Interviewing Jennifer Spugnardi
The Turning Point is the only rape crisis center in Plano, and for the sake of protecting its clients' privacy, it is very well hidden. The non-profit organization is located in an unmarked suite inside a brown brick office building. I know exactly where it is because I have recently begun volunteering at the center. Today, however, I am here not for volunteer work, but to interview Jennifer Spugnardi, a clinical psychologist. This is our first meeting, and I am unprepared to find her confined to a motorized wheelchair, but she quickly puts me at ease with her cheerful and professional demeanor. She has limited movement, but guides her wheelchair smoothly down the hallway to her office, where we begin the interview.
Until recently, she tells me, she worked exclusively as a counselor and legal advocate. The Turning Point serves survivors of sexual assault and adults who were sexually abused as children, so almost all of her clients were trauma survivors. “We serve friends and family members, so occasionally we'll get a client like that, but I mostly see survivors,” she says. “The longer I was here, the more I learned that trauma is really a specialty in the clinical field, and you don't get a lot of training on it in graduate school” (J. Spugnardi, personal communication, October 6, 2009). She is careful not to set timelines for her clients, respecting the right of each person to proceed at his or her own pace. She establishes goals with the client at the beginning so that they know what they are working toward. The process comes to a close naturally, she says—sessions become shorter and quieter, and the self-report of the client makes it obvious that things are going well. Sometimes the client will say outright that they feel they have accomplished what they have set out to do; other times, it is a matter of reflecting back to them what they are saying in session. “I'll say to them, 'Well you know, you're saying that you're having no symptoms now, this and this is happening, you're in a good place—how does that fit into our work? Is this still something that you feel like you need?'” (J. Spugnardi, personal communication, October 6, 2009)
Counseling, however, is only part of her work at the Turning Point. In fact, just two weeks before our interview, her job description changed. She is now co-director of programs, responsible for managing the clinical, crisis response, and education programs at the Turning Point. She supervises staff members, manages grants, continues to work as legal advocate, and still sees individual clients for counseling. “I'm wearing many hats right now,” she says with a laugh (J. Spugnardi, personal communication, October 6, 2009). She works part-time, thirty hours a week—twenty-five in-office, and five hours from home managing grants. Her average work day lasts about five hours, and she usually has a client a day, either intake or a session. The rest of that time might be spent answering phones, taking crisis calls, setting up and attending staff meetings, preparing for sessions, or getting handouts together for clients.
I am puzzled at first as to how psychology fits into this new job description. “It factors into every single aspect of my job,” she assures me (J. Spugnardi, personal communication, October 6, 2009). For example, she explains, when she provides legal advocacy for a client, it can still involve crisis intervention even though she is not technically counseling them. “A lot of times it's not so much the information that I might have, but just that they're dealing with the criminal justice system, which is scary, and they don't always get the outcome that they're hoping for. Sometimes they just need someone to listen and to understand that and to support them” (J. Spugnardi, personal communication, October 6, 2009). Even managing grants, which seems very far removed from counseling, involves setting targets, determining how many clients can be effectively served without staff burnout, and what services are in the clients' best interests—all areas where her counseling skills are an asset.
We talk about her personal life—she has no children of her own, but she lives with her mom and keeps her niece and nephew. “So it's like having kids,” she says with a laugh. “I get to go home to them and have fun when I leave here. It's important” (J. Spugnardi, personal communication, October 6, 2009). She got her undergrad in Psychology at TCU and decided to go to graduate school, planning to be a play therapist, since she wanted to work with children. When she did not get into her desired program, she ended up at SMU, getting her Masters in Clinical Psychology. When it came time to do Practicum, she saw a notice for the rape crisis center of Collin County. “I just thought about it and thought, if I can do that kind of counseling, I can probably do any kind of counseling. So I came here and met my clinical director at the time—who is now our president—and just really liked it and liked the staff, and have never looked back. I think that was what I was meant to do, was work with trauma survivors. That's how I ended up here” (J. Spugnardi, personal communication, October 6, 2009).
Finally, I come to the main point of the interview—whether or not the rewards of counseling outweigh the considerable challenges. She acknowledges the difficulties, such as having to wear so many different hats and managing so many different aspects of the job, which she says can be both good and bad sometimes. She also looks pensive when I mention the common problem of counselors “taking [the problems of the client] home with them.” She admits that it has always been a struggle for her, especially when she first started, and that secondary victimization is common when working with trauma survivors. “There are stories that I've heard that will always stay with me, that I will never ever forget. But...it really is a kind of systematic desensitization. You learn that it's a part of your work, but it doesn't have to be a part of you. I had to practice leaving that at the office and going home, and leaving those stories here” (J. Spugnardi, personal communication, October 6, 2009). She tries to utilize her coping skills, modeling self-care and hoping that her clients will do the same.
She also maintains that helping others is its own reward. “Working in non-profit is, I think, for me, the most rewarding kind of work, because you're helping with people who need help and deserve help, and they don't have to give anything back in return, and I really really love that” (J. Spugnardi, personal communication, October 6, 2009). There is no time limit, she says; insurance companies are not an issue. The focus is on the client, and whatever help they need is the help they receive, which yields better results.
It is not only the client who benefits from this sort of work, however. When I ask how working at the Turning Point has changed her as a person, she sobers. “It's such a huge part of who I am. This is the only job I've ever had...I have such a respect and commitment to survivors of sexual assault. That part of it, the mission of it, is definitely a big part of who I am. It definitely has changed my life. I feel like this is what I was supposed to do” (J. Spugnardi, personal communication, October 6, 2009).
As the interview winds down, I consider the question that brought me to the Turning Point—do the rewarding aspects of working with trauma survivors outweigh the challenges? Jennifer Spugnardi certainly seems to think so. I would be hard pressed to guess whether it is her buoyant enthusiasm for helping others that led her to this line of work, or if her work with trauma survivors is what made her so enthusiastic about helping others. Regardless, I admire her for what she does and cannot rule out the possibility of someday pursuing a similar path. I offer her my hand, realizing as I do that she cannot shake it, but she does not seem to mind—she just smiles and thanks me.
