This week we went straight into roleplays with relation to discrimination – as a client we had to play someone that had experienced some kind of discrimination or was somehow different to the counsellor.
First off, I was counsellor to Leonardo’s client. His difference was that he felt he was being mistreated by his employer because of his Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). I tried not to “play” as a counsellor too much, but rather I used my knowledge of counselling techniques to learn more about Leonardo’s ADHD and how it affects him and his job. I asked him open questions with the intent on trying to get him to open up about how he feels about being discriminated against. He said he felt it was very easy talking to me about it (he really does suffer from ADHD, but thankfully is not discriminated against in his workplace), and I presented a non-judgmental attitude. We did talk a lot about possible solutions to the problem of how his ADHD prevented him from even attempting the training courses, but as Matt pointed out in his feedback for our roleplay, I could have asked him how ADHD manifests in him personally, and how it affects him. That would have moved us past the surface level to see if there were any underlying issues affecting Leonardo.
I do feel I made a mistake near the end of the session – I looked at my watch and told Leonardo that we had five minutes left but then proceeded to ask him another question instead of summarising the session. As I was working out how to organise the summary, a question about possibly shadowing a co-worker popped into my head and I felt compelled to ask it. It also verged on advice rather than being a thought-provoking, open-ended question, which was also quite bad. I think my intention was to take him down the path of considering other options that could help him acquire the training, but it was ham-fisted and rushed, and I should really have asked it in a different way, before I started to wind down the session. As I said, the idea of taking that route popped into my head and I felt compelled to ask it immediately. Overall though, I really enjoyed being a counsellor for Leonardo, and it helped that his presenting problem was something real for him that I could really probe him on.
In the second roleplay, I was an observer to Leonardo and he was counselling Karen. Essentially, Leonardo built a good understanding of Karen’s problem through his use of questions, but his inexperience in the basic techniques of counselling let him down in that he often didn’t use open questions. He didn’t do the level 2 course so he missed out on things like reflecting and paraphrasing, so I did suggest to him that he read the first half of the CPCAB book “Counselling Skills and Studies”. Overall though, his friendly demeanour and what appeared to be a genuine interest in Karen’s presented problem went a long way towards it being a productive session. I really felt that he wanted to help Karen. At the end of the session he did a little summary, and as Karen was late, I feel that he could have reinforced the time boundary by reminding her that sessions cannot run over, as that would disrupt the sessions of everyone coming after her.
In the final roleplay, I played the client to Karen’s counsellor. As the roleplays were about understanding difference and diversity, I presented the problem of being a man and being expected to be stoic and emotionless, not feeling able to ask for help or advice. This is different to Karen’s experience of being a woman. I didn’t express this difference until some way into the session, after I had explained the initial problem. I said “As a man, I feel unable to open up and talk to people about my emotions”, to which she replied “No, nowadays, I don’t think that’s true”, which completely undermined my feelings and state of mind, and didn’t make me want to talk to her anymore. I can’t really remember much else of the session, as that one remark totally blew me away, and demonstrated to me how being judgmental and not showing unconditional positive regard can really cause problems in a therapeutic relationship. It’s ok to not agree with things that clients say when you are a counsellor, you’re not there to nod and agree with everything, that would be counter-productive, but to totally dismiss what the clients is saying as not true is dangerous – it could have taken me a lot of courage to even think about having counselling in the first place.
I honestly feel that there is a lot of pressure on men to be stoic and that there is little acceptance in society for men to ask for help with their mental health, which is a shame. I would like to change this perception, and encourage men to come to therapy, and I have a plan on how to raise awareness of this in the future. I don’t want to change men so that they feel comfortable blubbing like a baby in public; it’s not possible to change a general characteristic an entire section of the population, but I would like to slightly alter the culture of men not being able to ask for help.
After the roleplays, we got into groups of two and, to increase our understanding of diversity issues with relation to empathy, talked about times when we felt we didn’t belong and times we felt we weren’t special, times we lost out, were excluded or felt less than good enough. I paired with Karen, and took turns to tell the other about times we felt those things. While it was a two-way conversation, it felt more constructive and more like a counselling session than the roleplay we had earlier because she was engaged in what I was saying and she was asking probing questions that delved deeper into my experiences. It was nice to just let loose and talk honestly about the times I felt I didn’t belong, or the times I felt excluded. Sometimes that is all a client wants or needs: Someone to listen to their problems and not be judged for having them.
I believe that a part of counselling is about injecting your own personality into the relationship you have with the client, and I felt that when Karen talked about her experiences, although it was a “discussion”, it felt more like how I’d like to be as a counsellor than in the roleplays where I feel it is taken a bit too seriously at times, or a bit false when people don’t bring their own real experiences as their presenting problem. That’s not to say I think everyone playing a client should bring their own real problems to roleplay – it’s just a bit better when they do. It’s probably safer to bring problems they have resolved as well.
She was very open and honest, her defences were down and I asked some very personal questions that felt a little risky. I only asked such radical, personal questions as I felt a real rapport with her in that moment – the rest of the class was drowned out and we were focused absolutely on our conversation. It helped that she was speaking of her own experiences and not of some made-up problem to suit a roleplay – it seemed more like an intimate disclosure of real personal beliefs that she had never felt able to speak into existence before. I don’t think she’d even fully formed the ideas in her head as they were quite jumbled and disjointed, but I developed a clearer picture as we went along. I feel like this exercise really helped me to understand that I can use my own experiences of being excluded or feelings of difference to understand those feelings in others.
In terms of what I feel are my personal blocks to empathy – I don’t think I could empathise with someone that constantly felt like a victim. I have known a few people like this in my time, and I find them utterly exhausting. Nothing is ever their fault; they take no personal responsibility for their actions, and have very little self-awareness. But then again, someone with a victim mindset may not ever voluntarily want to have counselling, and if they did, it would be a big sign that they no longer want to identify as a victim.
There are experiences that I hope I never have to live through, such as war or extreme poverty that I would find it hard to empathise with, simply because they are extreme situations that I have never experienced myself, and while I can imagine what they might be like, I have no direct comparison. Similarly, there are certain things that I could never experience myself, but I could use my thoughts and feelings of things that have happened to me as a reference point. As a man, I could never have a baby growing inside me and feel what that is like both physically and emotionally. I could never lose that baby, and feel the overwhelming emotions that could bring. I could however, use my imagination to feel a fraction of it. I am naturally quite empathic, and have been known to cry when a character dies in a TV show, not because I was sad that the character had died, but because I felt the sadness and feelings of loss of the character that was grieving, the one that loved the deceased character.
