review

My female owner enjoyed her second placement at the private school tremendously. She had her end-placement review last week and her clinical supervisor played the role of a mirror, helping her to reflect objectively and accurately, her qualities as a therapist.

For a long time, my female owner had looked at the qualities she appreciated in her numerous helping friends and wished she had those qualities as well. She realised now that she had those strengths she yearned for and it was more of a matter of being confident in her abilities. Some aspects of therapy came naturally for my female owner that she had dismissed it as things that anyone could do. Her supervisor ended up saying that she hopes that my female owner would begin to realise what she knows. Even something which my female owner felt was a weakness, her tendency to self-reflect, her supervisor wrote it down as one of her unique strengths and something to keep doing, as part of her professional development.

Sometimes, it felt for my female owner, as if she was going though therapy herself. Those weekly sessions of CBT, changing her perfectionist thinking (which her supervisor said it was stronger than other students she had met) and addressing her low sense of self-competency. At the end of “therapy”, my female owner was able to let go of some of her unrelenting high standards (as Young would put it) and make them more adaptable for herself. In fact, her supervisor was glad that my female owner was taking time to explore Queensland and not be too stuck with work. Obviously she also grew in her sense of competency as a therapist.