I told him I’d play the counselor role. No I don’t like talking in front of people. Or it’s more like I tend to get incredibly nervous. But let’s be real, at this point, I’m supposed to be beyond some of this discomfort and more sure of myself. So he would be the client and I would be the counselor and we would do a 15 minute portion of a session in front of the class. From there the class would practice writing a case note.

Tradd has been the fictional client for the past couple of weeks. He’s a 20-something white male college student getting ready to finish his undergraduate degree. I’ve only had one client close to this demographic and I found him to be the most difficult one. There are clients where they are the ones who lead the session and you struggle at times to get a word in. Then there are ones where you struggle to get the words out.

Before we started I told him, that if I get stuck, I need him to help me. So that was the deal I thought we had. Somewhere in the middle, when he was talking about being a failure, all I had was a blankness. This teacher wants emotional processing. I looked at Tradd and said “help me”. I felt confused that he did not then feed me a line. All he said was, “Keep going. Failure. Just stay with me.” I don’t remember the rest.