I found out yesterday at my internship that I start seeing clients as soon as next week. All of my clients are HIV positive, on serious loads of medication, and who cannot get counseling under regular means. (the staff counselor is booked with a caseload of 25+ patients a week so I cover what she can't see). The only clients I'm not allowed to see are those who require mental health assessments as I am not qualified to diagnose. That being said, I'm still required to see these patients, do assessments, treatment plans, and "try" to diagnose. Huh? LOL
I'm nervous/excited about it all. I'll have 10-15 clients that I see on a regular basis. I'm not worried so much about the assessments. I've done a ton of them for school on real people and on fictitious ones, so that's not a concern. I'm more nervous about the actual treatment and creation of a treatment plan. I'm sure I won't totally screw someone up, but it's intimidating to think that a client will be listening for what I tell them to do.
My first client is self stated anxious, so I'm going to try some cognitive behavioral therapy. This includes changing thought patterns, maybe including some exercise or breathing techniques, role reversal, stuff like that. I think that once I'm past the fear factor I will enjoy working with clients and helping them through problems.
School is going well. Class tonight is cancelled because of ice, so now I have time to read up on my textbooks and start work on some of the papers that I won't have time for later. The hardest part is finding all the peer reviewed articles to use for references. The nice part about my first client is that I can tie them to several assignments in two classes, so that really made me feel good. Another exciting thing is that I have a friend from church who is a professor at my old university (he started after I graduated). He's a psychology prof and has written a book on ... guess what.... cognitive behavioral therapy!!! Yay!!! He said he would sit with me to figure out a treatment plan for my client and help me find ways to get the client to communicate what they expect from treatment.
It's shaping up to be a good (and productive) week. Stay safe!
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