Utilize this template to transcribe a 10 minute segment of your recorded counseling session. Please remember to edit for confidentiality. In addition, you will need to annotate your transcription to identify or highlight a specific skill.
Brief description of Client (age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, employment):
He is a black single man and he’s 23 years old. He is a student in Houston University and he has a roommate. He is family live in different country. He worked a part time and when he needs money in the past but right now he doesn’t have a job.
Brief description of presenting issue:
Alcoholism: Financial Instability due to Alcoholism. The client consumes a lot of alcoholic beverages every day that it has put a financial strain on his income because he can’t keep a job due to his habits.
Session #: 1
Transcription
Counselor: Hi
Counselor: Why are you here today?
Counselor: Ok.
Counselor: Why do you say that?
Counselor: Uh
Counselor: So you came here today because your friends told you to come?
Counselor: Good.
Counselor: Ok, so it seems like you have you feel have drinking problem. Are you concerned about your drinking?
Counselor: Excuse me, what do you mean a lot? How many bottles do you drink?
Counselor: What kind of alcohol do you drink?
Counselor: Have you been like this in your drinking?
Counselor: So you drink to escape your problems?
Counselor: You are a student, do you drink before you go to class or after?
Counselor: Did you have problems in school because of your drinking?
Counselor: Oh! The there’s a second time.
Counselor: When did it happen?
Counselor: And you keep drinking?
Counselor: Yeah that’s a problem. So when you drink, do you drink by yourself or with friends?
Counselor: Now that you are here have you decided to stop drinking?
Counselor: Have you been to treatment like AA meetings?
Notes on counseling skills
The session begins with a general assessment question: “Why are you here today?” Through this question the counselor hopes to learn the patient´s expectations and general feelings toward therapy. Throughout the session the counselor applies different techniques that help the patient get his feelings out in the open and clarify his thoughts.
Listening is a fundamental counseling skill, if the counselor seems disengaged the patient will not profit from the session. In this case, the counselor confirms through a series of questions and approving sounds that he is in fact listening to his patient. Another skill that this counselor applies is empathy. This is the ability to perceive the patient´s experience and then to communicate that perception back to him. The counselor achieves this by paraphrasing what his patient says. He first listens to the patient´s comment, identifies his key words and feelings and then rephrases asks him if that is what he meant. This is also known as perception check, where the counselor asks if he understood things properly.
The counselor also looks to reflect his patient’s feelings, for example, after the patient tells a story where his alcoholism was a burden, the counselor confirms this feeling by saying it is indeed a problem. By continuously asking questions the counselor invites the patient to clarify and amplify his feelings and talk more about what he is going through. After these open questions are the best approach is to follow a response with a paraphrase of what the patient said or with a reflection on the subject to encourage him to keep sharing and avoid a repetitive and unnatural pattern of questions and answers.
The counselor in this session makes a good job at being concrete, which helps clarify the content of the discussion. He also maintains the right approach by maintaining an unconditional positive regard and being nonjudgmental about his client´s confessions.
