Today I had a very interesting conversation with a client; they said, “you must feel such satisfaction from seeing people grow, I mean, you have helped me so much”. It reminded me of that time a friend asked me “do you think you are a good therapist?”
As it happens, I do think I am a “good enough” therapist, yes. But do I get satisfaction from seeing people change and do I think that what makes me a “good enough therapist” is the fact that I help people? Not really, that's not something I actually often look at.
What I told my client and what I believe, is that the most important thing in my work, and where I get my satisfaction form, is the relationship with the people I see. To which my client replied, "yes sure, but that relationship is this way because of you, and who you are".
And they were very right of course. I realized that when I as a Gestalt therapist say "the relationship", I am referring to something that has been built in me as an understanding of a concept after years and years of training and studying.
So, in referring to the relationship, I was referring to a fundamental stance of being
Open: I am here, with no hidden agenda, with all that I am
Present: I feel my body and I am attuned to the other, I notice what I feel, and I am able to understand the process
Available: to be truly transformed by someone’s pain, to be moved
Genuine: I will risk in saying something that makes me uncomfortable, because I am committed to doing what I am asking the other to do; explore new ways of relating.
Professional: I speak always from the frame of who I am, what I do, all the training and all the education and experience I have. And within that clear frame, I am available to be swept away. I “follow the client but I lead the process”
Caring: I truly feel everything, love, worry, responsibility. I have my own therapist, colleagues, supervisor, mentors and teachers, that support me in feeling all of this and also placing it somewhere where I can carry it, where it doesn’t re-traumatize, but it becomes part of a story, a painting, some form of art.
That is what I said to a different client later today, when they asked “how can you do it”? I said, “it is not unpleasant, it is like reading a beautiful book, even if it makes you cry, could you ever regret having read it?”
So no, I don’t get my satisfaction as a therapist from having “helped” someone. In fact, I would never take credit for something that you did in your life; but I have infinite moments of being proud of how I regulated myself, how I stayed in a difficult situation with you in a different way than what people have done before me, or of how I showed up with something intimate in a moment that it was necessary for you to feel, to register, that i deely care.
And I really do believe that it is the relationship that heals.
In fact, one of the most helpful things an old therapist has ever told me, was when she asked “what is it that I do that helps you”? To which I replied,
I don’t know really, YOU ARE JUST THERE.
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