Psychologists face same pandemic as clients
They also deal with loss of routines, loss of relationships
KITCHENER — How do you help someone through a situation you are also going through?
That’s the question psychologists have been grappling with as they’ve helped clients face different problems arising from COVID-19, many of which they have been encountering in their own lives.
“It’s been this parallel process for all of us,” said Carolyn Wiens, clinical supervisor at KW Counselling Services. “In terms of being in a pandemic, we’re experiencing a similar process to our clients in terms of loss of routines and loss of the relationships with the people we love.”
Many of her sessions have become “joint conversations,” where Wiens said they are mutually able to reflect on what the pandemic means and how the client can find new strategies to deal with it.
“For the first couple of weeks there was shock and the feeling of denial,” she said. “And then you get into developing new routines, and you start to wonder, ‘how long is this going to go on for?’ We’re all going through the different stages of frustration, anger and depression. That’s part of everyone’s experience who is living in a pandemic.”
But that also comes with its own share of challenges.
Psychologists need to be aware of their own anxieties, said Wiens, and not let those anxieties colour the conversations with clients. It’s a principle they must also adhere to outside of COVID-19, but the pandemic has further illustrated its importance.
Brian Mainland, co-director of the Waterloo Psychology Group, gives the example of managing working at home while also taking care of young children. It’s a situation that many Canadians find themselves in, and it’s an experience he has also had to manage with his own children, aged two and four.
“One of the things that is challenging is that you hear all these problems that someone is experiencing, and at the same time that you’re trying to wear your psychology hat to help them come up with ways to deal with problems, you’re thinking, ‘yeah, I’m dealing with the exact same thing.’”
In comparison to pre-pandemic sessions, he said he finds himself using more personal examples from his own life to lead into discussions of how to approach the problems.
But that can be a dangerous method if not used carefully, he said, because while both Mainland and his client might be dealing with the same world pandemic, it is impacting them in very different ways.
Some families have seen both parents lose their jobs, struggle to make rent payments and don’t know how they will continue to stay afloat financially. Others couldn’t say goodbye to their dying mother or father.
Mainland, by his own admission, is not dealing with those compounded problems, and he said it’s important to understand that while everyone has this shared COVID-19 difficulty, it is creating different secondary issues for everyone.
His situation is not their situation, and he said psychologists have to approach their sessions that way.
His advice through COVID-19 is for everyone to first turn the lens on themselves and try to understand how they can start managing their own circumstances.
And that goes for psychologists, too. “It’s a time where I’m practising what I preach more than I probably would need to,” he said.
The pandemic has also brought on a different type of challenge: transitioning from in-person sessions to phone and video.
Wiens said KW Counselling started offering the services two years ago, but the uptake has been relatively slow. In-person sessions allow a psychologist to read body language and better understand pauses, and she said it’s generally been the preferred method among psychologists.
But there are benefits to the alternatives. Phone calls can sometimes lead to clients opening up without the fear of physical response, she said, and it can let them dig deeper in some instances.
“Like anything there has been a learning process,” she said. “But I think people are going to see that video and phone counselling are valid options.”
Uncertainty remains in the time of COVID-19. While Ontario has slowly begun its long process to reopen, timelines are still largely unknown.
It will continue to take its toll, and Wiens said everyone is going to need to take steps to manage the interim.
“Clients are grieving, they’re in this in-between place, and they know that they’ve moved from point A, but they’re not quite at point B yet. And sometimes that middle part in between is a really important place to be,” she said.
“The journey is sometimes more important than the end.”