Life is a therapist...

Despite my greatest intentions, my motivation is running a little low these days and I've struggled to come up with new and interesting topics to write about. So I want to ask you: What interests you? What do you want to learn more about? What do you want to know my thoughts or perspectives on? Comment here with your ideas and I'll use them as starting points for future blog posts. Perhaps this will be the spark my creativity needs to get pumping again :)

I often struggle with how to end sessions with my clients, particularly following a difficult or distressing session. More than once it has happened where a flood of emotion is experienced just as our time is about to come to an end; most recently one of my clients came to the realization that her experiences growing up with an alcoholic father and overbearing mother were affecting her own relationships with men. She sat quietly for 45 minutes, answering my questions and relating painful memories, but it was only as we were wrapping up our hour that she became tearful, relating how she had never before put the puzzle pieces together in quite the way that we just had. We discussed how we could work through some of these issues more fully in future sessions and my client was very amenable to this, but I couldn't help but feel guilty for leaving her with this "unfinished" business. I have noticed that I feel this way at the end of many sessions, and end up feeling obligate...

In my Internet travels this afternoon, I discovered this very interesting and thought-provoking article originally published in the Washington Post. I have decided to register for a certification training course in "Cybercounselling" -- that is, the online delivery of psychological services -- which I plan to post more about as soon as I find a few extra spare minutes in my day, but in the mean time I thought I would post this article for your perusal.  Google and Facebook raise new issues for therapists and their clients   By Dana Scarton Special to The Washington Post Tuesday, March 30, 2010; HE01  Link to original: Click Here   As his patient lay unconscious in an emergency room from an overdose of sedatives, psychiatrist Damir Huremovic was faced with a moral dilemma: A friend of the patient had forwarded to Huremovic a suicidal e-mail from the patient that included a link to a Web site and blog he wrote. Should Huremovic go online and check it out,...

Ov er the weekend I stumbled onto a blog that seems to be exactly what I've been searching for in terms of practical ideas for counselling rather than just overviews of various theories and methodologies. It is the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA)'s Counselling Connect , the "new blog where you will find stories, perspectives and ideas about the profession of counselling and psychotherapy in Canada."  So far I love it, and I hope you will too! I've already been inspired by new ideas for my own practice as well as information on continuing education and certification courses that are available to me. The tags are very helpful in bringing you to the specific posts that will be of most interest/relevance to you. My only real disappointment is that, so far, there doesn't seem to be very much in the way of commenting or discussions. I am hesitant to leave many comments of my own as a result -- cue memories of being back in the classroom ...

There was a young woman I saw several times at the correctional facility I work at. Several sessions into our work together, we began discussing her past in the context of more recent grief issues that had come up for her. As we talked, it became clear that she was holding in a lot of anger, resentment, and pain from past traumatic experiences and that she had buried her emotions so deeply that she had, in essence, forgotten how to "feel" them. She would talk about the experiences and losses with about as much emotion as she might talk about what she ate for dinner yesterday. There appeared to be a complete disconnect. I thought about asking my client to start a journal to begin the process of reconnection, thinking that free-flow writing might begin to awaken and evoke those emotions, and help her to identify her feelings. I had seen these results in other clients who have used journaling as an effective therapeutic tool. However, my client's reading and writing skills...