I think I may be breaking a little bit. The graduate program I started last spring is in counseling. I knew that entering this program meant that there would be a huge amount of self growth, healing and authenticity on my part...it is inevitable.
This past spring when I miscarried the first time I was taking 3 classes and this fall when I miscarried the second time, I was also in three classes again....very busy and was able to focus my attention on the coursework, the readings, etc.I have finished taking the core classwork and now the real therapeutic framework has begun, times when I am supposed to really find a presence and awareness of myself and begin to incorporate who I am and what I can bring into the therapeutic environment with others.
Well, now I am in a class that is a group, an actual therapeutic process group for 3 hours each Wednesday. We are expected to bring our true selves into the group and it is excruciating for me. I am realizing each group night how much of a wall I have up in order to get through this program. If that wall came down, I would be revealing a fragile, broken mess.
I am jealous of those of you who can go to work and close your door and just be with yourself. I feel very exposed and fragile right now in my graduate program and I need help. I need to begin focusing on my own therapy while I am training to work with others.
How much of my reality am I suppose to bring to this experience with my classmates?How am I supposed to sit in a group therapy session at school and still be a student but also be a woman who has lost two pregnancies which very well may have been caused by my body?
If I do not find some healing in what I have been through and am currently going through, I will be a horrible therapist.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Heavy Day
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10 comments:
Oh, Meg. Feeling all these feelings is what will make you a great therapist.
If someone came to you and said her body had caused two miscarriages, you would tell her that there was no deliberate causation, and to be as gentle with herself as she is with others.
We are all fragile at the core...it takes strength to know that and even more to show that.
See you and hug you soon...
Meg hun, I agree with Lori! I have realized more things about myself recently - things that I thought i had dealt with but apparently haven't. I think it's always a continued work in progress and everday that you get out of bed - is the working being done!
I agree. The fact that you are so tuned in to what you are working through is exactly what will make you a great therapist.
I have no doubt that someday you will be able to turn your struggles into hope and help for others.
As for the class, I totally agree that you need to balance full disclosure with professionalism. Maybe there is a way you can be open with the class without being, well, too open. Like most of us, I've found that people who haven't struggled to start a family or who haven't been exposed to miscarriage don't really get the depth of the sorrow it causes.
Maybe something short be relate-able, "We've been struggling to start our family. We've had a few initial 'successes' which didn't work out. This causes me much sadness. It is like being awarded first place in a contest you've worked for for years, only to have the prize taken away from you."
Good luck with it all. Hopefully other classmates will be brave enough to meaningfully share their issues, too. That might create a good environment for sharing and respect.
Ms.Planner said almost exactly what I was going to, only better. So ditto to her comments.
Thanks for your kind words. And good luck with the program. I will try to be there Saturday!
I rather know what you're talking about. I feel so very "in pieces" inside... As if anyone were to pry, they'd find me falling apart. Miscarriage and IF do that to you, they affect you to your core.
I'm so sorry... I don't know what to say. Except I hope that somehow (even not if in public) you can work through your very soul's feelings, and come out healed, on the other side.
Personally I think going through what you have been through will only make you a better, more empathetic therapist. Those 3 hour sessions must be really draining. I hope you are able to get through the program and come out stronger on the other side.
And thanks for your comments earlier this week. Thanks for being there.
You have a giant flag on your blog which lets me know that we're neighbors. Who knows, we may shop at the same grocery store.
I look at other women so differently now. I actually look at women when I grocery shop and wonder if they've lost babies. I'm sure, statistically, some of them have.
I walk by them, pushing my cart, picking up a can of soup, and nothing is said.
I wonder how much pain floats by each other like that without acknowledging the other.
I'm writing as someone who is struggling with infertility and loss, who is in therapy, and who is beginning to think - very tentatively - about training to become a therapist herself. I really relate to what you say here, and hope that you will take what follows in the spirit in which it is intended.
I'm not sure whether you can really separate out the Meg who wants to work to help others, and the Meg who has lost two pregnancies. It would be nice to think that you could somehow leave your miscarriages at the door of the group therapy session, but, as other commentators have already said, it is these very feelings of fragility that will ultimately make you a better, more empathetic therapist. Your fellow students are also working towards becoming counsellors, and so should have the sensitivity to be able to acknowledge something of what you've been through. Ideally, a group therapeutic setting should be one in which all members of the group feel accepted and supported.
As you acknowledge, you need to find a space in which you can begin to work through some of your feelings about the losses you have experienced - whether that is the group session or not. Are you also in one-to-one therapy?
I'm so sorry you are having a hard time. I wish I was able to give you some sort of great words of wisdom. All I can say is I don't think your hurt of your miscarriages would get in the way of you being a wonderful therapist. You suffered and with that kind of suffering, there is bound to be scars. ~hugs~
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