Overcoming life's challenges

This is the theme of the blog and indeed I have decided to make it the theme of my counselling practice.  Having qualified in July I have spent the summer thinking, what kind of therapist am I and what kind of therapist do I want to be. 

The process of qualifying as a therapist has been an exhilarating, cathartic and emotionally challenging one.  It requires you to really look at who you are and what are the things that motivates you. I have come out the other end feeling more myself than I have ever felt.

I have spent much of my professional life as a litigation employment lawyer, conducting often highly contentious legal proceedings on behalf of both individuals and organisations. During this process I noticed three things. The first was that I was much more interested in the people, why they did what they did, how they got themselves into this situation or why others had put them there, than in the law behind the situation.  I could write a lot about this (and perhaps one day I will).  Partly as a result of this then I became very good at calming nervous clients and witnesses and shepherding them through the process.

The second conclusion that I came to was that the process of litigation was toxic. Even if an individual won it very rarely gave them the closure and the outcome they were looking for.  They also often got less money than they were expecting.  They were already damaged by the events that took them there in the first place and most of the time they came away even more damaged by the process than they were in the first place.  In other words it rarely helped (the best outcome for an individual was an early settlement of good value – it mitigated this impact).

I felt I was part of a process, that while necessary and important, wasn’t helping the people involved on a fundamental level.  During this time I also met the manager of a mental health hospital.  We spent several weeks in a tribunal together.  She was and remains one of the most impressive people I have met and was a great inspiration. I remember thinking, I want to do what you do.

The third realisation was in what you might call my day to day work.  The part of the work I most enjoyed was mentoring and training junior lawyers.  Helping them learn and then seeing the part where it all suddenly clicks and they start to fly is a greatly rewarding and intoxicating feeling.  This sense of someone taking off is part of the reason I have chosen the cormorant taking off as my cover image.

Finally there were developments in my own life.  I had already decided to become a counsellor before this, but going through a divorce during lockdown, moving house, moving city, deciding to change career, all of this crystalised for me how much of an impact these events can have on people. How they change you.  How they reveal who you are.  How if you embrace this (as opposed to repressing it or rejecting it), they can lift you up to a higher level of yourself, but there are significant emotional challenges along the way. I was lucky enough to have a considerable support network to help me through these challenges which included some excellent therapists.  It seemed to me that both considering making these changes, or dealing with them if they happened was something I could help people with in the therapeutic process.

There is a saying in therapy that you get the clients you need.  I have been served up with a number of clients with precisely this dilemma.  Leaning into my own experience helped me help them. To help them get to a point where they can move on with their life in the way they want to, or at least come to terms with what they have lost. This then is the other meaning of the cormorant.  It also symbolises resurrection.

That is why, overcoming life’s challenges is the main theme of my therapeutic offering.  Of course I will help with other issues (and have clients for who this is not a feature). The solution is the same I think, using the events or experiences they are dealing with to become a more resilient, authentic version of themselves.  To see them fly.