Practicum Experience: Good Grief Counseling

The prolific success rates of mindfulness-based therapeutic techniques among the body of evidence only highlights how we can further incorporate mindfulness into not only psychological treatments, but also into our daily lives as preventative measures against unnecessary distress. The cognitive perceptual and interpretive control afforded via mindfulness practices seems to influence the appraisal of the situation at hand affects our reaction and response to it. The advantageous ability to objectively reflect on an issue before responding is not confined only to the realm of treating psychological symptoms.

The practicum was significant additional commitment for you, and I appreciate your time and patience in answering my questions and finding informative and interesting tasks for me to do. I know that my practicum experience will be invaluable as I complete my course in Health Information Management.

Mr. Gotcher is in compliance with his treatment plan this reporting period. He has not had any known incidents that have raised concern with regard to the safety of others in the community, self, and the staff at Ambitions.

Planning an end of life is very daunting and complicated task for the client, family, and counselor (Wong, Hall, Justice, & Hernandez, 2015). Professionals need to take the time to find out what type of rituals does the clients partaken whether it’s religious or not. Grieving persons that believe in or has a relationship with a higher power or God or practices faith beliefs is known to have lesser levels of grief tension during bereavement Juntenen and Schwartz (2016). Counsels can include spirituality or belief in the end of life planning. An empirical therapeutic intervention called life review is a great tool for counselors to use in the end of life planning. This therapeutic review focuses on individuals association with spirituality (Wong, Hall, Justice, & Hernandez, 2015). If the counselor is not competent or comfortable discussing particular religions they can refer the client to a faith go-between or a Chaplin Juntenen and Schwartz (2016).

At its essence, mindfulness is about developing a focused state of mind through a process of directing and controlling thoughts and thought patterns at a specific time. It involves developing a better sense of self-awareness, being focused on breathing or anything else that helps to create a point of focus, removing mental

Mindfulness meditation is an alternative way to treat symptoms related to psychological disorders. Neuroscientists define meditation as a grouping of emotional and attentional training regimes developed to cultivate well-being and improve emotional regulation (Khusid & Vythilingam, 2016). Traditional cultures view meditation as a practice to train the mind to achieve spiritual and health benefits. Although there are many types of meditation, mindfulness meditation shows the most evidence for mental health (Khusid & Vythilingam, 2016). Khusid and Vythilingam (2016) describes mindfulness as the ability to maintain open, accepting, nonjudgmental awareness in each moment. Mindfulness meditation

“Mindfulness” takes on a slightly varied definition based on the practitioner and the researcher. The Oxford dictionary (2016) defines mindfulness as “A mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.” Weijer-Bergsma et al. (2012) states, “Mindfulness is a form of attention training using meditation techniques, in which participants learn to pay attention in a specific way” (pp. 238-239). Mindfulness has also been described as “the process of engaging a full, direct, and active awareness of experienced phenomena that is spiritual in aspect and that is maintained from one moment to the next” (Van Gordon et al.,

Segal, Williams, and Teasdale (2013) share Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness. Mindfulness involves purposely paying attention. It involves being in the present moment. It involves being nonjudgmental (p. 38-39). When coupled with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques, mindfulness helps the user to disengage from powerful depressive thinking. This helps the user prevent a recurrence of depression without the use of antidepressants. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is an intervention that was developed as a way to teach people who continue to relapse into depression how to maintain their wellbeing on a long-term basis (Kuyken, et al., 2015).

Take them to the King, they don’t have much to bring, their heart is torn in pieces, It’s their offering. Grief is experience in many ways through the five stage, grieving and after death.

Mindfulness puts all attention and efforts on the present time regarding one’s feelings, ideas, and awareness. Being mindful requires one to watch and observe how people act and react, without intervening or casting any judgment upon them. This has been used for many years as a therapy method that helps one become more aware of others feelings, thoughts, and actions. Mindfulness studies the ranges of treatment that results from allowing mindfulness as a way of theoretical occurrences of observing one’s character. Mindfulness is related to being open to suggestions in training sessions and can be used as in addition to therapy for any patient or psychotherapist.

Like any other experience I had in a clinical setting, I must say it is always short lived. I thought that I would have a difficult time in the class as well as the clinical setting. Class has been difficult for me, but clinical seem to be a great learning experience. The fact that I had a teacher that is passionate about her specialty was even better than I imagined. Sometimes its intimidating to ask questions that may come off as dumb or too simple to ask to her, but she can help you conquer your fears and weaknesses. I still wish that we could just have more time, and more learning experiences so I can get a better feel of the specialty. I know that OB isn't for me, but I did enjoy learning a in depth experience of it. I never know what

Mindfulness meditation is referred to as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, or MBCT. MBCT is increasing in popularity among new techniques in therapy around the globe. Studies have proven that mindfulness meditation can help to reduce daily turmoil such as depression, anxiety, and stress. It has been stated that “mindfulness is believed to promote good health, and many studies have associated mindfulness with decreases in depression and anxiety. (Good Therapy, 2016). There are many factors that cause one to experience depression, anxiety, or stress. During MBCT individuals are taught new techniques to control their emotions, which plays a big role in depression, anxiety, and stress.

The client defines his problem of grief with a mild case of depression to be associated with his physical change and not being able to care for his self as he previously did. He also associates it with the loss of his mother and grandmother. I noticed the client’s chronic grief when I first started visiting him (two months ago). During my third visit with the client I could physically see that his grief was starting to take a toll on his body (also the disease has had an effect as well). His skin was yellow (jaundice), he looked like he lost some weight because he had no appetite, had trouble sleeping, he told me he had blood in his stool, and he told me he didn’t know how to cope with his mom being in the hospital while he was basically home

With many psychological theories that can be found today, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) have been found to be central in mindfulness approaches (Burke, 2009). These methods aim to help incorporate mindfulness skills to help tolerate symptoms that are experienced through techniques such as meditation and yoga. Consequently, guides the individual to change the way of thinking by being self-aware of their present emotions in order to carry on, thereby, “mindfulness is paying attention to one’s experience in the present moment,” according to, the American Psychological Association

Mindfulness in therapy is putting your attention toward what you are experiencing currently in the present moment i.e. Feelings or emotions, without judging it. As well seeing and accepting things as they are without modifying them. This is something Buddhist monks have been doing for a very long time. The ancient Buddhist Monk used this tool to acquire what they consider “enlightenment”. Enlightenment in simple terms means extreme clarity and peace of mind.