A core component in the field of clinical psychology is interviewing. Clinical interviews, also known as conversations with purpose, are dialogues between psychologist and patient that are designed to help psychologist diagnose and plan treatment. It is essential that psychologist build their competency in their clinical interviewing skills. The foundation of refining these skills established though social interactions starts here in graduate school. In this paper, I’ll go over my previous experiences in interviewing, strengths and weaknesses, what I have learned thus far, and the areas that need further growth and development. My first introduction to interviewing was in graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Attending …show more content…
During interviews, I tend to be good at building initial rapport, attending behaviors, question selection, and some nondirective listening responses. When I sit down to interview someone, I always remember that they are a person. Talking about simple things are also important before getting into the details of the interview. Holding a light conversation comes very natural to me. I also know that rapport building is a critical aspect of building a trusting relationship. I also operate under a client lead model, so I follow the pace of the client when interviewing. That includes starting when they are ready and taking breaks from the interview to discuss other matters. Previously I struggled with maintaining eye contact, but through practice interviewing I learned when it is appropriate to make eye contact. I usually keep a good posture during interviews. Depending on who I am talking to, my voice can come off seductive. This is not purposely done. Besides that, I keep a good rate and volume of speech. Active listening and verbal tracking is also strengths. I show that I am listening to what a client is saying through summarizing, restating and paraphrasing what they say from time to time to make sure I am understanding the message they are relaying. Furthermore, I do a good job of asking open-ended questions and …show more content…
I struggle or am too not familiar with knowing the right use of therapeutic questions, some directive listening and action responses and ending an interview. The text for the class did a good job providing definitions and examples of therapeutic questions but when I attempted to use them in practice it did not feel natural, but forced. I sounded scripted and they didn’t go with the flow of conversation. I believe this is because I didn’t truly understand the best time to work in questions like indirect to swing and projective. I’d like to see these examples shown in class. I am also not too comfortable with some forms of directive listening responses like reframe and confrontation. I struggle in my personal life with confrontation so to do it tactfully in a professional setting is a challenge. I think confrontation is no scary to me because I tend so get emotional or defensive when I am confronted. I imagine receiving the same emotions if I had to confront a client, which can rupture rapport. Although, I know that confrontation is sometimes necessary, I’d like to avoid it as much as possible. There are some directive and action responses that I have trouble producing, one being advice and the other being self-disclosure. In general, I am very skeptical about giving advice for two reasons. The first being that I have always operated under a client centered approach where
Evans, D. R. (2010). 1. Essential interviewing: a programmed approach to effective communication (8th ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
(Giroir, 2013). In this particular assignment, I am asked to interview a college graduate or
But I had realized that I do not have to have all the answers and I am not here to give solution to the client. Instead, I am here to assistant the client in finding solution to their problems that would work for them. Therefore, when I am stuck I would have to paraphrased or summarized the client statement or conversation that the client had said to me. I would always keep in mind that I have to be an active listener and listen to my client with non-judgmental. This is only reason that I was able to continue with my session with my client (husband) and most of the time I did not let our relationship interfered with the counseling session. During the interview I had use the reflection of meaning, interpretation and reframing. Meaning is how my client feels about the situation. Interpretation is what I think he is feeling about the situation. As for the reframing I had assisted the client to find an alternative way for client to approach the
McClish, Mark. “Susan Smith” http://www.statementanalysis.com/susan-smith/ Advanced Interviewing Concepts. May 6, 2002. Web, Feb. 7, 2012
Effective crisis intervention must follow ethical principles which ensure that client is not placed in further harm also that the decisions and opinions of the client are respected throughout the process and the intervention upholds a rights-based approach. This involves good listening communication skills, observing, understanding, genuineness, respect, acceptance, non-judgment and sensitivity demonstrating empathy, among other support provided by counselor. A number of specific strategies can be used to promote effective listening during crisis intervention. These include using open-ended questions - “what” or “how” questions. They are used to encourage sharing of information from a client about their feelings, thoughts and behaviors, and are particularly useful when exploring problems during a crisis. Closed-ended questions usually begin with action words such as "do", "does", "can", "have", "had", "will", "are", "is" and "was". These questions can be used to gather specific information or to understand the client 's willingness to commit to a particular action. Using close-ended questions that seek specific details and are designed to encourage the client to share information about behaviors (such as the specific actions or behavioral coping strategies used by the client), as well as “yes” or “no” responses. Restating and clarifying what the client has said can help the counselor conducting the crisis intervention to clarify whether he/she has an accurate understanding of what the client intended to say, feel, think and do. Restating can also be used to focus the discussion on a particular topic, event or issue. Owning feelings and using statements that start with “I” in crisis intervention can help to provide direction by being clear about what will
Today’s skills session on social work interviewing skills covered the uniqueness of social work interviewing in comparison to interviews conducted in professions such as the police, doctors, employers, etc. It covered also different types of questioning and how to paraphrase. Another area covered was, what to avoid when interviewing a service user and the use of silence. I leant that interview skills are fundamental in social work and social work interviewing is unique. Social workers empathize with clients because of their knowledge of the client group and the need of help to alleviate their problems. Empathy however does not equate accepting that the client is right in what they have done or that the social worker is condoning their actions. Empathy relates to the issue of ‘trusting’ and ‘believing’ the client. In as much as a social worker should seek to establish trust in the relationship, this does not necessarily mean they should believe
Although, this session ended with amazing results, I feel as though I need more practice with this type of therapy. I have to continue to practice on allowing the patient to come up with their own solutions. I found it hard not giving advice to my client, because I already knew the situation. However, in the end I found myself very proud, because even though this was not a real therapy session, but the client was able to find a real solution to her problem. This experience is one that teaches the therapist restraint, it allows one to step back and listen. It also gives the client the opportunity to reach a solution themselves without someone giving them the answer to their
Motivational interviewing is based on a client centered approach to therapy that uses open-ended questions, affirmation, reflective listening and summaries to help the client recognize the pros and cons of change and their reasons for resisting change thereby eliminating their ambivalence about change. Once the client deals with their ambivalence the Miller and Rollick believe that the client will be able to make the necessary changes. In addition, motivational interviewing gets the client to argue for change not the counselor. Furthermore, the client not the counselor is responsible for their progress.
Interviewing and research skills are needed within the social work profession. Effective communication skills are one of the most crucial components of a social worker’s job. Every day, social workers must communicate with clients to gain information, convey critical information and make important decisions (Zeiger, 2017). This interview experience was an opportunity to explore the daily challenges and rewards of a licensed social worker. I was excited for the opportunity to interview a social worker in the gerontology sector as this is a specialty I am considering. This meeting allowed me to explore the educational steps of being a social worker, practices of the agency, the clients who are served, and the challenges the agency has.
Interviews are very popular among most individuals especially researchers and scholars as they attempt to obtain information and data from an interviewee. However, there are many factors that influence the interview and which determines its success or failure. Often, the interviewer takes charge of the situation, and they have the sole responsibility of asking the questions while the interviewee provides an explanation or an answer to the question asked. As a result, an interview can be defined as a consultation or a discussion in person through which information and data are exchanged regarding a particular phenomenon event with the intention of establishing the interviewee’s position. It is easy to tell the mood and success of the interview
The intake interview assists in establishing and diagnosing any problems the client may have. The therapist may then explain to the client what to expect during the interview, including the time duration. A good assessment/ or intake will focus on the individual situation, strength and coping mechanism. The intake form is for the client, it gives the therapist more information and an idea of who you are. The intake process that is considered of a series of questions and consent form that the client has to sign and agree to. A professional relationship between a counselor and a client begins with an intake interview.
The counseling session began with the introductions where I introduced myself as the counselor and later introduced my client. This stage is important in any counseling session since it is the time of exploration and focusing according to Gerard Egan as quoted by Wright (1998) in his essay on couselling skills. It is in this session that I was able to establish rapport and trust with my client in order to come up with a working and fruitful relationship with him. During this stage I made use of skills like questioning, where I would pose a question directly to my client, sometimes I would choose to just listen to what the client wanted to speak out while in some instances I would be forced to paraphrase the question if I felt the client did not understand the question I had asked previously. There were also other times when I would reflect through silence. During such a period, I got time to study the client and the information he had given. This being a difficult area, since some clients may not be able to volunteer information to you as the counselor, I decided to assure the client of confidentiality of any information he was willing to share with me with a few exceptions which I also told him about. Being open to him about the only times the information may not be confidential was part of my building rapport and establishing trust with him. I therefore, decided to ask the client what information he wanted to share with me and lucky enough he was ready to speak to me about different issues that he was going through.
When we were first given this assignment I had not put much consideration into it. I thought we were to ask a couple of questions, it would all work itself out and I would be done. But this was not the case. The thought and reflection put into interview questions really surprised me. There was far more factors other than the questions you were asking, because you were also dealing with people, people who are giving you there free time, their attention and opening themselves up to you a stranger, so there were far more responsibilities then what were initially at hand.
After watching the video tape, I realised that I was quite good at using questioning skill to help the client. The closed and open questions used in the interview were considered to be acceptable and appropriate. I believe that my personal experiences have shaped my ability to appropriately apply this skill in counselling. When I was younger, I used to listen to my grandmother talking about her past and the old tales that she had heard of. I...
I feel like I made really good eye contact in most of my speeches because I was always taught to look someone in the eye when I spoke to them. I also have really good memory so I could easily remember things about a topic or about a memory to share with the class and be able to tell the story or information correctly. My eye contact was a really big strength for me and I think it helped me in a lot of the speeches I did. The speech I think I made the most eye contact and was able to keep my thoughts together, was my impromptu speech when I talked about me and Arley’s relationship. I was able to give so much eye contact because I was not nervous and was able to speak about something I knew a lot about and the topic fit me fairly well. My other strength was memorization and that came in handy during my informative speech. I felt like my informative speech was one of the best speeches I gave due to the knowledge I had of the topic. I was able to remember important information and that made me more calm knowing I would be able to sail through the speech without going