You’re Already Counseling — You Just Don’t Know It Yet

Imagine a colleague breaks down in the office kitchen after a phone call. A church member pulls you aside after the service, eyes red, voice shaking.

Your teenage daughter comes home from school and slams her bedroom door. In each of these moments, someone is reaching out, and you are the person they are reaching for.

Most Kenyans in these situations rely on instinct.

We offer advice.

We quote Scripture.

We say, “It will be okay,” and change the subject because the silence feels unbearable.

We mean well. But good intentions without skills can cause harm; we may dismiss someone’s pain, project our own experiences onto theirs, or take on emotional weight we are not equipped to carry.

Research consistently shows that the quality of the first response someone receives when they are in distress significantly shapes whether they seek further help.

In Kenya, where the Ministry of Health estimates that 75% of people with mental health conditions go untreated, those informal frontline conversations —over tea, after church, in the school staffroom —are often the only support someone receives.

A dismissive reaction can shut someone down for years. A skilful one can open a door they did not know existed. The stakes of these everyday encounters are higher than most people realise.

The truth is, you do not need a psychology degree to support people well. But you do need a few foundational skills. What follows are five basic counseling skills that build on each other: active listening, empathy, open questioning, knowing when to refer, and self-awareness, each unlocking the next.

By the time you finish reading, the way you listen to people will have already begun to shift.

Start Here: Learn to Listen Before You Speak

There is a difference between hearing someone and listening to them. Hearing is passive; the words enter your ears while your brain is already composing a response. Active listening is a deliberate act of attention.

It means setting aside your own agenda to fully receive what another person is communicating, both in their words and beneath them.

In Kenya, we have a strong culture of advice-giving. The moment someone shares a problem, we jump to solutions. “What you should do is…” or “Wacha nikwambie, the same thing happened to me.”

This comes from a genuine place of care, but it often shuts the other person down. They do not feel heard; they feel redirected.

The alternative is reflective listening. Before you respond, paraphrase what the person has said: “It sounds like you are feeling overwhelmed by the pressure at work and that it is affecting your sleep.”

This simple move, reflecting their words back to them, has a powerful effect. It tells the person, “I am with you.” I am not rushing past your pain to get to my opinion.

Try it this week. The next time someone shares something difficult, resist the urge to advise. Instead, reflect. You may be surprised by how much space that single shift creates.

Feel With Them Without Falling Apart

Once you have learned to listen, the next challenge is what to do with what you hear. Empathy is the ability to feel with someone, not just for them. Sympathy says, “I feel sorry for you.” Empathy says, “I can sense what this is like for you, and I am here.” The difference matters.

As psychologist Carl Rogers, the founder of person-centred therapy, put it, when someone truly feels heard and understood, even to a minimal degree, change becomes possible. Sympathy creates distance; empathy creates connection.

But here is the danger, especially for teachers, HR professionals, community health volunteers, and pastors who hear hard stories every day: empathy without boundaries becomes absorption. You take on the other person’s pain as your own.

You carry it home. You lie awake replaying their words. Over time, this leads to compassion fatigue and burnout.

The skill is not to stop feeling. It is to feel with someone while remaining anchored in yourself. One practical framework is the “I hear you” approach: acknowledge the person’s experience fully (“I hear how painful this is for you”), then internally remind yourself that their pain belongs to them, not to you. You can hold space without holding the weight.

You can hold space without holding the weight.

The Questions That Unlock Real Conversations

Now that you are listening and empathising, the next skill sharpens the conversation itself. The questions we ask determine the depth of the conversation we have.

Closed questions — “Are you okay?” — invite a one-word answer and usually get one: “Yes” (even when the person is clearly not okay).

Open questions invite exploration: “What has been weighing on you lately?” or “How did that experience affect you?”

In everyday Kenyan scenarios, this shift is transformative. Instead of asking a struggling employee, “Is everything fine at home?” try “What is going on for you right now?”

Instead of asking your teenager, “Did something happen at school?” try “What was your day like today?” The question opens a door; the person decides how far to walk through it.

And here is the part that most people find hardest: after you ask an open question, be silent. Let the pause sit. In our culture, silence is uncomfortable; we rush to fill it.

But silence after a question is not empty.

It is an invitation.

It says “take your time.” Some of the most important things people will ever tell you will come after a five-second pause that you had the discipline not to fill.

A useful practice: count to five in your head after you ask a question. If the person has not responded by then, resist the urge to rephrase or offer an answer. More often than not, they are gathering courage. Your silence is the safest space you can offer.

If you are finding these skills useful, they are exactly what is covered in depth, with practice and feedback, in Clarity’s Certified Basic Counseling Skills and Self-Awareness Course.

The Most Loving Thing You Can Say Is ‘This Is Beyond Me’

This might be the most important skill on this list, and it is the one that untrained helpers get wrong most often. There is a line between supporting someone and playing therapist.

When someone discloses suicidal thoughts, abuse, severe trauma, or psychotic symptoms, they need a trained professional — not a well-meaning friend.

The danger of crossing this line is real.

Consider a church elder who hears a confession of abuse during a home visit.

Without training, they may inadvertently minimise the crisis (“Just pray about it”), make promises they cannot keep (“I will never tell anyone” when mandatory reporting may be necessary), or re-traumatise someone by probing into details they are not equipped to handle.

The intention is love. But the impact can be harmful.

The skill here is recognising the edge of your competence and having the language to refer to. A referral is not abandonment. It sounds like this: “I care about you deeply, and what you are going through is important.

I think a professional counselor could support you with this in ways that I cannot. Would you be open to that?” You are not passing them off. You are connecting them to the right resource while remaining present in their life.

A referral is not abandonment. It is the most honest form of care.

Before You Can Hold Space for Others, Know Yourself

Every skill above depends on this one. You cannot hold space for another person’s emotions if you do not understand your own. Self-awareness is the foundation on which every other counseling skill rests. It means knowing your triggers, your biases, your patterns of response under stress, and your unfinished emotional business.

Consider: when someone shares a story of marital conflict, do you project your own experiences onto theirs? When a friend talks about financial hardship, do you feel compelled to rescue them because sitting with helplessness is intolerable for you?

These are not character flaws. They are human patterns, and they are invisible until you do the work of examining them.

Models like the Johari Window, which maps what we know about ourselves against what others see in us, can be useful starting points. But real self-awareness goes deeper than a model. It requires honest reflection, feedback from trusted people, and ideally some form of structured personal development.

This is precisely why Clarity’s Basic Counseling Skills course places self-awareness at the centre of the curriculum, not as an afterthought. Before you can be a safe person for others, you need to understand the lens through which you see them.

Your family of origin, your cultural assumptions, your unresolved grief, all of these shape how you respond to someone else’s story.

Knowing them does not make you a worse helper. It makes you a more honest one.

You’ve Been Doing This on Instinct. Imagine What You Could Do With Training.

These five skills — active listening, empathy with boundaries, open questioning, knowing when to refer, and self-awareness — are the difference between being a well-meaning presence and being someone who truly helps.

They are not reserved for therapists. They belong to every teacher who sits with a struggling student, every HR manager who handles a grievance, every parent who wants to connect with their child, and every community leader whom people trust with their pain.

You have been carrying this responsibility informally, probably for years. What you have just read is a starting point. But reading about these skills and practising them under guidance are very different things.

Clarity Counseling & Training Centre’s Certified Basic Counseling Skills and Self-Awareness Course is a short, practical programme built specifically for non-therapists who want to support others with confidence and skill.

You will practise these skills in a safe environment, receive feedback, and leave with tools you can use immediately. The next intake is open.

Enquire now at +254 (0) 114 444 300 or visit claritycounseling.co.ke/our-courses/short-term-courses. No prior training required — just a willingness to grow.

And if this article has made you consider a full career in counseling, explore Clarity’s Diploma and Certificate in Counseling Psychology programmes — designed for professionals ready to make the leap.