Alternative Counseling for Unplanned Pregnancy
What women need immediately upon discovering an unplanned pregnancy is someone who can listen to their problems in a friendly manner without judgment and provide comprehensive information to aid in decision-making, as well as assistance that aligns with their situation and life conditions to help resolve and address the problem effectively. Service centers must therefore have alternative counseling providers to help women make decisions that align with their life conditions, personal potential, and readiness to face the consequences of their decisions.
Options counseling aims to empower women facing unplanned pregnancies to crystallize their thoughts in understanding and confronting the problem, enabling them to choose a solution based on diverse, accurate, and comprehensive information.
The Concept of Options Counseling
Options counseling for women with unplanned pregnancies is a highly challenging service because unplanned pregnancies are deeply stigmatized by society. Women facing this issue are generally viewed as having inappropriate behavior, and if they behaved correctly, they would not face this problem. The stigma is even greater for teenagers, students, single women, and widows. Providers who share the majority societal view cannot offer appropriate and relevant options counseling for this issue.
In providing options counseling for women with unplanned pregnancies, counselors must first understand that no woman intends to have an unplanned pregnancy. Unplanned pregnancy is one of the forms of violence against women, resulting from a social value system that differentiates between men and women and strictly defines the value framework of women’s sexual behavior, condemning any behavior outside this framework. Unplanned pregnancy is stigmatized by society, leaving women to face the problem alone, in a state of confusion, unable to see how to continue their lives. Having someone who listens with understanding and without judgment is the primary need for women facing this problem.
Key Principles of Options Counseling
The heart of options counseling is believing in the potential, ability, and intelligence of the problem owner to solve their own problems. However, these potentials are diminished due to the confusion caused by the problem and societal stigma. The process of options counseling focuses on restoring potential, alleviating suffering, and encouraging the person facing the problem to see their own value and potential to solve and find a way out on their own.
Counselors are not superior, more knowledgeable, or givers, but rather companions in suffering, exploring the social capital and potential that the service user has, supporting comprehensive information and resources to help the service user find solutions and make decisions that align with their goals and lifestyle, with the following key guidelines:
- • Counselors treat service users as equals, with an open mind to understand them as much as possible.
- • Counselors and service users work together, or it can be called shared power to solve problems, allowing the service user to make their own decisions.
- • Counselors must believe that service users have wisdom and potential and know their own life stories best.
- • Counselors should work using their abilities, skills, and knowledge to support comprehensive information and find relevant resources to benefit the service user in making decisions and solving problems on their own.
The Process of Options Counseling includes
- 1) Building Relationships involves creating trust and a relaxed atmosphere at the first meeting to open up the service user to talk and exchange learning together. The readiness of the service provider and the expression of voice, eye contact, and gestures are important.
- 2) Mindful Listening involves attentive listening, understanding, respecting the identity of the service user, giving importance, not taking notes, responding periodically, and not interrupting with questions, as often the service user just wants to express their feelings through storytelling without needing advice.
- 3) Reflection is a skill to help the service user review and clearly understand the problem they are facing again, reflecting what is heard back to the service user, both in terms of key content and feelings.
- 4) Understanding and Non-Judgment requires understanding that each service user has different backgrounds and life experiences and is facing suffering, which may result in various attitudes and feelings at that moment, such as fear, anger, confusion, depression, rage, self-punishment, and hopelessness. It is crucial for counselors to be aware, not judge hastily, and accept the identity of the service user.
- 5) Questioning here means asking to stimulate more thoughtful growth instead of giving advice or making decisions for them, to clarify the problem further, check if there are additional issues, and explore solutions, analyzing the pros and cons of each option in solving the problem.
- 6) Restoring Inner Potential involves finding skills or inner strengths that the service user has, such as patience, responsibility, letting go, mindfulness, etc., and the counselor witnessing the service user’s abilities genuinely by praising and acknowledging them to restore the service user’s mental state to be strong and ready to continue living in society.
- 7) Confidentiality is crucial in the counseling process because those facing unplanned pregnancies are at risk of having their stories exposed and being condemned by society. Maintaining confidentiality also helps build relationships, trust, and confidence between the counselor and the service user.
The obstacles to listening and reflection are biases, using the counselor’s mindset and values as a framework in counseling, which must be aware of to make listening effective and fully mindful. Bias leads to judgment, interpreting the service user’s experiences, hastily concluding, and rushing to find solutions for the service user, resulting in decisions made by the counselor, not the service user themselves.