“She is strong but she is exhausted”


I know. What a way to start the first blog for third year psychosocial block. How am I already tired and it’s only been 4 weeks and 2 practical days? Let’s just say that this psychosocial practical block has brought back a lot of suppressed problems and insecurities form last semester’s physical prac, as well as come with its own new challenges that has caused some upset in my very fragile, easily unbalanced psyche.

 I lost a lot of self-confidence during the course of last semester’s physical practical. As you can imagine, after spending nearly 2 and a half years in a degree, to then be told you don’t have the skills to be an OT, can really have an enormous impact on your self-confidence. It makes you question all your decisions, your ability and worth as a student therapist, and in my case, contemplating a degree change because if I can’t help my clients, what am I doing here? But I made it, so I subconsciously swept all the difficulties and stress, the insecurities and doubts into a box and stashed it in the very back of my mind, never to be heard from again…. Or so I thought.


 Prac prep involved self-reflection in the form of creating time bound goals with comments from clinical performance and experiences from physical prac, and that little box I thought I was rid of, just exploded open. It was like someone had opened my own personal Pandoras box. All those things I tried so hard to bury, just came flooding back into the forefront of my mind, making me doubt myself once again. How do I make a time bound goal with something personal such as a lack of self-confidence? The process of rebuilding your confidence can take YEARS, never mind a few weeks. So, coming back from this experience has not been easy, and in all honesty, I don’t think I have fully recovered from it. As such, the preparation has been very emotional and quite challenging.

Fast forward to the night before the first prac day. Anxiety. Panic attack. Stress. Self -doubt. All of the above. Writing SMART aims has become a personal nightmare because I seem to confuse absolutely everything and where it should go, not being specific enough, not having the correct aim… and don’t even get me started on sub programmes. That is the equivalent to a horror story in my book.

Fast forward a bit more to the first morning of prac. Anxiety. Panic attack. Stress. Self-doubt. All of the above. Now I have to see new clients. Have sessions with them. Have my supervisor observe sessions. Try not to curl into a ball and start rocking back and forth from the absolute fear of failing again. And again. And again. As fate would have it, I receive a schizophrenic patient who I am battling to get through to. Cue more self-doubt and questioning my worth and ability as a therapist. This was particularly discouraging as even through the whole negative first semester, the one positive was always my therapeutic handling, client therapist relationship and establishing rapport, even with difficult clients.

So where does this leave me now? Contemplating whether or not to be honest in this blog that you are reading, or sugar coating these experiences with euphemisms and sarcasm which is how I generally go about my daily life. As you have likely deduced, I have decided to be honest, brutally so, about my feelings. It has been quite an ordeal to write this blog, as having typed it out, means having to stare these insecurities and fears right in the face. Not being able to shove them back into a box to deal with later, but rather letting them run rampant, is really daunting. But there is also a sense of freedom in acknowledging your difficulties on such a public platform. A way of purging the soul. And so while self-reflection comes with the downside of laying yourself bare and showing your weaknesses and negative thoughts, it also allows you to see your strengths and the positives.

I have been placed at a venue with a wonderful group of students. The group has provided a safe space to express difficulties experienced on prac, where solutions and ideas can be thrown around, where resources are shared and where everyone is supportive of one another. I was eased into the turmoil of psychosocial prac with a seminar in child and adolescent psychology which really helped get me back into a psychosocial frame of mind before seeing patients. I have been given a supervisor whose calm nature is a perfect balance to my anxious self and this really helps me to feel less anxious and stressed once I get to the venue. I do not feel pressured to control situations out of my control, such as not being able to access the patient files, but rather being told that that is just the way it works sometimes. I was able to see my supervisor run a group with 5 patients, showing how to include those patients who do not like to be included and how to be firm in expectations but still a part of the group. This helped with understanding the expectations when running a group and has made me feel a bit more confident about the group I am co therapist for on Monday.
I know that this journey is going to be challenging, and that my biggest obstacle is myself. I need to overcome these insecurities and fears and regain the self-confidence I know I have somewhere deep down. I have shown myself countless times that my resilience has been greater than anything thrown my way so far, and I am not about to let that change. As such, I think a title change might be necessary. “She is strong but she is exhausted” sounds very final. As if I have given up. As if I have been beaten. As if my exhaustion, mental, physical and emotional, has gotten the better of me.

Instead, I choose to hope. Saint Augustine said “hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are, and courage to know that they do not remain as they are.”

And as such, I choose to amend my previous title to:

“She is exhausted, but she is strong. And she will not falter in the pursuit of that which sets her soul on fire.”


References:


Download clipart - Thank you for using YA-webdesign. (2019). Retrieved 3 August 2019, from https://ya-webdesign.com/startdownload.html

The Art of Self Reflection: An Ultimate Key to a Happier and Successful Life. (2019). Retrieved 3 August 2019, from https://hackernoon.com/the-art-of-self-reflection-an-ultimate-key-to-a-happier-and-successful-life-3be602aadb1b

(2019). Retrieved 3 August 2019, from https://gifer.com/en/Q6hi

Mesothelioma Law Firm - LowGif. (2019). Retrieved from http://www.lowgif.com/abab2367-law-firm.html


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