Jonathan Jenkins is a clinician at Bacon Street who does both general and substance use counseling for youth and adults. He grew up in Williamsburg and received his training at William & Mary, where the Counseling program is part of the Education department in a nod to counseling’s origins in schools. Jonathan originally did his counseling residency with Bacon Street and we are happy that he has now returned to us. He sees clients in our Williamsburg and Newport News offices, as well as via telehealth.
What is your approach to therapy?
Person-centered, very much so. I like to meet my clients where they are and talk about what they are needing to bring up or address when they come in because I’m a firm believer that these sessions belong to my clients, not to me. They should be talking about the things they want to talk about. And there’s research that supports that.
You supervise the Licensed Residents in Counseling who work at Bacon Street. What made you decide to supervise newer counselors and what do you like about doing this?
I would probably credit that to Bacon Street’s first Clinical Director, Bob Coleman, who was my licensure supervisor and an amazing man. I learned so much from him. And I always appreciated knowing that I had somebody I could go to and get support with tough cases, or just to talk about things that I was seeing or experiencing in the field. I’ve always had a connection with teaching. I almost minored in education in undergrad but I started it too late. And I think that’s one thing that has encouraged me to be a supervisor. Supervising is a way of giving back and trying to give my supervisees a positive experience like the one I received.
What would you say is the most rewarding aspect of your work as a counselor and the most challenging?
I’ll start off with the challenges. One challenge is when a person’s view or expectation of counseling doesn’t match mine. A specific example of that sometimes is when a family brings their kid to counseling, and they may not say it out loud, but the expectation by the parent or guardian is “fix my kid.” But that’s really not how therapy works. I’m not like an auto mechanic where something is wrong, you bring your kid in, I pop the hood, and I fix them up and send them back out as good as new. I mean, we’re humans. We’re a lot more complex than that. That’s not what I was trained as a therapist to do. And helping can look different in different situations. So sometimes there can be impatience for the process and it being a longer process than expected in some cases. In those cases, I will sometimes sit down with the parents and discuss what is going right, what is not going right, expectations and whether they are being met, and how we can continue to work as a team for the benefit of their child. Sometimes parents need to realize that they are an important part of this process and it is going to take some changes on their part, not just on their child’s part.
The positives are when clients feel comfortable with me. When they feel safe to be able to come in and talk about things, even difficult things. A reward is certainly when a client might tell me, “Thank you, you’ve been helpful” or “I appreciate this” or “Thank you for not making me feel bad about this.” We go into this field because we want to help people, so knowing that we’re helping is certainly reinforcing. And we don’t always get that while we’re actually working with the clients. Sometimes we find out after the fact. That’s happened to me on two occasions, where I ran into a former client who recognized me and stopped to thank me.
I also enjoy working with other professionals and either learning different things because of their experiences or having people you can bounce ideas off of. I turned down some places that I applied to because of being told that, yeah, you’ll have coworkers but you’ll be so busy that you’ll rarely cross paths or have time to chat, and it felt too isolatory.
Many people are under a lot of stress right now. What is some advice you would give to people for coping with that stress in a healthy way?
I feel like my instant response is self-care. Definitely maintain self-care. I’m not always great at this, but for myself I try to take a “this too shall pass” mentality. If I’m preaching it, I should be practicing it as well. I tell my clients, nothing lasts. Things don’t stay the same. And that can be true of both the good and the not-so-good times. For me, self-care is sometimes about getting away. I need breaks and it can be nice to take some time to get out for a walk with a coworker.