Worth its weight in gold: what TA training is really for
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Five-time Olympic gold medalist Steve Redgrave once said, “If you ever see me in a boat again, you have my permission to shoot me”, having just retained his Olympic title for an unprecedented fourth time. My version is more about training and exams than boats, and I said something similarly definitive following my CTA exam.
When my supervisor said to me last year, “You might as well do your PTSTA. It’s not really an exam after all…” I didn’t quite believe them. “Once it’s done, you’ve got seven years to do your TSTA if you want to – and you don’t have to”, they continued. My resolve began to crumble, and by last summer, I found myself starting out for another “not a real exam”.
I had a limited understanding of the PTSTA process at the outset, but it felt less Herculean than the CTA. It started with a 20-page Training Programme Outline (TPO) and then consider how you would guide students from TA101 through to CTA. Candidates submit the TPO six months before attending the Training Endorsement Workshop (TEW), a three-day assessment of supervisory and teaching skills. In the intervening period, you gain endorsements from your TSTA supervisor and another supporting TSTA, demonstrating your teaching and supervisory capabilities and receiving constructive feedback.
As I constructed my TPO, I found myself writing about my motivation for becoming a PTSTA, how it informed my longer-term plans for my practice, reflecting on my own training experiences, and custom-building a CTA learning journey. This exercise started as a work of fiction and then became something that I would be quite excited to teach one day. I reflected deeply on my CTA experience, listening to the recording of my Psychotherapeutic Counselling and CTA vivas (not for the fainthearted), and articulated my beliefs about supervision, therapy and research.
My five-year CTA course was combined with an MSc. When I started, I wondered, “If the MSc is the last two years, what the heck are the other three for?” If you boil the CTA’s academic content down, it could indeed be covered much more quickly. As I considered how to construct a curriculum, though, I noticed that my CTA learning journey involved revisiting the same material multiple times, each time experiencing it on ever-deeper levels.
Take Ego States, for example. If we were considering them purely academically, we would trot through the Functional and Structural models, perhaps contrast them with Functional Fluency. But, listening back to my mock psychotherapeutic counselling viva after seven years more practice, supervision and personal therapy, I observed my ego states in action. I heard my Little Professor doing “being a psychotherapist”, while, these days, as a more embodied psychotherapist, I am, most of the time, an Integrating Adult. The space between the two contains the journey of becoming, which began in training, continued as I worked in practice and was further honed through the PTSTA process.
We aren’t really training at all; we are becoming.
I began this piece with a rowing analogy, which is pertinent in my world, as I was a high-performance rower throughout my teens. Training was part of daily life. Row, study, row, sleep, repeat. But I didn’t “become” a rower; I got faster at rowing. It took up so much of my time that I felt like it defined me, shaping some of my daily practices. But I was still “doing” rowing.
Over the course of our training, through learning, supervision, personal therapy and clinical practice, we stop “doing psychotherapy” with clients and, without noticing, we become psychotherapists. I remember having the core conditions written on my hand in my first-ever placement session – my Little Professor in charge. I was worrying about what they would bring; what I would say next? Could I cope with the client’s content? Would I be able to give them a “good enough experience” of being listened to?
As I have reflected on my trainee experiences, I have seen how tutors and supervisors helped shape me as a psychotherapist. I noticed the importance of their tone and permission to challenge. I realised that if, as a tutor or supervisor, I presented material too prescriptively, I might leave a trainee feeling like the stone being chiselled by the sculptor, rather than the potter at their own wheel. I began to deeply appreciate the difference between supporting the learner’s exploration and understanding of their work, rather than demonstrating “how to work with a client”.
This lesson came to life when I visited Connexus to deliver a session to third-year learners as part of the TSTA endorsement. Shaped by their RTE’s teaching style, they challenged everything, bringing their own models and ideas. My plans and timings went out the window - and the learning was rich, fruitful and personal. Everyone had their own view on Ego States; our own perspective on how we work with them, what works for us, and what does not. This process helped me focus on the responsibility that comes with being PTSTAs and TSTAs as formative figures for the next generation of Transactional Analysts.
Which brings me to the TEW itself, which really is not an exam. We met online as a full cohort two weeks prior and received an overview of what to expect. In small working groups, we got to know one another a little and read one another’s TPOs in advance. Then, there we were, on Zoom together at the start of the three-day endorsement workshop.
Everyone was nervous, grappling with the notion of “not an exam”. With gentle encouragement from our TSTA faculty, we began to settle into a rhythm; each morning, we met for a plenary session to check in and learn together before breaking into our working groups. As the weekend unfolded, we relaxed and began to believe that this really was an endorsement workshop, rather than a formal “examination”.
On the first day, our working group took turns teaching for 20 minutes before receiving strokes and points forward from our colleagues and TSTA endorser. While nerve-racking, it was illuminating to observe different teaching styles, covering familiar material from other perspectives, both as international colleagues and across TA disciplines. During day two, the working group shifted to supervision. Each bringing a supervisory topic, we worked as either supervisor or supervisee for one another, after which feedback was given and digested. Day three’s small-group work focused on discussing and reviewing our TPOs.
Beforehand, I’d had little concept of what training was like abroad, and I have emerged with more appreciation for the UK’s personal therapy hours requirement, which is rarely matched overseas. The network and fellowship offered by our TA training colleges feel precious, knowing now that many train in smaller, more isolated settings. At this time of deep political turmoil, I really valued the opportunity to connect with colleagues globally, whose different frames of reference and experiences truly enriched and shaped me.
The TEW endorsement came via individual faculty meetings and a formal write-up. In an affirming and collegial space, we discussed individual aspects of my TPO and my practice and how I saw my path evolving. In the closing plenary, reflecting on my experience of the weekend, I realised that I had begun expecting to feel like I was crossing a ravine alone on a one-rope bridge. I left, realising we had all walked across a footbridge together, journeying over the past year from CTA to PTSTA.
I arrived at my next supervision with my TEW endorsement letter in hand, ready to sign my TSTA training contract and be awarded my PTSTA designation. Ready to start working with students both as a tutor and supervisor, to learn, work and grow in the company of brilliant people.
And yes, this does mean I will be doing another exam after promising I was truly done. But Redgrave got back in a boat just a few weeks after making his statement. He put in another four years of training and became the first British athlete to win five Olympic golds. While we fortunately don’t have a TA Olympics, I’m interested to see who I will become in this next phase of my training journey.
Amanda Bradley, MSc., CTA(P), PTSTA (P), FCA (retired), FCT (retired) After a 20-year career in Corporate Finance, Amanda Bradley retrained in psychotherapy. Now, she splits her time between coaching board-level leaders of major companies and running a successful private practice online and in person in West London. She has recently become a PTSTA in the psychotherapy field. Amanda holds an MSc in Psychotherapy and is a UKCP-registered Transactional Analyst. Amanda is a retired Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, England & Wales and a retired Fellow of the Association of Corporate Treasurers. In her spare time, she is a Finance Trustee of a local community charity.
She can be contacted at: amandabradleydpc@gmail.com