Reference no: EM133306669

Ethical Dilemma

You are a counsellor in private practice. Your client, Bertha, is a woman in her early thirties seeking counselling concerning her personal life. You have been working with her for several sessions over a few months. Apart from missing two sessions with late notice, she has attended each week. Bertha still lives at home with her parents (her older brother and sister are both married). Her closest friend is married, and they have two young children. Bertha explains that she visits them weekly and has often looked after their children when they go out. Bertha enjoys reading stories and playing with their children; however, she has expressed frustration and sadness that she has been unable to find a partner, even though she has "done everything [she] can to find someone". Each week she attends both a synagogue service and a women's social group. She also plays in a weekly women's netball competition, and she has been on singles trips overseas with different groups of people aged 21-35 each year for the past five years. No man has shown much interest in her from these trips, however. She fears that she will never find anyone, that she isn't attractive enough, and that she will never be able to have a family of her own. During the last couple of sessions, she discloses to you that she has taken an interest in someone whom she met on one of the singles trips. He lives three suburbs away, so she happens to see him sometimes at the shops, and they have had "some nice chats", but he hasn't asked her out on a date, and she is too scared to ask him out. She asks if you can work with her on her self-esteem and social confidence so that she can pluck up the courage to ask this man out. For the next couple of sessions, you work with her on her social skills in particular. She asks you how she should approach this man and what she should say to him. Over the next couple of sessions, you work with her to come up with some possible conversations she could have with him. The following week, she comes to the session in tears, while she describes how this man turned around and walked away when they made eye contact last time. During the session you discover that Bertha has actually been following him. She waits for him at the shops on a Friday afternoon, because she knows that is when he is most likely to be there, even though they have not discussed this with each other. She then tells you that she has sometimes followed him home "to see what his house is like, and to see whether he has a girlfriend". At this stage you become quite concerned that she might be stalking him, and you say, "I think we need to stop this conversation here". Your client then becomes quite distressed and quickly leaves the session. Bertha does not contact you for four weeks but then arranges to see you the following week. At the start of the session she states, "I have finally plucked up the courage to say how disappointed I am in you, and I am only seeing you today to let you know I intend to stop coming to see you because of the lack of care you showed me."

Question: How should you respond to Bertha during this session (give two possible responses and evaluate them using the EDM model (Miner-Bridges, 2006)? Include in your essay a consideration of the main ethical responsibilities of the counsellor in this session and in previous sessions.