Reflection of Meaning

Reflection of meaning and interpretation is really kind of hard for me to grasp. I understand what it means for me and what it is suppose to mean for the client but I guess the hard part is how to get to it. I know in my personal life when I have done counseling, figuring out what things mean for me is always really hard. I feel like I really just don't know. However, as I have aged I have found out that it takes time and always doesn't come to me right away. When trying to interptet the meaning of certain feeling and thoughts it really takes time. It is improtant that you take time to really reflect on thoughts and feelings in order to get to the deeper meaning. Even though this is very hard for me and I may be hard for clients of mine in the future, I think this is the "ah ha" moment in a session and the real breakthrough or reselution. Being able to understand the meaning of you thoughts and feelings, for me, is the real goal and can really help clients understand themselves better.

Experimental Activity

            For my Experimental Activity I decided to go the Career Services building and attend a workshop. I had always looked at workshops to go to but just never made the time to go.  After looking at my options I chose to attend the “What can I do with a major in the helping professions?” workshop. I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do after I am done with undergrad. I have been going back and forth with just trying to find a job or continue going to school for a masters degree. I figured this would be a really good workshop to go to because it could really help me with my decision-making.

            Grad student, Justina Farley, led the workshop. She started by talking about some myths/ questions that we might have about helping professions.  I found this to be really helpful because it did answerer some questions that I hadn’t even thought about. One of the myths that she brought up was “ You cannot get a job in mental health with only a master’s degree”. This is not actually true. Except for university professors, MA/MS graduates are in high demand, related to manage care and licensing. In addition to community/ agency mental health jobs, masters grads can obtain LPC, LCSW, LMFT, and others which allow for private practice. One really interesting thing that Justina talked about was that you do not have to have a masters degree in order to get a PhD.  Most clinical and counseling PhD programs accept bachelor’s level applicants.

            Next Justina went in to the different things you can do in the mental health helping fields. Administrative work, applied work – psychology, counseling, social work, applied work – non-therapy, education, and others such as human resources and life coaching are the areas you focused on. Non-therapy work in College Student Personnel, administration and student affairs is really what I have been thinking about doing as a career. Even though I probably do not want to do counseling, I think the skills and knowledge I have acquired in class will be very beneficial in any career I choose.

            Towards the end of the presentation Justina informed us of what each level of a degree meant and what it takes to get to that level. These was really helpful to me because it gave me a visual map and time line that I could look over and think more about. I was able to look at each level and how much time it would take to obtain that degree. Next she gave us a list of places we could volunteer or contact for more information or experience. During undergrad it is very important to build relationships with different people within the university and the community and volunteer work is a great way to build those relationships.

            Overall, this workshop and experience was very informative and helpful and it gave me a lot of information to consider and think about. After going, I would say I was maybe a little more confused than I was when I went in because I had so much more information to think about. However I am still very glad I went because now I know I am on the right track and I know the steps I need to be taking in order to get where I want to be.

Practice Day Reflection

Like I said in my last blog, I am a very honest and up front kind of person and it can sometimes be very hard for me to not immediately say what is on my mind and voice my opinion. Last Thursday we were in small groups and I always tend to freak out a little and think there is no why I can talk to someone for more than 5 minutes. However, each time I am pleasantly surprised at how well I do and how well I am able to just sit and listen to someone and not become overbearing and strongly opinionated. I actually really enjoy it because it allows me to work on myself and being too opinionated. It allows me to sit back and try to see things from a different perspective, which is something I have ,sadly, struggled with. I am really interested to see how the group videotape  interviews go towards the end of the semester.

Confrontation

I really enjoyed talking about confrontation. Confrontation is something I have always been pretty okay with, or at least I thought I was. I am very good at recognizing my weaknesses and my strong points. With that said I know I can be very blunt and too the point and I don't have a problem with being brutally honest with people. However, that doesn't work for everyone and I know if I am like that with everyone I will run them off. So confrontation is probably going to be hard for me in the opposite way, unlike most people. Not everyone wants to hear the ugly truth right off the bat so it is important for me to learn skills and techniques to be a little more subtle when it comes to speaking the truth.

Conducting an Interview

I really enjoyed this class because I really had no idea how to do an interview or what the real purpose was of an interview. I am glad to know there are steps I cam follow to keep me on track and guide me through the interview process. I like having something visual like a checklist that I can glance at to make sure I have covered everything and gotten down all the important information. However, I can see where a checklist may lead to some problems. Some people may be too focused on the list and miss out on other information they may need. It is important that we keep our minds open to any other questions that may come to surface.

Feelings and Art Therapy

I really enjoyed class last Thursday. This was my second practice day and I found this one a lot easier. I think it was easier because we talked about something I could relate to. We were asked to describe our feelings in general. In describing our feelings, most of our feelings were directed toward school. School is pretty much the center of our world right now so it makes perfect sense that It would be the foundation of all of our feelings. I found this really easy to talk about because it is something I can understand and relate to. It was really easy for me to ask questions and really get the client to talk about their feelings. I also really liked the coloring even though I didn't really find it that necessary. However, some people may find it helpful so I think it is very important to try different things when you are counseling.

Observing and Reflecting Feelings

I like how the book describes reflection of feelings and paraphrasing as closely related.  It is very important for the client to reflect on their feelings. As a counselor you can help your client do this by paraphrasing. As a client is talking, a counselor may repeat back what he or she has heard and by doing this you may in turn open your clients eye to something they didn't see before. It is also good to paraphrase so that the counselor is clear on what he or she is hearing and if they have heard something wrong the client then can clarify. Paraphrasing can help the counselor identify the feelings or emotions the client is expressing and also allow the client to reflect on his or her own feelings. I think this is a very useful technique to use in a counseling session or even it regular conversation.

Practice Day 1

Last Thursday we had our first practice day. We had to only worry about the skills we had learned so far in the class. I thought it was going to be just like talking to someone like I do everyday but it wasn't. This first practice day was a real eye opener. I was paired with C. who is from China. I never took into consideration the differences we might have. One of the hardest things for me to overcome and get use to was the language barrier. Even though C. spoke English, her English was no as good as mine. I could tell she did not understand some of the things I was saying and I too, could not completely understand some of the things she was saying. Another thing I found to be very difficult was the culture differences. I, not knowing anything about China but knowing there are huge differences in the culture, didn't know what types of questions to ask or even where to begin when talking to her. I think it is very important to discuss things such as language and culture differences with your client before hand. Discussing these issues would make the session go smoother and allow me to not be so disorganized while talking to that person.

Attending and Observation Skills

I really enjoyed the class and chapter on attending and observational skills. During class I realized a few things about myself when it comes to listening. I absolutely hated trying to completely ignore someone when they were trying to tell me a story. However, I started to think to myself that it is easy to pay attention to someone for 2 minutes but it tends to get a lot harder the longer someone talks. I think this will be a hard thing for me to over come. I tend to get distracted easily and have trouble keeping eye contact for long periods of time. When we started talking about body language and watched the clip on body language, I realized that this was something I was pretty good at recognizing or reading. The more I thought about class and what I had read in the book, the more I realized that you can't be good at everything. There are going to be things that I struggle with and there are going to be things that just come naturally.

Problems with Techniques

One of the points that really stuck out to me in the article about multicultural counseling was that over time theories of counseling have been redefined to fit into techniques and approaches to clients.

This is something that has always brought up questions for me and I do not thing this only applies to counseling. It applies to many things in education and the world. When we go through school, we are taught textbook ways of doing things and we do not live in a textbook world. Things are not always as black and white as textbooks seem to put them sometimes.

I think techniques are good but I also think that they can sometimes cause problems for students once they get into the “real world”.  I think Ginter is right when he says that counselors want to focus more on “doing” counseling than “being” a counselor. When you are taught techniques, it is easy to want to place people in to categories and then apply certain approaches or techniques to them based on what category they are in. In doing this we lose sigh of being a counselor and actually counseling. We place too much emphasis on applying textbook techniques to real world people.

With all that being said it is very, very important for students going in to counseling to practice. Along with practice, it would be beneficial to watch counseling sessions take place. Being able to see how other counselors handle certain problem would be good because you are able to see different ways of handling situations that may not go along with textbook approaches.

Wellness in Counseling

Before reading the article on wellness by Myers and Sweeney, I asked myself what my definition of wellness was. For me wellness is well-being in a holistic way. How a person is based on there well-being. And this may be in multiple areas such as their physical and mental health.

I really like Hettler's definition of wellness in that "wellness is an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward a more successful existence." I think this is very true and to be a well, physically and mentally, it takes effort along with understanding. It is important for people to understand first what wellness means. Wellness can mean many different things for different people. In counseling, I think understanding and accepting that people have different views from me is going to be the most important thing for me.

So, in understanding wellness and what it means for different people, I like The Wheel of Wellness model the best. I liked that it was visual, and the clients were able to see something solid and concrete in front of them. - I always think having some type of visual aid or model is very helpful.

Having "Spirituality" in the center of this wheel made perfect sense to me. It is important for someone to kind of focus fist on there values, their beliefs, and a sense of meaning in their life. This provides a type of foundation or base line when starting to counsel someone. Also having the 12 different life task around the wheel allows the client to take things one thing at a time. - We talked about this during our second class and I think we were all in agreement that slowing things down and taking it one problem or issue at a time is very important. I think it helps with minimizing stress and keeping anyone from becoming overwhelmed.

The Five Factor Model  would also be very helpful in counseling and I also think it would be very interesting to research. Having multiple versions available - adults, children, and even different cultural models- is very helpful. Like I said earlier, not everyone has the same views. Theses views vary based on age and culture, so to have different versions of a model can be very beneficial.

All in all, this was a very interesting read and it provided several sources to aid me in my journey of counseling.