Summary: Feelmo Game

These shared meanings become the powerful routes through which the therapist and teenager communicate best” (pg. 117). This suggestion has allowed me to broaden my style and approach to creating a more comfortable space for adolescents to open up and share. This he adds would serve as a shortcut for difficult events and the way they express those events verbally, allowing a more unique and connected space for the teenager and myself.

Therapists can help clients feel their feelings more fully by creating an environment where the client feels safe. Helping client’s feel their feelings rather than talk about them intellectually opens an opportunity for the client to enter their own experience more fully. Using open-ended questions to explore the client’s feelings can be effective. Therapists should clarify what the affective word the client uses means; not just assume they understand. Angry can mean many different things to many different people. Getting clarification not only helps the therapist understand more but protects them from overidentifying or misperceiving the client’s experience as being the same as they have experienced. It allows the therapist to enter the client’s subjective world. Entering the client’s subjective world, having the client feel respected and understood, increases the trust in the relationship. It gives the client the opportunity to learn more about themselves and possibly have a corrective emotional experience because they are met with empathy and validation from the therapist rather than the judgement, disdain, and invalidation they may have experienced with others in their lives. Another way a therapist can help a client experience their feelings is by speaking to the incongruence they perceive between what the client is sharing and the accompanying affect. This intervention starts

Emotion focused therapy (EFT) uses multiple techniques to illicit emotional reconstruction. “By bringing awareness, regulation, reflection and transformation” (Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014, p. 160) to the forefront, the client, has the ability to focus on those emotions and recognize the maladaptive strategies used to alleviate these responses. Within EFT validation is key in promoting congruence, positive regard and empathy. “Validation is the processes of letting the [client] know that the therapist views their needs and reactions as understandable, valid, and normal” (Denton, Johnson, & Burleson, 2009). By allowing the client to lead the session and reflecting the client’s emotions back to her you reinforced to the client that it was safe

Play is the universal language of children and allows children to express their emotions and individual responses to stressful situations. Play allows children to recreate crucial events that they have experienced and provides the child with a sense of control over the outcome of their play. The presence of a non-directive adult observer during play provides a companion for the child to recall difficult experiences and memories. Medical play is a way for children to work through the process of stressful medical experiences, where children cope with stressful healthcare experiences and can achieve mastery by creating positive outcomes in play. It is vital to understand coping strategies of children, since these approaches may affect their future reactions to healthcare situations. Children who have a sibling with a chronic illness can experience vicarious medical distress and their lives can be impacted by their siblings’ chronic illness. The researchers’ aim of this study was to observe and compare the reactions to medical trauma through play of children with medical illnesses, siblings of children with medical illness, and children who were healthy and did not have family members who were ill.

Crying has always been recognized as a significant and frequent part of the therapeutic process (Blume-Marcovici, Stolberg, & Khademi, 2013; Nelson, 2012). During the therapy process, tears are often shed by both the client and the therapist. Because therapy tends to be focused on uncovering repressed emotions, working through traumatic experiences, processing grief, or adjusting to life’s circumstances, tears are often associated with the work that is done during therapy. Because mental health therapy tends to be emotion-focused, it is surprising to discover that little research has emphasized the importance of therapists’ crying during session. This leaves family science researchers wondering how often therapists cry in

Communicating therapeutically typically uses a combination of techniques such as empathy, touch, active listening, clarifying and open-ended questioning as noted by Day, J., Levett-Jones, T., & Kenny, R. (2015). Ultimately, it aims to create a space in which the

When narrative therapy first came into my life, I was not able to realize its brilliance. I had the misconception that the modality found where problems stemmed from and then showed clients how to cope with problems when they reoccur. Then I saw narrative therapy in action during a session with clients of my colleagues. The idea of problems being outsiders intruding on the system was fascinating and co-authoring a new narrative with a client sounded fulfilling. When all of a client’s knowledge is considered socially constructed rather than learned, it helps the therapist to see the client and the client’s problems as separate entities. Meaning becomes attributed to these problems through the client’s interactions with their social environment.

The client appeared to be nervous and shy initially in the first session. As we continued the session and worked into the following session, the client was more open about her life and career aspirations. My impression of the client is that she is a rather intelligent, caring, and ambitious individual. She disclosed that she has Dyslexia but she has ambition and drive to get tasks accomplished. Mallory has an age appropriate level of functioning and is very “persistent” and a detailed organizer. She mentioned other strengths such as being able to talk to people and always being on task.

A therapist also treats the clients by asking socratic questioning. For example, Will you feel different if you are active? Consequently, the therapist will have the client to complete an easy task that is on the same schedule; therefore, the client can cooperate constantly with their therapist versus doing nothing. Some therapist used therapeutic strategies to treat the client regarding their negative thinking along with asking the client to provide reasoning such as why he/she is bashing themselves. At times, the therapist will ask questions that will make the client think am I over criticizing myself for this event unlikely, if it was my friend would I think of the event being so critical. It is possible for a client to feel heavy emotions that can be very painful in a therapy session that the therapist asks him/her to talk more about the situation to help ease the pain this technique will lift a bit of pressure from the client until the symptoms are taking care of eventually. It has been told that behavior therapy has been effective in the population of color people.

Every single activity, session, interaction that the client and therapist execute jointly in the course of their combined struggle to help the patient deal with life more effectively with life’s most challenging aspect is the therapeutic relationship (Oliveira, Sousa, & Pires, 2012, p. 295). Flexibility from both the therapist and the client must be given at all times to be able to co-create a new story with the patient. The therapist’s listening and attending to the sessions are essential to this part of the relationship. This approach is like a trial and error run. Since the therapist has never previously worked with this client before, each encounter in therapy is like uncharted territory for both the client and the therapist. The therapist cannot rely on fixed techniques and procedures for treatment; flexibility is a must, especially in the aspect of changing (Slife, 2005). The client will change with the therapist’s help, and flexibility from both parties is needed. If not, the therapeutic relationship will be affected. This therapeutic relationship is an on-going project throughout the treatment process. The relationship is built by how the client and therapist work together on creating new narratives based on new lived experiences in more empowering ways and promoting change.

Counselors must allow clients communicate emotive feelings in order to recapture a sense of balance, according to Wise (1956). As reported by Romer, Litz, Orsillo and Wagner (2001), suppressing emotions during counseling can hinder the healing process, and contribute to emotional disorder.

When working with this client one has to consider that she is a single African American mother. She also works full time in Joplin while living in Pittsburg so she travels a lot. Her work schedule also changes all the time and is not very consistent.

CBT is designed to help the client better understand what is going on. We function by what Beck described as Automatic Thoughts. “He invented the term automatic thoughts to describe emotion-filled thoughts that might pop up in the mind. Beck found that people weren’t always fully aware of such thoughts, but could learn to identify and report them.” (Martin 2013) While CBT can help in many different ways, a client’s thought process is perhaps its most important focus. With Ana feeling as stressed as she is about her husband being deployed, her lack of speaking with her family for the past year and her fears

Client was able to reflect the right feelings using her body language and facial features during the game. Client was able to find a suitable solution for her feelings of frustration working in a group by saying, "Next time we will do better." When therapist asked client during the game what her first three thoughts would be if her teacher said "I'm going to call your parents," client reported, "I would ask why, then say I didn't do anything, then tell my teacher that my mom is at work and can't talk." When the client pulled a game card asking when was the last time she talked back, client reported the last time she talked back was when her foster mom refused to let her play outside. When therapist gave client emotions board to identify the three emotions she felt during the session, client reported that she feels joy because she likes the new board game, happy because we plan to talk about controlling anger next session, and surprised because of the new therapist. Therapist praised the client and her thoughts and behavior and client was happy with therapist

The client seemed very confused as though she was not sure of what to say and looked up the ceiling taking pauses, blinking, sighing as she spoke about the presenting issue. i nodded continuously to