Ambiguity is inherent in both life and counseling. Ambiguity is unavoidable among beginning counselors, as it involves learning novel skills and information, navigating different sources of information, increasing their awareness, and working with clients for the first time. Every counselor must understand how to negotiate ambiguities, which are inherent in counseling, and this is referred to as having a tolerance for ambiguity (TA) (Endres, Camp, & Milner, 2015). It is considered one of the basic variables in a person’s cognitive and emotional orientation toward life. Individuals with a high tolerance for ambiguity view insoluble, complex, and novel situations as manageable and desirable (Endres, Camp, & Milner, 2015). It is not always the case with individuals with a low tolerance for ambiguity who find such situations challenging and threatening. Due to the important role that tolerance for ambiguity plays in counselors’ lives regarding how they handle novel and complex situations, it is necessary to understand this concept’s application. The paper explores how insights regarding tolerance for ambiguity can be used in work with clients.
Counselors can use tolerance for ambiguity to develop counseling skills. In particular, tolerance for ambiguity allows counselors to use acceptance, silence, and clarification, which plays a significant role during counseling (Endres, Camp, & Milner, 2015). These skills help in effective counseling by allowing counselors to develop empathetic understanding and tolerance for their clients. These counseling skills work by enabling communication between counselors and their clients. For instance, a counselor with clarification skills will seek to get the background of a client’s issues to understand their situation better and determine the best solution. Therefore, effective counselors should have counseling skills, such as acceptance, silence, and clarification, to help them deal with their clients. These skills can only be developed if a counselor has tolerance for ambiguity.
Also, tolerance for ambiguity is associated with more flexibility when dealing with clients with complex problems during counseling. A counselor with tolerance for ambiguity will not find it challenging to handle a client experiencing a complex problem that touches on their religion or culture (Endres, Camp, & Milner, 2015). Tolerance for ambiguity allows counselors to question their religious beliefs and other life aspects, an indicator for more flexibility. Addressing complex situations that touch on a person’s religion or sex may require flexibility, which is hard to get among counselors without tolerance for ambiguity. Counselors with tolerance for ambiguity are flexible in their thinking and behavior, which helps work with clients of differing lifestyles and values. However, this is not the case with those who are highly intolerant of ambiguity, as they will always appear to shut out all aspects of reality that may appear to challenge their perceptions. Such counselors will struggle with accepting ambivalent feelings or conflicting emotions due to their inability to see things from two or more perspectives. They will also react to ambiguous situations by developing anxiety or feeling threatened. Therefore, counselors must have tolerance for ambiguity, allowing them to be flexible when it comes to challenging situations.
Tolerance for ambiguity plays a vital role in enhancing counseling relationships. Counselors with tolerance for ambiguity find it easy to connect with their clients emotionally, as there is a free flow of feelings, emotions, and motivations between them (Fulton, 2016). Counselors/therapists can learn more about their clients’ irrational feelings, conflicts, defenses, and how they structure their relations. Tolerance for ambiguity makes this possible by interpreting ambiguous stimuli based on their perceptions and experiences. Notably, nondirective and psychoanalytic therapy techniques rely on the ambiguity of therapeutic relationships between counselors and their clients (Fulton, 2016). Tolerance for ambiguity allows therapists to ensure that clients lack anything concrete to base their perceptions about them. Therefore, tolerance for ambiguity is essential in understanding and enhancing counseling relationships between counselors and their clients.
Tolerance for ambiguity is also associated with ethical decision-making. When counselors have tolerance for ambiguity, they better understand personal and professional values that are required to be successful in the field (Jennings et al., 2005; Ametrano, 2014). Conflicts between these values are common, and when they are not addressed properly, a counselor may struggle with ethical decision-making. However, this is not the case with counselors who tolerate ambiguity, as they learn to reconcile the conflicts. It means that these counselors can use these skills to also help their clients through awareness of the role that values play in decision making. Therefore, tolerance of ambiguity is ideal counseling because it helps counselors learn ethical decision-making skills.
In conclusion, tolerance for ambiguity is essential in counseling because it allows counselors to view insoluble, complex, and novel situations as manageable and desirable. It allows counselors to use acceptance, silence, and clarification, which are counseling skills that allow counselors to develop empathetic understanding and tolerance for their clients. These counseling skills work by enabling communication between counselors and their clients. Also, tolerance for ambiguity is associated with more flexibility when dealing with clients with complex problems during counseling. A counselor with tolerance for ambiguity will not find it challenging to handle a client experiencing a complex problem that touches on their religion or culture. Tolerance for ambiguity is also associated with ethical decision-making. When counselors have tolerance for ambiguity, they better understand personal and professional values that are required to be successful in the field.
References
Ametrano, I. (2014). Teaching ethical decision making: Helping students reconcile personal and professional values. Journal of Counseling & Development, 92, 154-161. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.2014.00143.x
Endres, M., Camp, R., & Milner, M. (2015). Is ambiguity tolerance malleable? Experimental evidence with potential implications for future research. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(619). http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00619
Fulton, C. (2016). Mindfulness, self-compassion, and counselor characteristics and session variables. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 38(4), 360-374. https://doi.org/10 .17744/mehc.38.4.06
Jennings, L., Sovereign, A., Bottorff, N., Mussell, M., & Vye, C. (2005). Nine ethical values of master therapists. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 27(1), 32-47. http://dx.doi.org/10.17744/mehc.27.1.lmm8vmdujgev2qhp
