u/FlyingBlind17

I was lamenting to my psychiatrist, as many of us bipolar individuals do, about how there are some parts of mania/hypomania that I enjoy, and I miss it. Though I have zero intention on changing my medication’s that have kept me out of a full-blown manic episode for three years.

First, he said he has never had a bipolar patient that hasn’t mentioned wanting/liking some parts of mania. But what really stuck with me was:

Repeated exposure to full-blown manic episodes overtime is not entirely dissimilar to suffering repeated concussions, in terms of damage to the brain.

Damn

Hi! I’m a blind therapist. Well, hope to be. About to finish the first semester of my masters program.

Anyways, I’ve had lots of conversations with my professors, but thought I could benefit from the lovely Reddit therapist’s opinions.

First, are there any blind or low vision therapists in this community? What have your experiences been? What populations do you enjoy working with? Avoid working with? Etc.

Second, for the sightlings, how would you attempt to overcome such an impactful barrier to human communication? That being the lack of body language recognition.

Of course, there are all the auditory nonverbal’s, tone of voice, expressions of emotions like sighing, laughing, crying. I can hear when someone is smiling. I can even hear when people are looking down most of the time, but there is still a lot of context I am missing, especially in my clients facial expressions.

Do we think this is a situation where broaching this barrier with the client and being transparent about my limitations is the best option? In that case, how/when should I utilize it? Of course we’ll have a conversation about it during intake, but in session?

During periods of silence, I can certainly ask things like if I could see you right now, what would your body language be telling me? But during my practice work, I have noticed myself wanting to ask about body language during/Wright after a client speaks, but I don’t want to pull the client away from their thoughts every time. Any thoughts?

I know it is all dependent on the client, dependent on the counselor, and dependent on the client counselor relationship, but i’m just looking for some different perspectives.

Bonus points if you tell me about your theoretical orientation and how they’d handle it.