Normalizing in student counseling: Counselors’ responses to students’ problem descriptions

What is it about?

In this article, we study an interactional practice called normalizing. The study is based on authentic, video-recorded interactions between counselors and undergraduate students. In normalizing, something that is said or done in the interaction is made normal, for example, either by labeling it “normal” or “commonplace” or by interpreting it in an ordinary way. Normalizing seems to be a means of addressing students’ problematic emotions and offering support, yet in a way that maintains an orientation toward problem solving. And while normalizing seems to serve affiliation, suggesting that the problems are not unique, it can be treated as either delicate or as problematic by the counselors and by the students.

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Why is it important?

While the data of this study is from counseling, normalizing is a very common feature in many other forms of interaction, such as medical encounters, various forms of supervision and also everyday interactions. Our study shows some of the specific ways in which normalizing is used. However, the article also shows, how normalizing may potentially also be dangerous: it touches on the issue that the student’s problems are not unique or special. The student may feel that he is being offered a standard solution that perhaps does not acknowledge his individual situation. Moreover, bringing other students into the discussion invokes comparison and can cause a student to wonder if, indeed his problems are in fact so common, why is he the one, for example, whose studies are stalling?