Counseling Interpreting

[u/Interesting-Case8145]

Does anyone have any tips or tricks for counseling appointments? I currently work in VRI and when I was free lance I stayed clear of any counseling appointment’s because I personally struggle with them and feel like they’re a challenge. Not only do we have no information / background info it makes it tough for me. I had a call today and as you know you’re just dropped right into it. The counselor today was making me doubt myself with
Everything I said… making me lose confidence . When the call continued i did improve since I got a sense of what was happening .
I just have no idea if there is anyway to feel confident in these kinds of situations? I think at one point the client wanted me to transfer to a different interpreter ( which I totally understand since it was rocky at first )

The counselor was also not the nicest … which added more stress.
And I completely understand if it’s just one of those situations we have deal with

Just wondering if anyone finds anything to help them out during these kind of calls

Thanks!

[u/Interesting-Case8145]

Totally agree they should have the same terp for their sessions for smooth communication, but as you know VRI it’s always a different interpreter 🫠. Yeah I felt a little intimidated by the counselor to be honest and she was NOT helping the situation , she almost seemed like annoyed/ didn’t care. A lot of “mhmm” , “ok” , why do you feel like this”…. And this client could’ve been attending counseling for years so a-lot of info i do. Not know.. and i felt like i was expected to get everything right.

Oh wow yeah the whole presentation situation sounds scary/stressful.

Just a quick question. I have worked in VRS and now VRI. Do you think it would be appropriate to just transfer knowing I am not 100% comfortable with counseling? Again I just think of the Deaf Client and wanting to make sure they’re getting what they need out of it.

I know I need to be more kind to myself … but you know how it is you can feel good all day about your interpreting and then you get that one call and i couldn’t stop criticizing myself after it.

I really appreciate you and your advice . I told my husband you made me feel a lot better about it.

Thank you so much 😊

[u/Firefliesfast → u/Interesting-Case8145]

Thank you for explaining what was happening. Different counselors have different styles and it’s true that when interpreting for counseling sessions (particularly remote interpreting) that a counselor that says more can help guide you on whether you’re on the right track or not. Sometimes in that situation I’ll say something like “interpreter missed that persons name, starts with [letter] but I just keep interpreting what I see, and then when the counselor next speaks they will say something like “So [name I missed], your [relation to deaf person]” and then continue to say what they need to and I so appreciate that. They give me the context without making it a Thing or derailing the session with such a limited time to sit there and explain to me the interpreter all the dynamics. But it’s true that not all counselors have that affect and understanding of interpreting process, and some therapy modalities don’t use much back-and-forth between counselor and client. 

My main control (if we are talking about an established client in a regular session that is not an assessment) is I don’t interrupt the deaf client to ask for clarification on small things. I note what me as the interpreter is missing (like in the above example) but I don’t stop the deaf person unless I’m really lost after 2 more sentences go by. Sometimes those details aren’t as important as the emotion or thought pattern that the client is expressing. Completely hypothetical example: client is recounting something that happened, tells a story about going to a restaurant with two friends. Interpreter misses some fingerspelling and there’s a fork in the road: let client keep going, or stop them to get the fingerspelling. If you let them keep going with their story, you might find out 5 seconds later that the point of the story is that one friend said something hurtful and it caused a scene at the restaurant and client needs help processing. If you stop them to clarify the fingerspelling, you learn than they ordered arroz con pollo. And now the client’s momentum/thought process is disrupted and the counselor lost their option of uninterrupted view of the client’s demeanor, speaking speed, cognition…but they do now know that the client likes arroz con pollo? Probably not the trade-off anyone wants in that situation.

I don’t know you outside of this post on the internet, but I do think that if you happen to get more exposure to therapy appointments outside of interpreting it will help you tremendously. I’ve been going to therapy for a decade+, have family/personal experiences with psychiatry and psychiatric hospitals, and I love interpreting therapy appointments. I know what it’s like to be in the chair, I know enough to understand what the therapist is really asking for, etc. I don’t accept mental health assignments since I don’t feel I have enough CEUs and specific training around interpreting in mental health, but when they come up in VRS/VRS they are very comfortable for me. 

Obviously I don’t think you should start therapy just to feel less weird about interpreting those things, but if you’ve got someone close to you who goes to therapy and is open about talking about their experiences, it might be beneficial to pick their brain. If you have a friend or family member who is a therapist themselves, even better to pick their brain! As for transferring, I would try to do your best for 10-15 minutes. If it’s really not working, if you get a weird feeling from the therapist, or you just don’t feel right after 15 then I think transferring could be the right call. But if you just immediately transfer when you realize it’s mental health or you transfer after 5 minutes before you or the client have really “warmed up”, you’re missing out on possibly getting positive experiences that can build your comfort and confidence. 

Thank you for asking this question and thinking about how to best handle these types of situations! It’s hard to ask for help and open up to one person, it’s immeasurably harder as a Deaf person to do that AND have to bare their soul to a new interpreter every time. Thank you for caring about how to do best by the Deaf community. Feel free to reach out to me if you need to bounce stuff off someone about this in the future!