Ms. Rehahn-Sommer, why can it be difficult to correctly interpret your own symptoms?
Because the necessary distance is missing. The attention you have for others cannot be equated with the attention you pay to yourself. For example, a psychotherapist who is very attentive to her patients can overlook how she herself is feeling. That’s why it’s important to consciously plan times in which you ask yourself: Where am I? How am I feeling right now?
“The more you know about psychology, the more you understand yourself” – is that true or false?
Both. Knowledge and professional experience are valuable, but they are not enough to determine that something is going wrong. A person with psychological expertise is still a person who is exposed to the same crises as everyone else. Maybe the children are in a difficult phase, the marriage is in crisis, the parents are in need of help: Anyone who has the unrealistic and perfectionistic self-demand that this shouldn’t happen because they know what a good life should look like feels guilt and shame and is more likely to try to hide it from themselves and others. This is how you really hit the wall.
What can a coach do for your own mental health?
As a psychotherapist, I see an important task in coming to terms with oneself: How did I grow up? What are my vulnerabilities? What is difficult for me? What is particularly stressful for me at work? What kind of self-care do I need to build so that I can stay healthy in my job? If you’ve been listening all day, you don’t have to lend your friend an ear in the evening, but can allow yourself to be a private person and relax.
Methods for psychotherapy are constantly being rethought, but both in research and in practice there is a lack of attention to the person and health of the therapist. We have long known that the therapeutic relationship is one of the most important factors for successful therapy. That’s why it’s crucial that we ask ourselves how we’re doing and what we need. After all, we don’t want to be an exhausted, burnt-out counterpart. Self-care is quality assurance for our patients.
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