Essay Character Study

Hope is 17-year-old female in high school who is half Mexican and half Russian. She lives with her father after he mother walked away from them at the age of 5. She has one older sister from her father and her mother. Then she has two half brothers from her father's new marriage.  Her older sister moved across the country when Hope was 15 years old. Hope has a very close relationship with her grandmother who looked after her most of her life.  Growing up in a fast pace urban city like New York, Hope feels she doesn't need to be in school to get a good paying job. She barley finished school with a GED and has no interest perusing college. Hope did go to church and was an active member in a youth group for a couple of years but then gradually as she got older, she stopped going to church and began questioning the idea of God.

Hope grew up with out a mother but she had her grandmother and it helped her cope not having her actual mother there for her. She loves her father dearly and wants nothing but happiness for him.  Her relationship with her father was strong and she is very open with him because she felt very comfortable telling him anything. Hope was around her father's side of the family often therefore she identifies as being more Mexican than Russian. Although she identifies being Mexican she clearly resembles features from her mother's side. From her blue eyes and long brown hair, her father had mention to her that she is an exact copy of her mother, physically.

Hope feels lost and cannot clearly direct her self in a path that will help her succeed in the future. All she does all day is sleep and drink alcohol. She feels that drinking makes the emptiness goes away. Every holiday her father tries to avoid buying alcohol for the festivities for Hope's sake but she has friends that would buy it for her. Her father does not like her friends but he believes if he tries to take action in her life that he would just end up loosening her just the way he lost his first daughter. Most of Hope's friends are bad influences on her but she does have other friends she met at the youth group. The youth group had tried to get her from coming back again but she constantly ignores their messages. Hope feels like a loner sometimes and feel like no one in the world would understand her. When someone does try to get to know her she pushes them away because she fears of getting to attach to them and then they abandon her.

Hope has a job at Walgreens as a cashier but lately her manager is not too happy with her. He claims she is always coming in late with a hangover. In high school her art teacher had told her she had a gift and if she wanted a recommendation letter that would be more than happy to do it. Hope wanted to go to art school but after her older sister left the house during a big dispute with her father she no longer felt motivated to go anymore. Since then secretly at night she would sneak out of the house to drink with her friends and her father would have no idea. Her stepmother was nice to her but never cared enough to ask Hope how she was feeling.

Hope constantly feels sad and anxious, to cope with her feelings she would drink alcohol until she passed out. Hope came home one day extremely drunk and woke up her baby brother by knocking down the TV on the floor. Her stepmother was upset and kicked her out of the house while her father was away on a business trip. Hope went to an old friend for a place to stay and her friend Emily accepted her into her house but as long as Hope seeks for help from a counselor. Hope understand she has a problem but she does not believe it will work because she has seen a counselor when she was young around the time her mother left because she would not stop crying.  Ever since then Hope build a wall around her emotions and hasn't shed a tear since then.

Session notes, track, the following information

1 - A brief description of your client / your helper, including age, gender, general life circumstances, occupation, etc.

2- A brief description of your relationship with the client/helper. Are you close friends, casual acquaintances or virtual stranger? is it a professional relationship? Is the relationship comfortable? Is the relationship kind of funny and strained?

3- A brief description of the setting where the counseling session occured.

4- A brief statement summarizing your evaluation of what happened in the counseling session. What gain if any occurred? What allowed gains to occur? if there were not any gain, what may have been needed?

5. How did non verbal events and verbal comments impact the session? Did the events of comments take the session in a new direction, get the session bogged down, contribute to the other person becoming defensive or relaxed, or become a stimulus for the exploration or deeper meanings? Try to identify what it was about the events or comments that had this affect. Sometimes when you review a session, you may find yourself wondering, "Why in the world did i say that?" perhaps something may be going on that has the effect of putting you out of touch with what the other person is saying. this may happen if you feel pressure to say something, try to help a client feel better too quickly, or hurry up to find a " solution." identify these occasions and try to recover the thoughts and feelings that prompted you to make these comments.

Reflection paper: Report your experiences as a helper and a client reflection paper you are to respond to the following questions:

1- What were you thinking, feeling, and doing when you felt you were being effective as a helper?

2 - What were you thinking, feeling, and doing when you felt you were being ineffective as a helper?

3 - What were you thinking, feeling and doing when you felt good as a client?

4 - What were you thinking, feeling and doing when you did not feel good as a client?

5 - When you were being either helper or client, did you find yourself reacting to the other person in a stereotypic way? That is, did you find yourself responding in terms of preconceived ideas based on characteristics of the other such as age, sex, race, appearance, etc? If so try to identify what you told yourself to make yourself respond in that fasion.

6 - What themes emerge regarding your experiences as a helper and your experiences as a client? For instance you may discover the theme of anger marks your experience, or the theme of exultation; or reluctance; or the theme of confusion; of the theme of relief or the theme of empowerment, or other themes, perhaps a combination of several themes.

7 - What are areas in which you got in your way (and/or in the way of the other person). In the helping relationship, what are examples of when this obstruction happened, and what are your plans to get beyond such behavior?

8 - What are your strengths as a helper, how did you see yourself using them in the helping relationship, and are there dangers that you could misuse such strengths?