STUCK ON THE FENCE

After just one day at Newlands Park my emotions, thoughts and worries have done a complete 360. Although I am still feeling fairly anxious about this prac in terms of being able to understand what the true core issues of my clients are and being able to deliver therapy suitable to address those issues I am actually feeling quite positive and excited about it. I think the reason for this is because these clients are SO high functioning - proper relationships can be formed with them and therapy has the potential to be so effective and rewarding because these guys can actually work with you, set goals for themselves in terms of their therapy and visible results can be achieved and seen both by you and them. I just think if done properly therapy with these guys can do amazing things for them. We ran our first groups and it was so awesome to see for the first time what we had been taught in group work lectures. The individual roles of each group member beginning to develop, the group dynamics and the whole process of reflection on the task done during the group.

A problem I am experiencing however is establishing if what my clients are saying and telling me is because they think it’s what I want to hear or if it really is the ‘truth’. Being the person that I am I naturally just want to believe them and buy into what they are saying but because they are people who unfortunately typically have characteristics of being manipulative and untruthful and want to hide their past and make themselves sound like a changed person I have to stop myself from doing that. My one particular client has identified and told me the reason he abused alcohol and has a set plan to change it, and quite honestly it is all very logical and makes sense to me and without a second thought I would buy into it but how do I know if that really is the reason? Am I being naïve or am I actually just being too suspicious?

I previously spoke about how these clients would have such rich stories to tell and one of my client’s proves this to be very true. There is so much too him – so many experiences and parts to his story that it is actually quite difficult to “figure” him out even though he’s not really hiding any details. I think it’s going to be challenging for me to figure out what the core issue behind his drug abuse is.

So once again I am standing with mixed emotions. Some things I feel positively about and some things that are playing at the back of mind worrying me. BUT I am excited to get back there on Friday!