Originally Written for Training the Trainer course Online Academy in my role as faculty tutor. https://www.acadtherapy.online/ 

As a seminar leader for psychotherapy training, a clinical supervisor in the NHS, and tutor for the Academy for Online Counselling & Psychotherapy, an ordinary moment in life captured an idea about the role of tutor/helper, and importance of self-belief.

I happened to be sat chatting to my 18-year-old, who coincidently began telling me about a sparring session he had just in the gym. Fully ignited from the session, my son spontaneously commented about his sparring teacher, “He cares about us”. In the same breath my son went on to reflect on a new experience he had had in the week, independently leading a session of 10-year-olds, in a Taekwondo sparring session. His TKD teacher had given him the gift of opportunity after being astute enough to sense a lack of motivation and confidence in my son. This skilfully chosen intervention, testing and challenging and trusting my son in one fell swoop, stretching him just enough outside of his comfort zone, seemed to spur both his motivation and his self-belief. My son voiced his relational experience, naming it explicitly as feeling ‘cared for’ and being ‘mentored’. He went on further, saying how good it felt to have “someone who believes in me…” and unprompted continued… “but it’s hard to believe in someone unless you’ve been believed in”.

This struck me as being rich about relationship. Firstly, it addresses the interpersonal, relational aspect that is the fundamental basis of the helping relationship. As a psychotherapist from a relational model, my relational ear conceptualises my son’s description of his experience with his trainer as a ‘reciprocal role’, representing an internalised relationship experience, with roots in childhood, as a template in adulthood for relating to self and other. This relational pattern is depicted as having two ‘poles’, an original adult (caring) to original child (cared for). Written as ‘caring – cared for’ the template is enacted in other relationships, and in this instance would be facilitative of self-care and of trusting, caring relationships. The other reciprocal role, “believing – believed in” would similarly involve self and others…and is internalised in “believing in” oneself and in others influencing relational and general self-management procedures that would be replicated and re-enacted.

Imperative to the role of the ‘helper’, is the capacity to instil the feeling of being cared for and of believed in, perhaps particularly important at the beginning of a course when the student or child may be anxious and need containing and encouraging, and when the aim of building a trust in the relationship would also be key for the helping alliance.

Secondly, it also spurred me to think about the Vygotskian idea of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which CAT has also taken to integrate into its ideology and theoretical basis. Therapists need to be able to gauge what is the ‘ZPD’, which Vygotsky relates to the difference between the two levels the zone of proximal development, which he defined as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky 1978 p86). In CAT this is often referred to when the therapist is gauging what the client might be able to work with, within the session or outside of it, perhaps having practiced with the therapist first. Vygotsky believed that learning takes place when the teacher is not a provider of content, but a facilitator. The idea ‘what a mother does today with a child the child will do for themselves tomorrow’, is a central tenet that can be related to the teacher/student, therapist/client relationship.

Thirdly, my reflection, concerns the feeling of being believed in, which ignites something and relates to the role of the tutor to inspire or impassion which perhaps comes from a relational pattern of the tutor also believing in their subject and their tutee. When a tutor can instil passion in the student, to be able to fully ignite and alight others with enthusiasm, is a magical aspect of the relationship.

So, this relational perspective emphasises the need to build a relationship that is trusting, allowing the student to bring themselves to learning in an open way, particularly as anxiety tends to shut down thinking and creativity and is the enemy of learning. The student needs to be able to make mistakes, and mistakes are exposing. The tutor needs to help the student feel safe enough to be vulnerable, as learning is a precarious process, always two steps forward one step back, and if I recall my own experience of undertaking the online diploma I was constantly being struck by discovering what I did not yet know. The tutor needs to be able to help the student immerse themselves in an unfamiliar territory and at the same time help them feel able to question. The student who nods and agrees is unlikely to get the most out of the experience. The tutor needs not to be defensive. And the tutor needs to be able to bear vulnerability like the student, not having all the answers, or the ‘content’ that Vygotsky referred to. In being open to not knowing, but facilitating, helping the student find out, may involve directing them to resources, enabling but accompanying them in their learning journey.

References

Ryle, A. (1990). Cognitive-Analytic Therapy: Active Participation in Change. Wiley, Chichester.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.