In Margotte's words:
For the past 34 years I have been privileged to work with individuals: children, adolescents, and adults, and also with couples and families in different configurations, and with groups. I have also been exposed to different schools of thought in psychotherapy, and to different ways of supporting people. I am not attached to any particular school of thinking, or any particular school of helping. I have a few strong attractions and some of them are Narrative Therapy and Mindfulness.
This profession, like many professions, is about growth. Non-flexible attachment to one particular school of thinking would be, through limiting my own growth, limiting the growth of others.
You are unique. I want to respect your uniqueness. The philosophy underlying my way of supporting others stems from a belief that people have their own skills for living and knowledge of life that supports them in resolving, healing, recovering, surviving addressing their concerns. "Knowledges," for there is more than one "knowledge," i.e. of ourselves, of another human being, of the world around us. What is often needed is an atmosphere facilitating meaningful conversation or a number of conversations to happen.
I do not believe my years of education and experience put me in an expert position. I am not your expert - you are. I am willing to co-create with you an atmosphere in which meaningful conversations can take place with a hope that we explore at least three things together:
- Recapturing some of your skills of living and "knowledges" of life, and applying them to your present life circumstances
- Co-creating new ideas. Part of the process is pure creation. I do not know what we may end up talking about or how we may arrive there. We have never met before. This very fact gives us a chance to create ideas neither of us would be able to come up with on our own.
- Sharing my ideas. I am willing to share with you my ideas coming from my both professional and personal experiences. In fact most of them are not even mine. For the past three decades I have been privileged to be invited into people’s lives, therefore exposed to thousands and thousands of stories. I feel like a big library or bookstore: full of stories. There is wisdom in the stories, brilliant solutions people were able to create, common themes. If I did not share the wisdom of the stories it would be a loss. But whatever I am going to offer, you are the one who can say:
“I adore this idea. I am going to take it with me,” or
“I am not sure about this one. I am going to throw it to the garbage,” or
“From this particular idea I just like this little part.”
There is no power or expertise involved. It is a co-creative, collaborative process, a partnership situation.
Sometimes I say that it is very much like cooking together and none of us is a chef and we do not have a recipe.
Margotte Kaczanowska, MSW RSW
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