Case Study
Patient Demographic: Client Age: 42 Sex: Female Gender: Female Sexuality: Heterosexual Ethnicity: Caucasian Relationship Status: Divorced Counseling Setting: Agency Type of Counseling: Individual and Group Presenting Problem: Social Anxiety Diagnosis: Social Anxiety Disorder (Social Phobia), Provisional 300.23 (F 40.10)
Mental Status Exam: Mental Status: The client is meticulously dressed and well groomed. She is cooperative and periodically exhibits a nervous smile. The client is fidgety and frequently repositions herself when seated. Her mood is anxious, and she becomes tearful when discussing feeling “stupid” during job interviews. She exhibits cohesive thinking, and her insight and judgment are intact. The client is oriented to person, place, situation, and time. Her affect is reserved. She denies suicidal and homicidal ideation as well as audio/visual hallucinations.
Presenting Problem: You are a certified mental health counselor working in a community mental health center. Your client is a 42-year-old white female who presents today with symptoms of social anxiety disorder. The client reports debilitating anxiety when interacting with others, particularly when meeting unfamiliar people or going somewhere for the first time. She states that she cannot sleep and has a poor appetite on the days leading up to social events. When encountering anxiety-provoking situations, she says that her hands shake, she sweats excessively, and her voice trembles. The client is recently divorced and, after more than 15 years of being out of the workforce, she is seeking employment. She explains that job interviews have been “humiliating” because of what she perceives as an “inherent lack of knowledge and a substantially impaired skill set.”
Other Contexts:     History of Condition: The client first noticed symptoms of social anxiety when her family moved north during the summer of her 8th-grade school year. When she began high school, she received unwanted attention for being the “new girl.” She explains that she was often teased because of her Southern accent and was labeled “country” and “ignorant.” Before meeting her husband, the client remembers drinking before going on a date stating, “It just helped settle my nerves.” Her social anxiety lessened after becoming a stay-at-home mom to her two now-teenage children. However, she noticed a sharp increase in social anxiety after her divorce, particularly when attempting to reenter the job force and trying to find new social circles. She denies current drug use and states that she is a social drinker. Family History: The client’s parents both live out of town and run a business together. The client’s father has been treated for alcohol use disorder and is now in recovery. Her mother takes medication for anxiety and depression. The client has two teenage girls. Both girls have had a difficult time with the divorce. Her youngest child is seeing a therapist for depression. The client’s ex-husband is a prominent attorney in their town. This is the client’s first experience with counseling, and she asks many questions when filling out the intake paperwork.  The client has agreed to participate in a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) group for social anxiety. You co-lead the group and would like the members to experience universality, one of Irvin Yalom’s curative factors

Question: The client has agreed to participate in a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) group for social anxiety. You co-lead the group and would like the members to experience universality, one of Irvin Yalom’s curative factors. Which technique would best enable you to do so?
(A): Interpreting
(B): Facilitating
(C): Confronting
(D): Linking

Correct Answer: Linking
Explanation: Primarily used during the initial stage of group development, the leadership technique of linking best enables members to experience universality. Irvin Yalom (1985) developed the concept of curative factors, also known as therapeutic factors, to encapsulate group member experiences leading to growth. Yalom’s curative factors include “altruism, cohesion, universality, interpersonal learning input and output, guidance, catharsis, identification, family reenactment, self-understanding, instillation of hope, and existential factors” (Boon & Vermeiren, 2019). Universality occurs when group members recognize that they have shared experiences, thoughts, and feelings—and that they are not alone. Thus, universality helps validate common experiences and reduce feelings of isolation. Linking is a process used to promote and encourage member-to-member interactions, which help members recognize their similarities and common themes. Facilitating is a basic leadership skill used in the early stages of group therapy to help encourage members to talk to other members rather than the group leader. Interpreting is a leadership skill that relies on a preestablished framework for group therapy (eg, CBT). Leaders use interpreting to redirect members back to the framework when explaining the meaning of their expressed thoughts and feelings. Confronting is used when counselors find a discrepancy in an element of the client’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. Therefore, the correct answer is (C)
Competency: counseling skills and interventions