2nd Edition
The Myth of the Untroubled Therapist Private Life, Professional Practice
Therapists are not immune to the range of problems their clients experience, including divorce, bereavement, illness and depression. The Myth of the Untroubled Therapist considers what kinds of difficulties clinicians face, as well as the best ways of dealing with them.
Featuring interviews from forty different practitioners – CBT, psychoanalytic, integrative and humanistic therapists from an international array of backgrounds – on how they coped during times of personal strife, the book dispels the myth that therapists are immune to the kind of problems that they help clients through. Using clinical examples, personal experience and research literature, Marie Adams challenges mental health professionals to take a step back and consider their own wellbeing. This new edition is updated throughout and includes a new chapter looking at the impact of COVID-19 on practitioners. Linking therapists’ personal histories to their choice of career, the book highlights some of the key elements that may serve, and sometimes undermine, counsellors working in private practice or mental health settings.
The Myth of the Untroubled Therapist is ideal for counsellors and psychotherapists, as well as social workers and those working within any kind of helping profession.
Introduction 1.The Pandemic and its Aftermath 2. The Untroubled Therapist: Buying the Myth 3. In the Family Way: When Therapists Have Children (or not) 4. Body and Soul: Working While in Physical Pain 5. Black Dog: Therapists’ Depression 6. Anxiety: Sparks Flying Upwards 7. History: A Lens to the Future. Why we Become Therapists 8. Keeping our House in Order 9. The Pain of Loss: Death in the Family 10. A Problem Shared... 11. Finally: Letting Go of the Myth
Biography
Marie Adams is a psychotherapist and writer. Along with her private practice, she teaches at the Metanoia Institute in London and the Institute for Arts Therapy and Education. She previously worked as a news producer for the BBC and later as a consultant psychotherapist for the Corporation, leading workshops for journalists and production staff on trauma and mental health.
'Marie Adams has brought her text up to date by including a focus on the COVID 19 pandemic and its impact on therapists during the lockdowns and since then. The profession has changed forever, yet the basis of the book – the personal struggles of therapists while working, still holds true. What an achievement that book is; a real, loved classic! Essential reading for every therapist.'
Sofie Bager-Charleson, author of Enjoying Research in Counselling and Psychotherapy and co-editor of Supporting Research in Counselling and Psychotherapy: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed methods Research.
'Every now and again a new book comes across my desk which highlights such an obviously significant aspect of our lives as therapists that it seems astonishing that it has not already been written and added to the essential reading of every psychotherapy training programme. The Myth of the Untroubled Therapist is such a book: Adams weaves insights from her own personal and professional experience with those of numerous other therapists into a highly readable and seamless narrative exploring stories of human vulnerability encompassing crisis, anxiety, loss and depression. In the process she debunks the fiction of 'the untroubled therapist' and, as important, reminds us how genuine engagement with our own inevitable difficulties in living can provide the surest compass for therapeutic practice.'
Simon du Plock
, professor at Middlesex University'This book gets straight to the heart of one of psychotherapy’s basic issues: why do people become therapists. There seems to be two prevailing myths about therapists: they are either completely neurotic or totally sane. These myths are held both within and outside the therapy profession. In this brave and honest book, Adams challenges both perspectives and, using remarkable and fascinating examples, shows that therapists generally have problems just like everybody else. This book should be required reading for all therapists and trainees; if somebody feels they don’t need to read it - that might be a sign that they should!'
David Mann, consultant psychotherapist and author of Erotic Transference and Countertransference
