Recently, when I went down to my LGBT center, I had a brief one-on-one session with the program coordinator, briefly going over why I felt compelled to seek therapy. He ended up recommending a free program which is run by a local university, so the therapists are graduate students but who also have professional, licensed supervisors and [if I remember correctly] also teams who work with them on individual cases. Part of his recommendation came out of the fact that he himself is being trained through this program and he thinks it's actually more helpful due to the number of people who are working, overall to help each individual. Now, my only reservation is that, essentially, this is a teaching facility and quite frankly the idea of being a test subject feels somewhat dehumanizing to me [as if the stigma surrounding therapy patients wasn't bad enough.] Not so much my issues of depression, social anxiety and so forth but when it comes to discussing issues regarding my sexuality [which is still an important issue to me, regardless of any personal development thus far.] I was told that sessions, cannot remember if it would be all or just some, would be taped and occasionally they may be observed through a one-way mirror. For some reason, the idea of discussing this issue, for teaching and research purposes, makes me think I'm going to be regarded as an object rather than a person even though that's ridiculous since their purpose is to help people. Just wondering what others may have to say, whether my apprehension is unfounded and if anyone else has gotten therapy in such circumstances before?
How can others learn if they do not get to observe and take notes? I had a trainee at mine, its normal.
You're not really a test subject. The intern therapists working with you have plenty of training and experience in the classroom, and receive a lot of clinical supervision while they are working with you, so in many ways, it's more like having the input of two different therapists, something most people couldn't afford. The therapist I saw for the longest period of time (almost 4 years) was an intern therapist when I started working with her. She is, by far, the best of the three therapists I have seen. Both of the others had been in practice for 10+ years. While it might be a little bit unnerving at first, the idea that your sessions are being observed, remember that the observation isn't of you. Anyone observing is looking at how the therapist is interacting with you, what s/he is saying and how s/he is responding to statements you make or issues you bring up. If anyone's going to feel like an object of study, it would be the therapist rather than you Additionally, having known several people who have been clinician interns, they way they approach their clients while in supervision is no different than the way they'd otherwise approach them. There's literally no difference, other than the fact that they may be receiving additional guidance and support outside of the session. And, for that matter, any competent therapist *should* be seeing a senior therapist for supervision on an ongoing basis even after they're past their internship, as the role of the supervising therapist is to help the practicing therapist identify possible "blind spots" that could interfere with the therapy. So overall, it's actually a positive, not a negative.
Just want to mention I've no problem with them being a student/intern as to their abilities so much as the context of these, potential, sessions. That being said, I honestly hadn't considered the situation that way, about the focus being placed more upon the therapist than myself. It's still somewhat unnerving to think about, especially since I've no experience with this outside of any grade school counseling. Regardless, I want to contact them sometime in the next few days to get the ball rolling and hope that it's just the anticipation of all this, as with most things, which is fueling my anxiety.
