Throughout the day I had the chance to be able to really think about this whole assignment. I can say now, I'm writing this before bed the same day, that I have warmed up to the idea of the whole thing. From both my past education, CYC, and my own personal experiences I have had some type of interaction with all the content being covered throughout the course. I like the idea of being able to go week by week and reflecting on the thoughts, feelings and ideas I have during class times. I am a very quit person and don't often speck up during class. I feel as though this assignment for myself will be able to give me more of an outlet to show my understanding of course content outside of completing assignments.

Although it's already outlined within the assignment I do truly hope that through completing this assignment that I do get to know myself better. The people I am close to within my personal life know all about me. I do tend to be a very open book once I am comfortable with the someone. My struggles with mental health and my therapy journey is a part I am equally as open about. I say this but I also know myself, there is always a few parts of my journey I leave out for one reason or another. During this assignment I hope that I become more comfortable with those parts I don't share and be willing to try things again. I feel as though I can't both be the person encouraging individuals to take part of healing and seeking help when it's not something I will do myself.

To my future self when I get to the end of this assignment I hope you have been able to learn about your self and make growth in your own personal path.

Within motivational interviewing, the idea of open-ended questions is used to get the most amount of information by asking the least amount of questions. Pointed out in the video is how when doing addiction counselling asking only closed-ended questions was how it was once done. By doing this they were missing parts of information that could have been useful to help the individual. Changing this to open-ended questions gave them a chance to learn information that might not have come up before.

again the video, highlights how communication takes place as well as the issues within communication. although it was thought to be within an interviewing mindset it felt very true to daily life. The first issue is when the words don't come out right, there have been many times in my life when I have said something with good intentions but by the time it comes out, it doesn't seem to be that way. there is also the issue of the listener not understanding the message being given, I find this happens a lot between different generations of individuals as terms and meanings have changed over the years. Lastly, words have different meanings, I find this to be one of the biggest issues within my generation as terms are coming in and out at such a fast pace it's hard to keep up with what is current.

Then there is reflection which is used to close the circle of communication by pretty much just saying back what the other person has just told you. I find this interesting as this is what closes the communication circle as I find myself doing it all the time at work. When thinking about it, it does make a lot of sense both in the interviewing world and the everyday world. You want to make sure that you understand what you've just been told before you continue with what is going on. the subtype of reflection, double-sided reflection, is also something that I found very interesting. it's very much like the skills of confrontation that we learned last semester but with a nicer feeling. You can point out both sides of something that isn't aligning with each other but not feel like you are calling them out on what they aren't doing.

Praise and affirmation were another part of the video that stood out to me for the interviewing context. It has been widely understood that these things encourage and maintain change but it wasn't something I had ever thought to use in an interviewing context. Understandably motivational interviewing does involve the stages of change so it does make a lot of sense when reflecting on the idea. If you were being told that you are doing good or anything positive along those lines, you would continue to make change.

Overall I find the ORAS technique very interesting and understand how it is effective to use within the interviewing context.

Such ideas were pointed out in the video like how we as people always want to speak to others over listening to them and how we enjoy meeting new people but don't put the same energy into listening to what they have to share. Another thing pointed out in the video was how we are always taught how to be proud speakers but never how to be good listeners. I find this very interesting as it can be argued that being a good listener is a more important skill.

I also found the four key points of being a good listener interesting. Some were more commonly heard like encouragement to hear more and clarification. The other skills such as not moralizing and disagreement over criticism peeked my interest. These are skills that do make sense when sitting and thinking about them but I feel like they are the skills we often forget about. understanding that other people are human too and you might not always agree with them is sometimes a hard thing to remember. Such a big part of communication is listening as is sending the message. When you feel as though what you have to say won't matter to the person it makes it so much harder to share.

Self-awareness, being able to recognize and understand emotions and have the sense of how it will affect actions, moods and emotions affect other, was something individuals were missing the most often. Emotions were often expressed at extreme highs as these individuals didn't know how to deal with what they were feeling. These extra highs would then feed into the others around them making a situation easily move into crisis management.

Self-regulation, appropriate expression of emotions and the ability to be flexible and cope with change, was another thing many individuals struggled with. Crisis management often started when an individual was unable to express themselves or when change had to be made last minute. As a support worker our biggest focus was to help them get regulated again and then later work through what was wrong and what we could do next time.

Empathy and motivation were the skills I found to come the most easily to those who I supported. There seem to be some secrets kept by those with intellectual disabilities on how to be able to read others so well and understand them. Most of the time during crisis management the others not involved seem to always express and understand what the other was feeling. There was this understanding that they were just upset at the moment but they are still our friend. Motivation was also often an issue in the context of what they wanted to do. They were always willing to do the activities they enjoyed and would express if they truly didn't want to do something. However, this is double-edged because often the tasks no one likes to do like cleaning was something struggled with, but with some convincing they took part.

Overall I found these components very interesting. It wasn't something that I would have generally thought about. I thought it was interesting how easily I could connect this to my real life and understand a more person perspective of these components.

There was one activity that I did end up enjoying and had an easier time with. The mindfulness of food was not something I had ever given much thought to. I am a person who does struggle a lot with eating in front of others because of my struggles with food in the past. In the comfort of my own home, I'm a huge foody. I look to cook, eat and try new things. These activities are something I enjoy but never gave much thought to as to why I found them so relaxing. reflecting on it I have come to realize that it was a way of mindfulness.

Back to the activity although I had a hard time with eating in front of others in the manner being instructed to I did find it very interesting. Taking the time to enjoy and feel the food rather than just chewing and swallowing was not something I had ever done. Later on that day when I was back home I tried this activity again. I had picked some of my favour food of all different textures. I followed the same instructions as we followed in class and it was quite enjoyable to me.

Although probably not something I will go out of my way to complete on my own again it helped with my overall relationship with food. I am still at a point where I have to view food in a fuel way sometimes to make sure that I am eating enough. This activity was something had helped with the enjoyment of food, I can eat something and enjoy it without needing to feel guilty about what I am putting in my body or how much I am putting in.

I have personally been in and out of CBT multiple times throughout my life. It is something that I have always had trouble with. I am still not sure if it's just because of who I am or if it's the manner of the therapist. I have never been the type of person to be able to freely express my emotions and it's something that I keep bottled up within. So the idea that I need to express my feelings to strangers and then look at how this is affecting my thoughts and actions has never been easy.

With the amount of education I have around CBT I do find that I unconsciously use the theory when I am on my own. By myself, I am able to talk through how my thoughts, feelings and actions are affecting the things around me. I am able to take something that is bugging me a lot and go through it, understanding that my way of seeing it is different than what is actually happening.

From a professional standpoint, I do fine the theories within CBT to be useful. During my work as a support worker, I would just different parts of it to help both me and my client to understand how they are feeling. Helping them Identify that the way they are feelings is affecting them is a useful tool when working in crisis management. Although the answers don't always come out clear at first with some rephasing and clarifying we can often get to the root of the problem and work with the client to come to a solution.

I also feel that part of my struggles was due to the timing in which we presented the activity. It was after the break but also mixed in with a heavy course content day. Once the class found out that essential oils would be involved they got excited and loud. It was then my time to speak to the rest of who the activity would go. I was trying to be mindful of the tone and volume of voice I used as I figured I shouldn't be using the same tone I would use when doing a presentation. I kept having to stop mid-sentence due to the volume within the classroom and others not paying attention. I found this quite upsetting and annoying.

Overwell I just have a difficult time with this in-class activity for many different reasons. I feel that if I was able to do this again in a manner that I wanted or with smaller groups I would have found it more enjoying then I originally did.

Cognitive distortions and automatic thoughts are still something that I struggle with all the time even though now I have the understanding that these aren't true. My most occurring one is that someone is mad at me even though I have no proof that this is often true. I can confirm that this is often something I drive my boyfriend nuts with. We are both people who are strong with communication when something is bothering us within our relationship. I still do have the automatic thought that he is mad at me even if I know that he is not.

My core beliefs are something that plays into this automatic thought. I spent a lot of my younger life constantly needing to be able to read the emotions of those around me. I am not sure if this is something I picked up due to my family dynamics or just something that came with my anxiety at such a young age. These beliefs still follow me around to this day and I am continuing to work through to this day even though it's not being done through CBT.

In my next journal entry there will be one of the many thought records that follow me when feeling as though my partner is mad at me and the reflection I have on it.

Behavioural activation I feel would have been something that would have been very beneficial to me when I was a teenager but no one had ever mentioned it to me. With my depression I had given up on a lot of things and had that dark could that followed me around. I was being the minimum to get by but that was about it.

I feel that if a therapist along the way had encouraged me to just start doing simple things that made me feel good and helped me set goals things would have turned out a bit different than they did.

I can truly see the benefits of this and I hope that it will be an approach that I will be able to use in the future for those I support in the future that are facing the same things that I did as a teenager.

A lot of the work done in the book felt a lot like acceptance and commitment therapy to me after learning about it, although it's never stated within the book itself. The teens are working through the process of accepting that their loved ones are gone and working to get their lives back on track. The main character's goal after completing this program is to go off to Harvard in the fall. This is her dream but she's been putting it off due to her high levels of anxiety from her grief.

It felt like they are slowing going through all the steps of this therapy to help these teenagers heal as well as move to what life has for them next. although I haven't finished the book yet I have a strong feeling that the main character will get to go to Harvard and be able to live her life the way her sister dreams of her too.

I remember a presentation I had in my other program about a YMAC program that works with youth with substance use challenges. They highlighted all the main points you hear about when working with individuals who have substance use challenges but when they got to the DBT part it stuck with me a lot.

I feel that DBT works well with a lot of the issues that come up when working with individuals who have substance use challenges. They often have this want and understanding to not want to use substances but at the same time, these substances are often being used for negative reasons in their lives. DBT and its framework seem to address all the challenges they might face when reducing or stopping substance use even though it was not designed for this intention.

I find this whole use of DBT to be very interesting and wish it was addressed more often when speaking about both the uses of DBT as well as from a harm reduction standpoint.

I overall liked the idea of this assignment because it made me have to go back and think about the learning that I had taken part of. I did find that I struggled with the amount of entries. I sometimes felt like I was focusing on one week for too long or that my reflection weren't as deep because I needed to feel the space with my thoughts.

I think this might be something that I carry into my future semesters because having to sit and think over the content again on my own time I often found that I was making connections to my own personal life rather than just thinking about within a clinical setting.

As someone who has two anxiety disorders, it has also piqued my interest because of my own lived experiences. I don't recall ever being in a place of anxiety where this would have been something that would have benefited me. But on the other hand I have heard many mixed opinions on the topic itself.

Understandably, these mixed opinions do make sense based on what exposure theory is all about. During the Slide show, I often kept thinking about the video we watched as a class about the woman and her fear of snakes. Seeing the distress she was in would understandably make you think that exposure therapy is a horrible thing to do to a person. I often think about people who have fears about things that are just a part of daily life. I can see how going through this would be able to help them live a bit more normal life after getting over a fear of speaking in public.

I can personally see both sides and understand the feelings people hold about exposure therapy but I still respect the positive effect it can have on some individuals' lives.

Narrative therapy is still such an interesting practice to me. I find that in a lot of therapies, the way you are is viewed as the problem within itself. In this sense, we take the problem away from the person to hear their full story before moving on. I find that you often get a sense of the type of person they are before digging deeper into anything else.

I often feel that a lot of what I went through growing up has placed labels on me that still follow me around in the groups I am able to. I feel like if I was given a chance to tell my story and remove the idea that I was the issue I would hold a lot less weight about it.

Unlikely many of the other groups we really didn't seem to have a plan as to what we were going to speak too. I wish we did cause I feel like this whole winging it deal lead us to lose marks overall. Two of my group members were always the ones asking the questions and I felt like they has planned all of this without letting the rest of us know what they wanted to do.

I personally wish I would have been able to be part of a different group or get the chance to do this on my own. I have spend a lot of my education within a counselling setting and I have always found it hard to do this kind of thing in group. Unless you have it planned word for word as to what you would like to say it's always impossible to highlight points you want to.

This video opened me up to the uses of it outside of the group I was original taught about me. I found it very interesting how it was reframed within the context of using it with adults because the work art if often overwhelming when you don't feel artistic.

I also found the idea of using for with individuals who have trauma interesting. This part of touched on lightly in my last program but we often avoided digging deeper into children's trauma but rather using art therapy to express the trauma in a manner they could better understand. I found that this was the close to the idea the video talked about but adults often have the ability to put words to their trauma.

The idea of using art therapy to find one's self again was interesting to me as well. I find that I have person lost a part of myself to my chronic illness because its placed many limitations on what I can do. It has never crossed my mind to use this type of therapy to find that part of myself again.

One that I find that is coming up more than I would like is that my partner is mad at me. This is never the case and is just something that my anxiety comes up with. As shown in my thought record I couldn't come up with many reasons as to why he would be mad at me but on the other hand there are many reasons as to why he is not mad at me.

Reflecting on this showed me that my automated thoughts don't make all that sense. If my partner was mad at me it would likely be more noticeable and not around the time we go to bed. My partner and I also work opposite shifts at work so on more days we only see each other in the morning and before bed so there would almost be no time for me to have done anything to upset him.

I feel that if I was to keep a thought record for a while I would notice a lot of the things I believe aren't true or don't make all that sense when looking at them. This has given me a new view on the way I look at things when I get those thoughts.