2. A Little Background .....
30 year old woman
From Hungary
PR status in 2006
Moved to Canada
permanently in 2009
“It's like everyone tells a story about
themselves inside their own head. Always.
All the time. That story makes you what you
are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
3. “ The future belongs to those who
believe in the beauty of their
dreams!
- Elanor Roosevelt
4. “It's like everyone tells a story about themselves
inside their own head. Always. All the time. That
story makes you what you are. We build
ourselves out of that story.”
- Patrick Rothfuss
5. Values &
Meaning:
Family
“I’m tired of just living
to work, I want to start
working to live”
“I want to take an
active step in pursuing
my goal of finding
work that will give me
evenings and
weekends off”
“I am willing to take a
job I don’t love in
order to take care of
my family and save
money to start the job
I do love”
“I could never
understand why so
many people stop
pursuing their dreams
after becoming
parents until I gave
birth to my baby”
“I see now more than
ever before how
priorities can change,
there’s nothing I
wouldn’t do for my
girl”
7. Brief overview of
last session!
• Encouraged
comments/questions
Story Exercise!
• Shared moments that
were meaningful and
made her happy
In the best of all
worlds.....
• Gained a better
understanding of her
biggest values
Goals Restory Action
9. Client Barriers:
Language
Lack of Education
Does not know the
Canadian equivalency of
the course she took in
Hungary
Counselling Session
Barriers:
Having a newborn
restricted her
availability
Lack of counsellor
experience
Editor's Notes
Summary (slide 1)
My client is a 30 year old woman, originally from Hungary, on maternity leave, referred to me by a mutual friend. She came to Canada to visit family in 2004 and during her stay she met a boy and they spent all summer together. Falling head over heels for one another, they decided that he would go to Hungary with her and meet her family. Although he couldn’t speak a word of Hungarian and she spoke very little English, their connection was huge and they fell in love. While in Hungary they decided they were going to get married and come back to Canada. She finally received her permanent residency status 2006, but they both decided to end the relationship and my client moved back to Hungary. They both felt they were too young when they met and needed to grow on their own for a while. After realizing they could not live apart, she finally moved back to Canada in 2009. Since being back, her English skills have increased significantly which has allowed her to find work. She has worked primarily in the restaurant industry, starting from being a hostess, then a server and then was offered a management position.
Assessment of the counselling Process (slide 2)
Session 1
After the initial greeting and explaining my competencies and the confidentiality of the session, I asked her what she was interested in speaking with me about - she told me she wants to find a different job. My client loves working in the restaurant industry; she loves the people, the diversity and more importantly the money, but she just had a baby and she is struggling to find something she wants to do next, outside of serving. My client was very clear about wanting a job with more stable hours, preferably Monday to Friday; she wants something with benefits in a position where she can be around people and ‘help’. I wanted to explore in more depth what motivated this goal. I thought it would be a fun way to start understanding this by asking her to participate in the dream exercise; this exercise so far is my favorite ways to listen to clients tell a story. After a few moments of discomfort she started to relax and started sharing her dream of where she would be and what she would be doing if all barriers were removed. During this exercise I found out that part of her dream is to own a small cafe. I could see from her body language she was feeling much more comfortable and was hopefully a result of my attending behaviour and empathy skills.
I wanted to explore her dream in more detail so I began engaging her in conversation by asking open-ended questions, this allowed for me to direct where I wanted the conversation to go with allowing my client to elaborate. After listening and utilizing the basic listening sequence I found out my client is looking for office work specifically in a hospital, it’s close to where she lives and has a friend who works there that says its good money and offers benefits. She likes the idea of being able to help people but wouldn’t be able to handle being a nurse. She wants stable hours so she can be with her family in the evenings and weekends and hopes to save enough money so when the children are grown up she can invest in opening a small cafe. I felt that the session went really well but wanted to know more about her and the things that really make her happy and proud. I ended the session with a summary of what was discussed and asked if she was willing to think of 5-7 stories throughout her life and share them with me in our next session.
Session 2(slide 3)
When we met for our second session we briefly went over the last session and discussed any thoughts, feelings or questions she had for me. One thing she shared was how hard it feels to transition from one field of work to another, I agreed with her and shared how that is exactly how I felt before I decided to take this course and reassured her that it will get easier. I was able to fill in quite a lot of information on the LRA chart just from our last session, but was really looking forward to hearing some stories in her life that made her most proud. I withdrew and listened. It was a very stimulating and fascinating process for me to watch. Her body language and the tone of her voice changed throughout the course of the stories and I saw how happy and excited she was to share these precious moments of her life with me. This was a point of significance for me. After she finished, I focused on reflecting how these stories made her feel. I explained to her the process of the Life-Role Analysis and shared what information I had so far asking if she had anything else to add. I then proceeded to ask the question “in the best of all worlds, what do you want to get out of life?” Her initial comment was a very popular one I’m sure; “in the best of all worlds I would win the lottery, get to stay home with my children and pay other people to run my cafe”. With the use of many encouragers, showing empathy and reflection on her feelings I was able to conclude that she really wants to be able to spend time with her family while financially contributing as that gives her the feeling of self-worth as well as working towards saving money so she can to eventually open up her cafe. We then spent the last portion of our session carefully discussing her goals; to develop her English language skills and investigate online courses. We then took some time with her restory. Finally we discussed what action she was
going to take to reach her goal .
Statements (slide 4)
“I’m tired of just living to work; I want to start working to live”
“I want to take an active step in pursuing my goal of finding work that will give me evenings and weekends off”
“I am willing to take a job I don’t love in order to take care of my family and save money to start the job I do love”
“I could never understand why so many people stop pursuing their dreams after becoming parents until I gave birth to baby”
“I see now more than ever before how priorities can change, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my girl”
I believe these five statements from my client to be significant because throughout our sessions, family seemed to be her biggest motivator. I could tell that since becoming a mother, her urgency to take care of herself and follow her dreams has changed to focusing 100% on doing what is right for her family. She believes that putting her dream of opening a cafe on hold is the obvious thing to do. She understands that running her own business would take her away from her family and since time goes by so fast she wants to be around, from sharing dinner with them to reading bedtime stories and tucking them in at night. Another strong motivator for her is the importance for her to contribute financially; this is why she is trying to find a job that can both accommodate her desire to be with her family and the imperative to be financially contributing.
Areas that were addressed in session one (slide 5)
-Areas we addressed in session one were; my competencies and the confidentiality of our discussions.
-She agreed to do the dream exercise with me and from that I was able to see that there was more to her desire of wanting to get a stable job
- her biggest goal and dream was to open up a cafe at some point.
-We discussed that this dream is still attainable and what those possibilities looked like
-I asked her if she was willing to do some homework; I proposed that she think of 5-7 stories that make her proud
- I was able to draw out strengths by listening to her dream, using my attending behaviour and empathy skills and by utilizing the basic listening sequence; asking open & closed ended questions, encouraging, paraphrasing and summarizing. I found with this exercise using reflection of feelings alot really helped with her confidence level
Areas that were addressed in session two (slide 6)
-at the beginning did a brief overview of the last session,
- I also encouraged her to ask any questions or share any comments or feelings she had. In this session she expressed that she was feeling sad that her dream of opening a cafe felt like it was becoming less and less of a reality. This was a development from our last session where my client discussed feelings related to her situation.
-Afterwards she started to read me her stories
- it was amazing how much I learned about her from just listening and observing .
-I then went on to describe what the life role analysis is and shared what information I had collected about her from our last session. We discussed what her idea of the perfect world would be and I continued to use the basic listening sequence I also shared with her that I was in the same perdictament at the beginning of this year so I could relate to how she was feeling, this was an example of self-disclosure.
-Subsequently we were able to reach her goals and defined the action steps needed to help her reach them. We went through the goals, restory and action stages.
Future Client options (slide 7)
My client has agreed to investigate ways she can improve her English - she is going to investigate online courses and community-based support resources that can help her both improve her skills and have a certification that outlines her level of achievement, this will help alleviate the concerns of employers over communication abilities.
Client and counselling Barriers (slide 8)
Some Barriers my client is encountering are English being her second language – a solution we have discussed is for her to look into some courses to help build her English speaking skills. Lack of education – in order for my client to make a career transition she will have to further her education by taking some online courses. She does not know the Canadian equivalency of the course she took in Hungary – we discussed in order to proceed with furthering her education it would be beneficial for her to find out the equivalency so she doesn’t waste time or money on courses she may not be required to take.
Barriers I found from our counselling sessions, because she has a newborn, scheduling time to meet was hard to set in stone. She cancelled four times out of the 2 times we met. Being a mother of 3, I could relate to no sleep and sick kids but it was hard for me to manage other priorities based on cancellations. I could see how this could be a challenge as a career counselor in terms of scheduling appointments. My solution for this as a counsellor would be to be more flexible and to make sure I take into account that there will be cancellations, having alternative work with the understanding that this may happen would cause less frustration. Another barrier is my lack of experience as a counsellor – I do find my skills have been increasing over the duration of this course but I believe with a continuation of practice my comfort level will inevitably increase which would in turn, allow for smother transitions from one topic to the next and less urgency to try to solve the issue.
Conclusion (slide 9)
Although my client wants to open a small cafe in the future, she is happy, for now, to take an online course that will enhance her office skills. This should enable her to apply for work in the local hospital. I thoroughly enjoyed engaging with my client throughout the LRA process and I found that following process guidelines kept the session focused on career exploration. This helped instill confidence in the process from my client’s perspective. At the end of the session, my client expressed that she felt motivated and had a clear sense of direction.
Thank you
