Intake Interview Reflection

Being the clinician and conducting an intake interview was one of the most the practical, informative, and thought-provoking assignments I have completed throughout undergrad thus far. While allowing me to practice clinical interviewing skills, I learned how difficult yet essential various skills were in order to successfully complete an intake process. Specifically, I found taking a direct approach and asking specific questions was most successful. For example, with my client, Ian, I was able to find out the most relevant information about his manic tendencies through asking him specific questions. His intake form described having manic tendencies in the past, though there was not enough information there to really get to the core reason for

Specifically, I found it extremely hard to “quiet myself” and let the client really express his point of view. One of my coping strategies for self-perceived awkward situations is to talk a lot and carried over to my interviewing techniques. Whenever I would be asking Ian a question, I would try to explain my question with more questions. For example, whenever I inquiring about Ian’s relationship with his family, I asked him how his relationship was with his sister, who he was closet with, and if he liked his sister all at once, thus he only was able to answer one of these questions due to probably feeling overwhelmed. I did not really provide the needed calm and silent environment to allow him to answer questions one at a time. Additionally, I found it surprisingly hard to really express the most appropriate level of sympathy and validation needed. Overall, I found it hard to maintain the most level of appropriate vocal qualities. For example, whenever Ian would talk about his past of negligence from his parents, I really found it hard to express how sorry I was that he had to go through that. I used the wrong tone to respond to serious situations sometimes. For example, whenever Ian was talking about having extremes “ups and downs”, I responded with, “That’s good! I mean…about the ups not the downs.” I found it really hard to respond to various and impromptu

Because of my inability to provide a calm and silent environment as part of my interviewing techniques, I missed out on gaining potential relevant information about my client. In the future, I will provide a very calm environment that allows the client to really express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. I will ask questions one at a time rather than grouping them together, and I will go into the interviews mentally prepared, thus removing any self-perceived awkwardness. I also will learn new interviewing techniques on how make your client feel appropriately validated and emotionally supported. I also need to work on my body language whenever conducting interviews in the future. Sometimes I found it hard to maintain eye contact, thus I would look away or take notes versus sit there and listen. In the future, I will only take notes when appropriate and work on maintaining approach body language that allows the client to feel the most comfortable as possible. I also believe that everyone could always be just a bit more self-aware, thus I will work improving my self-awareness and ability to really understand where the client is coming from. I will work on bettering the interviewing techniques I implemented well and improving on those I need to work on so allow myself to better assist those that will potentially seek my