Friday May 27, 2005

Okay, so it's not an auspicious beginning to my first ever blog to use the date as a title! I will aim for increased creativity as I get the hang of this thing. To start with I, as an ex-pat Brit, am drawn to the name "Blog" because it reminds me of the Brit term "Bloke" (which is translated from the American "Guy"!). Plus, being full-time self-employed in private practice as a Sex Therapist and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and a full time married woman, mother and grandmother clearly leaves me with way too much time on my hands!

I began this blog on a whim. My colleague in the office next door, Dori, has a blogspot, and reading hers has been inspiring. I thought it would be fascinating to keep a blog about my work. Sitting here now the reality of what I have chosen feels somewhat overwhelming. My work is by nature shrouded in confidentiality, so I won't be writing about my clients (I can hear them all breathing a collective sigh of relief) but I thought it would be interesting to write about psychotherapy from MY perspective of being "not on the couch" hence my blogger handle. To anybody who is not a mental health professional, this probably sounds like an easy task. But one of the things about being a psychotherapist is that a certain amount of mystery is involved in the role. Revealing information about oneself has to be at all times strategic. This is not because we are more fascinating, interesting and important than the people who entrust their psyches to us, but because it has to be clear that psychotherapy is about them, not about us. It's a complicated dance to figure out what things would be useful for clients to know about you, and what would be detrimental and unhelpful to their own psychotherapy. (I'll go into all this in much greater detail in later blogs.)

Anyway, welcome to my "Not On The Couch" blog. More to come...