- We completed a group activity during our second class meeting that revolved around the continuous evolution of the counseling profession, and my group was assigned focusing on the history of how the profession began. I knew that counseling is a fairly new career field compared to others and seeing the timeline of every event associated with its development was humbling in a way. I was so surprised how the profession started as a guidance course in schools and gradually developed to include counseling to groups, couples, and individuals as we know it today. The field of counseling has so many seemingly small events that lead to huge changes and milestones for what we see now, and my group did such a great job going over the events that we saw as the most important, such as the Great Depression and … The activity gave me a better appreciation for those who made an impact on the mental health profession and how much progress has been made in just over 100 years.
2. Class 4 included the activity regarding potential stereotyping we have to acknowledge that we may have learned about or potentially believed at some point was an eye-opening experience. There were a good amount of stereotypes for almost every group that I could recall off the top of my head, and I saw others writing practically all of them before I could so I know I was not alone in what I thought. I remember feeling guilty for writing such untrue stereotypes about different groups of people even though I did not agree with the stereotypes, and it was uncomfortable seeing practically all of the stereotypes being negative. It was a good experience to have as it allowed us to physically see all of the potential beliefs and know that we are not bad counselors for simply knowing of the stereotypes. We know that we may not believe those stereotypes, but as future counselors, we are going to be presented with clients who may believe these or other negative stereotypes about others and we are going to have to do our best to keep an unbiased stance and treat every client with respect.
3. During class 10, the overall topic revolved around crisis intervention as well as prevention and I recall being very mentally engaged as I had not been previously taught much about the subject. In our groups, we were given a scenario of a client experiencing psychological distress and was tasked with intervention suggestions. It was interesting to begin as my group was initially divided whether the client was actually experiencing a crisis or not, where I was advocating that she indeed was in a crisis and my group quickly came to the same conclusion. While going over helpful strategies and potential interventions, it was so interesting to me to hear the perspectives my group members were taking about what questions we would ask the client and how we each could bring a different view about how to help the situation. I was extremely proud of how well we all worked together and how everyone had great ideas about how the scenario should be handled. By the end of the activity, my group had a solid foundation for crisis intervention strategies and I was more confident in my own knowledge about the subject due to the practice.
4. During class eleven, our guest speaker who presented “Team is a Verb” about child abuse advocacy stood out immensely to me as the information was previously unfamiliar to me and made me further consider changes that need to be made in the system. I was shocked when he showed us the example with the fictional child Robin and how she would have to recant her story of abuse 15 times to different people in a typical school system compared to only 3 people at a child advocacy center. He explained the importance of how child interviewing needs to be as nondirective as possible and allow the child to tell their story without interference. I did not realize the emphasis on using understandable terms that are appropriate for the age of the child as well as avoiding more close-ended questions.