Main description:

Therapists are not immune to the range of problems their clients experience, including divorce, bereavement, illness, and depression. The Myth of the Untroubled Therapist considers what kinds of difficulties clinicians face and considers the best ways of dealing with them.

Featuring interviews from forty different practitioners - CBT, psychoanalytic, integrative and humanistic therapists from an international array of backgrounds - on how they coped during times of personal strife, the book dispels the myth that therapists are immune to the kind of problems that they help clients through. Using clinical examples, personal experience and research literature, Marie Adams challenges mental health professionals to take a step back and consider their own well-being. This new edition is updated throughout and includes a new chapter looking at the impact of Covid-19 on practitioners. Linking therapists' personal histories to their choice of career, the book highlights some of the key elements that may serve, and sometimes undermine, counsellors working in private practice or mental health settings.

The Myth of the Untroubled Therapist is ideal for counsellors and psychotherapists as well as social workers and those working within any kind of helping profession.

Contents:

Introduction 1.The Pandemic and its Aftermath 2. The Untroubled Therapist: Buying the Myth 3. In the Family Way: When therapists have children (or not) 4. Body and Soul: Working while in physical pain 5. Black Dog: Therapists' depression 6. Anxiety: Sparks Flying Upwards 7. History: A Lens to the Future. Why we become therapists 8. Keeping our house in order 9. The pain of loss: Death in the family 10. A problem shared 11. Finally: Letting go the myth