Description of Client In Counseling

The client who is identified here as Shelly, is a single 26 year old Italian American female. She came in to counseling casually dressed and her grooming was clean and appropriate. This is Shelly’s first time to counseling. She was initially experiencing high levels of anxiety, anger, and sadness due to the loss of her 4- year romantic relationship to a man. These symptoms persisted for about two weeks after the break-up and therefore, affecting her sleeping, eating, and work patterns. Shelly was engaged to this man for 2 years of the 4-year relationship and recently found out that he had been unfaithful in the relationship. She then terminated their engagement. Shelly did appear to be angry and guarded during the intake session. She also explained that she was experiencing worry about her current financial situation. As Shelly described, the ex-fiancé charged her accounts and she is unable to keep up with payments. She is currently indebted $30,000.

As it appears, Shelly is extremely dependent on her relationship emotionally, mentally, and financially. She has a strong support system with her family; however, it appears that she extremely dependent on her family. In fact, she moved back in with her family and they have initiated to move her things out of the apartment for her.

Shelly denies any suicidal and homicidal tendencies but is feeling “guilty” because her ex-fiancé threatened to kill himself if she didn’t return to him. She also expressed fear of giving in. During the first session, apparently out of anger, Shelly did not want to see this man again exclaiming, “What he did was wrong!” “People don’t do that to other people.” During the second session, Shelly shared with me that she accompanied her brothers to the apartment to remove her belongings and move out. She saw her ex-fiancé during the move and described the encounter as “not too bad.” She then appeared to be confused with her decision to leave him.

Description of the Session

Different from other sessions, Shelly walked in smiling today. She was on time and initially expressed no concerns. In fact, she expressed content and appeared to be excited to share that she and her ex-fiancé were thinking about reconciliation. It seemed like she was concerned about letting her family know that she and her fiancé were thinking about working things out; although, she didn’t seem to want to explore this area. One of the concerns was that she had given in to this man but I had a hunch she wasn’t quite convinced that he was genuine. Despite the apparent happy affect, she would always go into discussions about how her ex-fiancé did the “wrong” things before and how she didn’t want him to do them again. I was attempting to guide her through the process to help her become aware of how much power she had lost over him and how dependent she had become on this man for her emotional well-being. I used a lot of reflection in the hopes that she will be able to recognize the patterns in her behavior. She did become aware on some level, but I did meet with some resistance when exploring this avenue. Perhaps she wasn’t prepared to face this just yet. However, I did end the session by letting her know that I thought it was a good idea that next time we explore what was going on within her, as opposed to discussing all the right and wrong moves her fiancé does. The session ended amicably and she seemed to have agreed with this idea.

Analysis of the Counseling Session

As stated previously, I used a lot of reflection. I was attempting to be empathic with what she was saying and feeling but I did not agree with her reunion with her boyfriend. I know it is not what is best for me; nonetheless, I found myself trying hard to make her realize that she was making the wrong choice. I believe there could have been a countertransference issue of some sort. I too experienced a similar situation. I would easily get drawn into her stories about her ex-fiance. Perhaps during these stories, I was trying to figure out ways to make her see it wasn’t a good idea because it wasn’t for me. The good thing was that I was aware of what was going on so I kept refocusing on her.

During the session, I also used a lot of underlining of names (particularly the ex) and some confrontation and refocusing which she didn’t particularly accept as planned. For example, when I said “Wow that’s a lot of power to give to somebody” or “Let’s talk about Shelly,” I got a resistant response like, “What about me?” She would then go into superficial things like what her day was like and how her friends are. It seemed like she wasn’t ready to go there and wanted to continue to draw my attention to the external factors. On some level, I believe it helped her come to the realization that she had given up some of her personal power. Additionally, I used a lot of empathic sounds and prompting like “uh uh” or “Okay” but as I analyzed the recording, I thought sometimes they sounded sarcastic in nature.

One of the client’s strengths is that she has an extremely supportive family but I’m not sure I delineated this positive in the best possible way. In fact, I think that instead of expanding on that, maybe I was trying to send her the message that her family was so good to her that she should be so lucky. If felt almost as if I was trying to shame her for keeping things from her family. I’m not sure. I just think I could have worked on this area better or differently. Nonetheless, I didn’t get the feeling that she wanted to talk about her family.

I believe I was working mostly with a humanistic theoretical framework. I tried not to be directive in nature although toward the end I discussed my ideas with Shelly in terms of which direction I feel we should go. I believe the process I used the most was person-centered by offering a lot of empathy, openness, and reflection.

Additionally, I believe I was multiculturally sensitive in that in my culture, it is extremely acceptable to be dependent on your husband. She was clearly dependent and that would be classified as “normal” for many Hispanic cultures. However, I have biases about this dependence both in my culture and when people actually display that type of behavior. I also didn’t know if it was normal for her culture to be dependent on the male spouse. It was simple for me to not directly press on the issue and tried to offer acceptance as best as I could. Nevertheless, I had a strong disbelief in this over-dependence on her paramour.

One of my strengths, I think, is prompting and probing and the use of open-ended questions. I think this created a lot of opportunities for her to expand. I also kept my talking to a minimum and the prompts such as “because… or tell me more… or so….” got her to elaborate. However, I may need to be more careful with some sounds that I noticed I was making during my session that may be distracting to the client.

Counseling Transcription

Client: I don’t know we are supposed to go away next weekend, so we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully he doesn’t back out like he usually does.

•  Clinician: Mmmm… (supportive sound)

Client: But I’m sure…he said he’s changed now.

• Counselor: Well it sounds like, you know, you’re not too sold that he may be completely changed…that hopefully….he won’t back out. (reflection, sharing a hunch, summary comment, underlining)

Client: Yeah, hopefully…I’ll see it when I believe it…I do want to believe it.

• Counselor: Mmm…Okay. (supportive sound, prompting)

Client: Just from what I’ve seen in the past week or couple days… looks promising but, as I said sometimes he’s unpredictable.

• Counselor: And you’re okay with that unpredictability (checking- in, reflection)

Client: No

• Counselor: No (reflection, empathic echo)

Client: But, that’s Steve.

• Counselor: Steve is unpredictable…Shelly is not okay with that…Mmmm. What are you okay with? (summarizing, checking-in, open-ended question)

Client: Well, I’d like him to be predictable…..I mean I don’t want him to be completely predictable cause then that will probably be boring but…..I want him unpredictable in a good sense like surprise me…take me out on vacation somewhere…unpredictable in bringing me flowers or…unpredictable, I don’t know… just doing something nice for me and not unpredictable like not coming home at night or…..getting wasted and passing out on the couch and me no knowing about it or……going to Martha’s Vineyard with two other girls…not that kind of unpredictable or how he’s gonna act….get really angry at me. I want the other type of unpredictability.

• Counselor: So….as long as he does all these wonderful things, you’re okay and happy. As long as Steve does all these unpredictable things that are good things…. (reflection, labeling affect, prompting, underlining, summarizing)

Client: Uh huh

• Counselor: ….you’re happy. (labeling affect)

Client: Well, I don’t want him to do the bad stuff either.

• Counselor: So if Steve….doesn’t do the bad stuff….. (reflection, underlining, summarizing)

Client: Uh uh

• Counselor: …you’re happy. But if Steve does those bad things….. then you’re not happy. (reflection, underlining, clarifying, summarizing)

(Silence)

Client: Yeah…I mean…

• Counselor: Wow that’s a lot of power to give to somebody…I’ll tell you (exploration of theme, confrontation)

Client: With our relationship yeah. It’s not like completely with my whole life what I’m happy with…but with our relationship.

• Counselor: Okay. (supportive sound, empathy)

Client: Yeah…umm…I guess he wears the pants in this relationship huh?

• Counselor: I don’t know. What do you think? (open-ended question, exploration, checking-in)

Client: I don’t know…I really didn’t think of it that way before. I mean I usually yell at him when he comes in and he gets all apologetic.

Overall Counseling Session Evaluation

In ending the session, I felt it went fairly well. I was happy with the realizations she was presented with. But then again, she came in with this happy attitude about her reunion and left questioning it. After evaluating the session, I’m not sure if this was the best approach. I think I brought in my biases into the session and that didn’t allow me to help her focus on herself. I wanted to get her to get past the external issues and become aware of the internal issues but she is so focused on what others do to her that she was either genuinely oblivious to them, or doesn’t want to deal with what is going on internally.

I did get drawn into discussing “others” when I know that we have no control over what other people do. We only have control over our thoughts and feelings. Perhaps I should have shared my hunches with her in terms of her dependency on others for her emotional well-being. Is this my impatience? It may be or it may not be but the mere fact that I am utilizing the word I in this report as much as I have, clearly makes me aware that I have yet to make this “about the client” instead of about me.

I think next time I would attempt to explore the human dimensions such as self-esteem, self-acceptance, and self-actualization. I would like to help her explore what is the meaning of this relationship or what this relationship is really about. We got a little bit into her fear of being alone; therefore, I believe it is a working process.