Reconnecting with you through my blog

Previously when writing blog posts for an early incarnation of my website I have provided practicable hints and tips, counselling strategies and ideas for problem solving. I have reviewed products and resources which I find useful in both my work with clients and also my own life - however given the memoir based nature of my writing projects these days I am inclined to restart this blog with content that is more aligned with those newer creative challenges.

Therefore, the series of posts following this one will be based more from my own point of view, opinion and experience - which I know can be a bit of a rare beast when it comes to therapists self-disclosing, certainly publically.

Nonetheless, after some careful consideration I have chosen to do so - to give a grounding and hopefully positive insight into how I work for those clients whom I have not yet met. And to allow those readers who might never have a session with me to come to know me through what I put on paper.

I believe that those I have worked with would consider me to be open and honest when it comes to relevant self-disclosure. Of course, there are many occasions when I have declined to share with my clients that I too have experienced what they bring to session. However, when I have believed it useful to do so, I have dared to offer them the knowledge that I understand their issue in the way only experience can inform us.

I think this sharing is very natural, paricularly for those clients whom I have known for a long time. We have been living alongside each other and growing simultaneously during those years as fellow humans. We are collecting good and bad life experiences in parallel along the way, and I think it is a typical rapport building reflex to share some of those things verbally. It builds connection, trust and safety - plus I hope it is useful to know that your therapist is not a perfect person. That they also have complex feelings and don't have everything figured out. 

My work on this blog will therefore be to determine which of those personal experiences might be relevant and helpful to read about, and for me to find a way to share them with you, dear reader, in a way that offers something of worth whilst also respecting the relationship that I have with my clients, and the knowledge that they don't all want to know what their therapist had for breakfast... or perhaps you do?