International Consultation Team

Dear Adela, Isolde, Khawla and David,

I am writing this not only to direct you, but also to my blog readers.

I came to Amsterdam for IFTA this time only because Khawla and David persuaded me. It is my first time I attend an  international conference without giving any presentations.

I value our friendship; it means a lot more than friendship to me. As I said in our last meeting, you have supported me as witnesses of my life cycle. We meet only once a year, which makes it easier to observe the life cycle transition from bird eye view. I am now going through pivotal transition of my life; a) leaving my professorship and getting into my own private practice, and b) my on-going bereavement process for the last two years. I want to stay functional not only for myself, but as a single father of my three precious children. I feel very lucky that I could bring two of my kids. Zen, as 17 years boy, has already left home half way, which I appreciate. I could not come to the last two IFTA meetings mainly because of my children. I feel so attached to them. For myself, I would look forward to my new possible intimate relationship to build in the future.

I appreciate the power of trust and engagement when we talk about our person of therapist issues. I can talk to you from the bottom of my heart only because you listen to me very carefully. We trust each other as matured professional therapists. We are also from different location and culture. We are different in terms of gender, culture and possibly generation, and we do not share our everyday context, and I believe that makes us easy to be connected in our consultation meeting.

I personally want to use our group in two ways; content and process. In terms of the content, I found very useful to share my hikikomori cases in our group as international consultation. Your presence made me try to explain our cultural context to someone who do not share the same cultural premises. I have done many times so far and it is almost at finishing stage to write up as a piece of paper. I want you to read and review my product which I hope to finish up soon probably next time when we meet.

I also value the process of our group so much. We do not belong to the same institute or workplace, but yet met at the conference and successfully formed a solid group. Our process of international peer consultation team is very unique and worth presenting to the therapists worldwide. People seemed to be quite jealous when we presented in Porto three years ago.  

I recently formed a similar kind of group in Asia; Korea, Singapore (and Taiwan) along with Khawla and David. They are younger than I and hope to grow in the future. I want to use our group as a model to follow for them. Family therapy is gradually and rapidly growing in Asian countries. We share the similar cultural tradition among ourselves, but still politically and economically in conflict. It would be my dream that we can organize the trustful relationship and form the similar kind of consultation group. Politicians cannot achieve this, but we as mental health professionals may be able to achieve by using our skills of engaging conflicted relationships.

I also need your help to save our countrymen after the historically worst natural disaster. It is only three weeks ago, the damaged communities are still in chaos. All the people in and out of Japan want to offer some kind of support. I want use my skills as a family therapist, but do not know how. I will visit the damaged community next week. I will come back to you and share what I observe.