I’m deeply reflective at the moment about the interactive dance that is a therapeutic relationship. Clients come, bringing with them their outcomes, troubles and patterns, and together we partner to journey through the landscapes they need to as they deepen and grow.
Working with many clients at once, a therapist similarly journeys on their way, supported by their clinical supervisor, and sometimes by their own therapist too. Patterns arise in our client work that point us towards noticing and learning new things about our own ways of being, both professionally and personally. Ethical practice is about continually deepening, growing and shifting in response to the way our client relationships touch us. As we do so, not only do we change personally, but we change the dynamic of our client relationships so that clients too can free up and move on in the ways they need to.
So often clients may perceive the therapeutic relationship to have a power dynamic, maybe like an expert - learner dynamic or a doctor - patient, dynamics that leave them one down and the therapist one up. This really is not my experience of therapeutic work. Healthy attachment therapeutically is about collaboration, jointly modelling what is happening now and what is sought, and together finding ways to release the old and welcome in the new.
I’ve been lucky enough to do this work now for thirteen years. As my experience grows, it is so striking to me that just as when I began, holding the truths that ‘I don’t know yet’ and that ‘my client is the expert on them’ remain pivotal to authentic and lively practice.
If you’re interested in psychotherapy, or clinical supervision with curiosity and humility at its heart, get in touch.
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