counseling-theories
What each counseling-theories question is really asking, how to structure the answer, and where the marks are likely to sit.
DQ 1 :What are your personal assumptions about: How do people develop the kinds of psychological distress that bring them to counseling?
Counseling theories
Three questions, asked in week one, before any theory has been taught. That timing is the point: what you write here is a theoretical orientation you have not yet named, and the post is graded on whether you can see it.
DQ 2 :Some might argue that a therapist’s theoretical orientation is irrelevant in the counseling process, and that only client outcomes matter.
Counseling theories
Two positions are set out and you are asked to adjudicate. The trap is treating them as opposites: the common factors argument is not the claim that theory is irrelevant, and saying so is most of the answer.
DQ 1 :Would you consider choosing Feminist, Solution-Focused, or Narrative therapies when counseling individual clients, marriage clients, and family clients?
Counseling theories
Three models and three client configurations, which is nine cells and not one answer. The post that works picks the pairings deliberately and says why the same model would be a poor fit elsewhere.
DQ 1 :Now that you have studied all the different theories of psychotherapy, what theory do you feel has the strongest approach for the population you may want to work with?
Counseling theories
A preference question that is graded as a fit argument. Name the population first, then argue the theory against it, and treat the second half about learning more than one approach as the part that carries the marks.
DQ 2 :How can you, as a therapist, avoid becoming “stuck” in a particular theoretical framework?
Counseling theories
The prompt asks for specific ways, which rules out an answer about staying open-minded. Name the mechanisms that actually catch a stuck therapist: supervision, outcome measurement, consultation and deliberate practice.