Analysis of 10min Segment of Person-Centred Counselling Session

Module 8: Clinical Practice

Introduction

The following transcript and analysis are from a recording of a session with a client who I see at my voluntary placement in City Counselling. The following session was recorded in the counselling room usually used to counsel clients. At the start of the sessions with this client, I sought and was given the permission to record the sessions. At the time of the recording of this session, I have been seeing the client for about 11 months on a fortnightly basis.

The excerpt I have analysed is not far from the beginning of the session (9.16), where the client is talking about her fear of what the future holds, her wish to explore the anxiety she has of fear and the effect it has on her thoughts and actions.

Key:

Transcript: Indented.

Commentary: Double line spaced.

I have used brackets to indicate minimal prompts or short responses from the other person and brackets with italics to indicate pauses and other non-verbal responses.

Transcript and Analysis

Client 1: …You know I wanna know who'll be my friend and I kind of...you know, I need...kinda...I think they...well, they didn't call me when I didn't go to tennis or they didn't call me when I didn't go to running, and then my expectations (mm) of people are you know maybe too much (mm) that I’ve got to ask for help and you know maybe when the time comes I’ll ask for help and really didn't need their help and could do it on my own which's been... you know, I can do things on my own and they are ok, I don't have to feel guilty about it, which is a big step for me to really think about that... You know being alone and I can and I will ask for help coz that's all (mm) all probably, that I need to be looking at. (mm) Do you understand?

Slavena 1: Yeah, soo you know from what I’m hearing, it's scary not knowing how things are gonna be, and you want to make sure to put in as many things in place as you can and sometimes you... aaa... from what I...