Counseling Experiences

FIRST PRACTICAL EXAM INSIGHT

Our first practical exam, we must say, is really nerve wracking! We were the first dyad to take the exam and we had no idea on how it was going to be. But the task was given prior the said exam and it helped us a lot in preparing for it. The task assigned to us was to give an

activity to the sexually and physically abused girls in a shelter and to use the psychoanalysis as a design for our activity. We had so many questions in mind prior the exam like do the girls know each other already? Is it their first time to meet each other? Or are their ages the same or does the group have very young or very old members? Since we weren't sure about the answers to these questions, what we did was we created a design for three age groups - young girls, adolescents to young adults and adults. We had to admit that we really had a hard time thinking of a psychoanalytic inspired activity because we had just finished discussing the client centered therapy by Carl Rogers and this therapy is still very fresh in our minds. Maybe we didn't have careful thoughts or probably not enough resources because during the exam, our activity for the adolescents turned out to be very client centered in approach. We felt bad but we've had significant learning about it. And though the second activity didn't turn out so well, we were commended for the first and third activities - the activities for the young girls and adults. For the young girls, we designed a game called Trust Building Maze Game, we designed this game in order to build trust among the young girls because as we all know abused girls, especially the young ones, experienced trauma and are more likely to have trust issues (Jaberghaderi, N., Greenwald, R., Rubin, A., Zand, S. O., & Dolatabadi, S. (2004) Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 11, 358-368). The activity we used for the adults was the Word in a Jar activity; this is one form of free association that helps release their anxieties.

It was so nice that Mr. Saplala made the necessary considerations despite the fact that we leaned towards Client Centered therapy instead of the original Psychoanalysis. We focused too much in looking for a free association activity that we neglected to consider Erik Erickson’s contribution to Psychoanalysis. We should have designed an activity that tackles Erik Erickson’s psychosocial stages for adolescents (crisis: Identity versus Identity Confusion) or probably dream analysis. We are happy though that he still noted on the positive things about the activity we made and how we presented the activity. This is a very good experience and learning for us as counseling students and this would surely help us further improve and prepare more for our next practical exams.

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