In a post I made previously https://psychologytales.com/2015/03/10/anxiety-and-the-way-it-sneaks-up-on-you/ I talked about the possibility of doing my practicum at a college counseling center.

I ended up deciding to do the practicum at the college counseling center.

I’m having a rough time. Due to some scheduling issues on my part and my therapist’s part I’ve been seeing my therapist (Still working with #29!) less often than I normally would. This week is the week I will start having weekly sessions consistently again. However, I can say with a lot of confidence that not having therapy during the first 3 weeks of my practicum was an awful idea. I’ve had only 3 sessions in the past 2 months.

I knew going to this practicum would be hard. I don’t think I factored in enough though that on top of the emotional angle that makes this difficult because of all the things it is activating about the Involuntary leave saga it’s also just challenging independent of that. So I have the expected challenges on top of me trying to deal with all the anxiety associated with being in that setting.

I am terrified that lurking behind all of the very friendly warm kind people there that there is a back door discriminatory bureaucratic system that forces people deemed too at-risk to withdraw involuntarily.

I have done my research and can’t find any trace that they are doing this to people there. In fact the things I find in my research suggest that they are advocating often in the direction of things that protect the students who are clients there in ways that my school did not protect me.

But there are things that make me jumpy. I see infrastructure in the system to allow communication with hospitals about students and mechanisms to communicate with school officials. Everything I see seems above board.

It’s hard to confirm the absence of things. I can look under every rock but then miss something lurking behind a tree. There’s no way I can know for sure this does not happen there.

It’s not a thing people advertise. I’m afraid I’ll somehow be ambushed by it only by seeing it happen to a client of mine. I worry I’d be as ambushed by it as the client.

In all my interactions with people there is an undercurrent of thoughts in the back of my mind saying “I can’t trust you. You might be just like the therapist who kicked me out of school”