Placement

Well, what can I say about placement? There is a whole mixture of emotions probably, at testing my skills out in a real counselling situation. I haven’t actually started counselling anyone yet though. My supervisor did an assessment on the client I will have in the future and from now on I will begin counselling her. Providing of course she makes another appointment.

I went into the placement on Friday expecting to slot in like I’ve been there ten years. That’s how I am – no room for mistakes or the fact that it was my first day. Must be perfect!! I felt very inadequate at times, yet the feedback I got was positive. I felt out of my depth and expected myself to know everything, for example writing up an assessment. And yet I’d never done that before.

But I am very aware of my thought processes are how out of kilter they are in comparison to reality. I am a student – they don’t expect me to know everything. I don’t feel sometimes that I am very articulate in my speech and find explaining things difficult at times. But I also know where that comes from and it is something I will work on. I don’t have a lot of inner trust because I wasn’t allowed to develop that as a child. I wasn’t allowed to make decisions and I rarely spoke up. I also wasn’t allowed to have opinions. So I know where I am coming from when I say I don’t have trust in myself or my thoughts.

The positive is that I have a very supportive supervisor and the people are all friendly. I am very eager to learn and everything is interesting to me. I also think I take the initiative quite well, although I may have to watch myself with that because I take independence too far sometimes. I think as I settle in I will gain in confidence. I am never good at going into new situations and it takes me a while to settle. I’m excited to be on placement, although it has been eclipsed by nerves and can’t wait to learn more from my supervisor and the other people at the agency.

Kazza