Mock therapy session

At the start of this session, I followed the ethics of narrative therapy, as advocated by Freedman and Combs (1996), by situating myself in the therapeutic relationship and creating a transparent environment. Instead of presenting myself as an expert in my field with vast experiences, I revealed to the client that I was a student who was being observed by a reflecting team that will analyze the session and help me improve my techniques. Furthermore, when the client indicated her concern that I was a single man who did not have the personal experience of marriage, I assured her that I had some experience with married clients. Even more importantly, I stated that my limitations and my openness to her perspectives: "Being that you know more than I do, you can fill me in with anything that I am missing." Essentially,

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troducing her to alternative points of view (Freedman & Combs, 1996, p. 126). These questions were: a) "Maybe there are things about you that, like you were saying, gets on his nerves and so forth, I don't know, has he brought any of these things to your attention at all"; and b) "If he's in the room right now, what do you think he would say if he just heard you say that [husband's behavior]. What would his reaction be?" With these questions, I was inviting the client to move beyond her experience of the problem in order to view the situation from her husband's perspective, thus creating an opportunity for her to acknowledge her husband's point of view in her story: "That you know no big deal wellà that his manners are fine, that there's nothing wrong with his manners." Even though this strategy did not yield a positive alternative story for the client, it set the foundation for the client and me to construct an alternative image of the husband, which went beyond the client's problematic conception. After further exploration of the problem, the client revealed that she was thinking about leaving her husband: "I don't know whether I want to be with him." Because the client was presenting a potential solution to her problem,
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Approximate Word count = 1504
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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