Learning Journal 53

The weeks learning was about how to regress back to basics and forget 3 years worth of lessons. Basically just be with the person, and we’ll be fine. That is very reassuring. Given the only client I met this week it seemed to be a perfect fit actually.

Its actually the hardest part of counselling for me and I bring it up frequently in supervision. How do I just ‘be’ with a client and not bring my powers of deduction or trying to work them out into the session.

On top of all that, I sit in supervision with my fellow colleagues and they talk about what wonderful interventions they have brought. How they brought this bit of theory in or that device and I have been tempted to feel that this is great practice, after all they’re all at it. It is very seductive to hear what ‘stuff’ others are doing with their clients and feel that you should be doing something too.

I was initially tricked into thinking this is what I should be doing in terms of bringing stuff into the room, but now I feel reassured that this is all bluff and bluster. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

I sat with another client for the first time this week, a young chap called PH. I have to say that it was a very rewarding encounter with PH bringing some items that I was very interested to learn about. He brought his anxiety, physical symptoms of and what lay behind this, his lack of confidence in himself. He was so unconfident that he described not having any social relationships whatsoever in university. I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for him at that point. I was aware that this wouldn’t be helpful to him, and possibly patronising so I pushed it away and focussed on listening to him.

He spoke about a sense that he had been closeted and perhaps shielded from much in his growing up. His parent were very loving and caring but perhaps he lacked some ‘exposure’ – my reflection. He was articulate but reserved. Here sat opposite me was a shy person, lacking in confidence to make friends and connections and basically was getting quite lonely going into his second year. University had perhaps not brought him what he had hoped, whatever that was. Hopefully we would work through some of this over the weeks as I let him know about my role and what counselling is in many senses, as I was privately aware that some of things counselling could be for this person would potentially be extremely pertinent.

If a therapeutic relationship is anything, it surely is connection. This is exactly what that person was lacking in his broader life. He had his parents to return to after university and he had his few ‘colleagues’ that he house shared with and a few ‘colleagues’ that he regularly sat next to in lectures, but not one social connection. I felt at once two things, that I wanted to make this a model of how people could exchange and relate socially and also to share this with him, but also I felt the aforementioned sympathy. The sympathy I checked out with myself after the event, as it hadn’t occurred to me that I was feeling that at the time, but later I checked it out and that’s what it was. It was not a useful feeling to have as it could leak, it could make the client feel I pitied him and it would not have any benefit for the client.

By wanting to model how we could have a social interaction and hopefully at the same time listening to and validating his experiences of anxiety I had consciously attempted to support this client to have a more positive experience. He had come to me with the goals of exploring his anxiety and further we had learned between us that he realised and thus wanted to socialise with others. That had not come from me.

To help our connection I modelled calmness and being reliable and boundaried. I was always attentive and I did not take over when he started to talk about his experience, even when it really felt to me like there were glaring errors in his approach to mixing with others. It was never about what I felt he should do. Instead I asked what he could do, what he wanted to do and at one point we did venture of into some structured work so that he could practice and rehearse what he could say to a friend that he decided he wanted to invite out to the cinema.

I did more than this in terms of making the relationship work however, I felt hat I was purposeful in being keen to hear him talk. I was conscious that this was a rare opportunity for him to be heard and listened to. It was crucial that I was really trying hard to listen to what it was like and empathise with his experience.

We listened to him speak about his year at University and how he had a few friends that he regularly sat next to but had only invited one out once, and been rejected. He had been on several nights out drinking but he didn’t enjoy this, it wasn’t for him, he felt awkward and lonely so went home early. He couldn’t understand the appeal of these events. At last here was someone hearing him and although this is actually just good counselling skills in many senses, it was by design that I knew this was crucial here.

Finally when it came to parting ways I was slightly overt in stating that I was looking forward to seeing him again, more so than usual but not over the top.