Therapist Presence: A Key to Unlock Client Growth - Essay Sample

Introduction

Therapeutic presence has been defined as one of the gifts in the therapeutic world, that offered tremendous benefits to the client (Geller, & Greenberg, 2002). The power of any therapist is defined by the presence of the therapist, in dedicating and offering his or her time to the client to ensure that the client further opens up to the discussion, leading to the productive discussion. The presence of a therapist can be described using three distinctive components, which include openness, availability, and the capability to respond.

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Openness

The presence of a therapist calls for openness to the client to help him or her in walking through their journey of experience. For instance, Rogers has fulfilled this concept by helping Kathy to walk with her on the journey of her experience. He has encouraged her, from the beginning of the interview, a concept that has called for more transparency, as Kathy opens to the therapist, about her feelings, since the death of his husband. The openness, to the clients, has helped Rogers to gather valuable information, on what has been holding Kathy to remain in her current cave of fear, despite making several attempts to make a difference in her life.

Capacity to Respond

One of the significant parts and roles of a present therapist is the capacity to respond to the client’s demands and responding to them. Rogers has depicted this concept explicitly through responding to Kathy as she shares her story. Rogers, therefore, offers an avenue to prepare Kathy to explain further and share her story.

Availability

Lastly, the presence of a therapist may be marked by the response portrayed by Rogers during the session. Rogers has depicted this concept by entirely focusing on the client. Therefore, Kathy developed a coherent bond during the session of trustworthy due to the availability of Roger’s response and cooperation in the session.

Client Self-Exploration and Level of Experiencing

Throughout the session, Kathy, the client, has expressed a series of expressions throughout that resulted from the death of his husband. Even though Kathy and her husband had undergone a divorce decision four years ago, his death left a massive gap in her life, a concept that has changed everything in her life.

In the preliminaries of the interview, it is clear that Kathy’s self-exploration is coming to life, after the death of his husband. She explicitly outlines the emotional attachment that she retained even after the divorce. She has struggled throughout to keep her calm from the loss of her husband, despite the divorce she had undergone.

Drawing ideas from the psychotherapy research tool, it is evident that Kathy has depicted an array of stages during the interview while making herself more transparent in the explanation. The content delivered by Kathy in the session may be categorized under the sixth stage of the self-exploration and levels of experiencing scale. The content is synthetic, or readily available and newly recognized, or fully realized experiences and feelings. Kathy openly introduces the audience to the death of her husband as a recent murder that happened last December, and how the events have marked a different and painful experience in her life (Kim, 2020). Through the mentioning of her late husband, and having been killed last December, it is clear that the events mentioned by the client are resent, and have developed emotional attachment in her life.

Kathy identifies the high points during the interview, on how the death of her husband marked the beginning of higher events in her life. She came to realize that the death of her husband marked the beginning of her loneliness, and she had used that opportunity of the divorce as a shield of not finding a new male relationship. Therefore, her new dilemma that emanates from the death of her divorced husband is the new chapter of having to face the challenge of making new male friends in the quest for a new relationship.

Progress of Session

At the beginning of the session, the ice-breaking stage was easily accomplished, as Kathy depicted little hesitance opening up to the therapist. In many cases, the ice-breaking concept results in a shallow response, and more domination of the therapist to help push the client to feel comfortable and open up what he or she is going through. While this concept may be depicted in the preliminaries of the session, most of the clients may take longer before opening up and discussing what they are experiencing. However, Kathy’s case seems to be different, especially when opening about her situation to Rogers in the session.

On the same note, Rogers understands the importance of keeping the client engaged in helping outsource more from the client, in the quest to pinpoint what the client is experiencing. However, irrespective of this concept being productive and useful, there are numerous occasions in the sessions, where the two have hit the dead end, presenting an awkward moment, a concept that has left Kathy feeling remorseful. On the contrary, the dead ends presented a gap that made Kathy uncomfortable, with prolonged silence in the session. As a result, Kathy made tremendous efforts to make the session livelier and open.

Irrespective of Kathy’s dominance during the session, a lot was achieved in the session, which helped Kathy open up and explain what she has been battling about, since the divorce. At first, we are introduced to what Kathy learns from the death of her husband and how it transforms her life. She further opens to Rogers, as the session progresses by cooperating with the therapist to offer more details about what she is experiencing.

New Vision

The existence of the silence in the session is one of the areas that has profoundly affected Kathy, despite her efforts in trying to regain and set the stage back for everyone. She has remained to be dominant in the sessions, making it difficult for her to develop the stead and consistency flow of the story. However, Rogers should have undertaken the initiative of avoiding the progress of the session, reaching dead ends, and giving Kathy the responsibility of reviving the session once more.

On the contrary, Rogers did most of the listening, rather than showing remorse and support to Kathy’s story. As a result, the environment mood changed, especially considering the age gap between the two, which made it cumbersome for Kathy to fully open to Rogers in the session. While Kathy tries to explain about herself, and the struggle she underwent to get out of the cave, or dark side of her life, Rogers only warns and cautions her, instead of giving amicable solutions, towards taking the bull by the horns.

After assessing Kathy’s situation, it became apparent that she was soon facing a different challenge after the death of her husband. Therefore, Rogers should have undertaken the opportunity to dominate and engaging in the conversation to ensure that Kathy felt open and all right in the session. Thus, the extensive conversation would have given her the feeling of not being lonely and even open more during the session. In the bottom line, Kathy appears to be struggling in the session, especially trying to explain herself. The silence from the therapist limits her communication. However, Rogers's commitment and further domination in the session should have helped Kathy convey what she felt about making new relationships.

Reflection

The session has presented dozens of ideas that one can implement them during any session to ensure effective and valuable results. One of the initial practical ideas that can be learned was the concept of breaking the ice, which is cumbersome for many clients to cope within the first place. Therefore, this calls for explicit coordination and understanding of each part to ensure that the client feels comfortable. Additionally, this increases the concept of trustworthy behaviors, which increases the cooperation and openness of the client in the session.

Active listening skills are an essential element that every therapist should have to help reduce the levels of destruction during a session. Rogers had depicted a good sense of listening skills by allowing Kathy to dominate and express herself wholly. Even though little interventions were made in the session, to help Kathy feel normal and all right during the session, Rogers played the role of listening mostly. Through this, he was able to fully understand how that life of Kathy has changed since the death of his husband, and how she was using the excuse of divorce to reduce the change of developing a new relationship.

Lastly, lack of confronting but encouraging the client is one of the elements that has been depicted in the session. Kathy is trapped in a lonely cave, no matter how hard she tries to find a new relationship. Kathy explains how hard she had tried, how comfortable and secure when she went out with a male friend. However, once she was back home, her normal lonely feeling slowly created back, returning everything to normal. In this case, Rogers was paying closer attention, without confronting her mistakes, and fear, but rather encouraging her to do what her heartfelt was right. As a therapist, the video has provided many beneficial skills that can be utilized in any session, to ensure that sufficient information is obtained from the client, to help develop a customized solution.

References

Geller, S. M., & Greenberg, L. S. (2002). Therapeutic Presence: therapists' experience of presence in the psychotherapy encounter/Therapeutische Präsenz: erfahrungen von Therapeuten mit Präsenz in der psychotherapeutischen Begegnung/La Presencia Terapéutica: la Experiencia de la Presencia que Viven los Terapeutas en el Encuentro Psicoterapéutico. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 1(1-2), 71-86.

Kim, C. (2020). Kathy Interview by Carl Rogers (Circa 1975) [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXQQ3zAVjKY