Small Talk

I shared at the second session of the Personal  and Professional Development (PPD) * group about my discomfort in engaging small talk, especially with people I do not know well.  I am aware of this all along, it used to be a big issue when I was younger as I felt incompetent in front of crowds and strangers. 

I shared that it has been less so now as my self-confidence has improved since I started working 6 years ago. Having had to interact with several new groups of people after moving to London - housemates, coursemates, tutors, placement colleagues and friends, I became more conscious  once again about this side of me. One example I cited was that when I bumped into my supervisor at a conference last Friday, she initiated small talk the first time, yet the second and third time, we just smiled, even though I wanted to say something. I felt a tinge of awkwardness as I had wanted to small talk, as well as share my thoughts about her sharing at the conference but decided otherwise. 

I drew two (of many possible) connections to this small talk issue, the first of which I shared with the PPD group, the second only occurred to me after the group ended :

1. I tend to be a task-oriented person, i.e. speak to people only when I have something to ask or need some help. Right now, the people-oriented side of me wishes to get to know people better, rather than  just for tasks. Very often I am not able to initiate it as I would be at lost with what to ask. While writing this I also recall feeling irritated and frustrated each time a friend approached me, as she is the sort who only approaches people when she needs help; I believe it is this similarity that stirred up my negative emotions towards her. On the contrary, I enjoyed conversations with her  sister, as she chats and take genuine interests in hearing and confiding with me; a character I yearn to be like.

2. My family rarely engages in small talk with one another; we only speak when there is a task to be done, or when care and concern is expressed,  like in many Asian families, through questions about basic needs like money, food and safety. This relational pattern persists even till today when I am overseas and speak to them over the phone. It does take me a long time to come to a good place to appreciate and accept this as our love expression.

  

My PPD tutor, in response to my sharing, said I could do small talk with myself to start off with, asking myself things like what another person would want to know or ask, or even imagine what questions I would ask five years ago or five years from now. He also suggested the team to help me work on a devil's pact, which he hopes to elaborate further in future sessions.

I made a pact with myself for the second realisation - to attempt to make small talk with my family on over the phone on a fornightly basis.


* PPD is a class that helps students explore how and what the personal aspect of ourselves enhance or limit us in our professional work with families. This could be done by looking at our own families and membership of other systems in our lives. Genograms, role-play and other experiential exercises could be used in the group session.

My First Observation of a Therapy Session at My Placement

I like the placement arrangement at IOP. Unlike my undergraduate social work placement which happened during term vocations, it is throughout the academic year, i.e. 2 out of the 5 days in a week are dedicated as placement days.

Once a week I participate in a family therapy workshop. This is a team in which  my placement supervisor works as a team with one other family therapist and 2 mental health practitioners currently pursuing their partime family therapy courses. The team adopts the Post-Milan reflecting team approach - while 1 or 2 therapist(s) conduct(s) the family session, the rest act as reflecting therapists, i.e. being proactive observers who, once invited into the session near end of the session, convene a conversation  among themselves, with the therapist(s) and family listening. The conversation could revolve around observations and hypotheses of the covert/overt conversations, dynamics and actions during the session, as well as the observers' personal reflection, feelings or thoughts triggered from observing the session. Suggestions and questions could also be raised. After the reflective dialogue ends, the therapist(s) and family would resume the session, bringing into the session what they just heard that make sense to explore further.

This approach enriches and demystify the therapy process, bringing closed-door professional discussions in front of the family. Not only does it increase transparency but also broaden the multiple perspectives the family and therapist(s) could experience to create differences. This approach is built from the concepts of second order cybernetics and social constructionism.

As this is my first day joining the team, I was told to remain as observer and not participate in the reflection yet.  Learnt possible ways to therapeutically engage mother and young children in play and music making. I'm amazed at how the team constantly attempt to engage children as young as 3  and a toddler in therapy, even  though their attention span is short and half the time nosily playing with the toys in the therapy room. This makes me reflect back on how much I had missed out in my previous work, when younger children brought to family sessions were totally ignored or assumed to not benefit or able to participate.

Observed the flexibility and risk-taking of reflecting team - the impromptu use of dolls and motherese-talk, which captured the children's attention during reflection (for a first time for the team). Noted also how the children's attention could easily be lost over time and when the reflection is not engaging enough.

The second family did not turn up for the session but the team made use of the time to convene a case discussion. Understood the constraints of scheduling sessions to track the role and involvement of care coordinator, based on the hypothesis of him/her being possibly a homeostatic member of the referred family, as suggested by Palazzoli et al (1980).

A vintage photo of 6 siblings, probably taken in the 1950s or 60s, which happens to be the era when family therapy first started. The girl on the top left hand corner is my mother!

Reference

PALAZZOLI, M. S., BOSCOLO, L., CECCHIN, G. & PRATA, G. 1980. The problem of the referring person. Journal of the Marital and Family Therapy, 6, 3-9.

Day One at IOP

I was very much at peace and feeling calm throughout the first day of my journey as an Associate Family Therapist - contributing to this would be the friendliness of staff and course mates, as well as my prior experiences of group supervision and participation in reflecting team. An observation I shared with the team is that most coursemates are still rather reserved, probably keeping the energy to keep up the stamina for future; also the more risk I take to share and experience, the more I would learn and take responsibility for my learning; the more colleagues who do the same, the more the group growth too!

I like the way our programme leader addresses my course mates and I as 'colleagues', which is a constant reminder that these two years will be a bridge leading to our future careers as family therapists or psychotherapists.

I enjoyed the experiential learning portions like the "speed dating", reflecting team and dyad discussions. I also liked our first class Personal Professional Development (PPD) class answering the century-old Marcel Proust questionnaire on "What do I like doing most". All in all, lots of experiential learning!

I'm also mindful of my tendency to doze off when it comes to lecture-style learning situations. I'm glad that I did not feel so for the entire day. Also found it amazing that a century-old questionnaire could still be so intriguing and useful right now, helping me to get to know myself a little more though asking myself questions I have never thought of asking - the question of how I would want to die (in my sleep with my closed ones at my side). I will keep my answers and compare them with my answers one year from now as an MSc student!

What struck me most in the Placement Introduction class was that we are not just acquiring clinical skills to work with families, but also creating a platform for ourselves to understand the role of a Family Therapist and to re-position ourselves as a family therapist, over and above our current profession, in my case, a social worker. A word used which I like is "de-skilled", just like we need to take off our clothes, feel naked first before we could don on fresh ones!

From the questions posted and sharing by the MSc students, as well as my own thoughts, I gather that we are all concern about the challenges that we would face in clocking the 60 (Certificate) or 240 hours (MSc) of supervised clinical hours. IOP is stricter - the only hours we could clock are 1.5 hours for conducting therapy (or co-therapy) and 20 minutes as a reflecting therapist. Important thing I learnt though is to have a balanced sentiment over this - on one hand to be proactive to raise red alert as soon as I notice I'm really lagging behind, yet on the other, to also stay mindful of the experiential learning I would gain even from the hours that I were to be unable to clock such as case conferences, discussions, etc.

Two key pointers for myself to stay mindful which I hope to record it here so that I could revisit and remind myself regularly:

1. A colleague reflected something important that never occurred to me, that my tendency to be overly focused in organising things to the extent that I could get overwhelmed and lose the sense of priority; this could have been my way to overcompensate my lack of self-confidence, especially in the past. I now believe these two have strong co-relation to each other in me, as through my years of working, my self-confidence have been built up and the times when I get overwhelmed with overly organising things have lessened.  

2. The importance of being consistent in writing and not to accumulate back log, something which I was mindful when I started working as an aftercare officer but lapsed over the months. This will be a huge goal I am committed to achieve and to gather mutual support from my colleagues!

Who is Amethyst Rippling?

Who is Amethyst Rippling?

Amethyst Rippling is the blogger-double of Yang Yang, existing on the world wide web, in my mind and perhaps overtime becomes part of the readers’ narratives in your own realms.

HW suggested I choose a blog name that integrates me and family therapy. Amethyst is my birthstone and is the name I used for my email address for ages. I initially have resistance in reusing it, wanted something different. I thus avoided it totally. Some initial ideas were - Reflecting Ripples, Rippling Reflections, Rippling Mirror and Rippling Forest. In the end I decided to embrace amethyst, after reading up more about it and realizing how apt it describes me and family therapy!

Amethyst

The name originates from the Greek work “amethystos”, which refers to being not drunk, or the cure for drunkenness. In Greek mythology a person called Bacchus felt remorse after turning a young maiden to stone. He poured wine and stained the statue, which created amethyst.

Today we know amethyst as the precious stone from the quartz family, colour ranging from reddish to bluish purple or violet. I presume not many people know that it is transparent at its purest form. and called Citrine  and turns yellow orange when heated. Its scientific formula is SiO2, made from sulphur and oxygen. It is usually found crystallized with rippling inside that are called thumb markings.

Amethyst is the aquarius birthstone (20 Jan to 18 Feb) and the 4^th and 6^th wedding anniversary jewellery. It also symbolises stability, balance, harmony, peace, courage and inner-strength. Believed to be the stone of spirituality and sobriety, it is said to have healing power against addictions, calms the mind, relieve headaches, insomnia, arthristis, pain relief and circulatory problems.  It is also called the Stone of Transformation. One special type of amethyst named Chevron Amethyst is purple with banded white and said to help change old karmic patterns to promote self-love for one to live in harmony with one’s loved one(s) and family members.

Rippling

It refers to the forming of small waves outwards on the surface of a liquid when something drops into it. The ripple effect is a term often used in economics to describe how the reduction in spending of a person decreases the earning of others and their ability to spend. In sociology, it refers to how the interaction of people affect those not directly involved, or how altruistic action by individuals or one community could influence or spread to others.

I was quite sure of picking Rippling. Why rippling, not ripple? Rippling gives a more circular way of looking at life as continuous changing process, whereas ripple refers to just a linear snapshot of  something dropped into the water that creates waves and dies off. The former aligns better with more systemic perspective, with the latter as just describing one segment of the whole process; the waves do not just die but expand outwards and form to other phenomena, while the process continues each time a new object drops into the water. Rippling also occurs on the surface of water, where a blurred reflection occurs, just like how we usually experience the uncertainty and confusion when we face initial struggles when changes occur in our lives. As the ripple spreads out over time, the reflection becomes clear. Helping myself and others (including co-therapists, clients and society to reflect) are important skills and processes in therapy, and in life, as well.

Rippling marries Amethyst

The tipping point for Rippling to marry Amethyst was when I read about the rippling (=fractures) on amethyst crystals. The combination kind of tell me that scars or imperfection contributes to beauty and serves as a part and parcel of healing. It is also interesting to visualise a precious stone (a solid) rippling (create waves); how fascinating it would be if hard objects could be as versatile as liquid to be able to expand and change with just the slightest touch! A little difference creates a widening difference. Even if this difference is just observed from the surface, we are not sure how much mystery is beneath - what remains unchanged or what shifted along, or there could still be undercurrent or perhaps calmness beneath all along.

Amethyst Rippling is at the same time mobile (moving waves) yet stationary (calm); awake yet resting; mindful yet at peace. All in all, a higher level of consiciousness that is in harmony. This is where I see the potential of Family Therapy, a combination of Science and Art – having a rippling effect and simultaneously, possess ing the aesthetics of healing.

Sources:

http://www.gemstoneeducation.com/Amethyst.htm

http://www.birthstones.org.uk/jewels-gemstones/amethyst.htm

http://www.astrologyzine.com/crystal-5.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_effect

See how amethyst looks like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yBW4qDef8s

How I got pregnant with Blog

Post Blog Days

I supposed I'm an opportunist. I started writing diary in 1992 under the instruction of my Chinese Language teacher back then. I took this as a chance for me to continue this writing habit throughout my days as a teenager. It went through a slow death nearing the end of my undergraduate days because of my lost of interest and other parts of my life superseding. It lasted for about 10 years.

How I got pregnant with Blog

It took almost another 10 years, in 2009, for another opportunity to arise. As a trainee in Family Therapy, I am tasked to write a reflective diary and a clinical log, as part of my course requirement to chart my growth both personally and clinically.

I choose to back date this entry as this idea of blogging was mooted on my first day at my Family Therapy course in Oct 2009. When my course programme leader introduced the concept of reflective diary and clinical log to us. I asked if I could turn it into a blog. While she was agreeable, I was cautioned against confidentiality for clients and sensitivity towards things said about colleagues, as well as to yield a more concise version for submission as part of course requirement.

But why blog? I could just keep it as a personal diary. Well, I hope to share this rebirth of me as a social worker, to a family therapist cum social worker. I hope the sharing could circumvent boundaries, especially with those interested in systemic family work but not able to witness in person this journey with me here in London. By having more people observing and participating in this journey, it also enriches my learning. Together, hopefully we create new perspectives about ourselves and the worlds we live in.

It took me 3 months of pregnancy before I finally set out on this as my first major task in 2010 . After a day of brainstorming for the blog name with HW, I finally decided on the blog name Amethyst Rippling. I have some reservation initially whether to keep it within restricted view but decided in the end to make it fully public for whoever interested to participate in this learning journey with me, It also embraces the transparency and  the effect of second order cybernetics in the post-modern approaches in Family Therapy.

I must say I am 10 years behind time since blogging became ubiquitous way back in 1999 … also regardless of how many years I will sustain writing this moving ahead, I am glad that I have finally, officially launched it online on 6-Oct-2009 (idea mooted)/ 5-Jan-2010 (actual publishing date) !

There will be two different labels to the blog - a reflective diary that focuses more on my personal growth and another clinical log, that focuses on my clinical learning points.