Throughout this semester skill labs were completed. This created the opportunity for students to practice important micro-skills. In this paper, I will reflect back on the micro-skills training and discuss the challenges, strengths, improvements, and the impact it will have in the future.
I actually completed this class early in the graduate program and thought it was interesting to look back at these labs and reflection on my challenges and strengths were.
Micro-Skills
The micro-skills training created a framework to grow from. The skills started simple and let students focus on one thing at a time. While this started to become frustrating and as if we were getting stuck in circles, it provided students with the knowledge to understand the basics. The labs helped attain skills counselors and art therapists have of attending, reflecting and listening, advanced reflecting, and challenging. The labs help me better understand how to be a good listener, how to paraphrase and clarify. Listening is not just waiting for your turn to talk, it is preparing yourself to listen and requires effort to understand what the client is thinking, feeling, and wanting. One thing I struggled with in the first sessions was wanting to fix or have the answers. I really had to focus on not waiting on my turn to talk but to really be with the client through these sessions. These skills will give me the opportunity to really know how to interact with clients and with practice they will feel more natural.
Challenges
During the skills labs, I was faced with my own need for perfection. I realized I put so much pressure on myself to feel perfect and as if I need to be doing things correctly to be growing. One thing I learned from this challenge was that sometimes I have to do things wrong first to learn a greater lesson. I still struggle with nervousness on how to interact with clients. I find myself getting more anxious when I see others go first. The first part of dealing with an issue is being aware of it and with practice, and a little more confidence, I believe I can get rid of preconceived ideas that I need to be perfect. Being vulnerable is what clients do every time they go to a session. I need to practice that same vulnerability to understand what they may be feeling and to learn from it myself.
Strengths
Some strengths I have gained from the micro-skills training are the attending skills. I believe empathy comes more naturally for me and with the other attending skills, I can better invite a client into building an important therapeutic relationship. I am also pretty good at reflecting and listening skills. I have improved greatly at letting the client know I have heard their story and have understood where they are coming from. In some of the last skills labs, I felt confident in how I used encouragers and open questions to get the client to open up more and get more information. The outline from the book helped with getting a start and I have found myself using different ways to better understand clients. Growing from the basics and starting to connect them is also something I have grown in and I am excited for this to happen in the other skills. While I think these come more naturally to me than other skills, I will continue to practice them and get better and stronger.
Improvement
I think I could improve on a lot of the skills, but specifically, I need to work on the advanced reflecting skills of reflecting meaning and summarizing. Reflection of meaning is the deep connection of understanding where the therapist uses paraphrasing and emotion to perceive the meaning. One thing I recognized in class was I would struggle to reflect meaning when it was my time to be the therapist, but as an onlooker or an ego, I could recognize it more clearly. This tells me my anxiety got it the way. I need to work on being more confident and like I mentioned before, vulnerable to make mistakes. Summarizing is pulling all the information from the session into a brief synopsis which is a bit intimidating. We practiced this skill in a five-minute session and normal sessions are much longer. I need to work on this skill in a more realistic setting and I can improve upon it by practicing at my current volunteer site.
Future
I feel the micro-skills labs have already helped me immensely at my current volunteer location. It has helped me become a stronger listener and know ways to ask questions to get clients to open up. In a group setting, I am comfortable with paraphrasing and reflecting feeling quite well. I need to remind myself to keep practicing so I can be ready for future clinical and internship sites. In future clinical and internship sites, the skills will give me a framework to build from. Hopefully, during future sites, the skills will become second nature. I think in future settings I will be better able to practice all skills at once and connect them. Growing from group settings and individual settings will also be an interesting thing to participate in.
Conclusion
The in-class skills lab experience let me grow in a comfortable environment. I feel I have become good friends with those I regularly practiced with which was a good and bad thing. I felt more comfortable making mistakes (something I needed to work on), but I also did not push myself to make mistakes in front of others. While I had similar groups each time we practiced, one thing I wish I did was to push myself out of my comfort zone.
Throughout this semester skills labs were completed and through those important micro-skills were learned. In this paper, the author reflected on the micro-skills training and discussed the challenges, strengths, improvements, and the impact it will have on the future.
Comments