This is a diary-style video about my first week in practicum. The practicum is part of my mental health counseling program. I am mostly talking about the feeling that my theoretical orientation is likely to change throughout my practicum. I started as a cognitive-behavior therapy, rational emotive behavior therapy, and solution-focused brief therapy enthusiast. However, practicum experience is a type of space where adjustments are inevitable. My adjustments would probably lie in the direction of somatic-based, mindfulness, acceptance and commitment therapy--not because I am naturally predisposed to these modalities, although I do have interest in them, but because they flourishing at the site I am in. Your practicum and internship site would leave a lasting impression on you as a counselor, would shape you a certain way professionally (not to overstate its influence though).

I would like to add in writing that the way I shortened "solution-focused brief therapy" in the video, disposing of the "brief" part, is actually a considerable violation against the gist of the modality. "Brief" is a crucial part of the solution-focused brief therapy. The idea is that you need to make pointed changes on a compressed timeline rather than stretch the explorations into infinity. The aspiration of the solution-focused brief theory is to make work for more people a traditional lengthy engagement with a therapy by shortening the engagement and making it, well, solution-focused. In the previous epochs, and now, still, a lot of therapeutic modalities, such as psychoanalysis, for example, presume a lengthy engagement and are accessible only to a certain class because of the demands on time, expenditure, and general idea that psychotherapy is either beneficial or at least interesting to engage--the idea is also class-related. The attempt to make therapy brief is an attempt to make therapy more accessible and meaningful--by focusing on solutions.

I think this is my main correction to myself. Now is the end of my fourth week of practicum. This video is recorded a short while back.

I am hoping you are having a great day and a week ahead of you!