chickadee: i miss you, little blog

Monday, March 22

i miss you, little blog

i suck at writing.

i always hated those "i am terrible at keeping up with my blog" blogs.

now i am one of them. bleck.

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anyway, i have been going to the antioch group now for several weeks. the first couple of weeks i just sat in on business meetings and such, but the last couple i have gotten to sit in on/help with some pretty cool stuff. i am starting to get all excited all over again. i have been realizing just how much work has to be done as a therapist. not only do you have to be prepared to respond in many situations, to many types of people, but you also are continually working on yourself.

while i was at the group today the therapists were talking about countertransference. countertransference is a therapist's own repressed feelings in reaction to the emotions, experiences, or problems of a person undergoing treatment.
probably one of the most well known examples would be if a therapist starts to fall in love with a patient for qualities they possess. however, it can be so much simpler. some of the markers to look out for are things like dreading a session with a particular patient, looking forward too enthusiastically to a session, being consistently late or running consistently long with a particular patient (or wanting to "fix" a patient within one particular session), or thinking too much about a patient during personal time (i.e. showering, taking a walk or run, etc.). so as you can see, there are a lot of boundary issues that can arise in therapy. not all of these are bad things in themselves, but can be bad things in a therapeutic situation. i have come to realize that day in and out as a therapist you are continually analyzing yourself as you are analyzing others to make sure your heart and mind are in it the right way, not in a harmful way or a way that displays your current struggles.

it's going to be such hard work.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Loved reading this. Other people are always living such interestIng lives. Ive never considered the inner lives of therapists. Fascinating. -kyrie; February 5, 2012 at 11:57 PM

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words.

Why are we inspired by another person's courage? Maybe because it gives us the sweet and genuine surprise of discovering some trace, at least, of the same courage in ourselves.
-Laurence Shames

Art offers the possibility of love with strangers.
-Walter Hopps

And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of men: A motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things.
-William Wordsworth

For I have known them all already, known them all; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all --- The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, and when I am formulated sprawling on a pin, when I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, then how should I begin to spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all --- Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] Is it perfume from a dress that makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin?
-T.S. Eliot (The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock)

All of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon, instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
-Dale Carnegie

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley