This week Katherine did her presentation about Art Therapy. I thought it was very interesting and enlightening – while I did have some idea that painting and drawing were involved in Art Therapy, I had never considered that physical expression such as dancing or playing music could be classed as therapy. I agree that the colours people choose to use are important, and that knowing their common meanings is vital, but it is also important to find out what the colour means to the client personally, as this has a definite impact on their choice. Her presentation reminded me of the self-puzzle we made earlier in the course. I still look back on that piece of work and am amazed it came out so well on my first try. I also like the look of the Mandala Therapy – they are supposed to symbolically illustrate the entire universe, and it is said that Carl Jung used to draw several mandalas just after waking, which would get him ready for the day.
Art Therapy is an avenue I would like to investigate, but for clients to use as an expression and exploration tool rather than me using it as a way to diagnose their unconscious problems. Just like at our recent workshop weekend, the masks we made were personal to us, and they were symbolic in their meaning only to us as individuals. I’m sure a professional Art Psychotherapist could say a lot about the mask I made, but how much of it would be accurate? I would rather a client explore themselves through their art, than let me fudge my way through interpreting it.
We also did some roleplays based on maintaining the boundaries of the helping role throughout the counselling session. In our group of four one of us would play as counsellor, one of us as a client with a problem that pushes a boundary, and the other two would be observers giving feedback on the counsellor. In the first roleplay Desmond played a client trying to get some medication early, while Arthur played the counsellor. Desmond used his knowledge of the people he helps day to day in his job to play a particularly persuasive client, but Arthur held firm and was very calm and straightforward in his responses.
The second counselling session I was the client and Desmond was the counsellor. The scenario that I had come up with was based around trying to get Desmond to come to the pub with me to watch a band that I liked, and that I thought he would like too. I started the session as normal, presenting a problem that I had been ostracised from my group of workmates. Desmond stayed on track and used paraphrasing, open questions and a degree of empathy to try and help me understand what the problem was exactly, but I abruptly side-stepped this and asked him if he would like to come to the pub with me and watch this band play. He was visibly taken aback, clearly not seeing it coming, but politely refused, citing his ethical responsibilities as a counsellor as his firm boundary. I tried asking again, but he stood firm, politely refusing several times, as he should, keeping his cool and referring to his ethical responsibilities when required to. I even tried getting emotional and I acted upset, but Desmond stayed the course; unflinching in his professionality.
In the third roleplay, I was the counsellor and Gloria was the client. She was having anger issues, and she got quite irate in our session, and asked me personal questions. She was initially upset that people were judging her, and that was making her angry. I did not reassure her that people were not judging her because I had no idea if they were or not, but rather asked her to explore her anger and her dislike of being judged. She then moved on to thinking I was judging her, which did make me feel uncomfortable, although Arthur and Desmond later said they could not detect that in my demeanour. I really did not know what to say when confronted with an angry woman and remain professional at the same time. In real-life I would have given as good as I got, but I remained calm, and a little bemused.
I sensed that Gloria was getting quite into it at points; I feel she is quite a fiery character underneath her calm and polite exterior, and that fire was burning. She was like a dog with a bone. She was determined to get me to answer her question as to whether I had ever been so angry that I have hit someone. I refrained from answering the question several times. The first time I told her it was irrelevant if I had ever been so angry, but she asked again. I explained that there are varying degrees of anger, and sure, everyone gets angry sometimes, and yes, I have been angry in the past, but “we are here to discuss your anger, not mine”. The last time I reframed her wanting to know whether I had ever been angry enough to hit someone as some kind of reflection on her wanting to know why she got so angry, which seemed to calm her down a little. Her final shot was “Have you ever got that angry with your wife?” and that stumped me. I did not know what to say after that. I felt genuine heat in me, and I wanted to break through the professional veneer and tell her about the last time I felt angry with my wife. But the roleplay ended there, thank goodness.
All in all, I was not prepared for an angry client, but now have a better understanding of how a client asking questions feels. Throughout the session I was thinking of how to not answer the questions she was firing at me in a way that kept the focus on her and her problem, and thinking about how to answer her questions with reflective statements that made her stop and think, rather than popping off another question. I really enjoyed this roleplay because like the one with Sam a couple of weeks ago, it was nothing like what I had previously imagined a counselling session to be like, and it opened my eyes to the diversity of scenarios that make being a counsellor such a challenge.
In the fourth roleplay of the evening, Arthur suddenly remembered crucial information about his problem five minutes before his session with Gloria, the counsellor, was about to finish. Gloria politely reminded Arthur that he had five minutes left, and he tried to convince her to let him stay until he had told her all the important things he had remembered. She did offer him a pen and paper and suggested he have a sit in the waiting room and write it all down, so that next time they could devote their entire hour session to it, but he did not think that was a great idea. In the end, Gloria shut him down with confident ease, and ushered him towards the door. I could tell that she had done that before.
