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Exercise #35 Forming End-of-Session Feedback
Directions: Using the guidelines and ideas from Chapters 7 and 10, formulate compliments, bridge, and a
suggestion for the client after reading the following transcript. You can submit your end-of-session
feedback to your instructor through iNet assignment submission. (10 points)
C: I wanted to be grown and I was going with the wrong people doing stuff and by the time I was 17,
that was the first time I had ever tried cocaine ...
P: Uh-huh.
C: By the time I was 18, I was really doing it but I had to stop because I was pregnant with Dilisha
and by the time I had her by 19 or 20 . . . I started experimenting with it again and by the time I
was 22 or 23, I was smoking it. So, I had to take an honest look at how long I had actually been
doing drugs cause I was in denial about how many times I had been doing drugs because it’s been
a while and it’s time for me to stop.
P: Uh-huh . . .
C: You know it’s time for me to stop . . . while I still have a chance to do something.
P: You have a chance to do a lot.
C: Uh-huh, it’s like I say, so much has changed and I had a problem with that ... change. I had a fear
of it, like you all gotta be crazy. I don’t want to stop doing this because if I stop doing this, what
am I gonna do?
P: Uh-huh . . .
C: And it’s like what am I really gonna do? You know, and I think that the first time I realized I had
to make a change was when I stopped doing drugs and I was still going to the tavern and around
other people and I realized that if I didn’t stop doing that I was going to end up back getting high.
So once I changed that and stopped going to the tavern and started going back to the Heavy
Hitters (treatment program), everything started to change. You know, like they tell you, “it’s a
process.” Everything is not going to happen at once, like I had thought. You know it is not all
going to happen at once and I found out it is a lot of pain to change.
P: Right.
C: You know . . . to let go of stuff . . . to let go of people . . . to let go of things that you used to do.
So, it’s a process. You find yourself listening and you go back to pick it up.
P: Uh-huh . . .
C: So I understand. I had to learn, I look back now . . . the first time I was in treatment was in ‘95.
Yeah, in ‘95.
P: Where was that?
C: St. Anthony’s. Well actually, I had started to commit suicide.
P: Really? C: Yeah, and I spent like 23 days at the County Mental Hospital and they diagnosed me with a
cocaine problem and I was like, I thought they was out of their minds. I was like I didn’t
know . . . I didn’t know. I didn’t have the slightest idea.
P: Really?
C: I didn’t have no idea about nothing I was just dumb to everything. I was just doing it. To fit in
and doing it to fit in . . . that created a habit.
P: Uh-huh.
C: You know, a real bad habit.
P: Yeah, I suppose so . . .
C: A real bad habit. So, you know I look at all that stuff.
P: I think you’ve been through a lot . . .
C: Yeah, I have. And I put people around me through a lot. You know I had a thing like . . . don’t
nobody care about me. I didn’t care about myself.
P: Right.
C: And you know I thought I ain’t hurting nobody so why everybody be in my business and worry
about what I’m doing? But that wasn’t true because there were people who actually loved me for
me and I didn’t understand.
P: Yup.
C: I thought everybody was against me. I really did . . . and its like now when you make changes in
your life you can see the people that care, like you and Sheila.
P: Yup.
C: You know, you can just see.
P: Isn’t it amazing how many people are really out there who are just full of love and energy and
want to help you . . . and you never see those people ‘til you need them?
C: Aw! That was, that was the killing part about it because I didn’t know these kind of people
existed.
P: Uh-huh.
C: I thought that only happened when you were old and you got love because you had so many years
of wisdom . . . and they always say “Baby , you know you really don’t need to be doing that.”
Thats what old people be saying.
****
(Client talks about admiring women like T who get their GED or college education)
C: And when I started coming around and started seein’ women who was in the depth of drug
addiction, real deep into drugs, prostitution, and stealing and all that stuff and you see them . . . and they manage to stay off drugs five years and longer, and you see the kind of things that they
done accomplished and be like, “Damn, maybe I can do that too!” . . . but you have to stick with
the ones that’s doing what you want to do.
P: Look how far you’ve come in the last year! We are sitting here . . .
C: Year . . . (reports how a year ago she was out on the street, arrested for prostitution, doing
anything for drugs, etc). I had a lot of things against me then and to look at it one year latter. . .
you are right . . . the positive side one year later . . . I’ve been clean for five months . . . I have my
own apartment, my own telephone . . .
P: (Both client and practitioner are laughing.)
C: I’m getting ready to graduate from the first stage of a day-treatment program, I have learned a lot
of things about myself.
P: Great, great, you are doing well.
C: Well, there is one thing I am trying to figure out . . . should I graduate with this class or not?
P: What do you mean by that?
C: (with sigh) I don’t know . . . because . . . it’s like we gotta write this autobiography.
P: Um-hum.
C: . . . and its like I haven’t wrote my autobiography . . . and it’s just like doing a fourth step . . . but I
haven’t told you about the 12 steps yet, have I . . . .
P: No, but I know about it . . .
C: Yeah, it’s like actually writing your autobiography is like starting on the fourth step and it means
you gotta get rid of all that old stuff deep inside of you that keeps you sick.
P: Um-hum.
C: ...and I remember before I had a hard time with my autobiography, it took me six months and I
ended up taping it instead of writing it but you get the most effect I guess from writing it ...
P: Um-hum.
C: . . . cause you actually see the stuff . . . your whole life on paper . . . and you know, just sometimes
there are parts of your life that you are not proud of . . . but that’s when you got to ask God to
forgive you for that part of your life. I mean like I look at my son . . . I can’t deal with him. My
16-year old son . . . I love him . . . you know?
P: Uh-huh.
Client goes on to talk about her children and the difficulty with the 16-year old as well as saying
she went to a school banquet for him last night, where he got his “letter” to put on the school
jacket he got for Christmas.)
P: See how you had to learn how to trust that people change? C: Yeah, you know what? I’m glad you said that . . . that’s a key factor . . . I forgot . . . so many
times I went into treatment and I could never stay clean for longer than 60 days . . . and my
children . . . I thought they were like . . . little children . . . they grew up with me using drugs and
stuff and I stopped taking care of them when they were like about 6 or 7 years old . . . that’s when
I really zoomed in with the drugs and stuff and I didn’t have time for them . . . yeah . . . I’m glad
you said that . . . cause so many times they done seen me and I think the worst time is to see your
mother go a whole year and a half and you really think things is gonna happen now because, you
know, we getting to be with her, she’s doing stuff, things is gonna be all right now . . . then to
have your mother do an about face and go back . . . I’m glad you said that because that’s one
subject she bring up a lot . . . you know, Sharon, what is gonna be different this time?
P: Uh-huh.
C: You know that’s basically the same question that a lot of counselors ask you . . . What are you
gonna do different this time? . . . you know . . . and this time what I see different is that I learned
how to stay clean when I stayed in that residential treatment for those 8 months and I managed to
stay clean for almost a year and a half . . . I learned to stay clean but I had never dealt with inside
issues . . . that I’ve had as a child . . . you know . . . with my mother and my being molested by
my uncles . . . you know it’s the secrets that you have . . . the things that you went through life. . .
and you never told nobody . . . you have any intentions of going forward in you gotta get rid of
those secrets because secrets--those are the things that will take you right back to drugs.
P: Right . . .
C: So, I’m dealing with that this time. I’m taking a honest look at myself because I didn’t think I had
no faults.
P: (Laughs with client)
C: I learned it was a cover up of all the pain . . . being in a lot of pain . . . you don’t know how to tell
nobody . . . you don’t know how to deal with it . . . . End-of-session feedback:
Compliments: Bridge: Suggestion: