I have a new client at placement. She's small and timid. Here's an excerpt from our first session:

Me:...so when people are assertive communicators, it means they're able to take their needs and the needs of others into account blah blah blah...
Client: *starts crying*
Me: Oh shit, I've broken her already... Can I ask why you're crying?
Client: It's just that...I've never ever thought that I have needs before.
Me: *heart shatters into a million little pieces*

In other placement news, I've been given a "project" to do with Alvin. This means spending more time with him and being baffled by the conversations we have, where he just does NOT. Give me. Enough. Information. EVER. To work out what the fuck he's talking about:

Alvin: So I was in the toilets this morning...
Me: ...
Alvin: And there was this guy there who spent about five minutes washing and drying his hands over and over again.
Me: (Okay, so where's he going with this? Funny story? Tragic anecdote?) Well, um...maybe you should've sent him our way or something! Ha ha?
Alvin: *Looks unimpressed* Well actually, I think he'd just come from seeing someone here. And you know, he probably told them he was fine.
Me: (Oh, so it's a conversation about how clients can sometimes lie or use avoidance so that they don't have to push themselves! Silly me!) It's interesting to think that clients really aren't being entirely honest with you, isn't it...shows that they're human.
Alvin: Well...no, I was saying that he probably has gotten a lot better, you know, and it just totally brought it home to me how debilitating this sort of thing can be...

I mean, Jesus. How do I work with that? I feel like a trained seal clapping my fins so I can get enough little fishy morsels of information in order to flounder in his wake. Bring on this "project" and hours of baffling conversation!

There's another intern at my placement. Let's call him...Alvin. This isn't his name, but what it has in common with his real name is that when I first heard it, I thought that he would either be very old, very Asian, or both.

He is neither of these things. Alvin is young and from exciting and mysterious parts foreign. He is charming and a natural conversationalist, he is extraverted and has the ability to find exactly the right key to unlock a person's soul. He cycles to work, and does salsa dancing at the end of the day. He is a magician with PowerPoint and now all the other counsellors love him because they have a whole bunch of multimedia hoopla to show to students who've been failing every university course they've ever applied themselves to and therefore need as many pictures as possible.

I probably sound a little bitter. After all, I'm Mr Introverted 2006 (not that I'd ever attend the awards ceremony, all those people...), I find small talk a ridiculous chore, I can't dance and I still use overheads for all my presentations. But really, Alvin's far too likeable, curses, for me to dislike him. And I've tried. Not all that hard, mind you; I like him too much. But it's easy to feel a little inferior.

I realise that there's no prize for Best Intern - actually, I might have to check on that, in case there is, especially if it's cash - anyway, the point is that it doesn't bother me that Alvin is more of a well-rounded person and natural clinician than I am, and possibly ever will be. I'm happy to concern myself with the functioning of frontal lobes after going through windscreens rather than helping people through major depression, and being generally two-dimensional if it means that I don't have to learn how to salsa dance or risk coming off my bike on my way home.

I was originally going to end my post about here, but then all of this happened, and I thought it might be worth mentioning. Teehee.

Alvin is also a stoner. I think. Either that, or he's high on life ALL THE TIME, which doesn't seem right at all.

Earlier in the week, we both had to help run an anxiety workshop scheduled for 2pm, right after lunch. Alvin wandered into the room at about 2.15, hair pulled back in a straggly ponytail. He told me that he had been really "inspired" by this "mellow and inspirational" band in the park who sang all these totally "inspiring and uplifting" tunes, man. Uh-huh. I can see the inspiration too, dude.

When he wasn't sitting on a stool up the front, staring vacantly at a spot on the back wall, Alvin was ad-libbing from his fabulous PowerPoint slides, regaling the audience with stories about his mates, how he applied this particular relaxation technique over the weekend (with any sort of herbal aid, Alvin?)...it just dragged ON AND ON and was quite frankly embarrassing for all concerned, and enraging for our supervisor. When the time came to run through a script for a muscle relaxation exercise, and Alvin decided that he wasn't going to be constrained by the impositions of a well thought-out script and decided instead to drone interminably about having thoughts like trains at a station and feeling the breath in your belly and not beating yourself up if your mind wandered and feeling the air on your bare skin, and everyone sitting in the room was secretly looking at everyone else through half-closed eyes wondering if this whole thing wasn't just some sort of weird joke and we finished 20 minutes late, I thought she (my supervisor) was in danger of spontaneously combusting.

Chalk one skill (timekeeping) up to me! Woohoo!