Problem:
Ian is a mental health professional with years of experience helping clients in various age groups. After the birth of his children, he specialized in counseling for children and adolescents. In the past 2 years he has been working with people with depression and suicidal tendencies. He has worked extensively with war veterans suffering from PTSD. He has often found their stories too overwhelming to fully comprehend their pain and at times emotionally numbing to respond adequately. In the face of such enormously challenging cases, he feels riddled with self-doubt about his competence as a helper. When he begins to realize that he cannot continue in his current state of mind, he approaches Paula, a cognitive therapist and a colleague of his, to help him out of his highly stressed frame of mind. Paula has known Ian for over 5 years now. He has had a brief stint as an embedded journalist in Mosul during the Iraq War, which is why he is often assigned clients with PTSD. She also knows that there are other reasons such as unrealistic demands by the agency that have caused him to withdraw from socializing and occasionally use medical marijuana to calm his nerves. Paula must understand both his external realities that have produced stress and the ways he has contributed to his stress by his perceptions and interpretations of reality. Ian has personalized and internalized these stressors, which has diminished his effectiveness as helper. Need Assignment Help?