Reflections

For me this course has been interesting and giving. I liked the practical parts of it, and especially listening to when you had ”therapy sessions”. This gave me ideas of methods to use in my life and my line of work. I am in Sweden studying positive psychology and motivational interviewing, and my aim is to in the future coach people to reach goals and also to become happier. This course has given me methods and interventions to achieve this and I have now seen a new way to work. It is also a good refresh of my old knowledge of conversation as well as i gained new valuable information.

What was evident for me during your therapy sessions is that you often asked how the person was feeling, in order to see what changed during the session, as well as to know which state he or she is in and what needs working on (what should be central during the session). This is good for seeing what works and what don't, and what steps to take in order to achieve a good result. The client will hopefully truthfully explain what he or she is feeling and from this one can explore why this feelings exist and how to cope with them. You also cared about the past experiences and what feelings are connected to that, probably in order to find out the source of the behavior and pain. If a therapist finds out the past event, and the past feelings, this could help in trying to accept it.

You also repeated what the person was saying, I think in order to show that you understand, and also for yourself to see that you fully understand the client. This is in my opinion also a good way to gain time to figure out what to do next in the session. The client will also be assured that the therapist is actually listening and understanding.

Last you said that you wouldn't want to make inferences about what the person is feeling or thinking, based on your own thoughts. I think that this is very good since you never can fully understand someone. You should rather work on what the client is telling you, and ask questions about that. If I would for example ask if someone is sad, they may say yes even if the person is feeling more happy than sad. This would be to lead the client into a subject that doesn't really need so much attention. I look the same way on giving interventions, and suggestions on what to to to fell better. This should in many cases be left for the client to decide. If I would give an intervention to my client I would ask if it feels like something she wants to do, just like you did with the exercise with the chair exercise where the client pretended to talk to his friend. I think that your way of conversationing is similar in many ways to motivational interviewing and i often agreed on the way you proceeded the conversation. For example you asked the client what he wanted to do about it, right now. This is the way in which i work with my clients. I say for example ”what could you do in order to change this/achieve this?” and it seems to be very efficient.

The thing that felt the least rewarding for me was the biofeedback, since I will probably not use it in my practice. Although, it was still very interesting to see that relaxing actually has an impact on skin, temperature, breathing, etc. It was for me reassuring to see that it actually works to a high degree, and interesting to see how the body is affected by stress. It's easy to infer that stress must be very bad for the body, making mindfulness important.

It was many things that were new to me, for example to ”feel where the sadness is” and to take some time just feeling it. For me it was surprising to see that that method actually worked and I don’t fully know why but I'm assuming that it has to do with accepting the feelings and knowing that it's only a feeling and nothing dangerous. I will try this the next time I have an unpleasant feeling. One similar exercise was when you told your client to accept the sadness and see if there is room for it. This was also a successful exercise and I was very attentive to see the result. My thought is that people don't usually accept the emotions but rather push them away. Accepting them for what they are and accepting that you experience it should be relaxing and comforting. Feeling, focusing, and breathing seems to be central in CBT and as I have taken a course in mindfulness earlier, I know that this is proven to decrease, sadness, stress, attention deficits, etc.

The exercise ”Your suffering inventory” was interesting in the way that it made me realize how things are connected in my life, and how much time it consumes. I realized that i should put less energy in certain things, and I saw what drained the most energy from me. Now that I think about it again, there was actually a negative event this weekend, that happened due to my lack of self-esteem which is number one on the list in this exercise. I realize that I probably should do something about this in order to escape those events. Concerning negative thoughts that was one of my issues in this exercise, I would like to add to see things from someone else's perspective, and to question if what you're thinking is actually true. People are often to hard on themselves, and also it's hard to think straight during pressure, stress and sadness.

When we listened to the ”radio channel”, I agreed a lot. I have been studying similar things like that we are in control of what we feel and experience. We are also in control of our life and how it proceeds, through our thoughts and behavior. It is only ourselves who decide who we are and what our life will be like. I will try to use this example in my practice.

One thing that you said that for me seemed very powerful was “Imagine that it will be like this forever”. It is an eye opener that will make you realize that you need to make a change. This could also be done in the reverse direction, by imagining what could be if you make a change, for example the perfect life. Overall, the course has given me ideas of conversation, interventions, and ways to make my future clients achieve things. I thank you for this course.