Becoming a practitioner in the field of mental health is a far more challenging task than one is likely to envisage at the beginning of one’s study in psychology. We face different kinds of challenges in the different developmental phases in the span of our work life as therapists. Whether it be novice or an experienced veteran, trials in our work are unavoidable — it may vary in each stage, however, it is present. This article focuses on the struggles faced by a beginner practitioner.

Novice Therapist Challenges

The challenges of a novice therapist are unique and an area of self-doubt in their personal and professional sense of self. Expertise to cope with this and develop a sense of self-efficacy takes years of personal work, supervised practice and experience. The selection to a counselling or clinical program depends on one’s intellectual capacity and cognitive skills, it does not often prepare one to cope with the ground realities in this field. It’s only during the internship phase that the students face the ground related challenges. Many of them struggle to cope with the complexity of human distress and one’s capacity to alleviate this. These challenges continue when they move into practice after the completion of their course. “The microscopic examination, understanding, and improvement of the emotional life of humans — the most complex of all species — is much more difficult than the novice can imagine” (Skovholt & Ronnestad, 2003).

Novice counsellor often feel a high level of performance anxiety during the early phase of their practice. They lack the professional confidence that protects them from anxiety when difficulties of human distress are encountered. These can be experienced more intensely with clients who present severe personality disturbances, suicidal ideations, self-harming, addictions and life-threatening disease.

These anxieties get compounded by the therapist’s sense of self that may be fragile due to their own life experiences. Even when the novice is in therapy, they are still in the journey of exploring their life events that shaped their personality and often vulnerable in their sense of self-worth. The novice can shift from enthusiasm to deflation and elation to despair when faced with struggling clients. It’s been noted that age and experience help the therapist manage their emotional fluctuations better (Skovholt & Ronnestad, 2003). It’s a matter of developing the emotional muscle required to absorb as well as separate oneself from client distress. A student therapist in his/her 40’s from a different but ‘helping field’ is likely to find it easier to manage the intensity than one in the mid-20s.

Another challenge faced by the novice is the extent of heightened evaluation by the doorkeepers of the profession. These can be their teachers, site supervisors and senior professionals in the field. Rigorous training is often recommended for the field of psychotherapy. However, psychotherapy as a profession has a proliferation of personality theories, no clear trajectory of best possible cure and often confounding in practice as well as the outcome. These obstacles are magnified for the novice because the supervisor is not just an admired teacher but also a feared evaluator who wields real power (Doehrman, 1976; Falwey-Odea, 2003; Pack,2009).

Insufficient conceptual clarity is another problem faced by the novice, although they may have studied the theories in their post-graduate programs, applying it to real cases is an overwhelming task. Even if the program does equip them with the rationale, method and development of conceptualisations, in actual practice these remain a bewildering task for the beginner. Lack of experience leaves them ill-equipped to arrive at a conceptualisation about individual clients in terms of presenting problems, tentative assessment and diagnosis of its origin and formulations around interventions. As opposed to a seasoned practitioner who has internalised conceptual maps and often operate intuitively.

Finally, a major impediment faced by novices in this profession is the glamorised expectations from the work. In my early years of training, one of my beloved trainers warned all of us trainees about the ‘God Syndrome’ trap that beginners fall into. He called it CMG (call me God), which is followed by EGCMG (even God calls me God). Although he said it in levity, I remember it having a serious impact on my reflections of myself as a therapist. It significantly influenced the way I accessed supervision and personal therapy. I also believe that this trap is not limited to beginner practitioners, some seasoned therapists also believe in their extraordinary power to cure and heal.

Some people are attracted to this field because they want to help others and thus derive their sense of self-worth through feelings of heroic power it can bring. To be able to grandly reduce the suffering of the traumatised people. Many of them have been inspired by a fairy tale figure, older teacher, caring therapist or charismatic guide who feeds into these images of ‘superheroes’. These glamourized figures impede realistic expectations and truncate the development of the therapist. If the session goes well the novice feels elated and trusts self as an ‘excellent therapist’ and if it goes poorly feels deflated and self flagellates for being a ‘worthless therapist’. A colleague of mine said to me long ago, “if my client gets better, appreciates my work and likes me then I must be good at my work”. Thus, professional self-worth as well as personal self-worth gets tied with client improvement. Thinking becomes linear and other factors that facilitate change stays inaccessible in the ground (for e.g. the client characteristics and supportive figures in the client’s life).

With time, practice and supervision the novice are likely to develop more realistic expectations that one is unable to cure or help the other in pain to the extent one fantasizes. In fact, therapy and change is an excruciatingly slow and painful process and there are many other factors that support and hinder these changes in which the practitioner plays only a minute part. Research shows that client is the most significant variable in therapy outcome (Lambert, 1989). Developing a muscle for this profession requires a thorough all-encompassing approach. An analogy would be — to develop strength, endurance and flexibility in the body we require an ongoing program that includes weight training, cardio, flexibility and endurance exercises; accompanied by a healthy diet that balances protein, carbs, vitamins and minerals. An absence of any of this can stunt the development of a healthy body leading to fatigue and inability to sustain the workout anymore. In the language of psychotherapy training — becoming an effective therapist requires building emotional, mental, physical and spiritual muscle. This can be facilitated by the pursuit of knowledge through formal ways of accreditation, ongoing education, exposure to different theoretical perspectives and assimilating new concepts into one’s ways of thinking and practice. This needs to be accompanied by one’s own therapy, identifying one’s strengths and limitations through supervision, physically active life and mindfulness practices.