|
| Analytic Psychotherapy and Career Coaching
|
I read your column every week. I know that you are a
analytically-oriented, psychologist and that you have a specialty in
work/life consultation. I am in psychotherapy with a therapist who is a
psychoanalyst, psychologist. I asked her to help me to me define, focus
and execute my job search. She refused to do so saying that that was
not her role. She encouraged me to seek career coaching or
work/consultation in addition to psychotherapy. I feel that to do both
psychotherapy and career counseling would be expensive and time
consuming. What do you think?
Call me pragmatic
Actually, I think there is a method to her madness. You are
correct,
I do indeed practice both as a psychoanalytically-oriented
psychotherapist and as a career coach. However, I don't do them both at
the same time or with the same person. When my psychotherapy patients
require work/life consultation, I refer them to a colleague, hopefully
one who knows how to stay out of the therapy issues and focus on the
career ones. Similarly, when my career clients require psychotherapy, I
refer them to a colleague. I find that there is a wonderful synergy
between the two interventions. Each enhances the impact of the other.
Take for example, the career client who fails to effectively negotiate
salary because she has such poor self-esteem that she devalues her worth
and the value of her skills. Career coaching can help her to
effectively manage this interaction. However, after negotiating salary,
she may have misgivings and self-doubt, she may suffer from an impostor
syndrome in which she feels that she is not worth what she is paid;
and, that she has fooled her boss. Psychotherapy can be very useful in
helping her to explore, understand and ultimately shift her lousy
self-perception.
Now for the crux of your question, why can't you have one-stop shopping?
Why can't you see one person for both psychotherapy and career
counseling? There are two reasons, one is therapeutic, the other is
practical. It is not the role of your therapist to tell you what to do.
In fact, it is counter-therapeutic. Her role is to help you to explore
your feelings, so that you can make good choices for
yourself--and, so
that you can understand the choices that you make. In contrast, an
effective career counselor functions more like a coach, at times,
encouraging, urging and instructing the client step by step.
On a more practical level, it is unusual to find people who are
well-trained in both career counseling and psychotherapy. Most
therapists know little about career counseling and many career
counselors know little about psychotherapy.
As for the costs, yes it can be very expensive. Although if you can
afford it, I suspect that you will find that good therapy and good
career counseling ultimately more than pay for themselves. To cut the
cost of career counseling, I would suggest that you find a career
counseling group. If well run, these groups have the added benefit of
learning from others and broadening your networks. As for reducing the
cost of psychotherapy, others not yet in therapy may want to look at the
column on how to obtain low fee
psychotherapy. However, it
sounds like you have already embarked on a course of treatment. Also, it
sounds like your therapist has a healthy respect for the parameters of
the therapeutic frame. So why not try a career group? You may even
want to start by reading books on career and life planning.
Good luck. I'd be very interested in knowing how you feel about this
advice several months down the road.
Dr. Friedman
|
Write Dr. Lynn Friedman