Clinical Journal 1

Clinical Journal 1
As a student who incorporated this psychodynamic therapy method for the first time, it was
definitely quite the struggle to find my bearings and steady myself at the start of the session.
When it was my turn to be the therapist, I allowed the client to open up and explore themselves
at the beginning. I took down certain moments that I wanted to focus on made sure that they
were addressed properly. Due to the time constraint, however, it was hard for me to limit the
exploration. It was difficult to draw the line between listening and confronting. On the former,
listening is a chance for the client to open up and take a deep dive into their current struggles and
thoughts. This is the chance for the therapist to take down notes of certain standpoints that can be
brought up if it relates to the central issue. However, the purpose of these short and
straightforward processes to promote independence and to allow self-insight. Techniques that I
would frequently utilize during the practice session were reframing and confrontation, two
challenging skills to address the client and encourage insight and a change in one’s paradigm. I
chose these two since the topics brought up by the client were anxiety-provoking so both skills
aimed to challenge the thinking patterns and to try and shift the perspective into a much more
positive light. I believe that I was able to reframe well by subtly placing them in restatements. I
do like to listen quite a lot so restating and reframing was definitely something I was comfortable
doing. However, I believe that I had some mistakes with using the confrontation where I
interpreted more than challenging the client to unlock the answer for themselves. Although
interpretation is also a skill utilized in therapy, my kind of interpretations came off as rather
judgmental rather than helpful. I think it is good to take a mental note to be more conscious of
my tone towards the client and to only interpret when there is an established rapport between
myself and the client. Confrontation is definitely on the list of things to improve on as I progress
through this course.
As a counselee, it felt that I was listened to and that I was given the idea that I can solve my
issues by myself. The counselor did not belittle me, nor did she try to make me feel inadequate.
However, with the time constraint, my issue did not seem fully resolved since challenges were
not placed enough and only began to manifest by the last stretch of the session. However, I
believe that there was a substantial rapport established between the two of us. The counselor
validated and made a clear effort to acknowledge my feelings well. It is interesting how the role
of the counselee allowed me to continue thinking as a therapist. It made me feel like I was in my
own two-chair technique where I played both roles. I wondered how counselor-me would
respond to counselee-me, as well as how counselee-me would react to the techniques of
counselor-me. And then having to see my groupmate do her own response provided more insight
on how to react to certain situations that can come about during a typical session.