Therapy: Follow-Up Questions

After meeting with Frank and hearing the reason why he has come to therapy there are a few follow up questions that will help me better understand what is going on and how I can help. All of the follow up questions fall under three major categories: identity, friend’s death, and views on counseling. Exploring’s Frank identity is important because growing up in a Latino and Catholic home means that there are certain values and traditions followed that shape not only the person’s life but their world view. Questions that are pertinent to exploring his identity are asking what values he holds due to being Latino and/or being Catholic, is he a devout Catholic because of tradition or personal choice and has he experienced any discrimination because …show more content…
To better understand how Frank is coping with his friends death pertains information needs to be collected in regards to their friendship and the friend’s death. Some of these questions will include: the closeness of Frank and his friend, if the friend’s AIDS status was known prior to his death or was his death a surprise, how long ago was his friend’s death, and how long ago has his symptoms been present. Lastly, exploring his ideas and views on therapy are important because they will aid in catering the approach used to what might be more helpful for him. For example, if he doesn’t really believe in the traditional talk therapy, I can incorporate activities such as having him drawing himself in the middle of a page and drawing the different influence his identity. This activity will help answer those identity questions without forcing Frank to do traditional talk …show more content…
I would use his faith as a way to help Frank through the grieving process. A great benefit of using his faith is that for some people with very strong religious/faith identities having a sense of comfort in an afterlife helps them better process a loved one’s death and feel at peace. The drawback of taking this approach can be that he might be offended or angry for using his religion, especially if he has not always seen eye to eye on everything his faith values. For example, he might describe himself as a devote Catholic because it is a cultural or familial tradition that everyone follows but he might not truly align himself with all of the religion’s views and values. I would supplement using this approach with using CBT to help Frank deal with his depressive symptoms. His symptoms of lack of concentration and difficulty sleeping are only surface level and are hiding some other thoughts and feelings that he has trouble expressing. CBT is a very beneficial intervention because it will not only help Frank resolve his depressive symptom but also help address the problems lurking underneath that are really affecting Frank. The limitation that CBT can have is that in trying to resolve the depressive symptoms and talking about his friend death, it can trigger past feelings or events that are not related to the presenting problem and unravel