The first day, that I attended DIG community counseling, I was scared because I am learning a new task and I wanted things to be perfect. I remembering chattering to Mary about my anxieties, I stated, “ I was afraid to make mistakes”. Mary exclaimed,” It is okay to make a mistake because that is how everyone learns.” In that moment, I had to remember that everyone has the first day and in no time, I will get things together. I know for me personally, I am a perfectionist but I have realized that I will never be perfect and I should enjoy the process of learning. The first task that I had to complete, was answering the calls and writing down the names of the individuals, who left a message regarding an issue about their session. For example,
I have always loved sports and the competitiveness that comes along with them. In so doing, I have decided to eventually become either a high school or college coach at some point in my life. Subsequently, I decided to interview the Vilonia High School Cross Country Coach, Coach Sisson. As I walked into her office, I instantly noticed all of the trophies and team photos from all of the past years of coaching. She is also the school nurse so her office has first aid equipment intermingled into the trophies and team pictures. While I set up my notes and questions for the interview on one of the desks in her office, she was finishing up a diagnosis of one of the high school students who felt sick. After her patient left, I quickly started the interview in order to waste no time. She began with how she got involved in coaching. The Vilonia School District expressed their interest to her as being the next cross country coach several years ago. She was widely known for her passion for running and she gratefully accepted the position and has been a coach for numerous years now.
“Give me liberty or give me death” was a quote that was said by Patrick Henry. This political slogan we, Americans, use has a different meaning as when it was first said by Henry. It is still used today by many people from all different countries.
during the sessions, and I was nervous about participating in counseling sessions. Before my first
Next, I am going to discuss the person-centred interventions I exercised through the therapeutic process with my client in session four. Within this I am going to explore how these interventions impacted my client’s responses and how I could improve my skills in future sessions.
The counselling process is one that may last for as little as one session or for years, it is within the middles stages of the helping relationship that particular counselling skills such as a focusing, challenging and immediacy can be implemented, as well as use of advanced empathy that can be applied due to increased familiarity with a speaker. Many actions may occur within middles stage of the helping relationship such as transitions that occur for a multitude of reasons and the outcome of which can vary based on the attitude of the speaker. Self-awareness remains vital throughout the entire counselling relationship due to the continual influence of empathy in the helping relationship and remaining aware my own motives and values when using advanced empathy and specific counselling skills. Ethics and boundaries are also involved within the counselling process as within a counselling relationship, I as the counsellor, must be careful with the balance or expenditure of power when challenging.
I cannot infuse any tools or assist the client in becoming aware of self and needs without humbly accepting that my thoughts and actions are fallible because I am merely human. Although I have yet to practice counseling, I know one of the biggest changes I need to make in my life is to understand and know a person’s situation before assessing and attempting to offer Godly counsel. Effective intra-disciplinary integration is destined to my humility as a professional. I cannot counsel any client without truly knowing who he or she is and allowing God to show me the most operative technique for creating change in that person’s life.
I find myself extremely passionate in Community Service, I have volunteered at Emmanuel Apostolic Church during Vacation Bible School for the past two summers, preparing food, coming up with creative ideas to keep children occupied, and making sure children are safe. During this time my leadership and conversational skills have strengthened. In addition to that, I have also volunteered there on numerous occasions to feed the homeless. In high school, I also volunteered at an Elderly home on bingo night to interact with the elderly, gave a listening ear, it was extremely rewarding to see them smile, laugh, and interact with me as if they had known me for a while; that showed me how much they appreciate having company. I take huge delight in
When I began my running activities for Outdoor Education, I thought that all I had to do was just take off running as hard and fast as I could for as long as I could. I also wondered that other than safety rules, because everyone should always be safe no matter what they do, why any "rules" or "tips" were needed for running. The reason I thought this way is because humans and animals run naturally. I learned quickly that just because something may come natural may not always be easy or safe unless rules, tips, and techniques are followed.
there will be good days and bad days and the counselor must be careful not to allow the emotions of helping others become the main objective in
As an African American woman, I have lived and worked in underserved communities and have experienced personally, the social and economic injustices grieved by underserved communities and the working poor. All of which, has increased my desires to work with such populations. A reserved person by nature, I have exposed an inner voice that I was oblivious to. I have expressed my inner voice to those living in underserved communities, who are seeking social and economic stability. I have come to classify and value the strength I have developed by the need, to survive in an underserved community. I use these as my continuous struggle against the social and economic injustices that I have experienced, as a product of an underserved community and as an African American woman. I have continued my struggle to overcome the barriers from my upbringing in an underserved community.
I believe that my behavior change project was a success. I personally, was extremely surprised by the amount of easy changes I was able to incorporate into my daily routine; easy changes such as taking the stairs, parking distance, walking while completing homework, etc. The weather stayed moderately warm, so it was never a problem to walk to events and activities around campus and/or town that I attended. Additionally, I discovered activities, like hiking, that I originally would not have done. The hike through the Sculpture Park, in Stevens Point, turned out to be one of the highlights of my semester, it was a lot of fun! My Fitbit was able to display to me the massive increase of step per day I completed when I did activities or incorporated
My plan for building and utilizing my support network:is to reach out to my advisor, instructor, or friends and family depending on what the issue could be. I can reach out to my advisor by either calling or emailing her if I am not sure about a course or education goal that I have question on. I can email my instructor if I am confused about an assignment or have questions or better understanding about a certain assignment. I have two friends that attended Capella and they understand the challenges of getting an education. They help me by encouraging to keep pushing and to set a few hours out of my day and to get assignments completed on time. I know if I was stress or needed encouragement I could always pick of the phone and call one of my
The counseling session began with the introductions where I introduced myself as the counselor and later introduced my client. This stage is important in any counseling session since it is the time of exploration and focusing according to Gerard Egan as quoted by Wright (1998) in his essay on couselling skills. It is in this session that I was able to establish rapport and trust with my client in order to come up with a working and fruitful relationship with him. During this stage I made use of skills like questioning, where I would pose a question directly to my client, sometimes I would choose to just listen to what the client wanted to speak out while in some instances I would be forced to paraphrase the question if I felt the client did not understand the question I had asked previously. There were also other times when I would reflect through silence. During such a period, I got time to study the client and the information he had given. This being a difficult area, since some clients may not be able to volunteer information to you as the counselor, I decided to assure the client of confidentiality of any information he was willing to share with me with a few exceptions which I also told him about. Being open to him about the only times the information may not be confidential was part of my building rapport and establishing trust with him. I therefore, decided to ask the client what information he wanted to share with me and lucky enough he was ready to speak to me about different issues that he was going through.
We finish what we start. This was the motto that kept me going during the strenuous training period for a marathon. But prior to that, I must confess, I wasn’t an athlete. I was never interested in playing sports, except for recreational badminton. During gym class, I would walk three quarters of the time when it time for the dreaded mile run. I preferred staying indoors and sitting on the couch and watch movies. The first time I had heard about a marathon training program, called Dreamfar, in my school, I thought to myself, what kind of crazy person would want to run a marathon? Never did I realize, eight months later, I would be that crazy person.
Adding exercises into one’s daily routines can change their whole lifestyle. Many people look at exercise as being something just for people who want to lose weight or to become muscle bound, but there are a great deal of benefits that can be received from exercising regularly. Of course gaining muscle and losing fat are the two most popular reasons that usually attract people to the gym, but they make up a small part of the potential benefits that can be achieved with exercise. There are several ways in which I have benefited in my life from exercising regularly, besides just making me bigger and stronger. It has made me become more organized, helped me make better decisions, and motivated me to take on new challenges in life.