Monday, July 4, 2011

My First Week

Last week I trained with the residential staff and met my new patients. Next week I will be hanging out with my new supervisor, the director that has been covering my job, the social worker who shares my caseload and the other clinical staff. I will be getting to know my new office space (which I will likely need help finding again tomorrow morning) and reading samples of the reports I will be writing as well as the files of the guys I will be helping. My head is cluttered with my thoughts and feelings about this new professional journey.

Like my last supervisor, my new supervisor is a provider of literature, which is a tactic I appreciate. This weekend's reading has been Parts Work and A Shining Affliction, plus several articles. Both books are definitely worth reading and bring me to the art processing and sense-making of the week.

Parts Work is about Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy, which lends itself really well to guess what... SoulCollage! (See this previous post on previous SoulCollage thoughts -- I was not a fan.) In really poor summary, Parts Work is about making friends with subpersonalities, recognizing their history and purpose and channeling this in ways that help us function at our best. Subpersonalities or "Parts"make more sense as SoulCollage than SoulCollage makes as SoulCollage, so I decided to make a couple based on my own subpersonalities that have been most active this week.

Mr. Ineptitude
Ms. Can-Do-Attitude
In short, this week has been a mix of thoughts like, "I don't know if I can do this," combined with, "Yeah, I am so excited to be doing this!" and a pinch of "I may have been made to do this!" I'm terrified, feeling incompetent, totally stoked and like the fates are smiling down on me and my new patients all at the same time. Good week.