Reflective practice

Reflective Practice
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Introduction
There are two very important components of reflective practice namely self-awareness and self-understanding. Reflective practice requires that counselors be not only skilled in their area of practice, but that they also are aware of their personal tendencies that influence their efficiency and objectivity of their service. Counselors require being mindful of their weaknesses and strong points to intentionally monitor how they may influence their performance. Reflective practitioners evaluate their performance after counseling sessions and use that information for their continuous professional development. They develop self-awareness, monitor their potential for stress and employ self -care measures as part of evaluating their performance and examining their rationale for their choices. Reflective practice is thus important in enhancing practitioners’ knowledge from experiential learning (Mental Health Academy, 2008).
Reflective practice involves several steps with the first being the selection of an issue that requires reflection. The next step involves describing the concerns related to the issue. The third step involves an analysis to determine how and why practitioners take different actions and the fourth step involves self -appraisal of behavior in terms of its impact. The last step involves exploring changes that may result in improved performance in handling clients (Mental Health Academy, 2008). This paper outlines a reflective practice process of a counseling issue namely grief and bereavement. It includes a literature review of the grieving process, the grieving process models, cultural aspects in grieving and how different clients present differently.
Describe the counseling related issue and explain why this issue interests you. Explain how further exploration might benefit your practice
Grief counselors relieve clients’ emotional, psychological, physical or spiritual personal suffering resulting from experiences of dying, death and bereavement. Grief counseling involves an array of activities to console those that suffer from different forms of loss. The grief related services may include education, counseling, therapy, consultation, support in various set ups such as clinics, offices, hospitals, nursing homes, pastoral contexts, schools and funeral homes among other settings (Gamino & Ritter, 2009). Grief counselors use their specialty knowledge to assist the bereaved and providing grief therapy for those presenting with prolonged, delayed or exaggerated grieving complications.
Grieving persons often accommodate bereavement as part of life by using their informal social support and thus do not require meeting with grief counselors for therapy or additional assistance. For others, social support is unavailable or the pain is disenfranchised which intensifies feelings of grief. In such situations, a grief counselor is helpful in providing necessary support and validation (Thompson, 2012). Grief counseling requires that counselors recognize the uniqueness in clients, their experiences, the normality of grief, and that they view clients as experts on themselves in encouraging their adaptation to their loss without trying to cure. Counselors observe, listen, hear, remember and understand clients’ stories of their grieving experiences in safe spaces as witnesses (Thompson, 2012). They witness client’s sorrow, despair, guilt, hopelessness, relief and yearning among other feelings. As witnesses, grief counselors commit to walk with clients through their pain while validating the significance of their grief.
Grief counselors also play a role of a facilitator of the healing process or clients’ adaptation to their loss (Humphrey, 2009). They pose questions such as how they might assist clients’ in their adaptation process and direct clients to areas requiring attention for accelerated healing. They guide clients to recognize their strengths and weaknesses and consult them to determine usefulness of their various therapeutics activities. As a facilitator, the counselor makes appropriate adjustments and assists the clients where they are and not where the counselor wants them to be (Humphrey, 2009). Grief counselors also play a collaborator role in therapy where they view the patient as the expert in their grief without employing their expertise on theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of grief. They are information sharing oriented and help clients to recognize their expertise and divergent thinking assisting them to create meaning of their loss and promote their resilience (Humphrey, 2009).
I would like to reflect on the grieving process because I have an inherent interest in the loss and bereavement issue in counseling. I would also like to reflect on the issue because I am currently undertaking placement at a bereavement charity. My five clients are of white descent and they include 3 and 2 females and males respectively. Further exploration into the role of the counselor in grieving process, the models, cultural aspects in grieving and the different ways in which grief presents will be useful in enhancing reflective practice. This is because it empowers the reflective practitioner to evaluate performance through a multilayered perspective of the different approaches or models used in grief counseling, the cultural aspects that influence grieving tendencies and the different ways in which grief may present in different people.
Critically evaluate literature with respect to your chosen counseling issue
Grieving models provide foundational knowledge that practitioners use when supporting the bereaved. There are several models used in creating an understanding of bereavement. The theory of attachment by John Bowlby forms the basis of the stages and phases model of bereavement. It indicates that human beings have a liking for developing strong attachments with one another. Death curtails the attachment and it results in grieving which is a reaction to the separation (Dent, 2005). Kubler Ross identified 5 stages that the bereaved move through in the grieving process. She indicated that they go through a state of denial where they may imagine that the dead may still be alive, they may also experience anger at others and themselves, they also bargain in an attempt to reverse the situation, fall into depression for inability to comprehend the situation and finally accept the loss (Walsh, 2007).
Parkes indicates that grieving is a natural response to bereavement occurring as a process. The process begins with shock, which often presents in numbness. Shock lasts for several days and the extent of shock is also highly influenced by factors such as whether the death was unexpected. When the death is sudden, people might present with extremely high levels of grief. The stages and phases model also indicates that grieving may also present with physical symptoms such as chronic lack of sleep, respiratory complications, inability to concentrate, lack of appetite and general feelings of restlessness. It may also present with emotional signs such as withdrawal, loneliness and desire for isolation. Others may feel angry, fearful of sense of guilt. Clients may show extreme anxiety evidenced by incidents such as panic attacks, which might greatly disrupt normalcy in daily living. Others may be highly irritable displaying signs of tension. Clients often feel that they had a chance to prevent death and are also overwhelmed by guilt (Dent, 2005).
Another model indicates that people require accomplishing several tasks in the mourning process. In this model, Worden indicates that there are fo...