Problem:
Children learn by pretending; it is part of learning and development. Throughout this course, you will, in essence, pretend to be a counselor, while focusing on your personal development as a counselor. Your personal reflective journal will help you in this regard.
Remember that your personal reflective journal will be part of your final project in Module 7, as well as play an important role in your residency workshop in Module 8. Your journal entry should reflect an introspective process that examines the dimensions of your personal self and includes cognitive, affective, physiological, and spiritual domains. Need Assignment Help?
Your journal entry for this module must be a minimum of 300 words and follow APA documentation and format guidelines.
For this module's personal reflective journal, consider that people are not synonymous or identical with their disorders and should not identify themselves as their disorders. Just as people do not refer to themselves by medically-defined ailments (e.g., "I am cancer") we should not say, "I am bipolar." The rationale for this shift is to facilitate removing the stigma often associated with mental illness. This may be a challenging thought as you begin to develop your professional identity.
Find one to three DSM-5-TR disorders that resemble your personal characteristics. How did you conceptualize yourself with the disorder(s)? Which diagnosis do you think would be the easiest to work with? Which would you prefer to avoid? (This is an exercise for you to begin to become familiar with the DSM-5-TR as a useful tool. Please be aware that most disorders are simply extreme versions of relatively normal personal characteristics and behaviors.)
Note: Do not provide a diagnostic workup on you or your family members. Your journal entry should be an introspective of your spiritual and personal self, and include your CAPS responses: 1) Cognitive-perception or reasoning; 2) Affective-mood or feelings; 3) Physiological-physical responses; and 4) Spiritual-connection to a force or being beyond that which is human. These domains should be explored and not stated. In other words, sentences shouldn't be written such as, "Cognitively, I thought that the client..." or "Affectively, it made me feel sad when I learned of the client's loss." The domains can be used as headings but are not required to be written throughout your reflective assignments.
Note: Review the guidelines on setting your own boundaries for what and how you share material of a personal nature in section 17.1 Counselor Education and Personal Engagement in the School of Counseling CMHC Program Handbook in the Module 1 resources.
Your journal entry for this module must be a minimum of 350 words and follow APA documentation and format guidelines:
Personal Self-Reflective Journal Entries (Main Body 4 or fewer pages)
Remember to focus on synthesis/integration (Cognitive, Affective, Physiological, Spiritual, CAPS) of personal application with the material: How you are personally impacted by the material.
If citations are used within the text, must have Reference list page