Psychotherapies I

I took Clinical Interviewing last semester which introduced me to the physical presence of being in a room with a client.  The majority of the work in that class was spent teaching me to a) relax my nerves at seeing a client... a challenge, I promise you, b) use an economy of language, and c) equip me with some basic counseling techniques to help me listen effectively and help the client process.

This class was my first introduction (barring the Master's program at SAGU) to techniques for making a more lasting change in the client's life.  Having someone caring listen to you who can ask precise questions to really facilitate your thinking is an amazing resource that can really do a lot of good.  This class gave me an introduction into techniques for being more active in the counseling session, like assigning specific things for the client to do outside of session. 

It also covered different ways of conceptualizing a problem.  For example: a person comes to you because he's tired of losing control his temper and ostracizing friends or getting fired.  You could look at it as a pure behavior problem.  After all, the problem is his behavior.  In this case when you're talking to... let's call him John, you're going to look at ways that he gets rewarded by losing control.  Even though he loses friends over it, they cave to his pressure  Or maybe people treat him really nice for a few days to keep from "setting him off again."  Your therapy will focus on helping him to get these rewards in a more healthy way.

Another way to look at it would be from the perspective that thoughts cause behaviors.  If John is blowing up and yelling at friends, there's something going on inside his head before he does that.  So if John can learn to detour the mental progression to a blowup before it gets there, he can prevent it.  Time will likely be spent helping him to discover this mental road.  Therapy might then focus on helping John to be more aware of his thoughts and be more aware of alternate paths.

A derivative therapy of this would focus more on learning to balance necessary opposites in life (dialectics) like the rational part of our mind vs. the emotional part of our mind.  Depending on the specifics of the situation John may focus here on how to accept the anger that he feels as a valid emotion, but not let it overwhelm the rational part of his mind that may say to temper it and channel it into something useful. 

The list goes on and on.  Some focus on changing the immediate situation.  Others look into a backgrounds that set the stage for the situation ever arising in the first place.  Some are very concrete and action-oriented while others are abstract and insight-oriented.  It all depends on the client and what's going to be a best fit for him or her.

I've heard most of these therapies before, but it stuck so much more now than it ever has before.  Maybe it's because I've seen a couple clients now and I understand more what it means to "do therapy."  Maybe it's because I'm immersed in other classes (psychopathology, personality/intelligence testing) that help me to picture what it would be like to have these clients.  I don't know.  But I do know that what I did above where I took a sample case, conceptualized it in multiple ways, and developed a cursory treatment plan would have been totally out of my reach a semester ago.  Props to the prof.