Good Customer, Bad Customer

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

It is not customary to talk about this, since we all value our reputation as correct and friendly specialists, is it not? Well, I'll take a chance.

They say that waiters are the worst diners in restaurants, because in their free time they strive to do with their colleagues everything that their most impudent clients do with them

According to professional ethics, most psychologists, counselors or therapists work in an atmosphere of non-judgmental client acceptance. In many directions, even without calling him a patient, since the word "patient" itself is evaluative, literally translated means "the one who endures", "patient". Clients use this rule with might and main - where else? Indeed, where else can you be yourself and not correspond to anyone? And this rule applies to the entire time of work. That is, for about a therapeutic hour. But even during this time, the client and the therapist enter into an oral or written agreement that clearly defines the rules of cooperation and implies the presence of standard ethics. So, not in a clinical setting, the client is not expected to sit on the table and start chewing on the tablecloth, even if this was not previously agreed. Among the conditioned rules, there are different ones - from the convenience of place and time for both parties to specific ones, based on the direction and manner of work and even on the personality of the therapist himself, since the personality plays an important role here.

Among the main ones are division of responsibility … In words, everything seems to be clear: both parties are responsible for the productivity of work. In fact, I really want to not carry anything like that, especially when faced with unpleasant questions; especially when there is no answer to them. Recently, this is already a scourge: the representatives of the famous amorphous generation, for the most part, do not even want to talk about themselves, but immediately demand that a psychologist scan them, and then, under their strict control, utter a word that will make it feel good and pleasant. problems will dissolve along with the seams on the clothes, and life will become one static picture of gloss. This is how he goes up the hill, jumps up, throwing up his arms, and so he hangs in the air - happy. Or like this, she comes home, and there is a hybrid of a restaurant advertisement and a new line of jewelry. And she stands, half bending over to the combed child, beaming with a white-toothed smile over the simultaneously burning candles in rose petals from her beloved. Forever. This is not even a search for a magic pill - this is Faust for the poor in spirit. The Devil's Sponsor is the Buy Me Now!

For those who have reason and will, this is a completely resolvable issue. He suffers from the dentist for the sake of that very white-toothed smile. So there is experience in setting goals and solving problems. And specialists have the experience and knowledge of how to create conditions for getting out of the glossy stupor into the integrity of the personality, for which one-dimensional pictures no longer matter, since their place is taken by quite voluminous, lively joys and sorrows, called the fullness of life. But this is the way.

Inveterate lovers of substituting erudition for education, relationships with pretty visibility, achievements - with photos on social networks, do not want to go a long, nasty way. I don’t want to accept the offensive truth that they are made of the same bones and meat as everyone else, which means that you cannot deceive the laws of human nature and you cannot run away from yourself. The lie will always be known to its wearer, making him permanently unhappy.

Yes, they do not really want an invented gloss, because they subconsciously understand perfectly well: freezing is death. The instinct for self-preservation makes them delay the achievement of a false goal. Unfortunately, some for this running in circles choose the fashionable "go to the psychologist". To me, in any case, unfortunately, because in my work I am focused on the result. Susan Forward once said that she sees people who go to psychologists for decades, but the only thing that changes is the state of their bank account. I do not like it.

returning to contract … During the therapeutic hour, we unconditionally accept the client, do not give any marks, and we perfectly understand that no one is immune from mistakes of any kind. We do not give any ratings even when they extort "five" for meekness with a knife at the throat, or, conversely, provoke a breakdown, saying exquisite nastiness accumulated in generations. Behavior - we object. The client's personality - never. Your life is only yours, a condition of the contract. Unlike the devilish.

So that's it. The conditions for absolute acceptance, as we mentioned earlier, extend for an hour. Do you understand me? The hour ends - and we enter the field of standard business and interpersonal relationships. And the client, for some reason deciding that there is a gray harmless creature in front of him, sitting in a closet in his free time, waiting for a summoning whistle, can get badly pricked.

The evaluation field comes into its own. A good specialist does not allow himself to be made a "servant for everything" even during work, and even more so outside of it. A good client understands this and more or less confidently maintains the framework of business etiquette: he respects the one whom he entrusted to walk part of the path next to him, adheres to the deadlines, notifies of force majeure, neutralizes the absurd urges of his left heel, takes into account the true impulses of the soul and mind, cares about mutual reputation and all that other, accepted in a decent society.

The bad one (here it is, a word so rarely mentioned in therapy!) Often tries to do everything that his unloved clients, colleagues or family members do to him, as well as to use quite natural impulses that arose in the process of realizing his own aggression. Standard business agreements protect us from this. But there is little that protects us from breaking agreements. And here I would highly recommend remembering that we are all someone's clients at a certain time. And that the therapist has his own social circle, views, friendships and business connections - as a rule, at a fairly high level.

The situation may change, and I don't think the misconduct will make the therapist mirror your nerves. Personal secrets, according to the same contract, will also remain buried forever. But in the field of official communication, buying services and distributing recommendations - you yourself understand …