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Everything just seemed so yesterday. In just nine months, we concluded what was deemed as a two years part time training in foundation family therapy. Everything was intense in these nine months! To exaggerate, I do feel like a newborn!
Thinking back, I started this programme wondering if I made the right choice in choosing this programme to further my professional development; having to leave home and everything that I was having back there.
Took some read to re-read the writings from the past few months. Found many entries to be very much tied to my sense of identity; both professional and personal. I felt that while there was definite areas I could have done better, I have achieved much in these nine months.
Professionally, I felt that the systemic lens is something which has pretty much been implanted in me. Perhaps not a very clear and sturdy one currently, but it definitely changed the way I see things around me. The techniques I have acquired of course required much polishing. But the experiences at the placement had allowed me to develop these competencies under guidance. A rare opportunity that I hardly doubt I will be able to achieve if I had stayed at home.
The training I had at King's had also made me grown as a person. Self-reflexivity is no longer a skill I used for my work. It is basically impossible in my perspective to see myself exclusively in professional and personal self. Very much like Carl Roger's principle on congruence, I find that I was able to appreciate who I am a lot more. Paradoxically, I thought when I stop trying to act professionally, I became more professional or rather, ethical.
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| Outside Portacabin, home of family therapy department |
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| Outside the IoPPN where we spent a good nine months together |
One major gain that I had which I had actually wrote very little, if any, about, is the peer support I have within the programme. I felt that they deserved special mentions as I highly suspect that my experiences in the programme will be different if they have not been who they are. Every single one of them. Given that we spent three days each week in the classroom exchanging ideas and thoughts, the level of trust and comfort in the group is so critical for us to be vulnerability in front of each other. To be able to discuss difficult viewpoints, display our unpolished skills, take constructive feedback be them negative or positive, I find these qualities extremely crucial for me to achieve what I have achieved thus far. For that, I count my blessings.
Sometime last month, I received the conditional offer for the MSc progamme. I guess my journey (of course pending the result of my current programme) in family therapy training has not ended. I wonder what I will write in my first entry next year if I do get into it. For now, I consider myself as completing a lap of training but definitely not done. This ending is also going to be the start of my next lap.
