[humanser] Dealing with blindness when applying to internships

Fri Feb 26 22:17:58 UTC 2010

I would want to hear more from the supervisor about his/her specific areas 
of concern. How does anyone build a relationship with anyone? I think I 
would say something like, "I've thought about this, but am wondering if you 
have specific areas of concern." Or something like that. I like to tell the 
story of my interview for my graduate school program in counseling 
psychology. I asked the department chair if he had concerns about me being 
able to pick up on nonverbal communication with my client. (He hadn't 
brought it up in the interview.) He told me he didn't think vision was all 
it's cracked up to be in therapy and didn't see it as a concern. This was a 
guy who was in his late 50's at the time. It was not a concern to him. This 
doesn't mean it isn't something to think about, but blind people have been 
therapists for decades.

Of course, if there are specific things your instructor or supervisor are 
concerned about or if they have specific feedback for you, you would want to 
hear that. I hope you are able to put them at ease.

Kathy McGillivray
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karen Rose" <rosekm at earthlink.net>
To: "'Human Services Mailing List'" <humanser at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: [humanser] Dealing with blindness when applying to internships

> Hi, Milissa and All:  Oh, how I had hoped these issues on the part of
> supervisors had gone away by now.  I am a totally blind therapist in Ca. 
> in
> practice since 1984.  Way back in the day, I got asked questions like this
> in interviews, and always answered that Freud never made eye contact with
> his patients--he was sitting behind them.  (Not that I'm all that
> traditionally psychoanalytic in orientation--that answer just seemed to 
> make
> professors have to reflect.
>
> In my first few years of practice, when working in clinic situations, I
> would often raise the question of blindness by the end of the second 
> session
> if the client had not done so, just to make the topic safe.  In the
> beginning, I would offer them the opportunity to work with a sighted
> therapist if they felt uncomfortable with me after the second sessions.
> Because supervisors had been so concerned with the issue, I actually 
> counted
> the number of clients who took me up on this.  The number was twelve, in
> fourteen years of practice.  Now, I've stopped this practice, as I am in
> fulltime private practice and can no longer offer this to clients, but it
> appears that very, very few of them care.  Clients are interested in both
> feeling better and getting better.  They are in pain about their own 
> issues,
> and mostly couldn't care less about ours.
>
> I think that blindness, like any other characteristic of a therapist, can 
> be
> used as a Rorashach card--an object onto which projections may be 
> made--and
> this can be useful in therapy.  I often get the projection, "It's 
> wonderful
> that you can't see me.  You won't judge me on the way I look, llike 
> everyone
> does."  (Actually, this tells me that not "everyone," but this client, 
> makes
> such judgements.)  Or, I'll get the projection about having better 
> hearing,
> etc.  (I usually correct the better hearing one, and then talk about 
> hoping
> to be able to "hear" what the client is saying emotionally.)  There are 
> lots
> of ways of using blindness as a therapeutic tool.  Most of my examples 
> come
> from blindness, e.g., examples about fear and/or trust connecting with 
> just
> going forward and crossing streets anyway; examples of actually doing what
> you want to rather than being blocked by "the odds being stacked against
> you," or by "what society expects," etc., by using the example, "If I did
> what was expected of me, or what I am "supposed to," I wouldn't be here,
> since my group is seventy percent unemployed.  So why not go for what you
> want, rather than what you think you can do, or what others have said is
> available to you?"
>
> Tell your potential supervisors, and professors too, that blindness is an
> asset as a therapeutic tool when used well.
>
> Karen Rose, MFT
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: humanser-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:humanser-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Milissa Garside
> Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 6:57 AM
> To: 'Human Services Mailing List'
> Subject: [humanser] Dealing with blindness when applying to internships
>
>                Hi Everyone,
>
> I have been on this list for a while and have enjoyed the discussions.
>
> I am currently a graduate student at Lesley University getting my masters 
> in
> mental health counseling. I am slated to begin my first internship in the
> fall of 2010. However, my advisor recommended that I put my internship off
> for a year because I do not have any "work experience." I have been 
> advised
> to get some volunteer work which I have done. Although I do not have any
> "work experience" I do have a great deal of volunteer work within the 
> human
> service field. The decision to wait another year does not sit well with 
> me.
> As a result, I have spoken to several people at the university including 
> the
> disability coordinator as well as the field training person. The field
> training person saw my resume last night and agreed that I have enough
> experience to warrant applying for an internship. However, both she and my
> advisor have raised the question how is it that a blind person can 
> establish
> a therapeutic connection with a sighted client? . I don't feel that they 
> are
> asking these types of questions because they are trying to prevent me from
> interning. They just feel that these are questions that internship sights
> are going to want to know and I am going to need to be able to answer it
> confidently. When I was first presented with this question, I did not know
> how to answer it. I'm wondering if this is something that super visors
> really want to know? And if so, how does one answer the question of how we
> as blind people establish a therapeutic connection without sight? Any help
> is greatly appreciated.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Milissa
>
>
>
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