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callunav(Someday, I really will write an entry about something other than work again.)
Today, I've been rereading some papers I wrote ~5 years ago, in my first year in the counseling psychology masters program. It's interesting for me to see how I conceptualized myself as a therapist then, in contrast to what I was learning, and compare it to how I've evolved as a therapist in, effectively, 3 years of practice. (That is, one internship and a little over 2 years' employment.) I've developed a more active and sometimes challenging clinical style, which doesn't leave quite as much space in the room for the client's self-exploration as I'd thought I would or should.
That's not an all-or-nothing thing. I still make lots of small, empathic responses when clients are talking. Also, it's a development that makes sense from the employment I've had; both the family therapy and the work in juvenile detention expected a more directive, 'solution-oriented' approach from me. And I think there's a lot of good in that, but I also think I want to back off from it some, especially when I'm just starting with new clients and just forming a relationship/rapport.
But the other thing this is making me think about is the discontinuity between how I perceive the role of the therapist when I'm the therapist, and how I perceive it when I'm the client. As a therapist, I'm constantly reflecting on what and how I'm doing with different clients, things I want to remember to do more of in general, things I want to remember to try in specific cases or situations. I go to supervision and describe interactions I've had or work I'm doing and get feedback, and go back into my office trying to integrate that feedback into how I work.
As a client, I think I have tended to perceive my clinician as a constant and myself as the variable. I was never sure whether it was unwarranted egotism to imagine that my clinician thought about me at all between sessions (while at the same time, I was hurt if they forgot anything from earlier sessions, which is quite a double-standard). I certainly never imagined that they would be making any changes in how they responded to me or their style of interaction from week to week or even month to month.
I doubt, really, that my therapists were usually changing at the rate that I am now, because I'm still so new to the work, and I typically saw people who had had their own practice for a decade or two. I would imagine that they had their general style pretty well established by that point. But I'm pretty sure that they would still have sometimes reflected on how things were going in their work with me and what they might do differently to help it go better. If I had gotten upset in a session, they might have wondered or even bounced ideas off colleagues about whether that was a sign that they'd done something wrong or just a reasonable development in the therapeutic process - and then gone back the next week with some clearer perspective and possibly some changes.
I have known for some time that I'm not a very easy client, for a lot of reasons, but I somehow never thought that the challenge would be ongoing, not just a matter of finding the therapist who would be able to work with me in the first place and then settling in.
In a way, I think that translates to a weirdly humble-arrogant belief that I'm the one doing all the work in that process, which seems like a strange inversion of the equally false expectation that one goes into therapy in order to have someone fix one's problems.
It's odd. I'm not sure what the implications are, but I'm enjoying pondering it.
Today, I've been rereading some papers I wrote ~5 years ago, in my first year in the counseling psychology masters program. It's interesting for me to see how I conceptualized myself as a therapist then, in contrast to what I was learning, and compare it to how I've evolved as a therapist in, effectively, 3 years of practice. (That is, one internship and a little over 2 years' employment.) I've developed a more active and sometimes challenging clinical style, which doesn't leave quite as much space in the room for the client's self-exploration as I'd thought I would or should.
That's not an all-or-nothing thing. I still make lots of small, empathic responses when clients are talking. Also, it's a development that makes sense from the employment I've had; both the family therapy and the work in juvenile detention expected a more directive, 'solution-oriented' approach from me. And I think there's a lot of good in that, but I also think I want to back off from it some, especially when I'm just starting with new clients and just forming a relationship/rapport.
But the other thing this is making me think about is the discontinuity between how I perceive the role of the therapist when I'm the therapist, and how I perceive it when I'm the client. As a therapist, I'm constantly reflecting on what and how I'm doing with different clients, things I want to remember to do more of in general, things I want to remember to try in specific cases or situations. I go to supervision and describe interactions I've had or work I'm doing and get feedback, and go back into my office trying to integrate that feedback into how I work.
As a client, I think I have tended to perceive my clinician as a constant and myself as the variable. I was never sure whether it was unwarranted egotism to imagine that my clinician thought about me at all between sessions (while at the same time, I was hurt if they forgot anything from earlier sessions, which is quite a double-standard). I certainly never imagined that they would be making any changes in how they responded to me or their style of interaction from week to week or even month to month.
I doubt, really, that my therapists were usually changing at the rate that I am now, because I'm still so new to the work, and I typically saw people who had had their own practice for a decade or two. I would imagine that they had their general style pretty well established by that point. But I'm pretty sure that they would still have sometimes reflected on how things were going in their work with me and what they might do differently to help it go better. If I had gotten upset in a session, they might have wondered or even bounced ideas off colleagues about whether that was a sign that they'd done something wrong or just a reasonable development in the therapeutic process - and then gone back the next week with some clearer perspective and possibly some changes.
I have known for some time that I'm not a very easy client, for a lot of reasons, but I somehow never thought that the challenge would be ongoing, not just a matter of finding the therapist who would be able to work with me in the first place and then settling in.
In a way, I think that translates to a weirdly humble-arrogant belief that I'm the one doing all the work in that process, which seems like a strange inversion of the equally false expectation that one goes into therapy in order to have someone fix one's problems.
It's odd. I'm not sure what the implications are, but I'm enjoying pondering it.