Posted by Solstice on January 8, 2012, at 11:19:21
In reply to Ideal client, posted by Dinah on January 6, 2012, at 20:37:52
Grrrr! That woman's 'advise' to other therapists really got under my skin. She responded to my comment, and her response bothered me even more because it was clear she didn't even 'get it.' I tried multiple times to craft an answer to her arrogant supposition that I very well might have been grateful to land on her doorstep, but the whole thing was so irritating to me that I finally gave up, thinking she's just too thick to get it.
Her notion that therapists should walk into the field dreaming up 'ideal client' criteria is so fundamentally anti-therapeutic that I am dumbfounded that someone who is properly trained in the field could even come up with the idea in the first place.
People who call up a therapist and ask to be seen are, for the most part, at the end of their rope. People entering therapy are often hanging by a thread - and would not be able to give a therapist the adulation Julie Hanks seems to expect.. I mean at the top of her list is "My ideal client appreciates my education... my expertise and life experience." OMG! How on earth does someone in crisis even have an organized enough thought process to even think if that?? When I walked into my therapist's office the first time, I was entirely focused on my fear, my anxiety, my desperate emotional pain, and my morbid belief that I had to stop living in order to stop the pain. And Julie Hanks would hope I'd walk in appreciating her education? I spent the first good while of therapy being totally self-absorbed, which is why therapy is supposed to be about the client in the first place.. not the therapist's need to be appreciated.
All I can think of is that Julie Hanks' 'expertise' that she is so hopeful that clients will appreciate is limited to clients with very mild and simple life situations and no long-term or deep psychic pain. She's the 'oil-change' of therapy, I guess - not able to handle what comes with doing an engine overhaul. All I can say is Thank God I didn't end up on her doorstep! She seems very self-UNaware. And it's funny.. she counsels me to understand that her blog is directed at therapists - not potential clients. Well.. so she thinks there's something *right* about having disguised prejudices against potential clients who are in too much pain to be as healthy as her 'ideal client' is? I doubt she's the only therapist out there who thinks like she does, but I think it's just so arrogant of her to imply that these beliefs she has are meant to be hidden from the populace. I think what provokes me the most, is that clients are generally not going to be healthy enough to spot her underlying agenda so they can run from her. I had a life-changing toxic 'therapy' that left me more damaged than I was when I went in, so her article hit me on a very deep level. I think she should post her list of criteria on her office door - advising anyone who does not meet her 'ideal client' criteria should find another therapist - one who is capable of caring for people who are not psychologically healthy.
Again, I thank God that I did not land on her doorstep. Her beliefs would have eventually broken through and contaminated the therapy.. and may have been my undoing.
Solstice
poster:Solstice
thread:1006540
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20111220/msgs/1006685.html