Clients can expect therapists to make their best effort to be helpful, to help them gain insight and learn new skills, and to teach them some of the behavioral tools they need to deal more effectively with their current living situations. Therapists should make it clear that they cannot save the clients, cannot solve the clients’ problems and cannot keep the clients from engaging in harmful behavior. Clients have to solve their own life problems.

A common misconception is often that a therapist can somehow make everything better. The therapist’s inability to take away the intense pain, or sometimes even to lessen it somewhat, is often interpreted as uncaring or unwillingness to help. The task of the therapist is to actively counter such beliefs and assumptions. A therapist can help a client develop and practice new behaviors that may be helpful in reshaping their life, though cannot in the final analysis reshape his/her life for him/her. The metaphor of the therapist as a guide can be helpful. I can show someone the way, but I cannot walk the trail for him/her. The caring is in staying with the client on the path.

While credit for the writing of the above “agreement” is given to psychologist and author, Marsha Linehan, I adopt her philosophy of the role of the therapist and seek to be the skillful guide in helping my clients through the dark and rocky trails of life in search of light and purposeful living.

~Lori