A crying shame
Therapy is not an academic discipline . It is a practical trade – a trade whose end product is an outcome rather than a commodity , but a trade nonetheless . Therapy is perhaps the most right-brain , intuitive human endeavour there is . So why do so many therapy schools treat it like a theoretical academic pursuit ? Why aren ' t they putting the necessary emphasis on learning by watching ? It ' s a crying shame , and it makes me worry for the future of the trade . I was lucky in that my training consisted of all kinds of knowledge acquisition – hearing about case studies , reading , but above all , watching therapy being applied . For that , there is no substitute . I despair every time a trained therapist comes to me lacking in confidence simply because their tutors did not demonstrate enough real therapy with real clients . Of course , therapists do need to learn step-by-step skills , the theory of how the mind processes emotion , and up-to-date research in the field of psychology . They do need to understand how beliefs are formed if they are to effectively challenge those beliefs when they become damaging . But when you are actually doing therapy , all that knowledge needs to fall to the back of your mind . To be effective as a therapist , you need to be able to act intuitively and spontaneously with your client . Just as you don ' t think about the alphabet when you ' re reading a page-turning thriller , nor should you think about theory when you ' re in the midst of practice . And speaking of books you ' d love to read ...
Writing the book you ' d love to read yourself They say you should write the book you ' d love to read . Years back , not long after I ' d qualified , I dug up a few dusty old VHS videos ( remember those ?) of therapy being applied with actual clients . Remembering how valuable observing therapy had been for me as a student , I watched them and watched them until they wore out ! And then I found myself with little opportunity to keep learning through watching .
When I turned to teaching , we demonstrated live therapy on our courses and provided a therapy video library for students to borrow from . But the videos would often get lost or damaged , and some students would have to wait weeks before they could finally watch the video they wanted .
Back in my early days as a therapist , I would have loved a resource that let me choose to watch therapy being done whenever and wherever I wanted – without having to find a video or wait until someone lent me one . To see and be inspired by real therapy for depression , overeating , trauma , low selfesteem , addiction – whatever the case may be – at the click of a finger ,