Kim Beck

I am writing on this topic because it so relevant to my group practice right now. I had a large caseload. The counseling was going well where clients were happy with their treatment and getting better. There are 6 counselors in our group and we all had solid caseloads. Then came the big dip in caseloads… they plummeted! In May, mental health month we did a survey for our clients to fill out about their treatment, their results were that they were very pleased with treatment and their counselor.

I have a 5 year old little girl client who has been in counseling with me for approximately 1 month. She has been pretty much superficial in her talks with me, we have been doing play therapy with puppets and a book called “brave bart” that talks about bad things that have happened to this cat it’s a child’s book that addresses sad, scary and bad things that happen to people, she has not been able to get passed a certain few pages and then stops.

I wanted to write about this relationship because not only have a learned a great deal from my supervisee, I also have learned how much I actually know about the field of counseling, including theories, techniques and supervision models. My model of supervision is clearly an education type. She wants to learn from me and I want to teach her, but I also want her to grow and learn by way of experience.

I wanted to write about my ACA conference experience because it really made a huge impact on me. I participated in "Giving back" day where I worked at the cemetery that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, we put the stones back together and worked together to make the graves beautiful for the families. Well, after leaving this cemetery of the "poor people" we drove past right up the street cemetery's of the "rich people" that were extraordinary and unbelievable how well kept they are whereas the cemetery we were at was not even touched, weeds as high as you couldn't believe!!

I have a 12 year old client and her mom is also a client of mine. Mom and child have a very dysfunctional / conflictual relationship. Mom yells at her all the time and hits herself when she gets angry in front of the child also staples her leg and this child knows about that too. The child voiced her thoughts about it that she hates when her mom does this and her mom yelled at her about hating that she (the child) cries all the time. I realize this conflictual relationship is even worse than I thought. In individual sessions I need to address mom to not hit herself or staple her leg in front of this child. The relationship will take a lot of work.