Peaceful
Mind
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"And the peace of God, which surpasses all
comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
I felt that the reading targeted a lot of the tough
issues that we may face during counseling such as termination and the process
of the actual counseling sessions. Being very new to the field with the limited
newly acquired skills at times it makes me feel inadequate to be able to accomplish
successful counseling with a counselee. I thought that the book helped lay out the
overall process to help me understand the bigger picture of things. Part of the
process is to bring forth the weak points in a person so it can be brought to
the counselee attention. When I think about confrontation I automatically
associate it to something negative but the book reveals that this can be a
useful tool when used correctly with clients, it promotes growth. Another
aspect that I found interesting were all the different types of termination; I guess
I had never really thought about how many different ways there are to come to
an end of a counseling relationship.The book showed how to deal with most of
the terminations in a very similar manner, through communicating to the counselee
that it was coming to an end and if were a decision on the counselee to have
just one last session to talk through it. Walking the counselee and even
ourselves through all the sessions just to show how much they have benefited
from the sessions, shown through their behavior and reactions to everyday
situations or maybe even new perspectives on things. Being able to give a counselee
closer is also very beneficially to the counselor as well it goes to show that
they helped them through a tough time and most importantly that both were
reliant on God or God’s will. It seems to be a comfort in knowing that even
though our sessions are coming to an end that God will never leave them and
will always be on their side.
Reference
Thomas, J. C. & Sosin, L.
(2011). Therapeutic
expedition: Equipping the Christian counselor for the journey. Nashville, TN: B & H
Publishing Group
Mackenzie,
ReplyDeleteI too feel inadequate when learning all of these different skills to learn. I know that in the end, we will know much more and through practicum and internship we will gain much knowledge, but at this point it can feel overwhelming. Termination was also an interesting subject to me as well. It seems really early in our class to be talking about it, but at the same time we need to be preparing to end our sessions at the end of the semester. It is also very important to understand that the client can initiate the termination even when we as the counselor do not feel like they are ready, which the book covered (Thomas & Sosin, 2011, p. 237). That will be hard to handle at first, but in the end, terminating early by the counselee standpoint will happen often. These two topics you mentioned really stuck out to me. Thank you for sharing.
Thomas, J. C., & Sosin, L. (2011). Therapeutic expedition: Equipping the Christian counselor for the journey. Nashville, TN: B & H Publishing Group.
Mackenzie,
ReplyDeleteI've also found the Thomas & Sosin (2011) text to be really beneficial in my understanding of the various skills that we are learning to implement into our practice as counselors. At first the idea of using all of these skills at the same time felt overwhelming and somewhat impossible, but the more I understand about the skills and the reasoning behind them as well as reading examples of how they are implemented, the more doable it feels (with much practice). Thanks for sharing a bit of your journey!