Author Archives: Diane

Using Therapist Emotions to Understand the Client

I have been seeing a 35-year-old woman for about six months at my practicum site. I left the last session feeling at a loss about how to help her. She was sexually abused as a child, and I’m afraid I don’t have enough experience to be an effective therapist for her. How can I decide whether to refer her to a more experienced clinician or get more training myself?

It sounds like you had a strong emotional response to the recent session with this client that brought up questions for you about your effectiveness. Before making a decision to do something different in the treatment, I would suggest reflecting on your emotions as a way to understand the client in a deeper way. Your feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt may reveal something important about the client’s experience in relationships and her view of herself.

The first step I recommend is to take some time to identify your emotional response to the client more completely. In addition to your own reflection, you may find it helpful to talk about this with your supervisor, therapist, and colleagues. When we feel uncomfortable emotions during and after a session, it is tempting to ignore or avoid them and to take action to reduce our discomfort. Instead, take time to go more deeply into your emotions by identifying the thoughts, images, and physical sensations that accompany the emotion. If you have a mindfulness practice, use that practice to engage with your emotional experience without judgment.

After you have a more complete understanding of your emotional response in this recent session, review what you know about your client’s history, developmental trauma and losses including the sexual abuse, and her current relationship patterns. All of these experiences may be relevant to the emotion that has been stimulated in you. Think about the connections you can make between your emotions and the client’s experience. It is likely that your emotions mirror a painful experience from her past and present relationships. Ask yourself when your client has felt inadequate and ineffective with others. She may or may not have been able to talk directly about these feelings, so you may need to make inferences about feelings she has kept outside of her awareness and aren’t accessible verbally. Supervision is helpful in identifying links between your emotions and the client’s.

Last, identify ways you can respond therapeutically to your client in the face of your feelings of inadequacy. It will help to think about capacities she needs to develop or how she could manage her feelings of inadequacy with greater strength and confidence. An example might be for you to say “it may feel daunting to face the impact of your past but I think our work together can result in you developing different ways of handling the triggers when they arise” or “I wonder if you sometimes feel like giving up and it’s hard to believe things can get better.” If your client is directly questioning your capacity to help her, you can acknowledge her worry along with your commitment with a statement like “you may worry whether your difficulties are more than I can handle and I think that’s an important issue for us to talk about together.”

As you respond therapeutically to the client using your understanding of your emotions as a connection to her experience, you will notice changes in her way of relating to you and changes in your emotional response to her. She may begin talking more directly about her feelings of inadequacy, she may deepen her engagement with the therapy and the pain of her abuse, or you may notice that you’re feeling more sadness about the impact of her trauma rather than worry about helping her. All of these changes are indications that you have used your emotions to further the therapeutic process. If your questions about the effectiveness of the therapy continue, talk further with your supervisor about whether a different therapeutic approach or a referral to additional services would be indicated.

I hope you find this helpful in using your emotional responses to understand your clients. Please email me with comments, questions, or suggestions for future blog topics.

Assessing a Confusing Initial Presentation

I just had the first session with a 22-year-old client at my practicum site. She seems depressed, but there is also something different about her than my other depressed clients. I found it hard to connect with her, which is unusual for me, and she couldn’t really tell me anything about her history. She says her childhood was fine, but she doesn’t remember much until she was about 11. How can I figure out what is going on for her?

You have identified several factors in your client’s initial presentation that leave you feeling uncertain about your diagnosis and conceptualization of her difficulties. An important first step in understanding your client is to acknowledge the confusion you feel rather than rushing to a premature conclusion. It may take several sessions to begin to piece together a cohesive picture, but it is preferable to move slowly than to attempt to resolve your questions too quickly. I’ll outline some approaches I would recommend for the next 3-4 sessions to move toward understanding your client more fully.

It seems likely that this client will benefit from your direct expressions of empathy and understanding. This is the basis of all therapeutic relationships, but your experience that it was hard to connect with her suggests that she has more fear and expectation of harm or rejection than many of your other clients. This may be outside of her awareness, so she probably didn’t say anything directly to reflect fear or mistrust. However, pay particular attention to making reflective statements, summarizing what you understand, and validating her decision to seek help for her distress. This will create a therapeutic atmosphere in which she will gradually develop trust and will be more open in talking about herself.

Since you have identified differences between this client’s presentation and others who describe their problems in a similar way, I would also recommend asking clarifying questions in order to avoid making assumptions about the meaning of her statements. For example, when she says she is depressed, you could say “people experience depression differently—how does it affect you?” or “can you tell me more about what is happening with the depression?” Since aspects of her presentation indicate the possibility of early trauma, I would also recommend reviewing the diagnostic criteria for PTSD and dissociative disorders so you are familiar with symptoms that could be interpreted as depression but are actually the result of trauma. A way to begin to identify dissociation would be to ask something like “would you describe yourself as more sad or more numb?”

As your client feels more comfortable with you, she may begin disclosing unusual symptoms and experiences that go beyond depression. This is another reason to familiarize yourself with other diagnoses, including dissociative and psychotic disorders, that could present similarly to depression. You may want to ask direct questions about these symptoms in order to identify an accurate diagnosis, and it is best to do this in a straightforward, normalizing manner. Examples are “Some people find themselves hearing voices when no one is around. Does this ever happen for you?” or “Sometimes people feel detached from their surroundings or themselves, as though they’re looking at themselves from the outside. Have you ever had that experience?”

Last, I recommend continuing to be aware of your observations and emotional responses to this client. Since she seems to hold large parts of her experience outside of awareness, the nonverbal communication between the two of you will be central in your understanding of her. Including this information in your assessment will lead you to a more accurate diagnosis and case formulation. It is also likely that you will continue to have some questions for the next several months, so continue move slowly in reaching conclusions. Identify what things seem clear and what things are uncertain about her presentation, and hold the ongoing ambiguity.

I hope you find this helpful in assessing clients who have a confusing or puzzling presentation. Please email me with comments, questions, or suggestions for future blog topics.

Ending Therapy or Taking a Break

I am doing my practicum placement in a high school, and I plan to return there next year after a summer break. Several of my clients have said they want to see me again in the fall, so I’m wondering how to talk with them about taking a break and returning to therapy.

It is wise to think ahead about how to handle this situation. I would recommend thinking of the therapy as ending when the school year is over with the possibility of resuming when school begins in the fall. There are many factors outside of the control of you and your student clients that make the continuation of your relationship uncertain. For example, they may move, their presenting issues and symptoms may improve or worsen in a way that changes the decision about your work with them, or the school may set different priorities for which students can receive therapy. There are clinical benefits for clients to engage in a thoughtful process of termination, and they will miss those benefits if you assume continuation of therapy and it isn’t possible to do so.

I have previously published some general guidelines related to psychotherapy termination which may be helpful to reference (Psychotherapy Termination and Termination Tasks). There are some additional issues that are present when you may be resuming therapy in a few months. The first is the variation in your feelings of closeness and enjoyment with different clients. Talk with your supervisor about your countertransference feelings related to all of your student clients and your preference for seeing them next year or discontinuing permanently. It is important to examine these preferences and to discuss your plans to return to the placement next year in the same way with all of your clients. If you are more explicit with some clients than others about returning to therapy next year, you are probably expressing your countertransference, unless your statement is based on a clear clinical decision approved by your supervisor. Examining and understanding the countertransference is preferable.

A second issue is the likelihood of changes in the life of your clients over the summer, both logistically and psychologically. The client may feel differently about therapy in a few months, and issues in her life may change in a way that affects her decision. Your desire to focus on the continuation rather than termination of therapy may be a way of avoiding the potential loss of ending your therapeutic relationships and the realistic ambiguity about the coming school year. Maintaining a focus on the ending of the current therapy by reviewing the progress that has been made and acknowledging the importance of your relationship with each other provides more therapeutic benefit to your client.

Third, talk with your supervisor about recommendations you may make to your clients and their parents about ways to reinforce the gains they have made in therapy. Parents and teenagers often view summer as a time for vacation from therapy, especially when therapy has taken place at school. However, your clients may be participating in activities that provide opportunities to practice some of the coping skills they have acquired or to take on new social and emotional challenges.

I hope you find this helpful in managing psychotherapy termination when the circumstances are ambiguous. Please email me with comments, questions, or suggestions for future blog topics.

Holding Different Perspectives on a Clinical Situation

I’m working with a couple who report very different versions of their interactions with each other. I trust the wife’s report more than the husband’s, but I don’t know how to figure out what really goes on between them. How can I determine who is more accurate?

The dilemma you describe comes up frequently in working with couples, and it illustrates an important capacity that we need to develop as clinicians. It is natural to begin with a view that there is a right, true, or accurate version of a particular situation or interaction. However, you will learn with clinical experience that each person in an interaction experiences it in slightly different ways, and sometimes in dramatically different ways. This requires us to develop a capacity to hold different perspectives on the same interaction. I will begin my discussion with some suggestions about this issue in working with couples, then address how it also applies when working with clients who feel hurt, angry, or misunderstood by us and when working with colleagues or supervisors.

Couples who enter therapy often present with each member of the couple invested in his or her position, trying to enlist the support of the therapist to convince their partner that their position is correct or superior. The therapist’s countertransference response is often to feel compelled to take the role of a judge and developing a verdict on the conflict. However, with rare exceptions for situations related to physical safety, the couple’s conflict is due to differences between the individuals and their ability to communicate and listen to each other.

The first step in helping a couple in this situation is for you to understand the perspective of each individual in the couple and to hold their perspectives, even if widely divergent, as valid and important. Your capacity to hold multiple perspectives can help shift the focus of the couple from a quest to identify who is right to an appreciation for each individual’s unique emotions, needs, and motivations. For example, a couple may begin a session with the wife reporting an argument in which the husband yelled at her, and the husband reporting that he didn’t raise his voice but only asked his wife to move her car into the garage. You can help both clients feel heard and understood by pointing out that the wife felt criticized and bullied, even though her husband may not have intended to criticize her, and the husband felt ignored when his wife objected to his request.

The ability to be interested in different perspectives is more difficult to attain and express when you are one of the parties in the situation or interaction. When a client reports something you said that she felt was unempathetic or when a client reports feeling hurt or angry with you, it is natural to identify distortions in the client’s perspective and attempt to correct her point of view. You will learn that this is rarely if ever successful. You need to hold your point of view without defensiveness while encouraging the client to tell you more about her experience of the recent interaction between you. Similarly, when you talk about a mutual client with a colleague who views the client very differently than you or when you experience a conflict with your supervisor about the direction of treatment with your client, you need to be able to express your point of view while being open to and respectful of that of your colleague or supervisor.

You may wonder how to develop the capacity to hold multiple perspectives and how long it will take. Anything that helps you identify and reflect on your emotions and thoughts will facilitate this capacity, which is sometimes referred to as an observing ego or mindful self-awareness. Some helpful ways to work on this are to seek psychotherapy from a psychodynamic or other depth psychology orientation and to engage in meditation or other mindfulness practices. It is a capacity that is an area of continual personal growth, since different clinical situations will pose different challenges to our tendency to look for the one right or accurate view. You will find it easier over time, though, as you make it a priority in your professional growth.

I hope you find this discussion helpful in working with clients, colleagues, and supervisors. Please email me with comments, questions, or suggestions for future blog topics.

Resolving Problems in Supervision

I am having problems with my supervisor and am thinking about requesting a new supervisor. She seems impatient and critical of me, so I feel intimidated and that makes it hard for me to take in her feedback. When I tell her how I feel, she says she’s trying her best to help me learn. I don’t know how to make this better so maybe I should change to someone else.

This is a painful situation, since supervision is a crucial part of growing into the therapist role. It’s easy to feel hopeless and think that a change of supervisor is the only alternative. My experience has been that this kind of impasse can often be improved with thoughtful self-reflection and conversation, so I’ll first suggest some ways to examine the possible dynamics of this situation. Then, I’ll outline some recommended steps to approach the conversation that are likely to make it more clear whether your supervisory relationship can improve and contribute to your learning and growth.

My first comment is that engaging in self-reflection and finding ways to shift your feeling of intimidation to one of empowerment will contribute to your ability to handle other difficult clinical situations. You are likely to face interactions with clients, family members, or other professionals that contain some of the same features of this supervisory relationship. Since your supervisor’s job is to support your clinical growth, she is likely to be most responsive to your efforts so it is a good place for you to test out some new relational skills.

To begin your process of self-reflection, I encourage you to shift your attention from your supervisor’s comments to your own response. You mention feeling intimidated, so explore the thoughts, feelings, and images that are present in that sense of being intimidated. You may identify thoughts undermining your self-worth and competence, feelings of shame and inadequacy, and/or images of yourself as a child being chastised by a parent or other authority figure. As you identify your response on a deeper level, remember that these thoughts, feelings, and images are yours and are stimulated by your supervisor but are not the only response you might have. Although your supervisor is an authority figure, you are not a child dependent on a parent’s care and approval but an adult growing into a professional role. When your supervisor gives your feedback on your clinical work, it is not confirmation of incompetence but confirmation that you are in the early phase of learning a set of new skills.

It may be helpful to talk with other supportive people while you engage in this process of self-reflection, especially if your supervisory interactions stimulate unresolved issues from your early life. Talking with your therapist, academic mentors, or past clinical supervisors may be useful. It can be hard to recognize and challenge old patterns when your feelings are strong and painful. It may also be helpful to talk with peers and friends to gain support and encouragement; however, be careful to avoid presenting the situation in a way that will lead them to see the situation as hopeless and affirm your fear that it can’t get better.

After you made progress in understanding your response, challenging some of your underlying beliefs, and grounding yourself in your clinical role, it is time to return your attention to your interaction with your supervisor. Consider the possibility that simply shifting your response from one of intimidation to collaboration will change the dynamic in a positive way. I would suggest initiating a conversation about your supervisory relationship, acknowledging it has been difficult and sharing that you have examined your response and are attempting to shift some of the things that have interfered with your openness to her feedback. State in a positive way what you feel you have received from supervision and what you wish to gain from her expertise.

If supervision continues to be difficult after having a conversation like I describe above, the next step that may be helpful is to talk with the director of training or another clinical supervisor in the agency. Your agency may have a procedure in place for resolving supervision difficulties, which you should follow, but if not seek out someone who has some supervisory and/or administrative responsibility for the training program. A conversation with a third party may give you further insight into the difficulty you are facing and lead to a more fruitful conversation with your supervisor, or it may lead to a decision to schedule a meeting between you, your supervisor, and the third party to discuss the problems and attempt to reach resolution. A decision to change to a different supervisor is rarely necessary if you follow all of these recommended steps.

I hope you are able to use these suggestions in understanding difficulties you face in supervision. Please email me with comments, questions, or suggestions for future blog topics.

Clinical Issues Related to Money

My internship is in an agency that charges sliding scale fees. One of my clients hasn’t paid for the last two sessions, saying he forgot his check both times. I know he can afford it because he just came back from a big vacation to Hawaii. How can I bring this up with him and get him to pay on time?

This is a difficult clinical issue, and it’s a good experience to have during your training. If you plan to work in a private practice after licensure, you will find that the meaning and emotions associated with client payment and fees become more complicated when it represents your income and livelihood. Having this experience while you are in training and not dependent on the fees for income allows you to come to a better understanding of the issues involved for you as well as your clients.

I recommend that you approach the exploration of money and fees by reflecting first on the meaning and emotions that are present for you both personally and professionally. Often money is a way of expressing and experiencing value or validation, and it may be used as a tool to exert interpersonal power. Feelings related to self-worth are often associated with the exchange of money in a relationship. These may include entitlement, comfort, envy, shame, deprivation, and pride. Think about the role that money plays in your family relationships and the meaning of money in your cultural community. You may become aware of implicit messages like “it’s not polite to talk about money,” “you have to fight for everything you get,” “you’re only worth what people give you,” or “if you work hard enough you’ll get what you deserve.”

In addition to your personal and cultural history with money, your current status as a therapist in training includes complex relationships with money. You may have taken on significant student loan debt or received support from a partner or family member. You are probably working as a volunteer or receiving a small salary while you are accumulating hours toward licensure, and you may be working another job in or outside the mental health field to pay your expenses. All of these factors will contribute to the feelings that arise in you when your clients pay or don’t pay their assigned fees. These will become heightened when you are in a private practice and your client fees are a source of income.

Once you have become more clear about how money impacts you in your clinical work, you can move to reflecting on the meaning of money for your client. Some of the things to consider are his early family experiences related to money, value, and power; cultural messages related to money and gender, since there may be different expectations for men and women; the meaning it has for him to seek services at an agency that offers a sliding scale; and the emotions associated with his financial choices. Think about conversations and interactions you have had in setting his fee, in sessions when he brings payment and when he doesn’t, and when he tells you about purchases or expenses like his recent vacation.

Your understanding of how you and your client think and feel about money will help you begin to identify the relational and cross-cultural dynamics in this therapy relationship and specifically in his recent lack of payment. A few possibilities to consider are: your client feels shamed by requesting a sliding scale fee and manages his shame by withholding payment; you are reluctant to discuss money openly and have had difficulty setting an appropriate fee and clear expectations about payment; your client devalues his emotions and needs for nurturing leading him to forget payment for a service that involves both emotions and needs for nurturing; your client associates masculinity with interpersonal power and is attempting to balance the power differential. What is important in your examination is to consider the contribution that you and the client are each making to this current conflict which will help you identify what you need to do internally and interpersonally to address your client’s lack of payment.

It may be helpful to use some of the guidance in a prior blog post about client attendance to identify a therapeutic response to your client forgetting his payment. Attendance and payment are two therapeutic frame issues that are often avenues for clients to repeat problematic relational patterns, especially those they aren’t able to articulate directly.

I hope you are able to use these suggestions in understanding clinical issues related to money. Please email me with comments, questions, or suggestions for future blog topics.

Client Reactions to Therapist Absence

I took some time off for the holidays, and my clients seem to be reacting to this. A few have cancelled sessions, a few have arrived late when they’re usually on time, and one said he thinks it’s time to stop therapy even though there is clearly more to do. How can I bring up the possibility that they’re upset about my being away without making the therapy all about me?

I agree with your assessment that your clients are having reactions to your absence and that it’s desirable to encourage them to talk about their feelings instead of demonstrating them in action. I’ll share some ideas about ways you can initiate this discussion and some of the reasons that clients may be reluctant to acknowledge and talk about their feelings.

Before talking with your clients about their reactions to your absence, notice and work to understand your countertransference feelings about this. You may feel annoyed, afraid, or guilty, reflected in thoughts like “don’t they appreciate how hard I work?” or “what if I lose clients every time I’m gone?” or “I guess I shouldn’t take so much time off next year.” These countertransference feelings can interfere with your ability to talk with the clients about their feelings, so wait to do so until you have understood and gotten support to process your annoyance, fear, guilt, or other feelings.

Your clients will probably have difficulty acknowledging to themselves and to you that they were affected by your absence. Our society generally values independence and autonomy over connection and interdependency, and it is unusual and unfamiliar for a professional to acknowledge the impact of a break in the relationship. Other health care and social service providers generally don’t acknowledge that the client may be affected by the provider’s absence or lack of availability. In addition, some of your clients probably coped with difficulties in their families of origin by denying their need for reliability and consistency and by shutting off their awareness of feelings of dependency and accompanying anger when their relational needs weren’t met.

Despite your clients’ reluctance and lack of practice, there are ways you can introduce the topic that will make it easier for them to engage in exploring their reactions to your time away. First, notice for yourself how the client’s behavior is different and mention this with an attitude of curiosity. For example, you might say “I notice that you were late for both of our sessions since I returned from my holiday break. That’s unusual for you, and I wonder if it might be related to the fact I was gone for a couple weeks.” This opening statement doesn’t make any judgment or assumption but simply tracks the change in behavior following your absence.

Second, it may help to make a statement that normalizes the fact that clients are affected by a break in the flow of therapy and that these emotions can be at odds with their rational or intellectual understanding of the reasons for the break. A sample statement would be “Many clients find they have feelings about missing a week or two of therapy, even though they understand the reason for my being away. Could that be the case for you?” With a client who is especially reluctant to look at her feelings about the therapy relationship, you might also talk about why this could be important to look at in light of her presenting issue or the focus of treatment. An example is “It may seem odd for me to ask about your feelings related to my being away for two weeks, but we’ve been talking about how you feel when your husband is on a business trip. It might help us understand that better if we also look at your feelings when I’m away.” This gives the client an explanation for why you think it is important to explore this and how it could help her in the area of concern to her. In some cases, it can be helpful to make a statement about the early experiences and coping strategies that interfere with acknowledging the impact of your absence by saying something like “We’ve been discussing how hard it was for you to come home to an empty house when both of your parents were working, and some of those feelings may have returned when I was away. You’ve worked hard to not let yourself know how painful that was, and it may be hard to recognize how you felt while I was gone.”

Last, let the client know that you’ll continue to notice and bring up the question of her feelings when you are away in the future. Sometimes the repetition over time helps the client to develop more awareness of the underlying emotions that aren’t accessible in your initial discussion.

I hope you are able to use these suggestions when working with client reactions to your absences. Please email me with comments, questions, or suggestions for future blog topics.

Client Attendance

I’ve been seeing a client for three months, but she has only come to 7 sessions. Sometimes she calls to cancel, but often she just doesn’t show up. I don’t know whether I should stop seeing her or if there is another way to help her understand the importance of coming in regularly.

This is a common dilemma, especially for clinicians in training or agency settings. It is difficult to make therapeutic progress when clients miss one or more sessions each month, and it is often challenging to engage the client in examining the reasons for irregular attendance. I will describe two approaches to this issue, and you may find either or both of these approaches helpful with this client and similar situations.

The first approach involves having a standard policy regarding attendance, setting a limit on the number of missed appointments or late cancellations. Your agency may have such a policy or you may develop one if you are working in a private practice setting. This policy should be part of your informed consent process, and I recommend that you remind the client about this each time she misses an appointment without notice or with late notice. A common standard is to allow three missed appointments or late cancellations (usually less than 24 hours’ notice) in a four month period before ending treatment. You may decide to make exceptions for illness or unavoidable emergencies, but be sure to discuss this with the client and let her know the reason for making an exception. The purpose of this type of policy is to insure that there is discussion about the issue of attendance and that the client is able to make progress on the issues she wants to address.

The second approach, which can be used instead of or in addition to an attendance policy, is to handle the client’s sporadic attendance as a clinical issue. The basis for this approach is an assumption that the client is repeating a traumatic or maladaptive interpersonal relationship and that you can provide the client with a different experience that will have a therapeutic outcome. I will outline a three step process for making such a clinical decision.

The first step in understanding the meaning of the client’s missed sessions is to reflect on her developmental history, especially regarding attachment and loss, and her descriptions of current relationships with intimate partners. Identify one or two themes that are present in these early and recent relationships. One common theme is an unpredictable attachment figure which leaves the client with feelings of longing and inadequacy. Another is an intrusive or abusive attachment figure leading the client to sacrifice safety to meet her need for connection. Think about the implications of these interpersonal experiences for the client’s view of herself and expectations of others.

The second step is to examine your countertransference and identify the interpersonal experience that the client is repeating with you. Be honest and thorough in reflecting on all of the thoughts, emotions, and images that are present when you wait for your client or when you pick up a message cancelling a few hours before the appointment. Notice any attributions you make about the reasons for the client missing the appointment and about the value of the therapy or your value as the therapist. Think about parallels between your thoughts and emotions and the client’s interpersonal themes. The client may be placing you in the position of the attachment figure or in the more vulnerable position she was in as a child.

Once you have identified the relevant experience and the roles being enacted by you and the client, you are ready to decide on a response that will allow the client to experience this interaction differently. This third and final step usually begins with shifting your countertransference state so that you are in touch with your therapeutic intentions and skills. You can then talk with the client in a different way than is possible when you are in the grip of the client’s enactment. In the best of circumstances, your response allows the client to become more engaged in the therapy whether or not she gains insight into the nature of the repetition. At other times, the client continues her side of the repetition, and you will need to decide whether to introduce limits as discussed above. Even in these situations, however, there is an opportunity for your learning and you can end the therapy, if necessary, knowing that you provided every opportunity for a therapeutic outcome.

I hope you are able to use these suggestions when working with clients whose attendance is irregular. Please email me with comments, questions, or suggestions for future blog topics.

Applying for Internship Training

I plan to apply for internship training in a few months, and I want to work with children and families. How can I make myself a competitive candidate when my clinical experience so far has been with adults?

Your question highlights a common dilemma that isn’t limited to clinical work; i.e., how does one gain experience when the positions require prior experience? You are wise to plan for this ahead of time, and there are several strategies that will increase the likelihood of you being accepted into a training position that will give you the experience you want. Typically, there are two steps in being accepted for a training position. The first is to be invited for an interview, and the second is to be offered a position. Therefore, it makes sense to think of your strategies in two steps as well.

Your written application will determine the decision of the training agency to invite you for an interview, so let’s look at that step first. You are more likely to be invited for an interview if you submit written materials that follow the format and structure requested by the agency and are professional in appearance and language. Prepare your materials in advance of the deadline so you have time to proofread them. It is preferable to have someone else also look over them for obvious errors. If you submit materials electronically, by email attachment, be sure they are in a commonly used document type (PDF or Word document) without complicated formatting.

Familiarize yourself with the agency, and mention in your cover letter the aspects of the agency that are particularly attractive to you. You can research an agency by looking at their website, talking with other students in your program who have done training there, attending an open house if possible, and asking supervisors and professors what they know. Be careful to not make assumptions, though. I have received applications that incorrectly assumed the agency used a specific modality of treatment or served a particular client population, based only on its name.

Regarding the content of your written application, I would recommend that you both acknowledge your lack of clinical experience with children and families and highlight other relevant experience. For example, you might have done child care, teaching, camp counseling, or volunteer work. In your cover letter, explain how the work you did gave you valuable knowledge about the challenges faced by children and families and how you want to expand that knowledge by working clinically. You would be wise to take on a volunteer commitment now, even if only 5-10 hours per week, that would demonstrate your commitment to improving your skills. Also consider applying to agencies that see individual adult clients as well as children and families, so that your prior experience will be more relevant to the agency population.

If you are successful in step one, you will be invited to interview with one or more staff members. Think about the interview process at your prior placements, and be prepared to answer typical questions about your interest in the agency, your preferred theoretical orientation, your self-assessment of strengths and challenges, and your future career goals. It is also wise to prepare a short case vignette that illustrates a challenging situation that you managed successfully.

Plan your answers to interview questions about your lack of child and family experience carefully. In addition to the suggestions above which apply to an interview as well as a cover letter, consider ways in which your clinical experience with adults will transfer to child and family work. For example, you may have worked with parents and developed empathy for the difficulty of raising children when living with a history of trauma and psychosocial stress, you may have had worked with young adults facing many of the developmental issues of adolescence, or you may become aware of the impact of family relationships in your contact with the family members of adult clients living with serious mental illness. Also highlight the skills you have acquired that will transfer to child and family work such as diagnosis and assessment, case formulation, treatment planning, or the use of trauma or substance abuse treatment models. Be realistic in acknowledging how much you have to learn while describing the knowledge and skill you have attained thus far.

After your interview, solicit feedback from the interviewers if you aren’t accepted into the agency training program. Ask if they have suggestions on how you could improve your presentation or performance in the interview. This might give you valuable information about how to be a more competitive candidate for future positions.

I hope you find these suggestions helpful in applying for internship training. Please email me with comments, questions or suggestions for future blog topics.

Clinical Issues at Holiday Times

The holidays are coming up soon, and I am thinking about how to prepare my clients for the issues that are likely to come up. This is my first year in a practicum placement, so I also wonder how much to be available to see my clients during the holiday season.

The time between mid-November and early January is a difficult time for many of our clients. Family gatherings can trigger painful memories and can give rise to conflict over past or present disagreements. Those who choose not to spend time with family or who are estranged from family may feel a heightened sense of isolation during this season if they don’t have relationships with a partner and friends.

In approaching the topic of the holiday season with your clients, I recommend that you adopt an attitude of curiosity and interest, free of assumption and agenda. You have probably worked with some clients for a few months and with others for only a few weeks. They will vary in their sense of trust and engagement with you and in their readiness to plan for upcoming events and gatherings. You can bring up the topic with a general statement like “the holiday season is challenging for many people and I wonder if you’d like to talk here about some ways to take care of yourself during this time.” This leaves an opening for the client to focus on the aspect of the season that is most challenging or to let you know that it isn’t a priority.

Some of the issues your clients may want to discuss are family gatherings, other social events, financial pressure, and managing stress. Remember that your role is to support and collaborate with your client rather than to attempt to fix the dilemma. Find out what specific difficulties have arisen in the past and ask how she would like to handle a similar situation in this holiday season. It is usually better to apply skills the client uses in other situations or to make small adjustments in the familiar pattern rather than taking on a major change. For example, if she has used a mindfulness exercise in other stressful situations, suggest trying that before or after a tense shopping trip. If the client reports that the family gathering becomes heated and conflictual after a couple hours, ask if he could plan to leave after two hours before things escalate.

Regarding the question of being available to see your clients, reflect first on your needs for self care during the holiday season. Our personal lives contain the potential for family conflict, painful memories, and feelings of loneliness as do our clients’ lives. Be sure to make your decisions about taking time off from client work in a way that includes meeting your needs. Consider the possibility that some of your clients will miss their scheduled appointments and that you will feel particularly frustrated or resentful if you defer your needs for time off and the clients don’t come in.

Once you have decided on your schedule for the holiday season, let your clients know when you will be out of the office and confirm the dates you are available for scheduled appointments. Some clients don’t think in advance about the impact of changes in work schedules and children’s school schedules on their ability to keep an appointment, so it may help to reduce the number of late cancellations you have if you go through the calendar with them. Provide your clients with information about emergency coverage during your absence, and develop a safety plan with those who are at risk or who anticipate particular difficulty at this time of year.

I hope you are able to use these recommendations for your clients and yourself in the holiday season. Please email me with comments, questions or suggestions for future blog topics.

Diane A Suffridge, Ph.D

Consultant, training and author in behavioral health.