There are only a few weeks left of the internship - a month and a half technically, but the agency wants us to stop seeing clients in the first week in June so we can finish our documentation and have it reviewed before it closes in mid-June. In light of this, I’ve started talking with my clients at the school about the number of sessions we have left.

Ending with a client (ie. termination - lovely word, is it not? Makes me feel all Ahnold.) is never easy, especially in an agency setting like this where termination is dictated by the terms of our internship rather than the client’s specific needs. Unlike in a private practice, we aren’t going to be able to remain available to our clients if they need us after we go. Once we end, we’re done. To further complicate matters, all of these clients are seeing us because they are working through grief and loss. While I don’t fool myself into thinking that losing me will be anywhere near as important as the loss which brought them to us in the first place, I know that at the very least I representated some stability.

Some of our clients are trying to bargain - asking us to stay for several more weeks, offering Monopoly money if we do. Some of our clients are looking for ways we can keep in touch - if we can’t come back next year, can we give out our email address? Can we exchange phone numbers? My first desire is to tell them yes. I wish I could keep in touch with them all, wish I could take them home, make everything all right. Fortunately I have a grasp on reality and stuff that urge. My second desire is to explain that the termination is not ‘my fault’. I want to make it all okay, but I can’t do that either. As our director said today, “No matter what you do, this is going to be a wound for your client.”

I hate that this is going to be true. I hate that I’m not going to be there for the clients when they go through hard times in the future. I hate that I’m not sure whether they’re even going to be able to get support again. Some of their parents weren’t supportive of therapy this time around and the school we’re at is going to be closing. I have no idea if the next school they’ll be at will offer therapy. I hate that I won’t be able to see how they grow and change.

None of us are having an easy time with this, though I’m pretty sure most (if not all of us) are breathing a sigh of relief because there are parts of the internship that have been difficult, annoying, frustrating, irritating and simply tiring. Those things I won’t miss. The clients - I will.

One of the difficult things for me is trying to deal with one of the Divas in my afternoon group. She’s got a very different idea of how a therapist and client interact than I do. Her boundaries are not quite so clear and as someone who’s psychodynamically trained, this makes me very nervous. She wants to take clients to outside groups, she wants to give her email address and keep up a correspondence. She seems to want to control what her clients do outside of the therapy room, instead of looking at the deeper issues and, for example, why they refuse to go to a group without her. Her approach seems more ‘mothering’ than I think is reasonable. I can understand differences of opinion, of therapy styles. But trying to get anyone in the group to disagree with her is like pulling teeth. During last week and this week I finally couldn’t keep my mouth shut and tried to disagree with her respectfully.

I was a bit worried that I’d gotten carried away, but my supervisor met me after the meeting and thanked me for offering my comments. I think she meant it seriously, and it was a relief to know that I’m not out in left field somewhere.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In other news, I’ve finally given in and scheduled a colonoscopy (eww) appointment. Sadly, getting off the anti-depressants didn’t do anything to cure the worms so my options are limited. I’m really nervous about this. In the past I’ve been blessed with pretty decent health. I get my share of passing illnesses, but nothing major. I was only in the hospital once before the worms hit and that was because of a car accident on Tom’s and my first cross-country trip. Now I’ve been for an ultrasound (interesting procedure, actually) and as of next Wednesday I’ll have had this thing too.

I shouldn’t be so worried. Many adults have gone through this procedure and have to do it fairly regularly. I’ll have anesthesia so there won’t be discomfort, but one of the side effects of the … cleansing… as well as anesthesia, is nausea. Truth be told, that’s the thing that scares me the most. I can’t wait until next Wednesday night - this will all be behind me. No pun intended.

Posted on April 27th, 2005 by Kat
Filed under: General