Thoughts From a Therapist: What My Last Mentoring Session Taught Me

Originally published on Sensory Integration Education on 30 March 2022.

Thoughts From a Therapist is a regular series written by Advanced SI Practitioner Anna Willis about something that piqued her professional interest or inspired her in some way over the last month. Anna, an occupational therapist and owner of Active Play Therapies, has over 10 years of experience working with children and adults with a range of learning disabilities and autism. This month, Anna reflects on a recent mentoring session:

“This month has posed a reflective opportunity for me. I’m incredibly lucky to have Virginia Spielmann as my mentor, and in a recent session, she set me the target to ‘get comfortable with not knowing’. This came out of me repeatedly deflating when she gave me ideas. I would sigh and say: ‘Ohhh why didn’t I think of that!’ At the end of our session she reflected this back to me. Rather than celebrating the acquisition of new, helpful knowledge, I’d berate myself for not knowing. It was because I felt I should know the answers already, and by not knowing the answers, I was letting my clients down.

“So, from this came the target to ‘get comfortable with not knowing’. It’s a bit ironic as I regularly talk about the importance of being honest and open about the limits of our knowledge as professionals. But when it comes to SI, I put myself under extra pressure to know everything. But actually, I’ve got an incredible network of people around me. The value of talking things through (whether in supervision, informally or peer support) is huge. No one person has all the answers. Particularly in SI where the research and theory is developing so rapidly. So I’m unsure why I put myself under pressure to achieve the impossible here!

“The same week as my session, I watched Brené Brown’s Netflix special ‘The Call to Courage’ (would recommend!). The take-home message is you cannot be courageous without being vulnerable. Learning to be vulnerable at work is challenging – I’m great at it when I know it’s something outside of my scope of practice. I’m learning to try it when it’s within my scope! My hope is that we can all let people know what we don’t know, ask questions (even the ones we think are silly!), be honest with clients and colleagues, and be kind when they do likewise and make a world where it’s okay to be human. That in turn gives our clients some powerful role-modelling of how it can be a safe place to open up and be vulnerable.”