Assessment of Personal Development - Essay Example

Personal Development Report Assessment Essay After almost six weeks break, the personal journey started again and some conflicting feelings were present in my mind. I was struggling with the excitement at the possibility of discovering new ‘lands’ but at the same time the difficulties and the thought of some painful crossing to reach the terra firma. In reentering the well-known room, I was confronted by the familiar clock, pictures on the wall, and the blue chairs, scattered around as if they were not ready to accommodate our bodies and souls. However, the familiar faces of my colleagues replaced those conflicting feelings with warm and more relaxed feeling. The existential approach that we were going to be exposed in this trimester and that we already had a little taste in the early part of the day left me, and other students, with some unanswered questions. The philosophical component that the existentialism draws from was even more challenging, but I felt not alone in the quest of making sense of the present world. As the decision of me being off medication was finally taken, the anxiety was also increasing. I felt the need to share the news with the group and by doing so, it helped me ease the tension. This made that anxiety more bearable. In addition, by voicing it to the group I was trying to overcome and change my instinctive approach of offering help rather than being the beneficiary. Asking for help was something that I was not accustomed to, partly due to my independent nature but mostly because trusting oneself was a safer and more reliable way of dealing with my own insecurities. I was battling with the latter for a long time and it did come up in the previous trimester. However, I was working at it more consciously. Week 5 started with silence, just like the silence that I was struggling with during my earlier skill session. But as I was learning, especially in this trimester, silence had such a therapeutic effect that the hour of this personal development group had many interesting ‘silent exchanges’ that gave me a space to reflect upon. While Ben denounced his continuous struggle in finding the meaning of the group and his role and expectations, I was compelled to question my role and expectations in the group. That day I did not reach any conclusions but I felt strong about not wanting a role in the group as well as the awareness of not falling into the group activities. In this trimester, the groups seemed more willing to express their own feelings and to push a little bit more, some of the boundaries that were present at the start of the course. I was also pushing my own boundaries but sometimes not as successfully as I wanted. Mostly, it happened when I was challenged, or at least I felt it that way by Michael intervention after I spoke about Sartre and his admiration towards Jean Genet. I made the group aware of my liking of Genet. However, there was much more than just an interest towards the writer. Genet was one of the first homosexual writers that I happened to read about and that opened for me an insight to a world that at the time, I was not so familiar with. In trying to explain the reasons why I liked Genet, I felt I was opening a chapter of my life, a chapter that I was not quite ready to share with everybody. The latter was clear when my answer to Michael and to the group was not explicit. Although I expressed that I read Genet because I was in search of my sexuality I did not clearly state the latter to them. That day on my way back home I reflected on why I did not say that I was also gay, I was annoyed at myself. However, in the presentation that I had the following week, I made sure to add in it a very personal insight of my life. My sexuality was clarified and told not just to my personal development group but also to everybody attending the presentation. I was very much taken by the session number seven, as Michael introduced the idea of the shadow and wondering where our shadows were, meaning where our dark sides of rebellious, anger and annoyance towards other members of the group were. So far, in the sessions so well kept at bay. It was quite uncanny that simple question generated some ‘shadowing reactions’ among Tashi, Michael, and myself. It all started with Tashi wanting to clarify something that went on in the skill group the previous week in which I was the therapist. After the end of the session in which Tashi was my client, Michael told me in front of her that she had been a ‘difficult client’, a comment that did not go well with Tashi. Tashi went straight ahead and challenged Michael, who did not manage to give a reasonable and satisfying answer. What surprised me most was that Tashi also brought it out to the group the fact that besides Michael’s comment, I also said to her that she had been "unauthentic.” I was surprised and in a kind of disbelief that I made that comment. Actually, I did not recall it and I was very surprised at myself if I did. I felt ashamed and sorry at the possibility of making such a comment and apologized. At the end of that group session, I had a private talk to Tashi, as I wanted to clarify with her what had really happened. However, even after that clarification, it did not make any sense to me. On my way home, I thought about Tashi and how painful it must have been to receive such a comment. I liked and respected her and I felt that she had been courageous to bring to the open such a contentious subject. I would have preferred if we had dealt with it that same day as I probably would have had a better idea on why if I had made that insensitive remark and possibly remember in which context. I had thought about Tashi and her comment almost all week and I could not pretend that everything was fine. The session started with Kirsty voicing the difficulties she had with her mother and her struggle in trying to be more independent and live her own life. A feeling of sadness for her difficult situation permeated the room. I sensed that the group was struggling to give solutions and I wondered if it was what Kirsty really wanted. When Kirsty decided that the spotlight needed to be move somewhere else, I was ready to bring into the session my thought regarding Tashi. I was not angry towards her or anxious about me asking for clarification of the comment that she made two weeks earlier. I started by explaining that the conversation that we had the previous week had puzzled me. Since the contentious subject was about authenticity, I felt that the first thing that I needed to say was that my apology to her the previous week was not sincere as I apologized for something that I did not believe I said or had any intention to say. The latter felt liberating, I was able to be less assertive and to express the way I felt especially when I was quite sure that I did not say that she was unauthentic. As the debate between us was took center stage, Tashi explained that she was not so sure that I actually said that she was “unauthentic’ and that was possibly the way she felt after Michael’s comment and the exchange she had with him after the therapeutic session. The penultimate session was quite emotional. Kirsty difficulties were reconsidered but with an insight of how Naomi and other members of the group felt and reacted about it. However, the great surprise came from Ria who after weeks of promising to be more open and to tell us something very personal. Her unbroken and mature voice told us a story of painful abuse in the hands of her ex-boyfriend. The therapeutic silence this time became a place where feelings of sadness and anger germinated and for Ria possibly a place where those abuse had been kept to protect her and his reputation. I felt angry and wanting to report the ex-boyfriend to the police for what he had done to her. I was speechless, as I could not imagine that behind that quiet and smiling face, a tragedy of that sort had been taking place for almost three years. This last event prompted me to think about my future as a therapist and how I would have reacted if a client came to see me with a similar problem. I had to admit that bracketing my anger and my emotions had been a demanding task, and that the difficulty of this future career was always at the door. However, I welcomed those challenges as long as I embraced them with an open mind and an open heart. Read More