Emotions (happy, sad, angry, overwhelmed, etc)
   
• Physical sensations (burdened, weighted down, pressured, etc)
   

Content Reflections: 

• Parts of the content (not a feeling reflection) or
   
• Client’s belief or thoughts or
   
• Summarizations
   

Reflection of Discrepancy/Confrontations: 

• Contradictions, “you say you want to lose weight, yet you keep eating fast food daily.”
   
• Two sides of one self: “part of you… and part of you…”
   

Questions: 

• Intonation—raising your voice at the end—or
   
• Starting a sentence with: who, what, where, when, how, is, does, etc…
   

Supportive Statements: 

• Reinforcement or judgment: “good job” or
   
• Trying to make them feel better or see another point of view, “it will be okay”
   

Directing Behavior: 

• In session such as experiments like an empty chair—“pretend your mother is sitting in that chair and tell her how you feel,” or
   
• Advice 
   

Self-Disclosure: 

• Disclosing your own experience as it relates to the client’s content—“me, too” or
   
• Answering direct questions from client or my experience of you in session—“When you speak loudly like that, I experience you as feeling angry.”
   

Silence: 

• More than 8 seconds long—whether the client or the therapist
   

Small Talk: 

• Non-therapy oriented conversation such as, “How are you?”