TPC-Journal-V2-Issue3

The Professional Counselor \Volume 2, Issue 3 218 Wanda’s “wow” demonstrates her awe of the trust she feels. On the other hand, Heather is not as sure about the trust in her counseling relationship: “I don’t distrust her. I don’t know if I trust her, but I don’t distrust her.” Trust can take some time to develop and some clients felt two sessions was not a sufficient amount of time, while others felt trust immediately with their CIT. Some clients emphasized that having Someone to Talk to and Focus on Self was important in the counseling relationship. This was unique for these clients and they valued being able to vent and open up to someone that is not in their everyday lives. Ava portrays this well: It’s nice to have a person to sit there and listen to you and to help you through the issues that you have because you just don’t want to sit down and talk to your friends or someone tell them “oh, I’m alone and I’m unhappy with this and this” because a lot of people don’t, it’s just a comfort thing. You don’t want people to know what your insecurities are in life, your weakness I guess. So it’s nice to have someone that I can talk to and to help me. The Counseling Relationship was significant for clients and they paid great attention to what CITs did and did not do, as well as what was between them that contributed to the relationship. Goals Many clients experienced goals as very significant in counseling. Clients appreciated having a direction for their sessions and something to work toward, and in some cases, experienced frustration when they did not have this focus or a plan of action. Frank speaks to his need for a plan here: What seemed most important to me was actually sitting with my counselor and coming up with the homework that I’ll be doing this week. It’s a completely different feeling. It actually felt like rolling up the sleeves and, you know, getting your heads together and coming up with a plan of action and that’s still, you know, a part of I guess it’s the old Marine in me. You can sit down and do a situation report and start planning that mission the better off you are and that was very important to me to actually sit down and get moving. It was clear that clients were focused on goals and wanted to use session time to productively work towards their goals. Insight An even more prevalent theme for clients than goals was insight. Clients experienced new insight as meaningful in session through their CITs asking questions, reflecting, reframing, and drawing parallels that made them think of things in new ways and come to new realizations. Johnny demonstrates here how a question his CIT asked led to an insight: The reason why it’s a good question is I don’t think there’s a really good answer for it. It also really just makes you feel like well, it doesn’t really make sense that I think, to allow myself to think that way. Carol illustrates the impact of insight for her in session: …I’ll think about it, you know, probably for the rest of the day. I’ve got to just come to terms with everything that happened, you know, in my head or whatever and, yeah, I think it probably is going to make a really big difference so…Because I mean I wasn’t expecting anything out of this, but I’m getting like life-changing stuff out of it, so it’s pretty crazy. Clients, like Carol, consistently spoke about insight as requiring further thought and reflection, and as expecting it would sink in more over time, and would impact their lives. Immediacy A few clients experienced immediacy as meaningful in session. This included processing the here-and-now of the counseling relationship and the counseling process, broaching gender, and CITs sharing their experience of the client