Class Blog - Jocelyn

Good afternoon everyone, I hope you have all had a good and restful weekend! This week I met up with Monica in order to practice some great motivational interviewing skills that we have been reading about the last few weeks. For the purpose of this first assignment we both took a deeper look into reflective listening and decided to practice these wonderful skills from chapter three of Rosengren. This chapter introduced OARS, which is a helpful acronym describing the microskills used in motivational interviewing. OARS stands for open-ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and summaries. When reading, reflecting, and discussing OARS with Monica, we both could agree these seemed fairly simple to do as we have practiced doing a few of these in previous courses. Rosengren highlights “reflective listening is the primary skill on which MI is built. It is the mechanism through which practitioners express their interest, empathy, and understanding of clients” (Rosengren, 31). ...

As we learned in the YouTube video, 12 Steps of AA with Father Martin, AA began in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith. This is where the 12 principles (known as the 12 steps) derived from. Prior to my two visits to AA in Tinley Park, I made myself familiar with the 12 steps, the 12 traditions, and the Big Book .  When I made my first visit to Tinley Park Community Church for Sunday night's AA meeting, I went along with a friend, as the thought of going alone made me quite nervous. I had absolutely no idea what to expect the first time I went through those doors; this was my first time ever attending an AA meeting. To my surprise, I was greeted by two friendly women with a handshake, smiles, and a few pressing questions:  1) Is this your first meeting?  2) Are you a student? You must  be a student? You'd think we had "students" written on our foreheads, as we were asked this same question a few different times during that first meeting alone! Well, yes. I...