Week 3

Last night was quite uncomfortable during my counseling session. For some reason, I found myself being almost condescending to Bill. This is pointing to a very important subject for me: a person's personality has quite a drastic effect on how I treat them. And as a counselor, I will need to minimize this to the best of my ability.

Bill has always come across to me as almost "too interested," or "too concerned" about whatever it is we're talking about. Don't know how better to explain it, but he has a manner of speaking and being that rubs me as disingenuous. And this caused me to question a lot of what he was saying.

As I think about this a day later, I'm thinking that questioning his answers and his priorities was perfectly appropriate -- it was the manner in which I questioned him that is the problem. I showed almost zero empathy, and became almost confrontational.

I know what I was aiming to do: clarify his answers, and allow him to see how his answers to the question (the benefits to NOT changing) were all actually benefits to changing -- but I was doing so in what turned out to be a rude and condescending manner. Kind of a "can't you SEE how simple the anwers are, you dimwit" kind of feel to my attitude.

I also had it reinforced that my facial expressions are quite strong: I can even feel myself doing certain things with my face (cocking my head to one side, raising eyebrows, scowling, etc), and though I don't mean to they just happen.

I wonder now if some measure of "acting the part" can be used here. I did a lot of acting in college, wonder if I should try in a way to create a role for myself - one that's not made up per se, but rather is real and genuine, but perhaps (if nothing more) a physical manner of being that I can try to step into that may help me do the following:
- keep my vocal inflections from becoming rude, arrogant, or sounding condesceinding
- keep my facial expressions from causing the client to feel uncomfortable or question what I may be thinking, or to keep my expression from showing disbelief, disgust, etc.

On a positive note - while I was the observer I felt much more in tune with what was going on. I was able to give what I believe was good feedback, and pointed out some things to Bill that he was not at all aware that he was doing. While last week I felt like I had barely anything to contribute, last night I was able to remain more focused and thus able to hear what was going on more clearly.

One of the things I wrote about in my paper was that I was worried about being uncomfortable counseling women I found attractive. I don't think that will be nearly as big an issue as I thought earlier -- what will be more of an issue is my interactions with men. I've never interacted very well or on a very open level with men, and so this will be a challenge. I think this may have been partly in play last night with Bill. It didn't seem to occur last week with Matt, but (god I hope this doesn't sound horrible) Matt's being gay changes the interaction in a way that makes it more comfortable for me - more akin to interacting with a woman (not that Matt is like a woman in any way). Not sure what to make of that.