The purpose of this journal is self-reflection in relation to the therapeutic process and one’s own role as a psychiatric mental health provider.
Through reflective practice, you will evaluate your own emotional intelligence as defined as the capacity to recognize one’s own feelings as well as others and one’s ability to assess and manage those feelings. The focus of these exercises is to investigate a deeper understanding of self, your triggers, the types of cases you invest emotionally more in and get overly involved with and those you’d rather refer to someone else. The idea is to be able to personally observe and analyze your own behaviors/thoughts/decisions and how those impact both you and your clients.
• Discuss a patient interaction in which there was transference, countertransference, prejudice/biases or judgments that you may be making about the patients or that they are verbalizing about you.
• Have you encountered this before?
• From where does this originate?
• Would it appropriate for you to continue to provide care to the patient and if so, how will you prevent these issues from affecting the care you are able to provide the patient?