This week we did some roleplays concerning endings in counselling.
I was counsellor first, and Phillip played the client. Charles and Emily were observers. Phillip’s problem was that he was worried that once he stopped coming to therapy, that there would be nothing stopping him reverting to old patterns of behaviour at his workplace. I was thinking during the whole session about how to let him down gently and fairly, without upsetting him. I referred back to earlier sessions where we “outlined his current behaviours” and had the opportunity arisen, would have reminded him of the actions he said he would take in certain work situations in a later session. I definitely made a conscious choice to take him back and remind him of the successes we had in our previous sessions, the observations he had made about his own behaviour and how he reacted to others, rather than focusing on me saying “no I can’t do that” and being negative; I thought that would be more beneficial.
It is hard to go back and make up interactions that never happened and expect the other person in the roleplay to agree to those imaginary sessions and accept them as our current make believe reality, so I felt very relieved when Phillip went along with it. He could have quite easily said that it never happened, or that we never did get to the bottom of such and such issue in session two. I sensed that Phillip was somewhat satisfied with my responses, in that he was not entirely happy that I would not agree to more sessions beyond the agreed six, but he understood why I could not see him for any more sessions.
In the second roleplay, Phillip was the counsellor and Emily was the client. Emily wanted Phillip to add a few extra sessions on to the end of their pre-agreed six sessions as she felt she needed guidance in court. Phillip did a great job of remaining calm, and Emily did a great job at pushing the boundaries.
