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Abstract

This reflective report critically evaluates my developing professional identity as a counseling psychologist. Using the Power Threat Meaning Framework, I present a self-formulation to make sense of my experiences during the second stage of my training. To begin with, I consider how multiple forms of power were operating in the complex relationship between personal and professional spheres. As I appraise my professional development, I examine the threats posed by the negative use of power and the resulting challenges within my practice. Drawing from research, psychological theories, and relevant case examples, I explore the meaning I attached to my experiences while managing complex problems and professional issues. In my endeavor to act according to ethical and professional guidelines, I consider my threat responses to preserve my functioning within program learning and professional practice. By appreciating my access to power resources, I demonstrate my willingness and ability to engage with feedback and reflexivity as personal strengths that helped me navigate my ongoing training. Therefore, I integrate professional and ethical perspectives in the “meaning-making” of my development as a trainee counseling psychologist.

Keywords

counseling psychology Power Threat Meaning Framework formulation training

Drawing from theories and research, psychologists develop collaborative formulations to make sense of clients’ difficulties, identify resources, plan interventions, and assist multiprofessional communication (Health and Care Professions Council [HCPC], 2015). Similarly, practitioners can use a self-formulation as a process of personal development to illuminate how they manage challenges, how they may be influenced by experiences of adversity, and how these may reverberate through their practice (Randall et al., 2019). To accompany the “sense-making” of the second stage of my counseling psychology training, I chose the Power Threat Meaning (PTM) Framework due to my resonance with its attempt to overcome a diagnostic understanding of human experiences (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). The Framework proposes an alternative foundation to describe coping mechanisms as adaptations to past and present adverse circumstances (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). Encapsulating the meaning of compassion in the acknowledgment of the universality of human suffering and the action tendency to alleviate this, the Framework provides a way to describe how people survive in their attempts to meet core human needs (Boyle, 2022). As individuals navigate the existential process of searching for meaning in their life experiences, common patterns of meaning-based responses are explored in relation to the negative impacts of power (Johnstone, 2022). While considering sociocultural contexts and messages, the PTM Framework is to be understood as an evolving and collaborative process that endeavors to prioritize intersectionality and the idiosyncrasy of individuals’ experiences (Cromby, 2022). By emphasizing personal agency within psychosocial, biological, material, relational, cultural, and political constraints, it can be used as a self-help tool to formulate one’s own experiences (Randall et al., 2019). The Framework invites a guided discussion through questions about the operation of power, the type of threats posed by its negative operation, meanings, threat responses, and power resources (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). Furthermore, it encourages the recognition of individuals’ strengths and the integration of someone’s experiences into an ever-unfolding narrative (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). What follows is my self-formulation as focused on the second stage of my counseling psychology training (diagrammatic version in the Appendix).

How is Power Operating in my Life?

The PTM Framework acknowledges power as polysemantic and multifunctional in its operation in individuals’ life (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). While it can be used to gain privileges, power can have a negative impact, leading to mental health difficulties (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). The above question invited me to reflect on how various forms of power operated in my professional and personal life. In my clinical placements, exploring the reality of diverse communities enhanced my awareness of adverse childhood experiences compounded by adverse environments where addiction was an adaptive behavior in maladaptive circumstances (Ellis & Dietz, 2017; Winhall, 2021). One of my clients shared the shame evoked by attending our sessions in a building known for being a recovery service. While working on “unhelpful cognitions” (Goffnett et al., 2020), I could not deny my interpersonal and ideological power as a practitioner over clients vulnerable to stigmatization due to substance use. I was angered by a system wherein the people who seemed to be most in need were the ones who had the most cumbersome process to access psychological therapy, arguably violating a socially just ethics of care (Brannelly, 2015). If related to substance use, cognitive impairment, reduced memory retention, and high-risk behaviors could be a barrier to access psychology. Conversely, if linked to dementia, similar criteria were considered a reason to prioritize access to the service. Delivering therapeutic groups for people with early onset dementia also exposed societal disadvantages as participants shared their marginalization due to the lack of understanding of their age-specific difficulties, further aggravated by the consequences of the pandemic (Draper & Withall, 2016). As the group facilitator, I was in a position of interpersonal power where I had the “response-ability” to help them find connectedness through a shared relational experience (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018).

During the pandemic, enduring restrictions made me vulnerable to feelings of disconnection exacerbated by remote teaching and reduced interactions with my cohort. In a role reversal, where I was the participant in online professional development groups, the exposure heightened my anxiety, fuelled by a belief that I had “nothing to offer.” Simultaneously, the economic power resulting from the financial strains of my training was threatening my financial security. By undertaking the program part-time, I had to prolong my studies within a societal context that seemed to be equating competence with winning a race toward qualification (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). However, as a trainee counseling psychologist, I held social power in the ability to access valued educational and professional opportunities, thus maintaining societal belonging (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). Inasmuch as I had the ability to shape client narratives or provide access to forms of psychological knowledge, I had to acknowledge my own potential for epistemic power misuse. By constructing collaborative formulations or inviting feedback to improve my practice (HCPC, 2015), I could attempt to shift power dynamics, while acknowledging the inherent unequal relationship between clients and therapists (Buber et al., 1997). In a Higher Education setting, I could empower clients through psychoeducation to normalize their difficulties (Thew & Krohnert, 2015). My resonance with their life circumstances and their drive toward self-awareness seemed to equalize the power dynamics. While appreciating how the academic system could contribute to psychological distress from their perspective and my lived experience (Shapiro et al., 2007), I could act as an advocate to corroborate how their mental health difficulties were impacting on their performance.

The Framework also expands on the influence individuals receive from their socioeconomic and political context, leading to internalized prescriptive values and normative beliefs linked to the intersection of their identities (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). As a cisgender male, I benefited from the societal advantages and recognition associated with this status (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). However, training in a role valuing emotional expression, which is stereotypically associated with “femaleness,” challenged the boundaries of my identity (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). Working with gender, sexuality, and relationship diverse (GSRD) adults, I endeavored to be affirmative in my practice, fostering their agency (Pepping et al., 2018). Nevertheless, I was grappling with the internalized shame in relation to our “shared” diversity and I felt the impact of an ideological power that attempted to mold my self-expression into conformity (Ehrlich, 2021; Swaby, 2020). While awareness of my internalized shame and oppression facilitated my exploration of these issues with GSRD clients (Comas-Díaz, 2005), I feared I was presenting a deceptive image of a “professional” who had conquered self-acceptance. Questioning whether I could help them with relationship and sexuality problems that remained unresolved for me, I noticed the “incongruence” in providing them with understanding when I could not be compassionate toward myself (Rogers, 1957).

Within the psychology profession, I wondered whether my presence was due to a diversity quota or my actual competencies (Fernando, 2017). Having a dual heritage upbringing, I experienced how my European background had been favored over my African side, which, despite being the most “physically” apparent, was dismissed and rejected. Accordingly, I had learned to do the same, which might have left me vulnerable to a less integrated sense of self and a conditional sense of acceptance (Ford, 1963). Arguably, these thoughts were residual beliefs that had been internalized by a developmental exposure to interpersonal power, where repeated experiences of relational aggression and systemic racism intensified a sense of exclusion and inferiority, which might have pressured me into developing a “false self” (Winnicott, 1965).

What Kind of Threats Does This Power Pose?

The Framework posits that the negative use of power can threaten individuals’ safety (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). For instance, identity threats would affect the development of beliefs and values that contributes to one’s sense of self (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). As counseling psychology has been put forward as “ethics-in-action” (Cooper, 2009), practitioners are called to reflect on how they navigate the intersection between their personal and professional identities. If therapists are to be considered applied ethicists (Tjeltveit, 1992), exploring my values is important insofar as these may inform my practice, the therapeutic relationship, and outcomes (Kubacki & Chase, 1998). Coming from a background in existential philosophy, I resonated with the humanistic value base of counseling psychology as one of my main conscious reasons for embarking on this professional training. The choice of my training institution as providing a foundation in person-centered therapy (PCT; Rogers, 1957) suggested my theoretical allegiance. Initially, I had experienced “resonance,” namely a fit between my values and the metatheoretical assumptions of PCT (Vasco et al., 1993). Specifically, I resonated with the primacy of the therapeutic relationship, the belief in the client’s actualizing tendency striving toward growth and the provision of core conditions of empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence to facilitate change (Rogers, 1957). Conversely, learning cognitive behavioral therapy ([CBT]; Beck, 2020) felt de-skilling and arguably evoked a state of “dissonance” (Vasco et al., 1993). While selecting “disorder-specific” manualized interventions felt “pathologizing,” the agenda setting seemed to harness a therapeutic process that I previously allowed to flow by trusting the client’s direction (Rogers, 1957). If left unexplored, my interventions would have been dictated by my values and preferences instead of being informed by the evidence base, my clients’ needs, or preferences (Cooper et al., 2021). By challenging me to rethink of myself as a practitioner, the transition to CBT arguably represented both an identity threat and a threat to a value base, increasing my vulnerability to purposelessness, meaninglessness, and malpractice (British Psychological Society [BPS], 2021).

If I wanted to progress in my training, I could not avoid its financial demands, which made economic threats inescapable. Within a system praising time efficiency and productivity by increasing pressure on the individual, I felt under a social threat (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). As the connection with my cohort and lecturers was fading, the remote attendance posed a relational threat, which, in my attachment history, was linked to experiences of abandonment and rejection (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). In the face of threat, attachment theory (Bowlby, 1988) identifies proximity seeking as a primary strategy for affect regulation to regain safety. If proximity seeking is a viable option, security-based strategies, such as exploration and caregiving, can be accessed (Mikulincer et al., 2003). Conversely, if proximity seeking is not a viable option, individuals will resort to deactivating avoidant-based strategies (e.g., self-reliance and emotional distance) or hyperactivating anxious-based strategies (e.g., need for closeness, preoccupation about relationships; Mikulincer et al., 2003). Accordingly, the reliance on characteristic patterns of interpersonal, behavioral, and emotional responses would indicate one’s attachment orientation (Mikulincer et al., 2003). Research among trainees confirms that lack of support systems would be one of the main stressors (Kumary & Baker, 2008).

As the therapeutic relationship would have the qualities of an attachment bond, practitioners’ attachment history may shape the way they relate to clients (Marmarosh et al., 2014). Because of their sensitivity to abandonment and rejection, “anxious” therapists might interpret ruptures as signifying clients’ intention to leave, whereas “avoidant” therapists might attribute difficulties in therapy to external factors (Leiper & Casares, 2000; Rubino et al., 2000). Recognizing within myself a tendency toward avoidant-based strategies, I initially failed to explore one client’s repeated cancelations because there seemed to be “valid” reasons. Having come to expect that we would have not had our sessions as planned, I noticed the effort required to keep my client in mind. My sensitivity to rejection risked acting as a smokescreen that stopped me from thinking about the meaning of my client’s inconsistent attendance. Prompted by my supervisor, I pointed out this pattern. My client revealed to be battling with feelings of failure, evoked by the difficulty of the exploratory work of therapy, from which they protected by disengaging when the emotions stirred up were becoming too intense (Winnicott, 1965). By paying attention to this, I conveyed my care as my client’s absence did not go unnoticed and their presence mattered. However, without supervision, the disconnection I felt would have confined me into a univocal meaning, repeating my client’s relational history of neglect with an “uninterested other” (Jacobs, 2012).

Calling on therapists to be aware of their attachment history and its interaction with their clients, a systematic review highlighted that practitioners’ attachment orientation may influence therapeutic alliance and outcomes (Degnan et al., 2016). By seemingly precluding the option of co-regulation (Porges, 2017), these multiple challenges arguably resulted into an accumulation of emotional threats that risked overcoming my affect regulation (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). In my practice, the exposure to relational threats could compromise my ability and willingness to offer myself as a “secure base” to facilitate clients’ psychological exploration and as a “safe haven” to provide safety (Mallinckrodt, 2010). Therefore, failure to attend to my psychological wellness could have placed me at risk for impaired professional functioning (BPS, 2021).

What is the Meaning of These Situations and Experiences to me?

The Framework considers individuals as embodied sense-making beings, recognizing how meanings can reside in different levels of awareness (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). Inhabiting multiple roles as therapist, student, researcher, and supervisee evoked feelings associated with core beliefs linked to “not being good enough” (Glickauf-Hughes, & Mehlman, 1995). In a state of threat, I was telling myself a story of unlovability where others were rejecting, harmful, and distant (Porges, 2011). Questioning whether belonging to the psychology community meant compromising my values, a tale of isolation was interwoven with a thread of injustice.

As I progressed in my training and began learning psychodynamic theories (Lemma, 2015), the exploration of my clients’ unconscious motives was accompanied by my own process of self-enquiry, which brought into my awareness meanings underneath my conscious narrative motif. Accordingly, I reflected on the influence of my personality and attachment history (BPS, 2021). While counseling psychologists are required to appreciate how the therapeutic relationship is conceptualized within different theoretical models (HCPC, 2015), literature suggests that therapists’ personality may suggest their preferred theoretical orientations. Thus, my idealism and inner focus would be in line with a preference for the unconditional empathic relationship of PCT while my tendency toward abstract analytical thinking would fit with the interpretative nature of psychodynamic therapy (Heinonen & Orlinsky, 2013; Varlami & Bayne, 2007).

Therapists may have had developmental experiences that sensitized them to others’ emotional needs, with resulting predisposition to interpersonal dynamics of self-sacrifice and appeasement (Glickauf-Hughes & Mehlman, 1995). My early life experiences were punctuated by the gratification of meeting the emotional needs of my significant others and the frustration in waiting for mine to be seen. Love and attention were accompanied by rivalry, jealousy, and guilt through a disempowering offer of care, which undermined my self-efficacy; my sadness provoked anxiety; my anger, as assertion of my individuality, aroused a fear of abandonment and was met with rejection (Klein, 1963, 1975). As both anxious and avoidant based interpersonal strategies were modeled, I did not expect my emotions to be managed nor welcomed. An invalidating societal environment of systemic oppression arguably produced a narcissistic injury, described as a wound in an individual’s self-experience, which can lead to a lack of self-acceptance and a fragmented or absent sense of identity (Menninger, 1957). In choosing counseling psychology for its resonance with my values in a role where my professional and personal self could merge (Vasco et al., 1993), my drive toward self-realization would suggest a thwarted process of individuation where I did not succeed in separating from introjected others (Ford, 1963; Mollon, 1993).

Furthermore, research suggests that the therapeutic relationship between therapist and client both presenting with attachment avoidance would be the most challenging in relation to trust and ruptures (Rizou & Giannouli, 2020). For instance, working with a client presenting with “depression” and “avoidant-based” strategies, I initially could not “own” my space in the face of their “wall of words” (Lemma, 2015). As I experienced my attempts to offer transference interpretations, which focused on our therapeutic relationship (Frederickson, 2013), as being met with dismissal or indifference, I noticed myself falling into the role of “passive listening”. While my self-esteem was rocked, my belief that I had “nothing to offer” was arguably activated. This dynamic culminated in a therapeutic rupture where I was taken aback by my client’s expression of anger as they were frustrated with the unhelpfulness of my support. Despite feeling sympathetically activated, I managed to welcome my client’s anger as I bodily sensed the depth of their hopelessness (Gubb, 2014). Subsequently, my supervisor anchored me into a reflective space (HCPC, 2015) where we wondered how expressing anger might have been easier than despair and sadness. Concurrently, my ethical response-ability was to enhance my client’s agency by validating the developmental meaning of their defense in the context of their experience of neglect while pointing out its contribution to current difficulties (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). As my client returned to therapy, I had the chance to repair the rupture by offering compassion as I challenged the “wall of words” through which they had “defended” against relational intimacy with me, de facto preventing the possibility of being helped. Disproving the introjection of a “neglectful” other, I gained confidence in “taking up” more space as an act of care.

What Kinds of Threat Response am I Using?

Overcoming a pathologizing perspective, the Framework recognizes that “symptoms” within a diagnostic medical model are survival strategies that can protect from the impact of threats posed by the negative use of power (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). Including thinking, emotional, behavioral, and bodily processes learned at different developmental stages, these threat responses may perpetuate difficulties (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). As I was introduced to CBT, I entered a state of sympathetic activation. Polyvagal theory suggests that the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system responds to danger cues by initiating a fight-or-flight response to return to the ventral vagal pathway of safety (Porges, 2017). In my learning experience, my subconscious sense (“neuroception”; Porges, 2017) of danger was represented by the uncertainty of “not-knowing”, which I associated with incompetence. To regain safety, my “fight” strategy comprised drive-based behaviors, such as overworking and perfectionism (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). By completing my training requirements as a measure of my functioning, I could maintain a façade of competence as I continued being productive. To keep a sense of control, I increased my workload and limited expenses, further reducing the possibility for social connections. However, underneath my perfectionism, feelings of inferiority were increasing my vulnerability to a value crisis (Richardson et al., 2020). In response to dissonance, practitioners may respond by strengthening or diminishing the influence of their chosen theoretical model on their practice, by drawing from different models through eclecticism or by ending their career (Arthur, 2001). Consonantly, I started experiencing lecturers as distant and menacing figures holding the power to decide my destiny as a trainee. The compounded effect of the economic, value-based, and relational threats evoked familiar feelings of being unimportant as I entertained thoughts of leaving my training in a “flight” response.

Oscillating between overcompensation and “learned helplessness” (Seligman, 1972), I had arguably developed “self-protective competencies” (Eckler-Hart, 1987) to avoid rejection in a conservative societal environment where I felt othered while growing up. Similarly, by focusing on my “professional self” to accommodate to the training requirements while neglecting my “personal self,” I run the risk of misattunement with clients (Eckler-Hart, 1987). If self-esteem is bound to meeting others’ needs, feelings of approval will be associated with the presence of a false self, leaving practitioners vulnerable to difficulties with setting boundaries, imposter syndrome, and burnout (Eckler-Hart, 1987). When one of my clients informed me about their upcoming holidays, I reacted by saying I could have rearranged mine to prevent a 1-month break in therapy. By reflecting-in-action (Donati, 2016), I realized the hastiness in assuaging my guilt in provoking my client’s anxiety. Despite still wavering about my time off, we explored their worries about not managing a longer break, linked to the underlying fear of abandonment (Meyer & Pilkonis, 2001). Noting that I might have felt angry for not attending to my self-care needs, my supervisor helped me strengthen my professional boundaries (BPS, 2021; HCPC, 2016).

Replaying childhood dynamics, I might have ended up “using” clients to meet my unmet narcissistic needs (Glickauf-Hughes & Mehlman, 1995). Associated risks are related to disempowering, by “rescuing” clients from their difficulties, misunderstanding, overidentifying with their difficulties, and discouraging the expression of negative feelings toward me (Glickauf-Hughes & Mehlman, 1995). Reflecting on the transference-countertransference as intersubjective experience (Racker, 2018), I wondered about my guilt as stemming from a developmental role as a care provider for the other whom I experienced as not managing without me, while covering my anger at the imbalanced relational dynamic. Simultaneously, my sense of being harmful by asserting myself illuminated my client’s self-other beliefs, while both recognizing their agency in the iteration of co-created relational dynamics and validating their anger at my disorganization (Jacobs, 2012). Instead of addressing my needs for care, I arguably first sublimated them by pursuing the theoretical exploration of existential themes, such as authenticity, individuality, relatedness, and choice (Cooper, 2015) and then projected them onto “vulnerable” others, which might have drawn me into a care-giving role as a form of self-healing (Halewood & Tribe, 2003). Unconsciously, I may have chosen this professional training to experience emotional intimacy while protecting myself from the vulnerability required in reciprocal sharing (Heinonen & Orlinsky, 2013).

However, in the face of an enduring experience aloneness, I had learned cognitive strategies, such as reflecting and meaning-making and relational strategies, such as being an emotional “container” and “barometer” (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). In the face of inescapable threat, polyvagal theory suggests that our autonomic nervous system takes us into safety through “shut down” and disconnection via the dorsal vagal pathway of its parasympathetic branch (Porges, 2017). Among their standards of proficiency, counseling psychologists are expected to understand therapy through their life experience (HCPC, 2015). Correspondingly, as a client, my therapist’s ability to unearth my anger has been pivotal in making me realize my sensitivity to abandonment and how I can distance the other. My personal therapy uncovered how to protect myself from feelings of grief, I had learned to disconnect both from the “uninterested other” and myself through emotional numbing, leaving my needs unattended (Lemma, 2015). Although anxiety-ridden, expressing my need for my therapist has been a healing experience in the process of challenging overreliance on avoidant-based strategies.

What Access to Power Resources do I Have?

Resonating with a conceptualization of human beings as striving toward growth (Ryff & Singer, 2008), the Framework invites awareness of someone’s strength, tipping the balance from powerlessness to empowerment (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). This question prompted me to appreciate the strengths that helped me navigate my training balancing my self-reliance with reliance on others. Resourcefulness and determination were skills that allowed me to secure a paid placement with the third sector. Similarly, by contributing to maintaining competence, wellness, and care delivery, self-care is an ethical imperative (Barnett et al., 2007; Wise et al., 2012). Accordingly, by processing feelings through personal therapy, mindfulness, yoga, and cycling, I attempted to attend to my self-care proactively to prevent the risk for impaired professional functioning (BPS, 2021).

Upon committing to a 1-year long placement, I realized my learning needs would have not been met; however, I feared compromising the relationship between my training institution and the placement provider. Whereas my learned threat response would have been to appease by subjugating to organizational pressures (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018), my peers provided me with the option of proximity seeking. Having nourished relational safety with them, I could voice my anxiety and frustration. Their feedback encouraged me to have a transparent dialogue with my tutor and placement educator to work on a solution. My decision-making process of anticipating the end of my placement had to evaluate the most appropriate prioritization of equally relevant actions (BPS, 2021): completing the therapeutic work with existing clients; considering the timing of my notice and how many clients I would have been able to take on; assessing the severity of presentation to allow for an ethical approach to our work; and protecting service users’ interests (HCPC, 2016). Thus, I could assert myself with professional accountability and integrity (BPS, 2021).

Similarly, I had developed a transparent relationship with my supervisors, which helped me voice my dilemmas in relation to the dissonance resulting from the apparent irreconcilability between different theoretical models. While counseling psychology training requires proficiency in a range of models of therapy (HCPC, 2015), overinvestment in theoretical allegiances can be ethically harmful if resulting into a biased theory-driven approach that denies clients’ uniqueness (Vasco et al., 1993). One of my supervisors helpfully noticed how an existential–humanistic value base could inform my way of being with clients regardless of the modality, thus avoiding the risk of “theoretical sectarianism” (Rosner, 2012). While working with a client presenting with low self-esteem, my ongoing assessment revealed an extensive history of adverse childhood experiences. To enhance emotional processing, Fennell’s (1997) cognitive–behavioral model of self-esteem advises experiential methods in the presence of a traumatic background. Furthermore, in line with the theory of interactive cognitive subsystems (Teasdale & Barnard, 1993), bridging the gap between “propositional code” related to analytic information processing and “implication code” related to emotional knowledge has been identified as a therapeutic target in CBT. Accordingly, I creatively resorted to chair work to address the origins of negative core beliefs (Pugh, 2018). Through an empty-chair exercise, I accompanied my client in a dialogue with the source of their “bottom line” (Fennell, 1997), so that this could be externalized and challenged directly from a “decentered” perspective (Pugh, 2018). Through an experientially salient and multisensory intervention, I could strengthen my client’s cognitive restructuring and self-compassion, assisting both intellectual and emotional understanding (Pugh, 2018). Thus, exploring the pluralistic ethos of counseling psychology is my opportunity to hold the tension inherent in the dialectical relationships among different therapeutic models to prioritize clients’ needs (Frost, 2012).

As ability to hold concurrent perspectives, understand and recognize one’s own and others’ mental, behavioral and affective states, reflective functioning would compensate for insecure attachment, enhancing therapist effectiveness (Cologon et al., 2017). Research confirms that continuous self-reflection is important to understand how therapists’ attachment impacts on their clinical practice (Lu et al., 2022). Accordingly, my attachment awareness may help me recognize those affective responses that relate to my relational history, which in turn may facilitate the provision of attuned responses to my clients (Rek et al., 2018). Furthermore, as I started “befriending my nervous system”, I can recognize when I am falling into a dorsal state of disconnection, which would be linked to a story of attachment avoidance, and ensure I provide my clients with a neuroception of safety by regulating myself (Dana, 2021). Consequently, my body, by offering me a sense of my own and my clients’ affect, peer feedback and supervision, by enhancing my reflexivity, were sources of power I could access. From a ventral vagal state of safety and connection (Porges, 2017), I can create a new narrative and shift from surviving the training to flourishing (Wise et al., 2012).

What is my Story (so far)?

While acknowledging the inevitable influence of my theoretical preferences, values, and relational history on my clinical practice, it would be ethically and professionally dangerous if I ignored them. Owning them means choosing to work toward meeting my emotional and relational needs so that I can see clients for who they are and not for whom I do not want to see in myself. By embarking on a process of “decentering” (Eckler-Hart, 1987), I can gain distance from the meaning of these situations and experiences and develop a “self-reflective responsiveness” (Mitchell, 1997) to attune to clients’ needs. If therapists cannot take clients further than they are willing to go themselves (Corey, 2012), it is my ethical obligation to work toward self-acceptance both as practitioner and as a person. Therefore, my self-understanding has the potential to parallel my ability to accompany clients in a similar process of self-exploration to help them in a compassionate meaning-making of their experiences (Randall et al., 2019).

Reflecting a process that is tentative and open to revision, formulating recognizes the value of unknowing (Smith, 2016), which is the place of the authentic encounter between oneself and the other (Cooper, 2009). In the twilight zone between hiding and longing to be found (Winnicott, 1971), it is still challenging to share myself. One of my supervisors has encouraged me to share more of how my practice impacts on me personally, examining the personal and the professional spheres. If formulations have implications for how we act toward ourselves and others (Randall et al., 2019), this report is my attempt to take up the challenge of vulnerability by showing my “self” for the benefit of my practice. As formulation informs intervention (HCPC, 2015), this is relevant to who I am and wish to become as a counseling psychologist (Randall et al., 2019) because I believe that my “self” as a person being with another person is the intervention. While my personal and professional identities continue to evolve (Comas-Díaz, 2005), I am starting to explore how a judicious use of self-disclosure in the service of clients can enhance the therapeutic relationship (Maroda, 2009). As a client, I have found disclosure a powerful intervention to undo my sense of aloneness, and yet at times, I have experienced it as uncomfortable. Similarly, as a therapist, I endeavor to be sensitive to how my client responds to my presence. In my counseling psychology practice, ethical self-disclosure has the potential to deepen emotional processing, validate needs, build secure client–therapist attachment, and foster a climate of immediacy and congruence as I share how I feel as a relational being who is being changed in the encounter with another person (Medley, 2021).

By raising questions into the meaning of my experiences, evoking memories, and eliciting associations (Randall et al., 2019), formulating myself has been difficult. Furthermore, if I had chosen a different framework, other aspects might have emerged, placing more emphasis on cultural, systemic, or political factors (Randall et al., 2019), as some of my values have been shaped by the environment in which I was raised. Calling for sensitive attunement, this self-formulation has offered me an insight into how my clients might be experiencing such process. As I invite them to be curious about their experiences without judgment from a place of interpersonal and intrapersonal safety, I have attempted to revisit my experiences with compassion.

Conclusion

To conclude, writing this reflective report has been an empowering process insofar as I chose to voice meaningful aspects of my personal and professional development throughout the second stage of my training. Using the PTM Framework, I considered the operation of multiple forms of power within my environment and the intersection of my professional and personal identities. Drawing from attachment theory, I noticed how the exposure to the negative use of power may threaten my ability to access caregiving behaviors fostering relational security and exploration. By investigating the meaning of my experiences, I realized how unconscious motives would color the “sense-making” of my experiences and detailed the potential implications for my practice. Referring to polyvagal theory, I explained my habitual threat responses as based on self-protective competencies and relational strategies in my attempt to preserve connection and functioning. Recognizing the value in relying both on myself and others, I indicated how resorting to feedback and reflexivity can pave the way for the development of an empowering practice as “response-able” to my clients’ needs. Therefore, this report attests my willingness to reflect on my personal and professional self as an ethical commitment.

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Nicola Amari

Author Biography

Nicola Amari, MA, is a doctoral student at Glasgow Caledonian University where he is currently undertaking his training in counseling psychology. In the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, he has also published “On becoming a counselling psychologist: Making sense of presence” and “Social justice in counseling psychology practice: Actualizing the ethics of compassion.” His most recent publication is a systematic review titled “Exploring the relationship between compassion and attachment in individuals with mental health difficulties: A systematic review” in the Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy.

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Self-formulation in counselling psychology: The Power Threat Meaning Framework

Abstract

Keywords

How is Power Operating in my Life?

What Kind of Threats Does This Power Pose?

What is the Meaning of These Situations and Experiences to me?

What Kinds of Threat Response am I Using?

What Access to Power Resources do I Have?

What is my Story (so far)?

Conclusion

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Author Biography

References