Part 4
STUDY GUIDE
CHAPTER 1
Are the Helping Professions for You?
Focus Questions: Look to the first pages of this chapter for a list of questions designed to give you and orientation and overview of what will be presented. Think about these focus questions before you read the chapter; after reading the chapter answer these questions again as a way of determining your understanding of the topics.
Examining Your Motives for Becoming a Helper
1. Look over the list of typical needs and motivations for becoming a helper. What are your main motivations for wanting to be a helper? What personal needs do you think will be satisfied in your work as a helper?
2. Are there any needs described in the text that you cannot identify with?
Our Own Beginnings as Helpers
1. What are your reactions to the authors’ description of their own experience when they began their careers?
2. What commonalities do you notice in both of the authors’ personal accounts? What about any differences?
Is a Helping Career for You?
1. How do you answer this question for yourself?
2. If you have self-doubts, does this mean that you should not seek a helping career?
Portrait of the “Ideal Helper”
1. What do you think of this description of the ideal helper?
2. What personal traits do you think are most important in being an effective helper?
Creating Meaning in Your Education
1. What does investing in your education mean to you?
2. What challenges do you expect to face in learning to cope with a system?
Selecting a Professional Program and Career Path
1. What factors will you most want to consider in selecting your career path?
2. What kind of graduate program most appeals to you?
Overview of Some of the Helping Professions
1. Of all of the helping professions described, which one most appeals to you? Why?
2. What steps are you willing to take to learn more about the specific profession that you find most meaningful?
Values to Consider in Choosing Your Career Path
1. In what way do you see your values as being related to your career aspirations?
2. Of the work values listed in this section of the chapter, what are your top three values --- the ones you deem to be essential in a job you would accept?
Suggestions for Creating Your Professional Journey
1. How important is it for you to create your own professional journey?
2. There are a list of suggestions for creating you personal and professional journey. Which suggestions have the most meaning to you?
Self-Assessment: An Inventory of Your Attitudes and Beliefs About Helping
1. After taking this inventory, what are a few of the items that you found yourself most struggling to answer?
2. What are some of the topics in this self-assessment that you would most like to do further reading and reflection on?
C HAPTER 2
Knowing Your Values
Focus Questions: Look to the first pages of this chapter for a list of questions designed to give you and orientation and overview of what will be presented. Think about these focus questions before you read the chapter; after reading the chapter answer these questions again as a way of determining your understanding of the topics.
The Role of Values in Helping
1. Values are embedded in therapeutic theory and practice. What major values can you identify that you deem most essential in a helping relationship?
2. Complete the self-inventory in this section of the chapter. What does taking this self-inventory tell you about the role your values might play in your professional work?
Exposing Versus Imposing Values
1. What difference do you see between exposing and imposing your values?
2. How would you decide what personal values you are likely to reveal to your clients?
3. How would you determine if and when to share certain of your values with your clients?
Dealing With Value Conflicts
1. If you have a conflict of values with a client, what steps are you likely to take besides making a referral to another professional?
2. When would you be inclined to make a referral? Whay?
Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Issues
1. To work effectively with lesbian, gay, and bisexual client population, how essential do you think it is for a practitioner to critically examine his or her attitudes, biases, and assumptions about specific sexual orientations.
2. Identify and examine any myths and misconceptions you might hold, and understand how your values and possible biases regarding sexual orientation are likely to affect your work.
3. Complete the self-inventory in this chapter that assists you in clarifying your values pertaining to homosexuality. After you finish the inventory, look over your responses to identify any patterns. Are there any attitudes that you want to change? Are there any areas of information or skills that you are willing to acquire?
Family Values
1. Values pertaining to marriage, the preservation of the family, divorce, traditional and nontraditional lifestyles, gender roles and the division of responsibility in the family, child rearing, and extramarital affairs can all influence the helper’s interventions. After reading this section and reflecting on the case examples, what family values do you hold that might either help or hinder you in working with a family?
2. What are your values pertaining to affairs in a marriage or a committed relationship? How would your values influence your work if you were counseling a couple and one of the partners was having an affair?
Gender-Role Identity Issues
1. You can become a more effective practitioner if you are willing to evaluate your beliefs about appropriate family roles and responsibilities, child-rearing practices, multiple roles, and nontraditional careers for women and men. Can you identify one of your beliefs in these areas that you might need to challenge and consider changing?
2. If you have strong personal values about gender roles in marriage and family, it might be easy for you to impose your own values on your clients. What can you do to lessen the chances of unduly influencing your clients in the area of gender roles
Religious and Spiritual Values
1. What are some trends pertaining to addressing spiritual and religious values in counseling?
2. Exploring spiritual values with clients can be integrated with other therapeutic tools to enhance the helping process. What are some of your thoughts about how you might incorporate spiritual and religious issues into your work as a helper?
3. A competent and thorough assessment of a client’s spiritual domain can provide the necessary background to inform case conceptualization and treatment planning. In your assessment process with clients, what are examples of some questions you might ask to determine the role spirituality and religion might play for them?
4. Several cases pertaining to religious and spiritual issues are presented in this chapter. Which one case do you find the most challenging?
Abortion
1. What are your values pertaining to abortion? How might your values influence your work with a client who is contemplating having an abortion?
2. What are some legal and ethical issues you would need to consider in exploring abortion as an option?
3. If a counselor has a value conflict with a client over the matter of abortion, do you think a referral is the appropriate course of action? Why or why not?
Sexuality
1. You may work with clients whose sexual values and behaviors differ sharply from your own. Consider your values pertaining to the areas of premarital sex, casual sex, extramarital sex, open marriages, sexual orientation, and sex in adolescence and late adulthood. With what kind of client would have the most challenging time in effectively working with because of your sexual values? Ask yourself whether you would be able to work objectively with a person who had sexual values sharply divergent from yours.
2. Review the cases presented in this section. Are there any cases that you would find difficult if you were the helper involved?
End-of-Life Decisions
1. Those in the helping professions need to acquire knowledge about the psychological, ethical, and legal considerations in end-of-life care. How open are you to acquiring this knowledge?
2. In this chapter the statement is made that mental health professionals whose values preclude consideration of hastened death should not be obligated to provide professional services to clients who want to explore this issue. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Explain.
3. Several cases are given in this section dealing with topics such as a teen contemplating suicide, the duty to report, and confronting the right to die. As you review these cases, ask yourself how prepared you might eventually be to offer help in these situations.
4. How do you think that your beliefs and values pertaining to end-of-life decisions are likely to affect your work in this area?
CHAPTER 3
Helper, Know Thyself
Focus Questions: Look to the first pages of this chapter for a list of questions designed to give you and orientation and overview of what will be presented. Think about these focus questions before you read the chapter; after reading the chapter answer these questions again as a way of determining your understanding of the topics.
The Impact of Therapeutic Work on Your Personal Life
1. When you work intensely with clients week after week, it is likely that you will be affected by their pain. How well do you see yourself as being able to identify and deal with emotions that may surface for you as a helper?
2. In this chapter the point is made that unless you have identified your own sources of vulnerability and to some extent worked through experiences that may have left you psychologically wounded, you may be constantly triggered by the stories of your clients. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this notion?
3. Your development as a helping professional will be intimately linked throughout your career to your development as a person. How invested do you see yourself as being in working on yourself as a person?
The Value of Self-Exploration for the Helper
1. The statement is made that identifying and resolving unfinished business related to your family of origin allows you to establish relationships that do not repeat negative patterns of interaction. What meaning does this statement have for you?
2. To what degree do you think that you might take on a professional role that resembles the role you played in your family? What are your thoughts about this?
Using Individual and Group Counseling for Self-Understanding
1. What value do you see in participating in personal counseling as a client? How open are you to seeking either individual or group counseling for yourself?
2. In this section, several studies are described that reveal outcomes of personal therapy for those studying to become helpers. What are some of these self-reported outcomes of personal therapy? What lessons have helpers learned from their own therapy that they report being able to use in their professional work?
3. Self-care is described as a moral imperative for mental health professionals. What does self-care mean to you? Do you see this as an ethical mandate for helpers? Why or why not?
Working With Your Family of Origin
1. To be an effective helper, you need to recognize the ways in which your own family of origin has influenced you and how your early background may influence your professional work. What is your sense of how some of your family-of-origin experiences might influence your work as a helper?
2. Family therapists generally assume that it is inevitable that they will encounter some of the dynamics of their family of origin in the families they will treat. Identify at least one of these dynamics that you think you need to do further exploration in your own personal work.
3. There is a section dealing with your family structure. Answer the questions that are raised at they apply to you. Are there any particular aspects of the family structure you grew up with that will likely impact your work as a helper?
4. How do you think your relationship with your parents and parental figures influences you personally today? How might these relationships influence you in your professional work?
5. What does the notion of “becoming your own person” mean to you?
6. How equipped do you think you are psychologically to address conflicts in the family in your professional work?
7. What role do family rules play in an individual’s development? What family rules did you grow up with that could most help or hinder your work with a family?
8. What are some of the differences between a functional family and a dysfunctional family?
Understanding Life Transitions
1. Why is it stated that helpers need to have a theoretical basis for understanding life stages?
2. What are the basic ideas of the psychosocial theory of human development?
3. What is the meaning of crisis as it is applied to critical turning points in one’s development?
4. In this section, the following points are made: “Each developmental stage builds on the psychological outcomes of earlier stages, and individuals sometimes fail to resolve the conflicts and thus regress. To a very large extent, an individual’s current life is the result of earlier choices; life has continuity.” What are your thoughts about these notions?
5. Describe the basic ideas of the self-in-context perspective on human development.
6. Be familiar with the key developmental tasks that are associated with each stage of life from infancy through late adulthood. What crisis is associated with each stage? What psychosocial tasks are crucial at each stage? What is the unique “gift” of each of these periods in life?
7. After reviewing the material on life transitions, think about how this applies to you. What connection do you see between your own life transitions and assisting clients who are struggling with developmental issues? What personal work do you see yourself as having to do if you hope to be an effective helper?
CHAPTER 4
Common Concerns of Beginning Helper
Focus Questions: Look to the first pages of this chapter for a list of questions designed to give you and orientation and overview of what will be presented. Think about these focus questions before you read the chapter; after reading the chapter answer these questions again as a way of determining your understanding of the topics.
Exploring Self-Doubts and Fears
1. Students often express their anxiety over the prospect of facing clients. Are there any self-doubts or fears you have about this?
2. Look over the list of statements indicating self-doubts in this section. What negative messages are you telling yourself, and how might you begin to critically evaluate them if they are not serving you well?