Discussion #5

A pilot stationed on the west coast was doing night training in the desert. He had been gone a week. The day he was supposed to return his spouse received a knock on the door at 7am on a week day. She was getting their two girls ready for school. When she opened the door, she saw three military members in their dress uniforms. She knew what this meant and slammed the door in their faces initially and broke down screaming. They were there to tell her that her husband had passed away in an airplane crash during a training exercise. She was a young, stay-at-home mom living several hundred miles from her closest family members.

Using the information learned from chapter 6 this week provide education statements, validation statements, empowering statements, and a reframing statements to this client. These types of statements are an important aspect of therapeutic interactions as highlighted back in chapter 3 (pp. 54-56). Please provide 3 statements for EACH one listed below.

1) Validation Statement – validating a client’s emotions, feelings, and reactions in order to help them feel normal or typical for someone experiencing this same type of issue. Helps them not feel alone or abnormal. – 5 points

2) Educational Statement – providing factual information as it applies to the crisis (statistics or frequency of the crisis/response, info to increase a client’s knowledge about the crisis/response, info on coping skills/techniques, etc.) – Must CITE in APA format – 5 points

3) Empowering Statement – clients who have been victimized, violated or feel helpless respond well to empowerment or responses that encourage clients and help present helpful choices that help them take back personal power. – 5 points

4) Reframing Statement – takes a situation or crisis and defines it in a different way. It redefines the situation from a danger to an opportunity as discussed earlier in the text. It is not rationalizing away the problem but highlighting it in a different way so that the client can have a new/different perspective that helps promote healing. – 5 points