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Day in the life Giving people space Jacqueline Ullmann divides her time between her family life, private practice and her role as a cancer counsellor at the Royal Free Hospital in London. Interview by John Daniel. Photographs by Phil Sayer 28 Therapy Today/www.therapytoday.net/November 2010 The alarm wakes me at 6.30am and I try to sneak in another five minutes of sleep. Sometimes five minutes become 20 and I have to rush. When the children were at home, we always had a family breakfast. Now my husband and I have breakfast together. In addition to my private practice, I work two and a half days a week as a cancer counsellor at the Royal Free Hospital in London. I’m lucky because it only takes 30 minutes to travel from my home to the hospital. I arrive just before 9am and the first things I do are to switch on the computer and check the message book. I job share with a colleague. We work alternate days and overlap one day a week, when we meet to discuss various departmental matters and other issues. I see inpatients and outpatients and their relatives, and cover all cancers except for the lymphomas and leukaemias. There are a further two counsellors for blood cancers, as the work is different because the patients go through different experiences. For example, the blood cancer patients spend a lot more time in hospital as inpatients. The counselling service is very much part of the whole team and works closely with the consultants, the medical teams and the nurses. A few weeks following diagnosis, if the medical team feels a patient or a relative is struggling to cope, they call us in. We invariably insist that they obtain the client’s agreement first. People can also self-refer and we see them at any time during their cancer journey. I am person-centred and start from where the client wishes to start. I use some psychodynamic and systemic theory and a little CBT. I explain this to clients in the first session. On an average day I will see five clients for a 50-minute session and possibly another one or two just to say hello and introduce the service. Some clients come for only one session – it might not be what they want or they just need to know that they’re reacting normally. Other clients access the service long term. Obviously, cancer happens to real people and there may already have been all sorts of problems in their lives before diagnosis, and now they just can’t cope. One week they might want to talk about the worries they have about their disease, and the next week they might be angry that parking was a struggle. I meet them where they are at, we explore their feelings and often themes arise. There are some common themes in the work. First of all, there’s the fear of recurrence – how to live with that. Then there is what I would call ‘other people’ – the patient has a diagnosis of cancer and outsiders can’t cope with it, it freaks them out and they have ‘crossing the road’ syndrome – they just want to avoid the patient. There’s another category of people who are overwhelmingly helpful and this is also too much for the patient. Every day I show my face in the inpatient ward. There is often a nurse who needs to tell me about a patient who is not coping or one who is dying. I always say I am available to the family if they want it, but I remind the nurse that I cannot do magic: the patient is dying and the family is going to be upset; that’s normal. Often somebody says they want to speak to me because they’ve done so much crying with each other that they need an outsider. This is why I am here – to care, support, listen and give people space.
November 2010/www.therapytoday.net/Therapy Today 29
Page 1 and 2: Therapy Today November 2010, Vol. 2
Page 3 and 4: Contents Sarah Browne Editor For se
Page 5 and 6: Mental health groups praise governm
Page 7 and 8: In practice Words and labels Kevin
Page 9 and 10: In training Walking the line Alex E
Page 11 and 12: Increasingly, counsellors and psych
Page 13 and 14: defined as the assumption that diff
Page 15: Questionnaire Jeremy Clarke A natio
Page 18 and 19: Viewpoint References 1. Wampold BE.
Page 20: Training Becoming a counsellor Surp
Page 23 and 24: ‘Trainees were primarily concerne
Page 25 and 26: © hans neleman/the image bank/gett
Page 27: my work. This is not because I am o
Page 31 and 32: Dilemmas The counselling-coaching i
Page 33 and 34: Kate Cunnion (counsellor, superviso
Page 35 and 36: female client and was seeking suppo
Page 37 and 38: Reviews Evidence for the economic v
Page 39 and 40: Co-creating therapeutic conversatio
Page 41 and 42: News From the Chair How are develop
Page 43 and 44: Could you write an information shee
Page 45 and 46: Case Study Research in Counselling
Page 47 and 48: skills and attitudes as a tutor to

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