Do Not Enter Without A Request

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

- Tell me, please, where should I go from here?

- Where do you want to go? - answered the Cat.

“I don’t care,” said Alice.

- Then it doesn't matter where you go, - said the Cat.

- just to get somewhere, - Alice explained.

- You will definitely get somewhere, - said the Cat. - You just need to walk long enough.

They go to psychologists with inquiries, everyone knows that. The right client brings a well-formulated request that contains at least a clear indication of the problem and the desired result of the changes. It would also be nice for the client to point out a problem in himself, which can be dealt with with the help of a psychologist. And not in the outside world.

Ideally so. In fact, everything is different. Real living people usually bring the following to the psychologist:

1. A symptom, or an actual life situation in which it is necessary to make a decision or get rid of suffering.

2. A feeling of total unhappiness, unfulfillment, or emptiness of one's own life.

3. Sometimes - a request that sounds like a specific task posed to the psychologist, but not to the client. Reflecting the client's idea of the desired changes, but without details in understanding the essence of the problem from the point of view of his own inner reality. For example, "I want to improve my self-esteem."

In the educational literature on psychological counseling, as well as in different approaches to psychotherapy, there is a different attitude towards requests.

Somewhere, the transformation of the client's initial complaint into a therapeutic request is considered the most important stage in order to consider the work started in principle. The therapist is ready to be persistent and spend from one to several meetings in order to get from the client an intelligible formulation of what goal he sets for himself, what he considers possible to do for himself to achieve it, and by what signs he will understand that it has been achieved. This approach, while it may initially exhaust the therapist and client, and create tension in the therapeutic relationship from the outset, as a bonus, brings a significant reduction in anxiety to both participants. The client receives the illusion of certainty in the goals and means, the psychotherapist also feels competent and reliably protected from possible accusations by clear agreements, which in the therapeutic process depends on him.

Psychotherapists who work in long-term approaches focused on personal change know that after a while there is no trace of the initial request. There is an opinion that no requests make any sense at all, and the client comes to the therapist to fill the deficiencies in the relationship, even if he does not realize it. When deficiencies are filled and "imbalances" are corrected, changes in life orientations, personal meanings and "demands" take place. And, whatever the person's initial idea of the problem, the task of psychotherapy is always the same: to make a person more authentic, alive and free in dealing with his needs, so that he can freely make choices, solve the tasks assigned to him, and in general - live with less stress. And, in the end, when a person understands what he wants from himself, from others, and can receive it in a relationship, therapy can be considered complete. It would be strange to demand such awareness from a person who came for help. And it is part of the therapist's job to handle the anxiety and possible demands of the client to “bring that, I don’t know what” is part of the therapist’s job, and is taught to do so. To be afraid of uncertainty is not to be a therapist.

What do I think? I am keeping the golden mean. The request is important as a common understanding between the client and therapist of the meaning of working together. In the absence of requests, therapy will seem aimless and endless. But at the same time, it is not at all important for me that the client brings a clear request not only to the first, but even to the second and third meetings. And he kept it unchanged for the entire period of joint work.

In my opinion, the request makes sense only as part of the therapeutic alliance: that is, reaching an agreement between the therapist and the client, with which processes in the client's inner reality they are dealing. The request is what the client will work on in himself - with the active support and participation of the therapist. Not a therapist - to execute. Any most correctly formulated goal of the desired changes does not make sense without understanding where I am now and how what is happening to me is related to what I am doing. And why can't I do it any other way yet. But, as soon as this understanding appears, motivation and the meaning of working on oneself appear. Only a request formulated from such a position seems to me to be a "real" request. Even if the word "request" is never mentioned in the dialogue.

So you can come to me without asking. And to you?