What I’ve realised over the last couple of weeks

It’s been another couple busy of weeks in deliberate practice, or should I say, getting started in deliberate practice. I think I’m off to a good start, I’d say I’m not quite airborne yet, but I’m at the point of hovering off the ground. There’s something that has played in my mind this week. “Take Breaks”. I say this not only because this last week in particular has been full on, with another lockdown in Sydney, which for me, has meant being busier than usual to make sure my clients are set up for telehealth. There has been the good kind of busy, like setting up my partner’s half birthday (yes – it’s a thing). Then there’s the annoying busy, like having to call out two plumbers, four times, to fix our kitchen sink, which still isn’t fixed and yet my partner and I have spent more time than the plumbers combined trying to figure out the issue. My point is – it’s been busy. Life normally is. I think that’s a part of what can make the idea of deliberate practice so fear inducing, putting in all this effort to counter my brain’s desire to automate everything I do, when I’m already busy and where no can tell you exactly how to do it. That’s already daunting. That’s before the brain wants to start noticing EVERYTHING that could be wrong about how I do therapy; which only compounds that feeling daunted. Why am I doing this again? More on that later.

Deliberate practice for me can be a lot like that, all these challenges, thoughts and ideas get in to take me away from what I was originally focusing on, which this time was talking about taking breaks. Breaks are so important because the urge to keep pushing; getting work done, researching, thinking about what steps I could be taking next in deliberate practice, on top of all the things I need to do to be a functioning human being. That’s a recipe for burnout; and my brain will want to throw out the excess weight – “I’m looking at you deliberate practice ” – so slowing down and resting actually becomes even more important with all this busyness, not less. Resting not only helps me recharge so I have energy to keep going but it also helps my mind to slow down, which makes it easier for me to remind myself of a principle that I see as very important in trying to improve – which is to take it one step at a time.

What I’ve managed to do since my last post

That point on taking things one step at a time rings true when reflecting on what I have done since my last post. Which is me admitting that I hadn’t taken things one thing at a time, like in how I was talking about in my last post that I wanted to start building a system for ‘reflections’ about client sessions. I didn’t do that; didn’t even come that close. I did however continue to use the strategies I spoke about last post to increase the likelihood of gaining actionable feedback from clients and I did allow myself more time to discuss that feedback with clients. That was good because it has lead to some workable discussions with clients about how we can keep on the same page in sessions. I also started writing down their feedback on my session note (not verbatim) as a way of keeping a record. This was also with the idea that I would have a place to find their feedback for when I do reflect, but I think the deliberate reflection ideas need to be on pause for now.

I also managed to unhook from overthinking camera set up and placement for session filming. I even managed to film my first session! Though I also realised I was being a little too gung-ho in how I was introducing filming to clients, there was a plane analogy involved, it wasn’t great…

Though after getting some excellent feedback from the ICCE Facebook group, DP coach (Nathan), my partner and the directing psychologist from my work; I’ve decided to take it much slower and simpler in how I’m introducing filming, which will be to only a handful of clients at a time, with no analogies to explain why I offer the filming.

Confidence: not all it’s cracked up to be?

I had another major reflection about how deliberate practice has been going for me and how I found it particularly challenging this week.

It went something like this:

I’ve spent most of my training and early career not feeling confident (imposter syndrome? Maybe). I was so often out of my comfort zone and as a result what I now see as my “gaps as a therapist” would show up in sessions; which there are a few of but I see the the main one’s as my tendency to not only bring up too many concepts to a client, but to also start over-explaining those concepts. That never felt great, so I think as a result ‘confidence’ became a precious metal, like gold, that I needed to obtain to solve these problems and become therapeutically rich. I would then search for things that would pay out this gold, such as supervision, learning new techniques and modalities. I have spent my career scrounging for gold. But now this “Better results” book comes along and says that this gold won’t make me rich. How dare they! So initially while I wanted to deny this, I have since started to trade my gold into the DP system. As a result I have traded a lot of my confidence in how I do therapy, now out of my comfort zone – full of anxiety – my gaps as a therapist have at times been showing up in sessions, full force, to overcompensate. For example, in two sessions I found myself engaging in my therapy gap behaviours, I spent the majority of sessions talking and probably over explaining things. (Side note: Despite this though, SRS scores increased noticeably for these clients?). So now I am refusing to reinvest in confidence and instead want to trade in my confidence for empowerment, because while deliberate practice can be very annoying and hugely anxiety provoking; it does feel pretty great when it works. In short – I do not want confidence. I do not need confidence to connect with my clients or help them get better, but I can work on ways to help them tell me what they need to get better.

Till next time and as always – thanks for reading.

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