After four years of training, prior to my journey at Somerset Counselling Centre beginning, I felt rather confident in my theoretical knowledge, and my ability to channel this knowledge into practice. With a somewhat natural aptitude for some of the core skills involved in counselling; listening, empathy, self-awareness, and curiosity, along with further development of these skills and many others during my time training at my place of education, I felt more than ready to get in the room and meet my first client. I felt anxious, of course, ‘but surely the client too will feel anxious’, I told myself.
Perhaps you can imagine then, my surprise when the first client didn’t sit before me shy, anxious or in a timid state, but instead brought with them an anger and rage that, within 10 minutes of the session beginning, shattered the confident relaxed persona crafted to get me over the threshold and into the room, and left me feeling like 8-year-old George, being disciplined by an adult. The theoretical knowledge now, instead of a tool to supplement my counselling skills, I held up like a shield so that I could back into a corner safely, whilst keeping the client busy with questions like ‘and how did that make you feel?’, ‘What’s going on for you right now?’ or trying to dazzle the client with explanations of the unconscious or how ‘transference’ works. Trying to prove to the client, and myself, that I knew what I was doing and that I could do the work, whilst the part of me that was actually capable of ‘doing the work’ was quietly retreating to the corner of the room. At the very end of the session, the client had remarked on how they were a little sceptical that I would be the right choice, given my age, but that I seemed to know what I was talking about and so they felt comforted by this.
I describe this session twenty months later, with a much greater understanding and awareness of my self, and of what it really means to be a counsellor. Perhaps the most interesting thing, I think, about this experience was how I felt afterwards. I felt relief, both that I had survived and that my defence had seemingly worked and managed to demonstrate to the client that I was indeed capable of doing the job that they had wanted of me. So why then did I not feel satisfied with how the session had gone? Why was the confidence I had before the session struggling to return and why had been replaced with the sense of being an imposter to this profession that I had trained so hard for? This thing that I had been so set on doing and so excited for, that had felt like my ‘calling’ in life, was suddenly changing shape before my very eyes and it felt scary.
After my first session, I got up, left my room, and went to sit in the ‘Counsellors Room’ in SCC, (a place that has rapidly grown into one of my favourite places to be) and I spoke to some of my fellow counsellors at the centre, still holding this feeling of being an imposter. It wasn’t long however until that feeling was eased, I wasn’t treated as an imposter or a student, but as an equal. We had conversations about how we had felt during our sessions, I was asked my opinion on things to do with the work and I very quickly felt like a part of a team. I had always thought of counselling as being a solitary and perhaps sometimes lonely profession, in the sense that there is no ‘necessary’ interaction with other counsellors, except for your supervisor. However, this is one of many ways in which I feel SCC shines. Having a place to be between sessions, with other counsellors. Whether to talk deeply about things going on in the world, in our own lives, or just to sit silently in reflection with one another, this experience is invaluable.
Every two weeks since I began my work as a counsellor at SCC I have attended supervision. A space of reflection and both professional and personal development with an experienced counsellor and, in my case, alongside another student counsellor. I attended every session, bringing my clients and some of the challenges I was facing with them and I found this extremely useful in finding a direction to take with them and in revealing things that I may have missed them trying to communicate in sessions. My confidence however was still faltering as I was finding myself more and more retreating to the corner of the room during my sessions with clients. I would get asked my opinion or commended for my insight during supervision which would provide small doses of confidence however, it wasn’t until I started to bring my ‘self’ into supervision that I was truly able to start finding my confidence.
The more confident I grew in utilising my supervision to understand what was going on inside of me, during my time with clients, the more confident I became in peeling my psyche off of the wallpaper and back into the seat, so I could meet the client’s needs, not just with counselling skills or interventions, but with my whole being. I found myself beginning to be able to challenge my client’s defences, ask questions I felt previously uncomfortable asking and hold their emotions I had previously been afraid of, such as anger. The more I did this, the stronger my relationship with my clients seemed to grow. The more I ‘showed up’ for the sessions, the more parts of them seemed to show up too.
One of the most important factors in this journey so far has been the place where I have chosen to work. The community and supervision described above, along with additional training and the support of the administration staff have created a warm, welcoming environment that has nurtured the young therapist in me and allowed me to grow my confidence whilst gently challenging me to push myself further, to find my strengths and limitations and to expand my capacity to hold clients.
The journey of a counsellor is an endless one, and as well-trained as I had felt before I began practising, nothing could prepare me fully for the journey between taking myself out of the corner of the room and into the chair to meet the client. But it is a challenge I have welcomed and one that I do not regret, for my time in counselling is one of the most meaningful and privileged experiences that I have ever had, and my passion for the work is ever-growing.
By George Baker
