Consultation
Getting your state license (good job!) is just the beginning. To become a competent psychotherapist, you need a life-long commitment to your own growth with the 3 following postures:
1. teachability.
If you are wanting to grow in the art of psychotherapy, you must come into this profession with a teachable spirit. We spend a lot of time with our patients in some pretty dark places laced with a lot of unknowns. So if you think you know the "solution" de facto somehow, or by reading it in a book somewhere, to be sure, without affectively experiencing something of their darkness and unknown with them, you will never be effective in helping people on their journey. As human beings, we need the presence of another who listens, engages, and becomes curious about our lives and experiences. No one is helped with any depth and long-lasting change through abstract techniques we suggest from a distance. I will therefore come alongside you and offer a safe space for you to practice and learn the art of not-knowing. You might be surprised by what is revealed and what you actually come to know.
2. a good therapist.
If your goal is to be a good therapist, you need to be or have been in your own longer-term therapy. The best thing about being in your own therapy is that you can become increasingly free of your fear of the encounter with the unknown-- whether it is yours or your patients. (Usually, it's a combination of both.) I believe wholeheartedly that if you have never been in your own depth therapy, you cannot be effective in facilitating transformation in another. Change, perhaps. But not transformation. You need to experience a taste (at least) of your own hard won transformation through a continual practice of exploring your own vulnerabilities with someone who knows how to navigate these places with incisive compassion and attentive wisdom. All told, I will not do regular consultation with you if you have never faced your own humanity in your own therapy.
3. a seasoned Mentor.
There is nothing like a safe space to grow and learn. And a good consultant/mentor knows how to create this kind of space for you, whether as an individual or in a group. I believe that you already know intuitively what is happening in a clinical situation. What I would offer is language and insight in helping you become aware of this, as well as possible theoretical frameworks which facilitate your conceptualizations in your practice. So basically, I aim to grow in you who you are as a therapist so that you can learn to trust your gut as it becomes more and more informed by sound clinical theory and practice.
