[humanser] Dealing with blindness when applying to internships

[Carmella D Broome]

There have been great comments made about this already. If we subscribed to 
this theory, I guess none of us would be able to form or maintain 
interpersonal relationships, be they social or professional. It is just 
beyond many sighted people to  grasp how its possible  to  do anything 
without the benefit of  being able to visually assess environment,  people 
around us, etc.

There are  things we miss out on as far as nonverbals.  In grad school, my 
internship supervisors would  point these out.  Some of my  peers would 
actually approach me afterwards to say they didn't think that was right 
because  my profs know I can't see and they weren't things that actually 
caused  a problem.  They thought I was kind of being picked on for something 
I couldn't do anything about. It would be like me handing that supervisor a 
Braille book and saying, "Read this!  Oh, you can't.  Well, how can you 
deal with me if you don't know how to read this?"  The answer, of course, is 
that there are ways of working around the fact that  I can't read print and 
he can't read Braille.  Same thing with  clients.

 But what I have also found is that clients don't get upset if I  miss  a 
nonverbal cue.  They know I can't see. They know I'll ask them  about 
nonverbals at times. Oftentimes, clients will bounce their leg, for example. 
I'll point out that I notice and ask what's up.  Oftentimes, they don't even 
realize they're doing it.  Then, I joke around with them  about how, if I 
were a Gestalt therapist, I would ask what their leg would be telling me if 
it could talk because it obviously wants to say something. We process it and 
then go back to whatever we were talking about.

I wrote an article about this a while back when I was a newer counselor, but 
the things I said are still 100% true. I would just have more examples to 
provide now.  For example, several new mommies have come in with their 
infants and they are very comfortable nursing in front of me.  They don't 
even say anything, they just do it.  You can read the article, "Insight 
Without Sight,"  here
http://blindcanadians.ca/publications/?id=1025


Carmella Broome EdS LPC LMFT/I
Crossroads Counseling Center, Lexington SC
Author of Carmella's Quest: Taking On College Sight Unseen (Red Letter Press 
2009)
http://CarmellasQuest.LiveJournal.com