Into the mind of a therapist

For her, therapy is all about the relationship between the client and the therapist. She says that the most important thing for a therapist is to be able to see the person sitting next to them, as a human being.

 

However, It was only through experiencing the loss of her husband, that Joyce understood the importance of that relationship.

 

Explaining the impact that her loss had on the way she worked with her clients, Joyce said: “ At the time, I actually had two widows I was working with,” She said, laughing at the irony.

 

Due to her own experience with grief and death, she was more present with these widows. She felt more understanding with their isolation and their feelings of despondency.

 

Explaining this shared feeling of sadness, Joyce says, “You become more patient, you allow them to be very negative, because you know you have to work through it, and that you will never get over it, especially something as dramatic as that.”

 

Joyce has been a therapist for 19 years. She graduated with a psychology degree in 1977 from Hong Kong. She wanted to train as a counselor, but they only offered clinical psychology, at the time. Joyce didn’t like what was offered in clinical psychology, because it was heavily academic based. So, she decided to work in business until 1997.

 

In 1997 she came to the UK to train as a therapist. “I’ve always wanted to be a therapist,” Joyce says. “It was only a matter of time.”

 

For Joyce, the most important thing is to provide for her clients. Because most of her clients are evening clients, her work day normally starts at around 5-9 PM. However, Joyce is very flexible in what she offers. She works to find a time and date that is suitable for both herself and her clients.

 

Explaining the importance of that flexibility, as she says, “I want to be there for my clients, as they lead such complex lives”. Joyce uses different techniques in her therapy sessions to help accommodate to the needs of each indivdual client. She mainly uses counselling, which is a type of listening therapy. For clients who have undergone trauma, she uses different techniques. For example, she uses EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy. This is a psychotherapy technique that is used to relieve stress. During these sessions, you relive traumatic in brief doses while your therapist will direct your eye movements.

 

EMDR is effective because when your attention is elsewhere, remembering distressing events is less emotionally upsetting. Over time, this will lessen the impact that the memories or thoughts have on you.

 

However, there is one client in particular that Joyce vividly remembers to this day, despite having met this client 10 years ago. Remensiing about this client, Joyce says: “She said I’m 60, and if I don’t sort myself out by the time I reach 64, I’m going to kill myself, and that’s how she introduced herself.”

 

This client had been sexually abused throughout her life. What she really wanted, Joyce says, was to be heard. This client told Joyce about a vision that she had of herself eight years ago, outside a house, where she’s pulling on her cardigan and crying, and she didn’t know what had happened, and why she has this vision. For this particular client, Joyce decided to use regression therapy.

 

Regression therapy is a treatment that focuses on resolving significant past events that are interfering with someone's mental wellbeing. The therapist brings the person into a relaxed state to help the process of regression. The person closes their eyes and speaks out about a significant experience in their past. The therapist also encourages the client to be as detailed as possible.

 

Joyce’s aim was to find out what had triggered that experience because it had been holding this client back. Through each session, Joyce brought the client closer and closer to that moment in their past.

 

Joyce says that in describing the vision, the client came to realise her father had raped her. Joyce said that it was important for the client to process that information, so that it doesn’t affect her future.

 

However, this particular type of therapy is controversial, because there have been a number of cases in which individuals have obtained memories of abuse or trauma that were found to be false.

 

Joyce understands this controversy around regression therapy. Speaking about this, she says: “One thing I feel as a therapist, and a lot of other therapists might disagree with me, but what I think is that it doesn’t matter if your memory is real or false. Whatever happened, real or not, is affecting your way of being. So I don’t care who the perpetrator is, that’s not my job, I’m not a policeman.”

 

However, despite this controversy over the therapy, research conducted by Elizabeth Loftus, revealed that 43% of practicing clinical psychologists think it is possible to retrieve repressed memories, which is a key aspect of regression therapy.

 

Despite the fact that her job as a therapist means she has to take on the emotional toll of her clients' issues, Joyce says: “There are actually times where I allow myself to cry. It’s not crocodile tears, I am aware that I am the therapist, but it is also so important to be understanding, and to be real.”

 

Joyce isn’t alone in feeling the emotional weight of her job. A survey from the British Psychological Society and the New Savoy Partnership found that 48 per cent of psychological therapists working in the NHS reported that they had felt depressed in the last week some, most or all of the time.

 

Contrary to common views, Joyce doesn’t see her job as rescuing someone. Rather, she sees her job as a reflective process in which both the client and therapist evaluate themselves. She says that a therapist should look into themselves, and ask: “can I be my own therapist?