I am grateful I had a chance to take my helping skills class in-person. I received hands on education to develop helping relationship and clinical counseling skills development. We engaged in role play in each class allowing practice engaging in clinical interviewing, listening, and helping skills to facilitate insight and action. For the final class project, I had to conduct a role play for a full session and present a recording. During the mock session, I felt like I had already reached a working alliance with my role playing “client.” I felt confident in my skills. I was paying attention to my restatements and summaries, body language, and asking broad open ended questions to foster awareness. I felt like we were making progress, and I was doing great. It was not until I presented the paper along with a video recording of my session I received feedback that I was going too fast. I was ushering the client into an action stage the client had not reached. I feel I received the feedback well, but I was shocked at my over confidence from my misevaluation of my helping skills in practice. I have taken this lesson with me into my practice. I have learned the counseling process takes time and restates can be made over again before the client is ready to move into the action stage. I have to remind myself of this when I have real clients who are still in the exploration or insight stage.  

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Included below is self reflection on the final interview to practice helping skills and a transcript of the mock session. This artifact represents my first full length session to practice my helping skills. In re-reading the transcript I can see the areas where I was making interpretations which moved away from the client’s language, and I recognize some of the choices were driven by counter transference to resolve the anxiety the client was expressing. I include it here as a reflection point for my growth in this area after a year of internship with real clinical practice to hone my skills.