The Right Way to be a Therapist
During graduate school I was slammed with a lot of blessings (aka commitments). I was a full time student, very active in the local recovery community, engaged, working 20-hours a week for my graduate assistantship, and interning 15ish hours a week. My counseling program had us start with a practicum placement, and then transition that to an internship. In the spring of 2020 I was unsure how that transition would even be possible with the extra hours requirement internships had.
Additionally, I was very unhappy with my practicum placement. After graduating UGA I wanted to work in the mental health field before pursuing a master’s degree. I spent that year working in alcohol and drug treatment. I both enjoyed it and was good at it. I could have progressed professionally by continuing those jobs. But I wanted to be trained and qualified to help a wider array of clients. So I applied back to UGA as a masters student. This started off great and I got a practicum placement at a large community mental health organization which was poised to offer me a diverse experience. However, due to my résumé, they placed me to intern within their drug and alcohol in-patient program.
I was diligently trying to make the best of the situation. But then the pandemic happened. While I recognize the horrors and struggles it created for millions (many of my clients later were on the edge of getting by, until the pandemic kicked them over), it had two clear benefits for me. Firstly, my practicum site let go of all their interns. Dozens of graduate students were displaced, but for me this was a welcomed escape. I was able to relocate to a wonderful private practice in Athens called Banyan Tree. I completed my internship there and later worked there for years until relocating to Brooklyn. The other benefit was that it allowed me to have enough time. If it wasn’t for zoom I don’t think I could have met all my commitments with travel time factored in.
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I guess this was the backstory to the actual blogpost. They had two master’s of counseling students as interns. We would have weekly supervision together. After a while we got a tad better at counseling and found our own paths. In supervision we would talk about certain cases, conceptualize them, and get support from our supervisor and each other. Oftentimes, my fellow intern and I would have horrified looks while the other one conceptualized. They were incredibly organized. They basically had a map of how the entire session should proceed. The idea of being that directive and rigid seemed terrible to me. I, on the other hand, would talk about my treatment planning with a lot of hypotheticals. I would have a loose idea of how the session should go but no attachment to it following that way. My free-flowing strategy seemed disorganized and too sporadic to my fellow intern.
But here’s the thing, we both helped people. We both had clients who returned weekly and who showed improvement. We had individuals in a relationship who both reported high praise of their partner’s therapist. We developed a respect for each other's styles and the strengths that accompanied them.
This was a vital lesson to my own personal development. We both had our own way that worked for us and our clients. It highlighted something we learned in our coursework: that therapeutic fit is a huge part of successful therapy. It doesn’t seem that there’s a right way to do therapy, people are too diverse for that. As I’ve developed professionally, I’ve become adjustable (although never to the level of organization as my old colleague), but also I’m limited, I’m still going to be me in therapeutic relationships.
But it did seem there were a few vital things we had in common. We both cared a lot for our clients and wanted to help. We both practiced and displayed empathy. We both spent time outside of our sessions figuring out how to be as helpful as possible. While I just said there’s no right way to be a therapist, I can’t imagine it being helpful without these things.