Yeah, the sad thing about this field is that you can never really completely avoid anything. Even if you have the most swank professional private practice that only sees women who want boob jobs... eventually you are going to run into one who drinks, gets beaten, is anorexic, is afraid of spiders to a point of peeing her pants, is really a man, etc...
Things are so intertwined and twisted...
Knowing your limitations, however, can be very helpful... and I think a lot of that will come out in your training. There's a lot of reflection and personal individual therapy is encouraged. You will quickly figure out everyone's issues and hot spots... still, I wouldn't over-disclose, class isn't group therapy. We had one person who disclosed about their divorce constantly... we all branded them a flake (even though they weren't at all... just didn't have good boundaries and was re-experiencing everything).
If you know you have issues with something like "not being able to help your family"... work on that now and as you go through your program. Find a therapist to talk with outside of school setting... it's best to handle it before you are out in the employed world. Trust me... it will come up. Everyone has something... everyone... even the most sheltered, blessed people in the field can have a reaction to this work. Imagine going from kittens and lollipops to overdoses and scar tissue... can be traumatic. Don't underestimate the value of self-care during your training and your career...
Transference and counter-transference issues are sometimes fun to process with a group... if you have a professor who is psychodynamically trained, ask them to lead a few class sessions to pull that out in people... it's very interesting. Even if you don't adhere to a psychodynamic theory for your practice... almost every theory will have similar concepts... some of them call it your "lens"... how you view things compared to how they really are... etc.
