Personal Clinical Orientation
I wrote this reflection for my principles and practices class at the University of Rochester. The professor asked us to reflect on our personal experiences and describe how we think these will enable us to orient to a clinical path. I have included my personal orientation reflection below.
Mapping Personal Development to Clinical Orientation Reflection
Reasons For Entering the Counseling Field
Childhood trauma and abuse, followed by many of its consequences, such as addiction, defined the first half of my life. I was fortunate to be able to spend time, beginning approximately in my thirties, doing healing. My continued healing includes nine years of addiction recovery, over ten years of psychotherapy, five years of forty minutes of daily transcendental meditation, five years of autodidactic reading, over three hundred books and audiobooks, and about one thousand hours of continued volunteering hosting philosophy and psychology-based group workshops at my meetup.com book club.
A process unfolded gradually for me, also punctuated by specific events, culminating to the point where I believe I had a kind of psychic death. I realized my life was oriented the wrong way. I found an understanding of spirituality, including a voice within which I call my daemon, and I constructed a personal conception of god. I decided I needed to devote my life to connecting with others through healing relationships. I also vowed to only follow my daemon and no longer do things my inner voice says are not for me: be authentic at all costs, discard the fake, and pursue only the real.
Strengths and Improvements
My strengths are that I am incredibly authentic and nonjudgmental. I let go of many material needs in life, which allowed me to discard most pretense. I am also personally experienced with many of the darkest parts of human existence. I do not judge others in key domains; for example, I do not judge drug addicts, murderers, rapists, or pedophiles. Give me your worst people, and I will work with them. Learning to forgive and understand my father has given me the gift of being able to forgive and understand almost all people whom society would deem unforgivable.
My areas for improvement could be related to learning to listen better and learning more nuanced response methods. I identify, to a certain extent (since I do not like "identifications"), as being on the autism spectrum; this means I listen differently. I have historically been direct and somewhat blunt. I want to learn better listening techniques and new ways to respond to ensure my directness doesn't come across as rude.
Personal Experiences
As discussed, I have faced trauma and abuse. I have experienced neurodivergence and other mental illnesses, including anxiety and depression. I am sexually diverse, yet I do not identify as LGBTQ+ as I do not like identifications. I have had addictions of many kinds, including alcohol, drugs (stimulants and others), sex, body dysmorphia, exercise, work, food, and relationships. I have traveled to about forty countries and love immersing myself in and absorbing learning about other cultures. I have also taken my pain and pushed it into a business career, working at prestigious companies and starting tech businesses now valued at millions of dollars.
Specific Impact
I want to create authentic healing relationships and healing communities. I would also like to use my business and technology skills. Delivering personal and group counseling would be extremely rewarding for me. I also would enjoy opening a mental health facility or creating software and AI solutions for the mental health space. I have a special interest in group counseling from hosting group conversations at my book club. I may want to work with neurodiverse populations as I seem to be able to effortlessly develop a fantastic rapport with those on the Autism Spectrum or with ADHD. I may also want to work with prison populations as I feel I could be one of the few people who could nonjudgmentally work with a violent criminal.
Questions and Uncertainties
Being empathetic does not come naturally to me. I listen differently; I listen intuitively. I worry that I will not be like other therapists who, to me, seem very "touchy-feely" and overly sympathetic. I worry I will not fit in with the people in the field. I also notice there is sexism and racism towards people perceived as patriarchal straight white men in this field. I notice microaggressions such as considering the founders of the psychological field (and Western civilization), like Freud, as being objects of ridicule and criticism. From what I have read of Freud and the other "old white men," I deeply enjoy them, as with literature from very diverse sources. Even though I am not the "old white man" people think I am, these projections on me and the climate of bias in the field affect me.
I am also concerned about disclosure in therapy. I tend to be blunt and self-disclose. I worry that this could lead to client complaints and even revocation of my license. For example, I would probably answer honestly if a client asked me if I find them attractive. If I said yes, would they file an ethical complaint? If I said no, would they file an ethical complaint? These are the kinds of things that worry me. I see myself as a trailblazer by entering this field when I feel very different from the people currently in it, and I believe I will forge my path and open doors for a new community and type of counselor and a new kind of healing.
