I am now very glad to hand over to Roslyn Byfield who is a counsellor in the team. She has written a particularly interesting blog about her experience of being a therapist during the pandemic and addresses the turbulent political landscape of the last year. Roslyn writes her own blog over at https://therapistinlockdown.co.uk and I implore you all to read it!
Hello everyone, and for those who don’t know me, I’m a Birkbeck MSc trained and BACP accredited counsellor in private practice and I recently ended a twelve year stint as voluntary counsellor at WCC. Lucian kindly invited me to contribute to WCC’s blog debut, partly as I’ve been blogging since April and I believe it’s important for profile raising that WCC is investing more in its communications, including social media.
I think it’s fair to say we’ve all been seriously impacted by the pandemic, some much more than others, for example if they have been bereaved. It has forced us, within a relatively short timescale, to confront a number of marked socioeconomic changes, including how we relate to others (having to distance or not meet at all, when proximity and touch are part of what makes us human); how we spend our time (as so many activities have been impossible or limited during lockdowns); how we move around (discouraging public transport use has encouraged more car use, cycling and walking); how we obtain goods and services (much more online, to the detriment of the high street and the environment); how we mark key life stages (restrictions on numbers and on procedures at weddings and funerals etc) and especially the way we work (many more now opting to work from home, even when things return to any kind of normality).
Although working online and via the telephone have been practised for some time, counsellors and therapists have mainly worked with clients face to face, so this has been a massive change forced upon us effectively overnight. It was helpful that some organisations like BACP and Online Events promptly stepped up to the plate by offering training to enable those unfamiliar with these ways of working to benefit from the experience of expert practitioners, as these approaches are ones which it cannot be assumed we can just do. There are various practical, ethical and contractual differences to be understood, as well as the emotional and psychological aspects.
Having done quite a bit of writing and editing during my life, I decided in April, to start a blog, predicated on the psychodynamic principle that our political leaders function as proxies for our initial caregivers and authority figures (parents or guardians), who, in an ideal world, detoxify and return safely our anxieties and projections, enabling us to develop confidence in them and therefore in our capacity to navigate the external world. That this government has proved itself manifestly unable to do this has led to a massive rise in anxiety and related issues across the population, so that months ago, commentators started alluding to a mental health pandemic. Evidence of catastrophic mismanagement of the crisis has been seen time and time again, from the suspension of regular tendering procedures, leading to the highly inappropriate awarding of PPE and other contracts, the appointment of unqualified government contacts and to key posts, the discharge of large numbers of COVID patients into care homes and the abject failure of the Track and Trace system to contain the virus. Although clinically necessary, lockdowns and restrictions have undermined the mental wellbeing of many, even though there have been some benefits. We learn during our training that one of our key challenges along the path to becoming a mature adult is coping with uncertainty, and we’ve had uncertainty in bucketfuls, even more because we cannot be reassured by our leaders.
The coup de grace is now evidence that the marked decline of public trust in the government (which, unlike Germany, for example, has not treated the public as an equal partner in terms of transparency), fostering the growth of conspiracy theories (e.g. COVID doesn’t exist, it’s all a hoax) and the antivax movement, just at a time when the government needs us to be vaccinated. It will be interesting to see what measures are taken to counter these movements, as the government’s libertarian principles are stopping at actually taking down offending websites and Facebook posts.
My weekly blog focuses on the various political shenanigans which have created this situation of failed trust, but also includes content on mental health and developments related to wellbeing, such as enhanced appreciation of the natural world. It’s had very encouraging feedback and I love the analysis and writing so plan to continue for the time being. In the meantime, I wish WCC’s blog well and look forward to reading it!
https://therapistinlockdown.co.uk/2020/11/29/sunday-29-november/