Reflecting on my internship experience

Reflecting on my internship experience

Reflecting on my internship experience, I have learned about what it takes to become a psychotherapist and about myself generally. During my intern, I had the privilege to work with a variety of patient populations and observe the psychotherapist. I can honestly say that throughout this journey, I have grown so much. My internship experience has consisted of its various challenges, excitement as my strengths and failures have become more evident. I realized I have a lot to learn. Before my internship, I was apprehensive about dealing with patients, unconfident in my communication skills, and uncertain about applying my educational skills both in a professional setting and a real-life setting. However, interning at the holistic health clinic has shown me that I am capable of all these things.

Being a full-time intern at the holistic health clinic was very eye-opening. Every day I was given tasks, responsibilities, and freedom, which greatly aided in my continuous learning and growing experience. My duties included: helping with advertising campaigns, assisting therapists with patients occasionally during treatment, collecting data for a study the hospital is running, setup and cleaning, and looking at a patient’s case study. As time went by, my connection with staff and different patients grew, I gradually found myself looking forward to my interning days at the holistic health clinic every time during the week. The staff were so helpful and didn’t resist helping me in whichever way I needed. It was a great experience

Psych synthesis holistic counseling is a form of holistic therapy that grounds from the idea that all living things naturally strive to become their full realization, and the most appropriate way to grow is to consciously cooperate with natural tendency. People are capable of understanding and coping with this process through meditation, therapy, self-reflection and various methods that one may easily prefer. The term psych synthesis came from an Italian psychiatrist by the name Roberto in 1911. It’s the main reason of creation being to fill the many gaps left by Sigmund Freud in his theories on human psychology. Psychosynthesis was therefore created to include many aspects of social growth and stayed open to many more that may be discovered.

Holistic counseling draws its theories from both the Eastern and Western theories on health. The Eastern is more focused on spiritual health, while the Western more focused on personality and neurobiology. Therefore a holistic counselee or focuses on the fact that spiritually the human spirit is actively involved in the total healing of the person-mind body and soul. Hence a holistic counselor must respect the patient’s belief and allowed them to affirm their orientation onto the spiritual work done on the therapeutic environment. In addition to that, holistic counseling approaches disorders and wellness as a greater whole. Instead of just looking at the symptoms, they dig deeper into the underlying causes, look at the profound connectivity of the body, mind, and soul, to help facilitate excellent recovery.

There are various types of psychotherapy, such as psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapies, behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, and humanistic therapy. Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic therapy involve a focus on changing problematic behaviors, feelings, and thoughts by discovering their unconscious meaning and motivation. Psychoanalysis is closely identified with Sigmund Freund. It has advanced since its early formulations. In this form of therapy, patients can learn about their selves by exploring their interaction I the therapeutic relationship.

Behavior therapy, on the other hand, focuses on learning a role in developing both normal and abnormal behaviors. Ivan Palvon was an essential person in the discovery of ideal conditions, which made a significant contribution to behavior therapy. Pavon’s dogs, for instance, drilled when they heard bells associated with food. Classical condition may be used by a therapist to help a patient with phobia through rested exposure to the causative of anxiety. This is referred to as desensitization. Aside from Palvon, Thorndike discovered operand conditions that rely on rewarding and punishing to shape people’s behavior.

Cognitive therapy is also a form of psychotherapy that deals with an emphasis on what people think rather than what they do. Cognitive therapists believe that dysfunctional behaviors result from dysfunctional thinking patterns. Therefore, by simply changing how you think a person can change how they feel and what they end up doing. Such that what a child thinks eventually leads to how they react to the specific thing even in their growth (Bowlby J 1985). Significant figures in cognitive therapy include Albert Ellis and Aaron Becks

Human therapy is a type of psychotherapy that is involved with people’s capacity to make rational choices and grow their potential. Human philosophers like Jean-Paul and Martine Barber greatly influence this type of therapy. Human therapy is further divided into three that is client entered therapy, gestalt therapy, and existential therapy. Existential therapy focuses on free will and self-determination, gestalt therapy focuses on being aware of here and now and acceptance of your responsibilities. Client-centered therapy is an individual therapy that differs from the idea of the therapist being the authority of the client’s experiences. Instead, the therapist holds the client’s hand and helps them change by effectively showing their concern and care (Meyers, Laurie 2014)

The success rate of psychotherapy is based on 80 percent. Most people who undertake psychotherapy seem to benefit from it. How is this established? Well, the most important evidence comes from meta-analyses that combine research from many random controlled trials. It is estimated from this that psychotherapy is effective to 80 percent while the rest of 10-15 percent suffer adverse effects.

Counseling and psychotherapy are usually considered to be interchangeable therapies that overlap in several ways. Counseling, in a specific situation, can be given as part of the psychotherapy process, whereas a counselor may work with a patient in a psychotheuropatic manner. The key difference, however, is based on the therapeutic time. Counselling requires a brief treatment centering on the behavior patterns majority of the time. Still, it can also be long term while psychotherapy focuses on a long time drawing from insight to profound emotional difficulties most of the time. Counseling helps identify problems and crises and encourages them to take positive resolves. At the same time, psychotherapy allows people with psychological issues that have been in their lives for a long period of time.

There is a good percentage of people who fail to benefit from counselling. There are many factors that might cause this such as unhealthy underlying factors that may be skewing the clients perception in that the patient has negative beliefs and circumstances that can interfere with our interaction with others and how we look at different things in life. Second a person may have fears that pose a resistance to counselling in that the fear of judgment, rejection, assumption of greater responsibility for one’s self, getting better not getting better to mention but a few can cause a patient to disengage prematurely from counselling hence fail to benefit from it.

Mismatch between the client and the counsellor may be a reason for failed counselling. Counsellors or therapist have different therapeutic methods they use. The approach a different therapist uses on a client may not be useful to the particular client leaving them with the notion that all counsellors are not that helpful. Consequently there can be a mismatch between the issues the client is dealing with and the therapeutic measures chosen by the therapist. Related to this ,and can also be a cause of failure in counselling is a clash between the patients personality and the clients personality .It is mandatory that the client and therapist form a relationship .Just like any relationship there needs to be a good bond between the two parties. This relationship can be difficult if their personalities crash hence failure in counselling.

Counselling can also fail to benefit a client of the client was looking for a quick solution. It is important for a client to establish that therapy takes a lot of time, usually much more than most people tend to think. This is due to the fact that the counsellor need to find underlying factors to the current situation of the client. A counsellor can only move as fast as the client. The research may be slow for instance due to people slow or resistance to change. Hence if the client expected very rapid progress, this can sabotage and fail the entire counselling plan. Other things that can fail counselling are like belief by the client that he or she can solve her own problem, expensive therapy sessions hence unfinished therapy ,preconceived notions about therapy, belief that therapist is wrong just to mention but a few.

A few weeks into my internship, I became aware that I was more reflective and more frequent about my internship, which was greatly increasing my self-understanding. I was greatly fascinated by my view on self and others changing as I experienced a heightened knowledge of my relationships. I learnt to consider my experiences at a different and new angle. I internalized the skills, knowledge, attitude and values that I got during my internship at holistic health clinic which I came to interpret as how patients internalize their experiences with their therapists. Upon sharing my experience with others, majority agreed with me on the effectiveness of psychotherapy, greatly enough I discovered that psychotherapy harms are greatly ignored.

On completion of my internship, I reflected a lot on how to use this information on psychotherapy. I learnt to be a great listener and developed a great understanding of the language of holistic counselling and psychotherapy at large. I greatly understood that I had a lot more to learn but I could without a reasonable doubt be happy about the career choice I had made It would take time and practice to become better but I was definitely at the right place, where I wanted to be ,in the psychotherapy world.