The case of John:

The client is John, a young adult, white, heterosexual male who was a former college football player. He has trouble being intimate with women and remains traumatized by a prior sexual assault by a coach. He reports thoughts of self-harm.

>> Okay. I guess I'm here because I recently entered into an intimate relationship which for a lot of people is not big deal, normal part of life. Not so much for me. And I'm, I just, I've been having some issues with that dynamic. [Heavy sigh], it goes back to my second year of college. I was a football player. I got a scholarship which was very important to me, I came from a poor family, single mom. This was, this scholarship was my ticket to something better. It was my only way out of my current circumstances. So something that was very important, necessary for me to have for my life. Like I said, about my second year I started getting some strange vibes from one of the position coaches. And eventually it turned into a situation of sexual abuse. I've never, I've never said that out loud to anybody before. But I never told anybody about it, I didn't know what to do. All I knew was if I said something, I just imagined I'd lose my scholarship, my coach gets fired and it's in the public, everybody knows, and oof, it's terrifying. I didn't want to go through any of that so I chose to bury it. Now it's been a little bit. I met somebody who changed my mind about my position on that situation. And I've been trying to make it work, I've been trying to just re-adapt and you know, change myself back into a person who can be that way with somebody. And it hasn't been going very well. I can't get what happened out of my head. Even now. And it's gotten to the point where I don't know if I can go back to the person that I was. I don't know if I can, I don't know. I just think what's the point. Would it be easier if I just flipped a switch, turned it off, if everything just stopped and I wasn't here anymore. Would that be better for everyone?

1.How would you respond to this client? as counselor!!