50 journals!
This week in my placement I saw 2 clients for the final time. They both
were very different sessions in so much as one was quite underwhelming and the
guy pretty much wanted to shake hands at the end and go. The other was a little
more connected, a little more important and a little more like it was something
we would both miss. Clients are different. Looking back these 2 sessions went
entirely to a predictable ending script. Both ending left me wondering about
what it is that I had achieved, if anything, and how to respond in my self to
the feedback that the clients had left.
The first ending was quite matter of fact. I tried out something that
Tony the tutor had touched upon in a previous session in college, that we should
acknowledge the ending, so I tried this out. I feel that I made more of it than
it really was for this particular person. That we would never ever meet again
in this space and time was perhaps an overshoot for this semi-alpha male who
really had come to the end of my usefulness anyway. That I didn’t use immediacy
was the problem I feel, looking back, and say just this.
When working with this client, throughout, I had a large amount of
personal resonation with his issues. R, the client, had arrived with presenting
issues around his biological father coming back into his life and over the six
sessions we had compartmentalised that and he had moved on. We had begun
instead to unpick the person. This is something that I am starting to do a lot
with clients. I wonder if it is a habit, a leaning or a bias in my practice?
Anyway, in exploring the person and his traits it transpired that R was
quite the outsider. He lacked trust for others and struggled with social
situation, especially large groups. While this is all perfectly understandable
from a personality perspective perhaps he went much further and I began to find
it uncomfortably like my own experiences.
R described having a very analyitical mind, constantly evaluating others
in a cost benefit methodology. This I know as extremely wasteful and tiring and
resource heavy, making social interactions very draining as I recognised his
description of not really understanding the point of many encounters. He tired
of nights out and made excuses not to attend. He liked his own space to just
be. For him to be in large groups was tiring and undesirable. That’s me too I
screamed, inside! I know! I know that! But I couldn’t say anything quite so
direct. I felt that would be needy of me and create some sort of weird dynamic.
I am here to listen and to reflect in a way that helps R make sense of himself,
not to be partners in crime.
I wondered if R might too benefit from simply realigning his acceptance
of himself as someone with a lot in common with those on the aspergers
spectrum, albeit at a level that was very easily hidden. That too seemed like a
step too far for me. To suggest or even use the terms seemed like a walk down
diagnosis lane, and I know that’s a breach of the rules and my training and
expertise.
I did wonder for a time about how I could possibly go with a client to
places that both resonated with me and that in many senses I had not come to be
at ease with myself. With R talking about such similar experiences of being an
‘outsider’ and on the periphery of his social group was an allied journey for
me. However, dipping into Yalom’s work does much to ease my angst on this. He
states that ‘to take someone further than a therapist has been’ was not really
a worry. It is entirely ok to be a witness to changes that may be far beyond
what the therapist has done. I feel that being entirely person-centred and
going with them, it could be entirely safe for us to explore an understanding
and level of self-awareness that I clearly do not feel I have. I would have
admired
To go back to the ending with R I found him quite difficult. I was
somewhat relieved to see the back of him actually as he didn’t really want to
engage with me in the last session, it was a formality in some respects I felt.
That made any special treatment of the ending quite false and overkill. He’s
going to be ok I thought and good for him that he is having these
contemplations now so that he can begin to come to terms with who he really is.
This he must do in his own way, not mine.
Reflecting on how useful my interventions have been with R, I would have
to say that the fact that we have six sessions as a maximum is something that
drives a focus to the work. We have travelled between us through several issues
and come to begin to explore him, as a person. The goal of the university
counselling team is, rather particularly, to keep the cash cows grazing. That’s
an underlying conflict to me,no matter how the staff re-present it. While I
feel that by helping this client stay aware and in control by being listened
to, this goal has been maintained. Is it a satisfactory process for me as a
therapist, no. However, I have succeeded in my job of keeping the cash cow at
Uni.
Another client, NV came to me some 5 sessions ago with the issue of
anxiety over a speech impediment. She was having serious anxiety attacks when
going into certain lecture rooms and was extremely worried about her impending
presentations. We have spent 5 sessions getting to know her in more depth. I
have been able to use that time very well with her I feel as yes, we’ve
validated the anxiety and taken her feelings very seriously. She has been
grateful to receive this authentic validation I feel. To evaluate how far we
have come is tricky for me. We have not had the environment nor I the training
that could actually help her speech impediment in any way. This is not really
something that she came for anyway, just the anxiety. At times this has become
higher and the very day before her last session this week she had another
attack. In that sense I am not assisting with the management of her anxiety
attacks. What I have been able to do is make her experience very real, not
dimished and further, asked her about her. The person behind the anxiety, who
is she?
I sensed that it has been extremely liberating to share space and time
with me to talk about ho she feels, what she wants in life and her wider
interests,. She is so much more to me than a girl with a stutter. I would like
her to know this for herself. This is my goal for our sessions.
Another boy, OK has now finished with my sessions. He had shared with me
and the counselling team how helpful he had found the sessions as I ‘got him’.
He was able to open up about many issues in such a way that surprised me a
great deal. He was another reason I had looked to Yalom’s book to reassure
myself that I could support someone who was going through things that I doubt I
would have the courage to share. If a client goes further than we have, is it
safe to support them? Is it possible to support someone who is going through
such emotional vulnerability in front of another person, when I myself am
likely not ready for that exposure. Well, to evaluate ones practice by
realising that such things have been achieved is a gratifying thing to do, but
also something that needs to be taken with caution. This one went well. This
client moved forward, felt heard, felt listened to and not judged. Ben, you’re
doing it. But how come that client went well? What did I do that made those
sessions ‘work’ for the client in this agency setting?
Surely there’s something about me in a University setting. It’s a very
exciting place to work and I am enthused to support this client group. Also I
have taken on board the 6 session limit and been mindful of the need to focus
and mark the passing of sessions and the need to prepare a client for the
ending. But it’s a little more than that. When I am with clients here I am very
caring and interested and I have noticed I truly validate there experiences. I
sense that in such a young client group that may have lacked external
validation through much of their lives to this point, this attribute of mine
must be a useful addition to see in a man.
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