You may have encountered times when your children provided unsolicited parenting, relationships, and business advice. They have no problem telling you how poorly you handle the above-mentioned topics and many other areas of your life. They seem to know everything, and you know nothing. Can you relate?
The other day, I talked to my son about my private practice and how I made changes. I noted that it is likely difficult for some clients to handle the changes I make in my practice. This is when he advised me that to bring in new clients, I should be making cold calls and driving in more clients this way.
What?
Okay – clearly, this child has no idea that the College governs me, and there are many regulations to protect the client…and yes, soliciting and coercion is something that would not be favoured.
But there is much more to do with it. I am not your average therapist because I will not allow you to stay in the blame and victimization game long.
There is a fine line between holding someone in their pain, providing empathy and validation, and getting them past the grief once and for all. In other words, you are allowed to be in pain and grieve, but if I continue to validate you in that grief, you will not move. You need to move through the valley of death, not set up camp there. You need to go through the dark night of the soul, not make your bed there.
The word night is singular, not plural. It is not the ‘dark nights of the soul.’
There is so much on the other side, but you must grieve the past, not stay there. Most people are stuck in the past asking ‘What if?’ ‘Why me?’ ‘When is it my turn?’.
Change requires stretching in a way you have never stretched before. It is much like growing pains. If you are not in discomfort, you are not growing.
So, to me, a good therapist listens intently to your story, feels your pain with you – never trivializes your pain, and never tells you it is silly to feel this pain or you’re wrong to feel it. Your pain is your truth; I will never argue with your truth.
But once we feel it, we then free ourselves from it. And we move past it. We come to terms with it, and we put it to rest.
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