Lisa Marie Gruger

Description

DC: "How did you come to be a therapist?" LMG: "It's tough to answer this question because I never set out to be a therapist. When I first graduated from university I had a degree in psychology and political science, and was torn about my future direction. I had studied both subjects because I had a lot of passion both for people and for politics. I became active in local, provincial and eventually federal politics, but over time I moved increasingly away from active involvement in partisan politics and more passionately into the social service sector. With reflection those 'early years' seemed to be a time where my excitement and commitment to working with people, policy and politicians were all interwoven by my desire to be a part of individual's and communities' process of change. It is this passion for working towards change which has brought me forward to today, and which now finds expression in my therapeutic work. My thirst for challenge, diversity and new learning has had me move on to a myriad of different positions over the years. The range has included working with young children and adolescents, through to teenage parents and women survivors of abuse, young offenders, adoptive and foster families, and now, with children and families challenged by behaviour and psychiatric disorders. While I was working with the Society of Special Needs Adoptive Parents (SNAP) I eventually found the particular direction that I had been seeking. Through the coordination of the support and education services for the adoptive families it became apparent that there was a shortage of therapists who understood the unique challenges that some of these families faced. The tenacity, strength and commitment of these families really inspired me to want to be able to work with them to be successful in both their personal and familial goals. So I returned to graduate school - with the clear intention of securing a Master's degree in Clinical Psychology, which included a specialization in Couple and Family therapy. I had never been so clear in all of my life. I knew that the differing abilities and disorders that many of the adopted/foster children were challenged by would require that I have a solid clinical training and skills. Similarly, I chose the Couple and Family therapy specialization because many of the families and couples that I worked with were challenged and tested by chronic and complicated demands that parenting their children presented to them. Some families seemed to exist on a continuously tenuous tightrope between togetherness and separateness. I knew that if I were going to be able to work with similar families, I would need to be exceptionally skilled at helping them balance the multitude of relational pressures that they faced. Through graduate school I continued to work in the field of counselling with an agency that operated in a cross-program model (from substance abuse to relationship violence, sexual abuse, and a wide array of parent-child relational concerns). This gave me an opportunity to continue to gather experience and skills in a variety of integral domains.

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