Question

The rest of these exercises deal with interpersonal empathy. In this exercise, you are asked to identify clients’ key experiences, behaviors, and/or feelings and then translate them into a core message each client is trying to communicate.

Listen carefully to the client’s statement.

Identify key experiences, behaviors, and the feelings they generate.

Pull them together in a statement of the client’s core message.

Roula is recovering from a bad car accident in a rehabilitation facility. She is a week or two into a program that could well go on for a few months. In talking with one of the rehabilitation specialists, she says, “You told me it would be tough going. And I thought that I had prepared myself for it. I thought I had some courage in me. But now I can’t find any grit at all. Doing even the smallest things takes so much effort! I keep breaking down and crying when I’m alone. I just keep giving in. . . . I’m just inches down a path that seems miles long. It seems endless.”

Key experience(s): finding the rehabilitation program so difficult

Key behavior(s): failing to tap into the courage she thought she had; giving in to discouragement

Key feelings/emotions: disappointment, discouragement, despair

Core message: Roula seems disappointed almost to the point of despair because she has failed to tap into the “stuff” within her that would keep her going during a very tough rehabilitation program.

Answer 1

It is tough period for me to undergo with this rehabilitation program..but I thought i can prepare myself for this..I can also find some confident on me before but now I feel any grit at all for handling anything, and i feel difficult to do anything even a small work..I feel like I am going down and losing everything and crying whenever I am alone..I feel like I am hopeless and I lost so much in my life..I think this going to continue for me in my entire life..