!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
By the end of my first clinical year at Beth Israel, I felt I’d mastered the basics of therapy. I no longer dreaded meeting a client for the first time, armed as I was with the tools Dr. Theobald had given me. Whatever self-doubts lay within, on the surface I projected confidence, assurance, and unforced interest. As with every academic challenge I’d faced, I read voluminously, took endless notes in my tiny handwriting, and followed the rules I learned without deviation. I fell asleep thinking of how to direct someone else’s thinking and emotions simply by the questions I asked.
“Sarah, you may be the quickest, brightest doctoral student I’ve supervised.” Dr. Theobald paused, smiling. He went on, “You display all the outward signs of caring and concern, the body language, facial expressions, the words…”
I tensed up, knowing he’d found my biggest fear, that it was all a fraud, done by rote. I stammered, “It’s…it’s…so much to remember…I know, I know, it feels like I’m following some rules, not the client’s stories.”
“That’s interesting to hear. What I see, or, more precisely, don’t see, is a spark of real connection. You might as well be exchanging letters with your client, inserting emotional adverbs every now and then to indicate your feelings.”
I sighed. “I do feel, I feel I want to help them.”
“Hmm…” he said. “You’ve spent the last three years in research labs, studying isolated behavior, narrowing your focus to specific experimental questions. Have you thought about that, research, as your career?”
His words stung me like an electrical shock.
“Look. You’re almost always the smartest, quickest person in any room. But your clients aren’t coming to you for your intelligence; they expect that of you, that’s not what will impress them about you, make you special for them. For them, you’re not a scientist, a researcher. You are first and foremost another person, who shares the trauma and the drama of simply being human. Without that connection, all your knowledge can’t begin to help them.”
I realised at that moment it was helping people, directly, face-to-face, that had drawn me to psychology. I’d always known that, but never seen it defined so starkly before. “I’ve never thought of myself as a dispassionate researcher. I’m always getting emotionally involved with our subjects,” I said.
“You have to make your clients believe that, your deep and complete sincerity, even if it seems artificial to you.”
I frowned and shook my head. “I don’t know what more I can do.”
He looked towards the ceiling, resting his left elbow on the arm of his chair, chin cradled in his hand, index fingers pressed to pursed lips. Finally, he offered, “What I do, is slow things down. Usually, I know what I want to say, to ask, right away. But when I sense the client has broached an emotional whirlpool, I force myself to pause, and name what I’m sensing to myself. Let her know, by that brief silence, that I’m affected by what she said.”
I nodded. I felt my lower lip quiver, in fear and self-recognition.
“Sarah, you have never failed in anything you’ve put your mind to. You already have that capacity for connection within you, it’s been bred by every friendship, every one you’ve ever loved. Start there, use those familiar emotional touchstones to be your home base, and you won’t fail here.”
A few weeks later, I met with Dr. Klein, ostensibly to review my initial dissertation proposal. I had something else on my mind.
“Julia, how did you know you wanted to work with kids?”
“It came naturally,” she said. “Never really thought about it, I guess. Why, are you having second thoughts about your topic?”
“No, no, it’s not that. It’s…I’ve been thinking, about whether I should go into children’s therapy.”
“You’ve always said how much you love kids, how they filled your heart.”
“Right, my heart, not my head,” I countered. Her raised eyebrows drove me on. “I think…I think I love kids, little kids, even teen-agers, too much to see them when they’re hurting. I don’t know if I could be a child’s therapist. The emotion, dealing with their problems, the damage that can be done, I can’t think clearly with them, about them.”
“Are you saying your want to change your thesis topic, the one we’ve been talking about?”
“No, I want to press on with that, looking at teen-age moms and how they interact with their newborns, their infants. I can handle that, as long as it’s cloaked in research, and I’m not expected to solve their problems. I always want to have kids around me, I know that. But – and maybe this is selfish – I want them to be healthy, I don’t want to be responsible for fixing the world for them. Just be with them, feel their laughter, their promise.”
“That’s good, Sarah, I’m glad to hear that.”
“You think it’s the right decision, for me to be an adult therapist, I mean?” I asked
“It doesn’t matter what I think. What’s important is that you think it’s the right decision. You’re the only one who can, who should, say what’s right for you.”
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