Helping Skills Lecture Assignment Mark P. Borg ID 349383(M) B. Psychology 2nd Year Tutorial Lecturer: Ms. Christianne Sullivan Something about the client: Client is female nearly 18 years of age. She is second born. Her parents are in the process of getting separated. The separation process has already been going on for the past 6 years and hasn’t yet finished. I have known the client for approximately one year. We have already had other possibilities to talk about some of her problems. One particular thing that she cannot stand is people shouting at her. She is also in scouting and takes care of young children, something she loves a lot. She is aware of her situation and has taken her time in the past to analyse her situation. She has already done the asking, the whys, the hows and has come up with solutions to suit her situation. I was aware of her parents’ separation before this exercise but we have never gone into so much detail. Throughout this particular session the client opened up a lot. As one listens to the recording one will immediately notice that during this session the client just started saying everything. She seemed to want to get everything off her chest. At one particular point she got so into saying what was happening that I didn’t dare interrupt. I felt she needed to get rid of it, as if she wanted to grab everything that was bugging her, all that, which she had stored for the past years and give it all to me. And that is why I opted to stay quiet and just listen. I must say that I was quite sceptic about the length of the session. I thought it would only last a maximum of thirty minutes but in fact I had to cut the session short because 45 mins ran out. Throughout the session the client spoke about two main problems. She opted to start with a problem, which is happening at home with her father and sister. However as it turned out this problem was a minor problem in comparison to the main problem which was the process of her parents’ separation. The first problem is what I will transcribe because of the many helper-client interactions. However I feel it is important to say that the bigger problem and the problem we spent the majority of the time discussing was the latter. Although there are helper – client interactions in the bigger problem, the interaction occurs at longer intervals, since as stated above, the client just wanted to spit it all out. As a helper I did not even dare interrupt but opted to stay back and just listen to what she had to say, what in my opinion was the best thing to do at the time. The majority of the conversation is spoken in Maltese however I have translated the text. Although the original agreement was that we would both speak in English it felt very awkward talking to a Maltese speaking client in English, so for the benefit of the exercise the majority of the conversation was held in Maltese. C= Client’s Comments H= Helper’s Comments CFrom where am I going to start?HFrom wherever you want. Something good, something bad. Start from wherever you want. CI’ll start with the last fight of the family. We started fighting because lately my sister’s computer wasn’t working, both of them, the laptop and the computer, emm so she was using mine. And she was working in there (client’s room) and she filled my room with papers. Now I am not an organised person but since I had ended up staying in
