lurking in the background that were preventing us from working in a way that matched our team values. I think we shied away from discussions around things that felt diffi cult for fear of causing off ence. Two such subjects from my perspective were sexuality and religion. Initially, I saw naming and exploring this as the sole responsibility of my supervisor. However, after the departure of a valued team member and affi liated regret that I had not expressed my curiosity and off ered thoughts sooner, I came to realise it was a collective responsibility – even if we were clumsy! Like the family life cycle, the team life


cycle and joining process is dynamic. I am left with ideas about how various stressors can be tackled in ways that facilitate team development and growth.


Lead therapist position – Melissa I joined Juntos clinic in February 2019 as


a lead therapist. Being introduced to the team as a lead therapist foregrounded my inner dialogue (Rober, 1999), and an internal smile thinking, “Ha… this will be interesting”. I questioned how could this title be connected to me, when nobody in the clinic has seen me in action as a therapist? Imposter syndrome came to mind. Joining a group within any context


or setting, for me, involves a process of feeling safe, and understood (Panichelli, 2013). The process begins with connections, the things that may connect me to other people in the room. At Juntos, we all identifi ed ourselves as women from diff erent cultural and ethnic backgrounds. These were the visible and voiced social graces (Burnham, 2012). Meeting a group that consisted of similar cultures and ethnicities was comforting to me as I felt I was able to connect to visible social graces. This has not always been my experience in other settings, which has felt inhibiting at times and adds to other challenges of joining and trying to fi t in. On my fi rst day at Juntos, I noted


there were diff erent layers to how I was connecting with the group. This did not stop at gender, appearance, culture or race. I sat in admiration of us sitting in the room committed to a Saturday morning, all on a journey at diff erent stages of our training in systemic and family therapy. This led me to think about the co-ordinated management of meaning hierarchical model (Cronen et al., 1988).


8


This model provides a useful tool to explore how contextual forces such as our motivation to develop our knowledge and skills, whilst off ering therapy to families leads us into discussions about the use of self as an implicative force. Our diff erent perspectives as well as our indicative similarities are explored within the layers of our communication. Over time, I have found embracing


and sharing stories of family celebrations and rituals – for example, in the Christian calendar the celebration of Easter amongst us – has been enlightening and a discovery of our unvoiced and invisible graces. Our individual family scripts (Byng- Hall, 1995) and cultural beliefs have made us curious about each other and produces another layer such as trust and relational risk-taking (Mason, 2005) in our approach, with respectful and tentative questioning. Something I noticed quite early on


in the group: ‘checking-in’ with each other on entering the clinic each week would form a vital part of creating safety, producing enriched learning about each other. I felt this was skilfully implemented and role-modelled by our supervisor, who would ask us refl exive questions; for example, “What did the tone of voice suggest to you?” with the caveat that there is no wrong or right answer. However, be prepared to be ‘pushed’ on your response to open up a wider and deeper consideration; for example, “What made you think this way?” This initially made me tense, but soon made me realise that being out of my comfort zone is also liberating, and necessary to develop the self as a therapist (Watts-Jones, 2010). At times, I have experienced an element


of perceived performance-anxiety to demonstrate my engagement and an understanding of theory to our supervisor and others in the group. However, our supervisor foregrounded a not-knowing position and a comfortableness that can be found in safe uncertainty (Mason 1993, 2015) that enabled me to move from a position of thinking I have to get it right. Our individual family of origin stories


plays a part in organising our thoughts. Our family traditions, behavioural patterns and our diff erent culture are often shared stories. There is lots of laughter during this process of our story telling, highlighting our diff erences and similarities, also adding a layer to the experience within a nurturing learning environment.


Refl ecting team member – Simone


In my second year of training at the


Institute of Family Therapy, I began work with Juntos as a reflecting team member (Andersen, 1991). When I first joined, Juntos was a team of three – and I was to be the fourth. Before meeting, I spoke on the phone with Joanne, and received a “welcome to the team” email from the other members. Both of these interactions went a long way in forming connection and preparing me and/or us for our first clinical sessions together. I knew we would be an all female team, and this offered some comfort in knowing that, at the very least, we had this in common. However, considering Burnham’s graces (1993), I knew we’d also find a complexity of multi-layered differences that we would no doubt discover along the way. I was drawn to thinking about the ‘constraints and affordances’ that our graces may present and, being new to the team at the time, how would I voice anything that I may be noticing? I had all the usual nerves and excitement meeting the team on the first day and, as we spent time joining as a team (Minuchin, 1974), we focused on how best to position ourselves to constitute safety and space to explore any arising themes, for ourselves and the families. The joining process with the team


seemed quite clear and concise, in that we had some liberty in agenda and timings. I was conscious of my position as a reflecting-team member and the support I may need to offer the lead therapist in offering my reflections. I was also aware of the additional joining that may be required between the reflecting team, to cohesively reflect our thoughts whilst simultaneously respecting individual perspectives. Authenticity was important to me and


I often wondered how to translate this to families whilst being on the reflecting team. I considered body language, tone of voice and visual contact – during and after reflections – as each could be interpreted widely (as alliance, warmth, or something else). I attempted to join with each client equally and kept absent members present by introducing hypothetical circular questions. As time progressed, I found a way of translating some of my curiosities into questions, in the hope that this would be an invitation for further considerations should the family choose to accept. Within


Context 169, June 2020


Coming ‘together’ in a family therapy clinic as trainees


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