This week we did roleplays to model the three stages of the counselling relationship. I was counsellor with Angela as my client.
Firstly, I established that while this was our first proper session, it was the second time I had seen Angela – the first time was a week beforehand in our initial meeting, in which we went over the details of the contract and answered any questions she may have had about it, as well as get her contact details and other such administrative tasks. Our relationship was still very much in the beginning explorative stage. I listened to the problems that Angela presented using active listening and she expanded greatly with little input from me.
I was mindful of the paperwork our tutor had given us that we discussed prior to the roleplay, and was trying to make sure I hit all the bases with regards to the three stages, it made me think too much into it. I definitely prefer to relax into the process, and just generally pay more interest in the client’s problems and ask questions to get more detail, rather than trying to tick all the boxes. While I did try to expand into the middle stage, I don’t think we really had enough time to go deeper into Angela’s problems. I feel that we needed another session to explore her problems and build up some trust before we moved into the middle understanding phase where I could gently challenge her.
I mentioned to Angela that we had five minutes left, and she accepted that. We spoke a little more before I ended the session. I found it a little bit difficult to end the session, as I always have, because I don’t feel comfortable giving people orders, but it gets easier the more times I do it. It felt hard to definitively say “this is the end of the session, goodbye” but I did not let that show in my voice or mannerisms. This is one of the reasons why I never progressed up through the ranks in retail. I was, at one point, in a managerial position, but I felt so uncomfortable telling people what to do that sometimes I literally could not make the words come out of my mouth. I’m not sure if it was because I wanted to be friends with my team and I didn’t want to be the bad guy that tells them to get on with their work, or if it was because I didn’t know what I’d do if they said “no” and feared the confrontation. Maybe it was something else; I had never really given much thought to my motives when it comes to decisions I’d made in the past until I started studying counselling.
