What I’ve realised over the last couple of weeks

It’s funny – I’ve realised that when I’m working on something new to improve as a therapist, my initial attempts of improvement start out with a lot of structure and detail, then after experimenting and feedback from others (e.g. my partner, Nathan, colleagues or clients) my process becomes much more refined. An example being my initial attempts with goal setting, I developed a document of goal-setting that I used to explore and create goals with clients, but I was losing client resonance in all the detail of the document. I’ve moved away from using the goal-setting document and all I do now draw out on an A4 piece of paper the goal-setting spiel I use. See below:

• Point A is the client’s current level of functioning/symptoms or ‘where they are now’
• Point B is the symptoms that the client would like to address or ‘symptom goals’
• Destination C is how the client will be different after therapy works or ‘life goals’

I will either write down the client’s responses at each Point B and C either in my case notes or on the drawn out piece of paper. This way I’m fair less likely to lose the connection with the client by moving through a document.

My biggest realisation however this post is that I seem to try get out of my over-explaining mode by… explanation. A perfect example was the previous plant analogy I came up with to use with my clients about me ‘over-watering the plant’ in sessions; taking the client through the analogy meant more explanation. I have been in this cycle of my over-explaining leading to more explaining. This can be infuriating because either I know I’ll be over-explaining but I’ll just keep going anyway or it crops up at times without me noticing. This realisation was thanks to support from my partner in helping me understand how this plays out in my life, new ways to notice it and to my latest DP coaching session with Nathan which just felt like realisation after realisation about how powerless I can feel to my over-explaining tendencies, how automated it has become and how it feeds itself.

What I’ve managed to do since my last post

Because my biggest realisation has been that I seem to try dig my way out of over-explaining… with more explanation; I came to the conclusion in my coaching session with Nathan that the only way to get on top of the over-explaining is to take my efforts out of the therapy room, as I have kept trying to fix it in the therapy room. Moving out of the therapy room has meant that I have started audio recording some of my sessions in the hopes of catching some over-explaining moments, to then tackle those moments in my DP coaching sessions with Nathan. It was decided that recordings would be the current best option, because my over-explaining is too idiosyncratic to simulate in a coaching session.

That’ll do pig, That’ll do

There is no phrase better than the final words in Babe to sum up the point of this post – which is my desire to believe that I have do enough; I do not need to keep doing more to be effective as a therapist and loved in my personal life. Realising that I need to take my efforts out of the therapy room has also meant an increased focus on letting things just be. Instead of trying to save my clients (or myself) from experiencing a challenging emotion while they are with me. Focusing on letting things just be means that I will no longer ask “is that accurate?” when noticing a reduced SRS score and only suggesting to a client that we do the SRS earlier next session or that they note down some feedback notes before the next session if I notice that our SRS feedback discussion was rushed. This is because the best way I can help myself is to focus on how I can do less – not more.

Go to previous or next post