About this blog
I have set up this blog because I’m hoping it might fill a need that I have myself as a trainee: how do I put the really useful stuff I read and hear about CBT methods and techniques into messy, real-world practice? Lecturers, Supervisors and Textbooks (knowledgeable and confident authority figures who deserve a Capital Letter each) often present material as though they’ve forgotten what it’s like as a trainee to:
a) not know much to start with
b) forget what you thought you’d understood when you have to apply it in a real psychotherapy session
c) be trying to remember so many different bits that you hardly remember to breathe during the session.
Lecturers, Supervisors and Textbooks also make it all sound neat and tidy whereas of course, the real world of patients is full of co-morbidity, complexity and overlap. Not to mention patients who don’t do their homework, or keep changing their focus of therapeutic attention, usually whilst not nailing down any actual goals, SMART or otherwise.
This has often made me feel that although what the Lecturers, Supervisors and Textbooks say is technically right and helpful, it’s a bit ‘off-key’ for me at this stage in my journey. Of course, learning is an iterative not a linear process, in which we build our learning in layers. And sometimes, a particular way of saying something or thinking about it can resonate more than another way, not because the latter is wrong, but just because the former is more ‘in tune’ with the stage that my own thinking has developed to.
So I found myself asking if a blog written by a fellow trainee, who is still journeying herself, might fulfill a need for other too? I’m not so inexperienced that ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’, but I certainly don’t know most things that I do need to know. However I am at least transitioning from ‘I know what I don’t know’ to ‘Oh I see, that’s what the Lecturers, Supervisors and Textbooks are talking about!’ And the content might also be of help to Lecturers and Supervisors, so that during teaching/supervision, they are reminded of the kinds of issues that may be taxing the minds of their students.
Of course, these articles are nuggets, not attempts at making comprehensive sense of a whole topic. They should take around ten minutes to read and digest, perhaps over breakfast or a lunch break. Where I can signpost you to further resources, academic literature and the evidence base, I will endeavour to do so. And I may well refer to materials freely downloadable on popular and frequently used websites, because they are … accessible, free, pithy and frequently based on the literature. And to keep things simple, I will refer to clients rather than patients (not instinctive for a former GP!) and I will refer to clients as she (rather than he or a non-gendered pronoun).
So as I light my own pre-dawn path with my trusty lantern of learning, if the beam lights up the way for fellow travellers whilst we slog towards the sunlit uplands of BABCP accreditation and independent practice, I’d feel pleased and warm.
But that’s a goal that needs SMARTening up. So I shall re-frame it: my goal is to write articles that make you think ‘that was a resonantly articulated, ten minute nugget that has enhanced my learning. I intend to try some aspect of it out in my own practice.’
And to help me know if I’m achieving my goal, please feel free to rate the article from one to five stars (I’ll help you anchor that: one star means ‘a little bit helpful’ to five stars ‘that really hit the spot’).
Anita