Reflective Goals

I don’t really have any goals that can be reached by the end of the semester, in 2 ½ months. My goals are more of a work in progress type of thing. I have been working on them since I began the program and while I have made significant progress, I feel I have quite a way to go before I can call them finished. My goals thus far would be to:

1. Overcoming the temptation to fill every second of silence.  This is hard because it has been beat unto our heads that time is at a premium and we have to move along at a steady pace in order to work on as many problems as possible throughout the day.

2. Overcoming the temptation to focus on the positive aspects of something someone has said. It is usually the negative factor that has caused them to come to us in the first place and to skip the negative is doing the client a disservice.

3. Having a personal life.

4. Learning how to help students understand death without projecting personal feelings onto the client.

5. Learning effective ways to keep clients in the here and now rather than focusing on the past.

How the class can help reach these goals: I think the first two are simply things that have to gained through experience gained working with clients. The fourth and fifth might be improved by having more role playing in the classroom.  As for the third goal, I am the only one that can work on and achieve that goal.