Listening to Clients (business)

I was asked to make a presentation to a group of business leaders who deal with distributors and manufacturers in parts of Southern California. The topic was how to help clients with their anxiety. This portion came toward the end of the meeting. At that point I had already presented to the group at length. I tend to be wary of excessive presenting on Zoom so I rushed this part a bit. The meeting took place on December 2, 2020.

On Choosing a Therapist

If you liked the description of therapy in I wrote in this post, here are some follow-up thoughts I had and wanted to shared on how to choose a therapist:

  • Choose a therapist who seems to have an open heart. This is a prerequisite to locating someone who can provide us with acceptance. This is fundamental to healing and thriving.

  • Choose a therapist who is not attached to outcomes. If your therapist is attached to outcomes, if things do not progress as quickly as their own attachment dictates, negative judgment will appear. This collapses the most valuable part of therapy: feeling esteemed independently of what we do.

  • Choose a therapist who has expertise. This will allow them to be more effective more quickly. Expertise usually comes from a combination of education, experience, and self-openness (the latter is necessary to allow therapists to integrate the material deeply enough into their own humanity).

  • Choose a therapist who has discernment to know when which piece of knowledge applies to which piece of your experience (and which do not).

  • Choose a therapist who welcomes that there are things they do not know. A therapist who “knows” will put you, or your loved one, into an already-made category. If doing so they will miss who you actually are, and be unable to welcome the parts of you that do not fit into the category (unfortunately when this happens shaming tends to be evoked, which is opposite of what constitutes effective therapy).

  • Finally, choose a therapist whom you feel comfortable with at a personal level, that matters too :)

As you can tell, only one criterion can be evaluated by looking at formal credentials. The others cannot. They need to be evaluated through interaction. For those, I would recommend interviewing different therapists (a typical way to do so is to engage in dialogue about what you would like help with). If something does not feel right in your therapy encounter, especially after having shared your discomfort (if you felt comfortable doing so), trust this. We may know or may not know this, but we all have within us, in moments of calm, the ability to detect profound human truths.

On Therapy

I thought, after having practiced therapy for some time (and after having received therapy in the past), that I should jot down a few notes on my experiences.

The most significant event in therapy is the repeated experience of feeling understood and esteemed by someone we value, even after we have shared with them things we feel vulnerable, or ashamed about ourselves. This is at the core what heels in therapy and sets the stage for growth. 

Other events in therapy are also helpful and contribute to resolution and empowerment: 

  • Gaining an understanding of our implicit beliefs

  • Gaining an understanding of how we function as humans,

  • Learning what helps our system thrive and what does not, 

  • Discovering resources in ourselves we did not know we have (this applies to all of us),

  • Practicing what we learn,

  • Understanding how others are functioning, 

  • Understanding what constitute fulfilling relationships and enjoying them.

But the most significant, in my practice, remains the experiences of feeling genuinely understood and appreciated, for no other purpose than being.

If you are a parent (remembering the moments of calm and pride) the following may resonate with you. As a therapist - and as a human -, practicing therapy brings me experiences of awe, warmth, and calm. A sense of having contributed to the good, of which all of us, including myself, are a part of, and a continued realization that all of us, in some ways, are connected.

As a client of therapy myself, the following words come to mind as a way to describe the experience of therapy: scary (before the first session :), warm, welcoming, supportive, curious, insightful, deep, calming, masterful, meaningful.

> On choosing a therapist