2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
When I just started my psychological practice, I was very worried about my sessions not being a failure. I considered failing sessions in which I could not "do good" to the client or "help". It seemed to me that everything needs to be done perfectly and only then can I get down to work. In short, this dilemma was eating away at me from the inside.
What does it mean “to do perfectly well” and what criteria can be used to evaluate a therapy session, I did not yet know, and anxiety in this place did not allow me to see what was on the periphery of this process. I was too busy with myself and not with the client. Paradoxically, it is the desire to be ideal as a psychotherapist that is detrimental to the client. Why? Because if the therapist constantly cares about how he looks like an expert, what he says and whether the effect of his work will be correct, whether the client will be satisfied, whether the client will solve the issue that has been tormenting him for decades in one session ….. In a word, if the therapist thinks about all these things, everything is lost. Consider a failed session.
The desire to be perfect
Almost all newcomers face this, I think, not only in this profession. This narcissistic desire blocks the internal resource and does not allow a person to be "alive" in the process of work, and the most important thing in psychotherapy sessions is to notice oneself in contact with a client, since to some extent the psychotherapist is a kind of instrument that feels and sees more than the client.
Yes, while at first it is so. Only when he gets into the client's field, the therapist is able to feel the experiences of this person, to designate the vector of movement, to hear the inner need that drives him, to track the themes where resistance occurs. This is all possible if the therapist is not busy worrying about his own achievements and the desire to do everything perfectly, but to be in the here and now, as he is. Only then is contact possible, which itself is known to be therapeutic.
What is “to do everything perfectly”?
When there is a desire to conduct a session perfectly well, you should think about what actually means “excellent”. What criteria will be used for internal or external assessment and who will assess it?
Consider two criteria that can be alarming for the therapist.
1. I solved the client's problem.
An excellent criterion. But let's think a little. A client came to you with a question that he has not been able to deal with for 10 years and you, as a professional wizard (it is impossible to name it otherwise) made a couple of professional manipulations and voila - the client solved his question. Do you think this is possible? Obviously not, and if you think it is possible, then you should see a psychologist.
It is clear that if a person is worried about something for a long time, then it is unlikely that you will help him figure it out in an hour. There are exceptions, but they are directly dependent on the client's awareness and readiness, that is, if the client has already worked out his question himself, he just needs to put a final point.
2. The client left happy.
Under what circumstances can this happen. Yes, for any. Either the client resolved his question, or received support, or the psychologist took on a lot of responsibility, or he was strongly involved in his energy.
All these processes can be assessed, both positive and negative. And they may not be appreciated in any way, because what exactly will happen in the client's inner awareness after the session, no one knows.
Maybe he needs a shake-up, maybe he needs support, maybe he wants to burn out and suffer for a while, maybe he just wants to warm up, he can throw out unexpressed emotions that have lain deep in the depths, but they are different. Nobody knows what kind of urgent need will come out in the session. And yes, the client can not always leave satisfied, and yes, the way the client leaves will not always signal the success of the psychotherapy session.
Therefore, returning to the topic of the essay itself - the desire to be an ideal psychotherapist and conduct all sessions perfectly, I can say the following.
After a certain time, I felt my ego deflate and become smaller and smaller, turning into its real size. I am not a God who can take everything and decide everything with a snap of his fingers, I don’t know how this should be solved, I don’t even know where we will go at each subsequent session. This knowledge is beyond the control of anyone.
No, there is, of course, a person to whom it is subject - in fact, the client himself. But he does not yet know this, and he has no access to this knowledge. Only he knows this, but not me. And I can lead him along the road along which I am walking and yes, I don’t know where to turn, we make a decision together, I’m not more important and not smarter than him, because everyone carries the knowledge about his life in himself. And yes, I no longer want to be an ideal therapist, I want to be alive and real, and this is what is therapeutic and this is what can open access to my own resource.
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