The Covid Months | Student Life
Life hasn’t been easy for the students. As the realities of lockdown came home to all of us their concerns came pouring in. Would final assessments still go ahead? How can missed hours be made up now? Single parents trying to manage childcare alongside being in class asking for guidance about how to juggle the two. Placements shutting down temporarily and not supporting remote working, making it impossible to continue to build practice hours. Struggles in finding classes on Zoom accessible or enjoyable. Missing the camaraderie being with classmates. Student self-generated WhatsApp groups throwing up nuclear curve balls that were wounding and painful.
This will be one of a number of posts where students share their reflections on this time.
It goes without saying that I would have preferred to have continued in our usual way - face-to-face classroom sessions on a Tuesday evening at the Guild, face-to-face training therapy, regular coffee catch-ups with classmates in Freudz Café and running my trainee counselling clinic at the GP surgery where I have started building my practice.
… For me, it has worked. Yes, it has required a shift in thinking and approach to studying, the position of being both ‘alone’ in your space with a computer whilst simultaneously being in a communal space with your Zoom colleagues is something which requires a level of self-motivation and focus that perhaps is easier when physically present with the group … However, it has allowed for a relatively seamless and uninterrupted transition and, most importantly, continuation of the course teaching which - whilst being an adjustment - has been of huge personal value. … Likewise, having set-up a new trainee counselling placement with my partner GP surgeries at the beginning of the year (pre-lockdown), where I was regularly holding face-to-face client counselling sessions, the ability to have given my clients the option to continue with our work remotely (video and telephone consultations) I feel has been both important to my clients and, at the same time, essential to the continuation of my journey towards qualification.
Anon Yr 1 Student
…. I didn’t think when I left my third year classmates at Northern Guild on that sunny cold weekend in March that I wouldn’t be seeing them again in the flesh for who knows how long. Despite this forced separation our group have formed a special bond over the past years and we have managed to keep in touch during the pandemic thanks to various technologies.
It’s been a similar positive story with our Northern Guild weekends by Zoom, our tutor has, as always, managed to be creative and inspirational without actually being in the room with us, what a talent.
However to not be able to say our goodbyes on our last weekend in person… it was truly a moving time. The weekend’s theme was … ‘Endings’ and proved to be challenging as on so many levels there have been lots of endings we could not have predicted in these recent months. For those of us working with children and teenagers many of us didn’t get the chance to say ‘farewell’ to our little clients and sometimes we haven’t been able to find out how they are coping<or> if we will be able to see them again in the coming months.
But there have also been the opportunities thanks to the staff at NG who have worked tirelessly to help us to continue with those clients who are able and <permitted. to use safe online methods. <Because> to this we have learnt new skills that we may never have had the opportunity to use ,in other times>. And … for me, despite enjoying working with some teenage clients online, I have also learnt to truly value how special it is to sit in a room with someone, personally a screen is a poor substitute for a human being… but at least we have been able to keep in touch with each other.
… my Supervisors …have been there supporting, advising and … as creative as ever without a hint of how tough it must be for them spending hours working by screen. Their positive attitudes and understanding of what our clients, and we might be going through is a lesson in fortitude and resilience.
In Lockdown ,,, I have … spent much of my time sitting or walking outdoors watching the sky, the trees and nature generally. This has grounded me and made me think of something a friend told me recently about our … iconic English tree, the mighty oak. …the UK’s oldest and largest oaks grow in forests surrounded by other trees, they thrive better when they have others around them. This shouldn’t be a surprise as we now know trees feed and protect each other and are connected through their roots.
Stephanie Robinson
I remember taking my time driving to class on an evening. The radio would gently play in the background as the rush hour traffic started to make haste. I would have that sensational sense of achievement upon the first try at finding a parking spot as I drove up towards Jesmond. I have found it interesting how I have been reflecting more on the smallest of things. “Mono no aware” is a Japanese phrase for ‘the (pathos) sadness of things’. It comes from an awareness of the transience of our world, like looking at a flower in the knowledge that its bloom will not last forever yet appreciating the bloom that exists in the here and now. I miss that drive.
When we were given the news that COVID-19 was to impact our ability to exist as we had before I was scared and a sadness struck me. What would it mean for the future? What would it mean for my clients? What would it mean for my course? I had more questions than answers and time seemed inconsistent with moments feeling fast, backwards, even stationary. It reminded me of the stroboscopic effect which is an optical illusion that appears to rotate a spoked wheel differently from its true rotation. This feeling did not have a chance to linger long. Within the same week of being informed that COVID-19 was about to change our lives forever, the Northern Guild team was already organizing, developing, and implementing their plan. As a community, they actioned a response quickly and decisively leaving no time for the weekly class to be in question; class was a go.
I had never heard of Zoom prior to COVID-19. I had used other systems before but was keen to give this new platform a try. It was simple and effective. So affective that myself and classmates have used this to continue to communicate throughout the “stay at home” orders. Student life had now changed as we collectively sheltered in place. Class started and I was excited how this would work and if it would change what we had experienced. It did change and having had this experience it was not a bad change, it was simply different. I enjoyed having what felt like more time in my quiet room at home to listen more intently to the tutor and classmates. I found myself focusing more on what I wanted to learn and explore than perhaps what else was happening in the room. I felt that I was more focused on what I needed. I still missed my breaktime catch up with this group of amazing people whom I have been journeying with for so long and whose time was shortly coming to an end.
To this end, we decided to support each other by setting up meetings as if they were our own private café time before class. We remained physically but not socially distant as we moved our social interactions online and to phone. During our zoom get-togethers we talk about how we are doing and what things are coming up in class. We discuss the future of our personal training and what direction we are individually heading towards. We have tested our on line skills together by sharing Zoom meetings and getting used to the platform as both a participant and a host. We have been learning how to become comfortable with this new way of working with our clients, tutors, supervisors, and therapists.
My supervision groups have also seen no delay. From infant observation groups, class group training and group supervision the Guild team have facilitated a smooth transition online. We have all had to relearn what its like to be in a group setting with time delays or internet connection issues. The group have been supportive and effective in respecting that we are all different with different circumstances and needs. This had made me reflect on this experience and how much more present I have felt during class.
I still resonate with “Mono no aware” in what has been and what is no longer. In its sadness, this phrase reminds me that I have come to appreciate the joy and beauty that exists in the here and now. With the help and support from my tutors, supervisor, and therapist at the Guild I have been able to give myself permission to be scared and hopeful during this time.
The tutors, supervisors, therapists, and office support team are all human beings experiencing this global pandemic alongside us. They have risen to these unprecedented times with the highest professional standards and genuine humanistic care. With that, I thank you all.
“One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.” – Carl Jung
Nicola Airey
THE COVID MONTHS Team Meeting
The last face to face team meeting was on 17th March, The team of tutors and supervisors had grown so much that we can’t all fit comfortably into any of our training rooms. So we decided to try the hotel down the road. It was a mistake the room was definitely large enough but it was windowless and foisty. It wasn’t an ordinary meeting.
There was a lot of tension. Covid-19 was getting closer. People were fearful, trying to predict what might happen, worrying about their families. The minutes record us saying that we thought lockdown would be in about a week’. It came on the evening of 23rd March, our prediction was spot on!
We had our usual long agenda but none of it saw the light of day. Having limped through ‘Matters Arising’ we spent the rest of the day talking about contingency planning for what we sensed was closing in. We spent a lot of time discussing something called Zoom. A few of us had some experience of it as participants and thought it seemed pretty straightforward. Then the first shock wave hit us. A student on that night’s evening course had messaged to say she had to self- isolate because she had been in contact with someone showing symptoms of the virus. This meant that night’s class would have to be on Zoom. Our planning had been good, but we still thought we had a few days left to test things out and get to grips with hosting our classes. Events had overtaken us. Everyone looked nervous. But we are very cooperative and supportive of each other. The tutor, and a colleague who offered to help her set up, left the meeting to go and get to grips with sorting out our first Zoom class. We all shouted words of encouragement and offers of help as they left the room.
The rest of the meeting passed quickly in a whirl of action planning. The catalysing effects of knowing IT was here, docked in our world, meant we worked quickly and efficiently with different people agreeing to write various protocols. Then there was a demonstration of Zoom by Glenda, our IT Director. When the meeting eventually ended we shuffled out in small groups talking in hushed tones to each other.
I become calm in a crisis, it’s instinctive. Time slows down for me and my thinking sharpens. I remember wondering what sort of tidal wave was coming. But I felt great confidence in the team. I knew we would pull together. Sarah, our amazing Course Manager had been taking the minutes. She asked me if I was scared of the virus I replied truthfully that I wasn’t.
Three long months later we have just had our usual summer term meeting. Back in March we could never have guessed how much would have changed . All our teaching, supervision and therapy is on Zoom. We have crossed the Rubicon and mastered it. The worst that has happened was one weekend when Zoom went down and all our second year training disappeared. The tutors, Alan and Emily, started messaging asking for help on the team WhatsApp group. Despite being a hot, sunny Sunday afternoon, perfect for relaxing, the team was right there with help and suggestions. Within an hour things were back on track and the rest of the day passed without incident.
At our recent meeting there were 31 of us on Zoom, 2 full screens of faces. Sarah H, Phil, Glenda, Emily and I were each in separate rooms in our Jesmond centre with the rest of team at home in various locations throughout North Yorkshire, Teesside, Tyne & Wear and Northumberland. I had left home at 7.15 that morning. I wanted plenty of time to set up. I was worried about not being able to scan the room and see everyone. In such a big meeting its easy to miss someone who wants to say something. We agreed that we would use the ‘Reactions’ and ‘Chat’ buttons when people wanted to comment and some of the team told me when this happened. People are hard to read on video when they are not speaking, they look impassive and its impossible to tell where they are looking. We moved through the agenda well enough but that is no measure of how a meeting is going. For me the beating heart was missing. An emergency vehicle whizzed by on Jesmond Road and I looked out of the window to see what was happening. Then I realised that for most people at the meeting the reality on Jesmond Road was simply non existent and that looking away from the screen could look as if I wasn’t paying attention.
Those of us in the centre had agreed to have a socially distanced lunch outside on the forecourt. There were 5 chairs suitably spaced waiting for us to take up occupancy and reveal our individual lunch boxes. Just before lunch time something caught my eye. I looked out of the window to see an extremely dishevelled man sit on a chair light a cigarette and open a beer. I asked Sarah H to take over the meeting whilst I went out to talk to him. Standing on the lower step I shouted over explaining that he couldn’t sit on the chairs. He looked sheepish and explained that his back was hurting, standing up and collecting his bag as he spoke. He looked tired as he walked onto the street. I felt an urge to call him back, sad that in pre-covid days I would have offered him a coffee and spent some time with him. Now I just went back inside grabbed the Dettol and sprayed the chair he had so recently vacated.
Lunch was a jolly affair. We were all glad to be in each other’s company, relieved that the new easing of restrictions had allowed us this time. We joked and teased with good humour and reminisced about pre-covid days. It was nourishing and uplifting to be face to face and away from a screen.
The afternoon’s business unfolded with orderly familiarity as staff spoke to their points and garnered opinion. We dispatched our business and completed the agenda. Afterwards a few of the team e-mailed to say they thought that by the second half I had got into my stride and that overall we had done what we needed to. I was relieved to hear it and I hoped everyone felt the same way.
Debra Mackenzie[i] writes, ‘This pandemic has been like a big dog, picking up our fragile society in its teeth and shaking it.’ The big dog has massively shaken our ways of doing things at the guild and in the profession at large, but we have found new avenues, new ways of being and doing and bit by bit we are learning how to make friends with the big dog. I can’t help wondering if he wanted to be this big dog? Whether he isn’t imprisoned, too? And what part have we humans had in creating him? Perhaps if we listen to his message and learn the lessons he brings we can all be free again but in different more responsible ways.
[1] Mackenzie Debra, 2020, ‘Covid-19 The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened And How To Stop The Next One’. London: Hatchett UK.
The Covid Months Where are the children?
Lockdown started overnight. Schools were closed and the children gone, locked in at home, like everyone else. Our therapists were distraught. No time for those all important goodbyes. No explanations. No possibility of exploring other ways of staying connected. For many children one of the few moments in the week when they were free to safely express themselves had disappeared, cut off by an out of control virus. Some children would be safe, protected by the immunity of well resourced homes and parents who had the means to manage the spiralling chaos the country had plummeted into. But other children were far from safe, their already disadvantaged lives made even more perilous and uncertain. Incarcerated for twenty four hours a day with families who had few personal or financial resources and were already struggling to cope.
But for every child one thing was the same - there was no warning, no preparation no precedent. Nothing to fall back on in that bleak ‘One simple message - STAY HOME!’
One of my colleagues, Emily, told me how she worries about what young children are learning in the so called ‘new normal’. Fear of the virus and the consequent mistrust of others, heightened by social distancing, is eroding personal relationships. Small pieces are breaking off and crumbling day after day after day. A hug from Granny, a high five from a teacher, rough and tumble with friends - familiar, reliable reassuring touch which normally lives embedded in a child’s day to day world fuelling emotional and biological well being. These losses are compounded by the erosion of almost all normal routines and structures. With all that is safe, predictable and familiar for children and young people shrunk to its bare bones we will see an exponential rise in childhood anxiety and depression and trauma unless we act to mitigate it.
During these Covid months so many children have been bereft by the disappearance of important family members, leaving them confused, lost and upset. Children with mothers who are in prison are not allowed to visit them. Contact with their mothers severed overnight. A dreadful, traumatic disruption of those all-important bonds that foster trust, security, self-confidence and resilience. Women were promised that they would be allowed out of prison, at least temporarily, to be with their children. A promise not kept for most.
Some of our most vulnerable children are locked inside homes where everyday violence, coercive control or sexual abuse is taken for granted. Terrified and locked in, they have no respite from the dangers that threatens to engulf and overwhelm them with every unpredictable moment. These fragile minds and bodies have lost any safe harbour.
At the Northern Guild pre-lockdown our team was supervising 377 hours of weekly therapy for young children and 274 hours of weekly therapy for young people, a total of 651 hours of therapy each week. Since lockdown, for young children it is now 65 hours of weekly therapy with only one of those sessions being face to face and 115 hours for young people with 6 of those sessions being face to face. A new total of 180 hours of weekly therapy. 471 hours have been lost!
We need to do something about this urgently. As our schools reopen Child Psychotherapists and Counsellors will need to work alongside teachers to open up new ways of working with children. There is no doubt that children will be helped enormously by seeing their teachers again, being with friends and having more normal routines. But they will also need the opportunity to give expression to the things they have internalised during this time so that their pain can be expunged & helped to heal.
Ingenuity, flexibility and imaginative thinking are needed. There is a huge range of possibilities to be considered but they will all require teachers and therapists working together to create strategies that fit the unique context of each school, its community and its children. For example, with older children and adolescents remote working is readily possible if they are comfortable with it and have the privacy and facilities to make it feasible. As schools open up their buildings setting aside a room for students to access remote facilities so that they can talk to their therapist can become a new resource.
Generally, younger children need face to face approaches. Smaller size classes give scope for therapists to become part of the class ‘bubble’. Children aged 7 and upwards could join Sharing Circles led by a therapist. Using creative media, story and enactment in well- structured ways children would be able to give expression to their own experiences and feelings alongside sharing those of their friends. One of the many benefits of this approach is that the children will bear witness to each other’s experiences and create a shared autobiographical narrative of the times ‘we are living through together’.
These are challenging times. They offer unique opportunities to rethink our approaches to working with children and young people. In less than 3 months we have achieved changes in therapeutic practice that would have previously been seen as out of the question, impossible and undesirable for either professional or operational reasons. We have walked through that wall and found ourselves in an admittedly alien environment, but definitely one that it is possible to inhabit in all good conscience. Now we need to claw back those hundreds of hours that have been lost. Working in partnership with schools and colleges therapists to move beyond the barriers that are leaving so many children unable to grasp hold of what we are longing to give.