Did it Ever Occur to You That You Might Just Suck as a Therapist?

[Jenny]

http://shrinktalk.net/?p=1143

I have skim read the article and this is actually something I had questioned myself after a rather rubbish ending with my ex therapist.. I'm sure I played my role in our awful ending, including transference, etc. but i really wonder sometimes whether she has the insight in to her role in it all too.

So yeah maybe 'suck as a therapist' isn't quite the terminology I'd choose to use, it's still an interesting question.. and i guess it could be quite easy for a therapist to just blame something on transference, no!? I wonder what my ex therapist told her supervisor about our ending.. i doubt she told her the honest truth about her abruptness at ending.

Anyway, thoughts?

[Cherrypie]

To be honest Jenny I am replying without yet having read the article but I wanted to reply as to what do counsellors tell their supervisors because thats probably an interesting point to me too.

At the end of the day a supervisor is there to support the counsellor but with the end goal really as I understand it of protecting the client. If the counsellor chooses to omit the bare honest facts however how can a supervisor know if something is seriously amiss..

I have met a long time counsellor who even reccommended to me that I don't tell my supervisor everything..and I felt she was plainly referring to any errors I may ever make.. so yes.. it seems to me that telling 'all' including our errors is really down to personal integrity and maybe to do with other issues too such as how much we feel we can trust in our supervisors etc but I see that its certainly a possibility that your ex therapist may not have told the 'truth'.. but theres another debate.. what exactly is the truth of any given siutation? From whose perspective.. Your therapists truth of the situation may look very different to yours. I do wonder how a supervisor can begin to ever really unravel this complicated situation and get the 'real' picture.. whatever the 'real' picture ever really is!!

I know thats quite waffly as my thoughts often are..but I am thinking in conclusion that whatever your ex-therapists take on the situation..whether she told or didn't tell, you know what happened to you. You know what your truth is and whatever she said or didn't say doesn't change your difficult experience and your reality..

xx

[NearW]

Hi,

This question comes up often to me as a counsellor ... I often feel I could have done better. This can be really discouraging in doing counselling, but I found a mentality (related to spirituality) which helped me cope with it. I still have this "I could have done better" thinking after most of my sessions with my clients, but I hope it is a motivator to be humble and upgrade myself.

I wonder if there are other/ better ways to see it? :P

[Jenny]

I guess there's a difference between thinking you could have done better, in a positive way.. as in reflecting on the session and thinking how things could have been improved.. and thinking you could have done better but beating yourself up about it. At the end of the day we're all human (even counsellors!) so no one will ever get it 100% right, and we can all learn from things in life. Trick is not to beat ourselves up about them :)

[DiscoverPeaceOfMind]

A sensational article, finally acknowledging that, yes, psychologists are normal, have their own problems, and don't always get it right.

I once concluded my psychiatrist's session convinced I now knew what my problem was....
It was my wife - all her fault!

Many years later, my wife and I sought marriage counselling. The worst advice the counsellor gave was when she said, "Speak openly and honestly". Speaking openly and honestly in that environment quickly destroyed the remaining threads of our marriage.

Worse is the psychologist who will not even begin to examine their own foibles. The one's who say they have no responsibility for their own son/daughter's depression. The one's who do not listen to the client, but impose a view on them instead.

A wonderful article, thanks for the link.

[mel]

It has been my experience that counsellors who work with the unconscious dynamics of the psyche will not blame the client or the transference on an abrupt ending. The very nature of the psychodynamic model is to take into account the vastness of our unconscious and its defences, the client's and counsellor's defences.

To not tell your supervisor everything is very poor practice. Unethical even. Dangerous. I would suggest to anyone who sees clients and fears the supervisor's judgement [me included] to stay in personal therapy and work on that.

There are many, many helpers out there who have not worked with/on their narcissistic parts in personal therapy and are causing damage to their patients. If you are looking for a therapist my first question to the counsellor would be "are or have you been in personal therapy and how long for?"

If the therapist feels offended, MOVE ON!