Reflection is Critical

My second client on placement, a 71 year old gentleman was a much different experience from my first one who was a younger woman. Upon meeting this client for the first time straight away I did not feel comfortable with him and because of this I rushed to get through the psycho-social assessment and interview. Our second meeting felt exactly the same. I was nervous and anxious about meeting with him and knew coming out of the meeting that something just wasn’t feeling right about spending time with this client. In supervision, my supervisor asked me what about this client made me feel uncomfortable.

At first I had no idea and thought it must be him and his personality but in reflecting I was nervous before even talking to the client so it could not have been his personality. So the more I reflected on it I realised that this client reminded me of someone from my past that had a negative impact on my life for a period of time. The client’s age, physical features and body language were all triggers that were reminding me of this man and a situation from my past that was very negative and abusive.

As Beddoe & Maidement (2009) point out, reflection is a way to “speak back” and to confront accounts that demand self appraisal. Obviously my negative reaction to a client whom I had never met before was something I needed to confront. We have heard about reflection from the beginning of study and how important it was but this was the first time it was highlighted for me and made a difference in working with a client.  It was very remarkable to actually see how reflecting on this client and why he was making me feel uncomfortable helped me to realise that this past situation was affecting me in working with this client..

After realising I was unconsciously linking this client with a personal experience I was able to re-visit him with an open mind and a different attitude. I was able to be more relaxed, spend more time with the client and get more information from him. What I have learned from this experience is to think and reflect about a situation if it doesn’t feel comfortable and not be naive that it could very well be something personally affecting your performance.

References: 

Beddoe, L & Maidment, J 2009, Mapping Knowledge for Social Work Practice: Critical Intersections, Cengage Learning, South Melbourne.