What is had become what was...

Tonight, we finally had the last practicum session. All the usual culprits, Andrea, Brenda, Matthias, Thana, Sindhoo and Mathilii were present.

There was a short brief on trauma therapy, and I was wondering if I could link this with terrorism and hostage situations. We did a video review of Thana's counselling session. In the video, Max was trying to figure out if he liked his fiancee and doubted his feelings for his fiancee, as he did not even think of her for the entire day. Thana thought Max was scared of connecting, and Andrea said that past history or something, could be keeping him at bay. Andrea also discussed ways to get Max to discuss his issues, because between the 2nd and 1st session, something seemed to have happened.

"I'm not so sure... Maybe you can help me here... There seems to be a gap between those 2 statements/sessions... so I can understand where you're coming from", "I can see you must be frustrated with me... last week you talked about this, this week, you talked about this...  what happened in between?"

Andrea then got us to discuss our gut reactions with this particular client, and I said that in the past, I would dislike this client totally, and now, on a scale of 1-10, my dislike would be between 3-4. Others disliked Max because he used vulgar language, told the counselor off and found him to be an intimidating and proud person, making the counsellor feel angry, while one of them didn't take the vulgar language personally. There was a discussion on attractive clients, and one of the ways to turn the client away would be to say something to the tune of "I'm not the best person to deal with your issues...". On mutual acception, clarifying it via "Is this my perception or shared perception?"

There was a short discussion on discussing triggered/unprocessed feelings with the counselor's supervisor, and a discussion of techniques on dealing with burnt out :-

• writing journals,
• reading,
• clubbing
• isolation (15-20 mins)
• yoga
• talking to someone
• hobbies
• drawing a line between work and home
• talking with someone @ the workplace

There was a talk on submitting the final writeup on this session and Andrea said there was no need for it, and all of us cheered! I was particularly relieved that there wasn't a need to do a writeup. And the session concluded.

During the session, I have gained an insight into myself as well, since reading the Little Book of Big Emotions by Erika  Hunter a few months back.