What I’ve realised over the last couple of weeks

It has been a busy couple of weeks getting into the swing of DP. The biggest thing out of it all though is that I had my first DP coaching session with Nathan yesterday. It was awesome. The sense of development was palpable and I’m feeling very keen for the sessions ahead. It’s a similar feeling I would get after a productive practice back in the days when I played cricket and could throw. Something stuck with me during the session with Nathan and I want to remember it. When Nathan asked me why I had chosen the stretch goal of “gaining actionable feedback from clients” this random analogy came to mind. What follows is an expanded version of what I said to him; after reflecting afterwards: I said that I sometimes look at the process of gaining feedback as like a juicer (or something like that). A client’s piece of feedback is like an orange that goes into the juicer. If I’m not very good at creating an environment of feedback then clients will not only give me few oranges, but they will also be poor quality. I will then get “juice” that doesn’t taste very nice, is not very filling and gives me less energy to try and create something meaningful with the client; thereby not helping my motivation to ask them for more oranges. I may even not want their oranges and avoid them. Where as if I improve the feedback environment I provide, then clients will give more oranges of much higher quality. This time the juice is much easier to take (I might even enjoy it) and it gives me fuel to create better outcomes with my client. I am then much more likely to ask for more oranges as well – hey look at that! I don’t about you, but that sounds very convincing to me.

…Honey if you’re reading this, I’m probably going to want orange juice when we get groceries tomorrow.

What I’ve managed to do since my last post

I managed to complete the 9 tasks I set out for myself and outlined in my previous post. Combined with the coaching session I am feeling very motivated to trek on. On top of that though I’ve started looking into ways to store my weekly reflections about challenging moments in client sessions, so that I can reflect on them later. I also started using more specific, detailed, task-orientated questions when debriefing the SRS with clients. Examples of this can be found on page 163 of Better Results: Using Deliberate Practice to Improve Therapeutic Effectiveness” by Daryl Chow, Mark Hubble and Scott Miller.

Upcoming tasks for me will be:

1. Practicing the principles identified in coaching for when I debrief the SRS with clients.
2. Practice storing some session reflections in an app (I’ll try smaller reflections in the Worry Time app until I get my head around Obsidian).
3. I also need to set a regular weekly time for reflection on client sessions, probably a Friday morning.
4. Figure out how to best set up my webcam quickly at the start of each shift. I have overthought this and not in a workable way so far. I’ll start with using it in my morning shifts where I have more time to set up.
5. Letting myself have more time to in sessions if needed (10 minutes) to debrief the SRS with clients, whether that’s starting the discussion sooner or allowing myself to go into between session admin time sometimes. At least until I get the hang of it.

Analogies as a bridge between ourselves and our clients

One principle that was raised by Nathan in our first coaching session is to reinforce the rationale of the SRS to clients in order to increase the chance of them buying into it. A part of this was demonstrating how I introduce the SRS to clients, which is something along the lines of: “It’s about time for that session rating scale. I do this with clients because as I said at the start I am not perfect, so there will be times you feel like I am over here but you feel like things need to be over here, (gesturing with my hand), this tool and talking about it will then help us get on the same page”.

Nathan and I agreed that this was a solid intro so we moved onto roleplaying the rationale principle a few times in me breaking down a “approach and method” score with a client. Long story short I gradually refined what I was saying and felt more comfortable in not only explaining the rationale but also jumping into my questions exploring client’s SRS sub-scores.

However later I started to think about how I could take this further in resonating with clients. What resonates with clients? Analogies. I often think of them as a “bridge” between myself and clients. More than I can count there have been times where an analogy has not only been the difference in helping a client understand what I or they have said, but also in helping what was said resonate deeply, especially on an emotional level.

I then came up with an analogy that I believe will help me set up why the SRS is important, act as a springboard to dive deeper into their SRS sub-scores and then as something to call back to in future sessions. So my SRS spiel is looking more like this: “It’s about time for that session rating scale. I do this with clients because as I said at the start I am not perfect, so there will be times you feel like I am over here but you feel like things need to be over here. It might then feel like we’re on opposite sides of a river without a bridge between us. Unpacking how the session went for you this way will help us make sure that a bridge is building between us and make sure we’re on the same page”. Then in exploring for example, I could explore further by asking “what would have to happen more or less often for the score on approach and method go from a 6 to a 7?”. In later sessions I could use the bridge analogy for reflections with the client e.g. “how’s the bridge between us today? any cracks?”, “Anything that happened today that gave it more strength?” and when noticing SRS scores “so it looks like there’s a crack in our bridge when it comes to goals and topics”. Those are some examples that come to mind. It may not be perfect and it may change a lot, but I like where my head is at.

That story to me almost perfectly encapsulates why I have been motivated to get into DP in the first place. In that it helps me take my overthinking brain and convert it from being a shotgun, trying to hit everything, to a laser focusing all its energy on one point. So all that power goes into the one thing I am trying to improve. I then end up with a much stronger sense of empowerment – which sounds pretty worth it to me.

Till next time and as always – thanks for reading.

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