The concept of self-awareness has long been observed by researchers as a crucial means that could help individuals to alleviate their psychological distress, thus leading to psychologically healthy individuals. Self -awareness is the state of being consciously aware of one’s internal states and their interactions or relationships with others. The present study was conducted in order to evaluate the usefulness of counseling tool or game in connecting theoretical concepts (self-awareness concept) to practical applications. Most of the time, it is quite difficult for the clients to self-disclose during a counselling session, especially during a group counselling session. Self-disclosure is a process of communication by which one person reveals information about himself or herself to another. With the elements of surprises and fun game embedded in the counseling tool, clients feel more comfortable and confident to complete the task given, especially when playing in a group. Thus a counseling game was developed to help participants feel at ease during a group counseling session, and then through the activities of the game could increase and improve their self-awareness. The objectives of this study are: 1) to determine whether students’ self-awareness improve after playing the game and 2) to investigate to what extent using a game can help counselors to bring out more self-disclosure from participants. The self-awareness game was pilot-tested on a group of 41 underprivileged male adolescents staying at a shelter home. The feedback given by the participants indicates that they enjoyed the game, contributing to easier and faster self-disclosure as well as engagement. Using a brief pre-post-test which were given to participants before and after they played with the game, it was found through paired samples t-test that two out of seven aspects of self-awareness were significantly improved. The general conclusion that can be derived from this study is that counseling session using games can help to increase the effectiveness of the counseling session. The game provides a fun and interactive approach in order to encourage clients to open up during the counseling session. It is hoped that the game can be a useful tool that benefits counselors in improving clients’ self-awareness and self-disclose during the counseling session.
Bell, H., Limberg, D., Jacobson, L., & Super, T. J. (2014).Enhancing self-awareness through
creative experiential-learning play-based activities. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 9(3):399-414
Briere J, Rickards S (2007). Self-awareness, affect regulation, and relatedness: differential
sequels of childhood versus adult victimization experiences. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 195(6):497-503.
Fayez, A. M., Sulieman, T. R., & Denise, Z. B. (2015).Expressive group counseling as a model
for increasing self-awareness to reduce trauma symptoms experienced by children in Palestine. International Journal of Psychology and Counselling, 7(8): 112-118.
Kalaiyarasan, M., & Solomon, D. M. (2016).Importance of self-awareness in adolescence – A
thematic research paper. Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 21(1): 19-22.
Myers, S. (2003). Reflections on reflecting: how self-awareness promotes personal growth. The
Person-Centered Journal, 10:3-22.
Oden, K., A., Miner-Holden, J., &Balkin, R. (2009). Required counseling for mental health
Professional trainees: Its perceived effect on self-awareness and other potential benefits. Journal of Mental Health, 18(5): 441–448.
Prince, H., & Alexander, H. (2017). Self-awareness. Insights. The Insights Group Ltd.
Sandu, M. C., Panisoara, G., &Panisoara, O. (2015).Study on the development of self-
awareness in teenagers. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 180: 1656 – 1660.
Sutton, A. (2016). Measuring the effects of self-awareness: construction of the self-awareness
outcomes questionnaire. Europe Journal of Psychology, 12(4): 645-658.
Topuz, C., & Arasan, Z. (2014).Self-awareness group counseling model for prospective
counselors. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 143 (2014): 638 – 642.
In-Text Citation: (Alias, Mustafa, & Ahmad, 2019)
To Cite this Article: Alias, N. F., Mustafa, S. M. S., & Ahmad, Z. (2019). Investigat?ng the Usefullness of Counselling Tool to Improve Students’ Self-Awareness. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 9(13), 166–172.
Copyright: © 2019 The Author(s)
Published by Human Resource Management Academic Research Society (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
