Professional Advice
Hi! My name is Emily, and I am currently pursuing my master’s degree for Speech and Language Pathology. My question is, what is the best way that you are able to maintain your patience or mental health throughout working with more challenging patients?
Thank you!
Emily,
HI! Congrats on being a masters student in Speech Language Pathology. Yay!!!!
Self-care is such an important aspect of life. It is for our own mental health and can keep us from “over reacting” when there is not a need for a reaction. Find things that make you happy, that FILL YOUR BUCKET of joy and giving. The value of giving, value of compassion, and value of kindness goes both ways (for others and OUR SELF). If you care for yourself it allows you to care for others.
On last thought, we can’t own what a client says. If a client is frustrated, mad, upset, depressed, we can empathize with them. We can care for them. AND, we can’t own their stuff, like other can’t own our stuff. Thus, if we are getting frustrated or loosing our patience with “challenging clients”, we might want to look inward and ask questions like:
-what expectations am I putting this client? Is that far?
-what are am doing that is causing MY lack of patience?
-what thoughts am I having to cause my lack of patience?
Remember this, some people are just not ready for therapy. This is can vary from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year. I mean look at what we ask clients to do:
1. Learn new skills
2. Talk in a new ways
3. Take ownership
4. Adjust perspectives
5. Perform selfcare
6. Let go of anxiety and fears
7. Step into uncomfortable speaking situations
8. Try things out of comfort zones
Every week. Do we do those life adjustments everyday, every week? Put ourselves in their shoes and we might not feel as frustrated.
Does that help?
Thanks for asking questions!
Be you!
With compassion and kindness,
Scott
Hey Emily!
To be able to do justice to any relationship, personal or professional, we must have enough to give… enough peace, enough compassion, enough strength… and for that we must ensure we replenish our reserves on a regular basis! So ensure you get some down time doing what makes you happy. Something that you do because YOU like it.. not to catch a deadline, not to make someone else happy, but just because…
Another very important thing that I ask patients to do in therapy is to draw joy from the process of getting somewhere, rather than mastery over something. But we must learn to practice what we preach! So if the PWS must break their seemingly unachievable goal into smaller ones and learn to praise themselves for having taken that one tiny step, so must the therapist!
One small correction I’d like to make in your question, though… clients are not challenging, tasks are. So the clients that might seem ‘challenging’ to you are in fact dealing with the same ‘challenging tasks’ that you are… most of the times they’re dealing with a bigger challenge than the one that you’re dealing with.
Remembering and recognizing these few facts makes the road much less challenging, for you as well as your clients.
Hope that helps!
Pallavi
Hi Emily! I echo what Scott and Pallavi have said. Practicing self-care is very important. You have to build in your personal time where you do things just for you. I personally value my weekends, and try not to work on weekends, if I can help it. It’s also important to find a support network of colleagues who understand what you are going through. Also, as Scott mentioned, you have to recognize clients are responsible for their well-being and we are facilitators in that process.