Role Play/Diversity

I am having a really difficult time with this blog/journal format, as I always have in many of my classes. I kept trying to write the diversity ones but have had trouble collecting my thoughts. I will try and get that one up over the weekend. I will also try to add some extra ones throughout November to make up for the ones I've missed.


Researched Group Role Play

Though I am not playing the group leader in my role play, I decided to do a write-up of the role of a group leader in solution focused group therapy for our handout. So I have been doing a lot of research on group leader characteristics and techniques anyway. I was able to find most of what I needed in the Corey chapter, as he gives a lot of information about the proper functions and characteristics of a SF group leader. Though it's not a specific SF technique, the role of the leader appears important to the creation of an environment conducive to the SF process, so I think it's worth exploring a little on the handout. I also used the section to talk about the use of compliments as Corey describes.

I tried to do some more research into the linguistic-construction of reality ideas that permeate SF literature, but I haven't found anything too deep yet in the types of places I research. I probably keep looking and expand my search outside of SW/counseling lit because I was a linguistics major for about 20 minutes, and Sapir-Whorf things are interesting to me. I think the idea of a linguistic construction of reality is interesting, however I am skeptical that brief therapy in the solution focused style can really change that kind of framework in a short period of time. I wonder if changing someone's construction of reality at the linguistic level is a more realistic goal for psychodynamic therapy since language is so tied to early development, but I understand how the theory guides the SF framework.

 I created my character based on some of the kids I worked with during my first field at a high school, and didn't do a lot of research around that initially. I hadn't put too much thought into race or ethnicity at first, I just had a 14-year-old girl in mind, but I decided that since we wanted to show diversity in our role play, I would make her multiracial so that I would have to do more research about SFT with different cultures and populations. My general sense of preparedness around diversity is summed up in the Socratic idea of the truly wise person being the one who admits that s/he knows nothing. I'm not saying I know nothing, but I think in therapy it's good to refrain from making assumptions about something or someone you don't know a lot about. My general approach to working with people different from me is to ask genuine questions to improve my understanding of them and their framework, and to practice cultural humility in my day to day life. Research can help too I suppose but talking to people is most important. I will talk more about this in relation to the diversity blog prompt soon.