u/Tough_Catch_4399

Throughout my time in the field, I’ve learned that potty training is not my favorite nor my preference. There’s other areas I’d rather focus on and specialize in. As I’m finishing my fieldwork hours, I’m wanting to focus on cases that don’t require potty training. I’d favor focusing on FCT and social skills.

Would I be a terrible clinician if I say any cases where I’m being asked to do potty training would be better suited for someone else?

As someone who’s been an RBT for 3 years, just finished my master’s program and finishing up my fieldwork hours, there’s something I’ve come to learn and that is I don’t like using direct care sessions as the time to focus on potty training. And as someone who’s about to become a BCBA, I don’t wish to do potty training as a goal for RBTs to do but rather have that be a parent training goal instead. So let me ask you this: Do you think potty training should be a focal point of direct care sessions?

To the public, my clinical director is nice, supportive, collaborative. To the other BCBAs and admin, they see her as kind. But behind closed doors in 1 on meetings, she said some really mean, harsh, and global things to me that were not structured, not tied to fixable criteria and it hit directly at my identity and character.

As an intern who was supposed to be getting developed and coached towards improvement and more responsibilities, that was damaging for my confidence, morale and broke my spirits.

She spoke to me in absolutes and made it sound like my future there is closed off but she told me this 5-6 months before graduation with no development plan, nothing concrete to fix and no reevaluation timeline. By the time she told me this, I was locked in because of my thesis. I couldn’t leave without huge risk to all the work I put in.

She put me in double binds, held me to double standards, placed specific communication parameters exclusively on me that placed extra emotional labor on me as an autistic adult. She knew I was autistic and made no efforts to adjust communication expectations that won’t create excessive emotional labor.

I genuinely do not understand why every time I made a mistake, her approach with me was to remove all opportunities instead of providing coaching. She held harsh narrow opinions of me. She kept me exclusively on direct care despite my supervision contract explicitly mention unrestricted activities that all interns would participate in.

Whilst others experienced her as kind, supportive, and collaborative, I didn’t have that experience. I see her as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. My distress when the clinical director is at my location is so high that when I called HR about it 2 months ago they still remember the level of distress I was experiencing when I called HR.