Reflection of

Meaning
Manjusha Warrier G PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
CHRIST (Deemed to be University)
Bangalore
• Assist clients, through reflection of meaning, to explore their deeper meanings and values and to discern their own
vision, goals, or life purpose

• Reflecting meaning is the art of encouraging clients to find new ways of examining their lives through your in-depth
listening for deeper issues and visions of the present, past, and future

• Eliciting and reflecting meaning are both skills and strategies. As skills, they are quite straightforward. To elicit meaning,
ask the client some variation of the basic question, “What does . . . mean to you, your past, or your future life?” At the
same time, effective exploration of meaning becomes a major strategy in which you bring out client stories, past, present,
and future.

• Counsellor use all the listening, focusing, and confrontation skills to facilitate this self-examination, yet the focus
remains on the client’s meaning and finding purpose in his or her life.
• Meanings are close to core client experiencing.

• Encourage clients to explore their own meanings and values in

more depth from their own perspective.

• Questions to elicit meaning are often a vital first step.

• A reflection of meaning looks very much like a paraphrase, but

focuses on going beyond what the client says.

• Often the words meaning, values, vision, and goals appear in the
discussion.

• The client will discuss stories, issues, and concerns in more

depth with a special emphasis on deeper meanings, values, and
understandings.
• Clients may be enabled to discern their life goals and vision for
the future.
Eliciting client’s meaning

• Understanding the client is the essential first step.

• Consider storytelling as a useful way to discover the background of a client’s meaning-making. If a major life
event is critical, illustrative stories can form the basis for exploration of meaning.
• Clients do not often volunteer meaning issues, even though these may be central to the clients’ concerns.
• Critical life events such as illness, loss of a parent or loved one, accident, or divorce often force people to
encounter deeper meaning issues.
• Through the basic listening sequence and careful attending, you may observe the behaviours, thoughts, and
feelings that express client meaning.
Eliciting client’s meaning

Some examples:
• “What has given you the most satisfaction in your job?”
• “What’s been missing for you in your present life?”
• “What do you value in your life?
• “What sense do you make of this heart attack and the future?”
• “What things in the future will be most meaningful to you?”
• “What is the purpose of your working so hard?”
• “You’ve said that you wonder what God is saying to you with this trial. Could you share some of
your thoughts?”
• “What gift would you like to leave the world?”
Reflecting Client Meanings

• Say back to clients their exact key meaning and value words. Reflect their own meaning system, not yours.
Implicit meanings will become clear through your careful listening and questions designed to elicit meaning
issues from the client.
• Using the client’s key words is preferable, but occasionally you may supply the needed meaning word yourself.
When you do so, carefully check that the word(s) you use feel right to the client. Simply change “You feel . . .”
to “You mean. . . .”
• A reflection of meaning is structured similarly to a paraphrase or reflection of feeling. “You value . . . ,” “You
care . . . ,” “Your reasons are . . . ,” or “Your intention was. . . .”
• Distinguishing among a reflection of meaning, a paraphrase, and a reflection of feeling can be difficult. Often
the skilled counsellor will blend the three skills together.
• Noting the key words that relate to meaning (meaning, value, reasons, intent, cause, and the like) will help
distinguish reflection of meaning from other skills
Reflecting Client Meanings

• Reflection of meaning becomes more complicated when meanings or values conflict

• When clients make important decisions, helping them sort out key meaning issues may be even more
important than the many other issues that affect the decision.
• For example, a young person may be experiencing a value conflict over career choice “What does each choice
mean for you? What sense do you make of each?” The client’s answers provide the opportunity for the
counsellor to reflect back the meaning, eventually leading to a decision that involves not only facts and
feelings but also values and meaning.
Reframing
• Reflecting meaning involves client direction; the reframing implies therapist direction. The client provides the new
and more comprehensive perspective in reflection of meaning, whereas a reframe supplies a new way of being as
suggested by the counselor.

• Reframing- thinking differently about issues/ concerns- thinking from a larger frame

• Reframing may come from observations of the counselor, they may be based on varying theoretical orientations
to the helping field, or they may link critical ideas together.

• The two skills are similar in helping clients generate a new and potentially more helpful way of looking at things.
Reflection of meaning focuses on the client’s worldview and seeks to understand what motivates the client; it
provides more clarity on values and deeper life meanings. An interpretation/reframe results from counselor
observation and seeks new and more useful ways of thinking.
Reframing

• When you use the microskill of interpretation/reframing, you are helping the client to restory or look at the
problem or concern from a new, more useful perspective. This new way of thinking is central to the restorying
and action process.

• Interpretation reveals new perspectives and new ways of thinking beneath what a client says or does.

• The reframe provides another frame of reference for considering problems or issues. And eventually the client’s
story may be reconsidered and rewritten as well.
Reframing- Steps
• The counselor listens to the client story, issue, or problem and learns how the client makes sense of, thinks about,
or interprets the story or issue.

• The counselor may draw from personal experience and/or observation of the client (reframe) or may use a
theoretical perspective, thus providing an alternative meaning or interpretation of the narrative

• Eg: (Positive reframe from personal experience) “You feel that coming out as gay led you to lose your job, and
you blame yourself for not keeping quiet. Maybe you just really needed to become who you are. You seem more
confident and sure of yourself. It will take time, but I see you growing through this difficult situation.” Here
self-blame has been reinterpreted or reframed as a positive step in the long run.
 Multiculturalism and reflection of meaning
• When helping clients make meaning, focus exploration of meaning not just on the individual but also on the
broader life context.

• It differs according to the cultural context. Eg- Individualistic Vs Collectivist cultures

• Cultural, ethnic, religious, and gender groups all have systems of meaning that give an individual a sense of
coherence and connection with others

• As religion plays such an important part in many people’s lives, members of dominant religions in a region or a
nation may have different experiences from those who follow minority religions. Being a counsellor, be sensitive
to those possible differences
• Read the following client statement. Which of the following counsellor responses are paraphrases (P),
reflections of feeling (RF), reflections of meaning (RM), or interpretations/reframes (I/R)?
“I feel very sad and lonely. I thought Jose was the one for me. He’s gone now. After our
breakup, I saw a lot of people but no one special. Jose seemed to care for me and make it
easy for me. Before that I had fun, particularly with Carlos. But it seemed at the end to be just
sex. It appears Jose was it; we seemed so close.”
• ………………….“You’re really hurting and feeling sad right now.”
• ………………….“Since the breakup you’ve seen a lot of people, but Jose provided the most of what you
wanted.”
• ………………..“Sounds like you are searching for someone to act as the father you never had and Jose
was part of that.”
• ……………………..“Another way to look at it is that you unconsciously don’t really want to get close; and
when you get really close, the relationship ends.”
• ………………………“Looks like the sense of peace, caring, ease, and closeness meant an awful lot to
you.”
• …………………“You felt really close to Jose and now are sad and lonely.”
• ………………….“Peace, caring, and having someone special mean a lot to you. Jose represented that to
you. Carlos seemed to mean mainly fun, and you found no real meaning with him. Is that close?”