Things happen in 3’s: #1

I am convinced that things happen in 3’s. I sometimes have superstitious tendancies and believing that things come in 3’s is one of them. As many people know I am in graduate school for sport psychology. I working toward becoming a mental skills consultant and counseling athletes. Currently, I am taking a counseling skills course and my instructor is very into role playing. When I met with her for the fist time back in January I had no idea what kind of scenario she would be role playing. She told me to choose letter A, B, C, or D. The scenario depended on which letter I chose. I chose A since my name starts with an A–not the best logic. Choosing A meant my instructor was going to role play a 10 year old boy who had anger issues on the soccer field.

If you know me at all you know that I am not a patient person and I have barely any experience working with kids. I never know what to say to children and I get frustrated by them when they don’t listen. It also doesn’t help that I don’t encounter kids because I work at a college and everyone I am around on a day to day basis is over the age of 18. Needless to say, I was totally freaked out when I chose this client. On top of that my teacher is really good at role playing. I have never met a person who role plays so well before. It actually felt like I was talking to a 10 year old boy. He was unfocused and so difficult to deal with. I got a 23/25 on that assignment but my instructor knew how nervous and stressed out I was when I was dealing with this child.

Last night I had to do a follow up consultation. I was pretty nervous all day and I wasn’t really sure how it was going to go. After a long day of anticipation I video called my instructor and decided to just embrace the challenge. For whatever reason she told me that this is the most controlled she has ever been in this role-play scenario. Basically, that means I did really well. I am  shocked because, as I said, I don’t really have experience working with children.

I am not sure how I pulled this off but I did and I am so excited! I don’t want to seek out kids to babysit or anything but now I know how to deal with them successfully in a counseling setting and I know that I can be successful in this field. I can not explain how happy I am about this. This was a huge test for me and I have gained an endless about of confidence from this experience which is why I think it is the first of 3 good things that will happen.

Now I am waiting for #2 and #3 🙂