Dear Client,
I am honored that you have chosen me to walk through this journey with you. I know that you have choices in therapists, and I do not take for granted that you see the same potential in our relationship that I do. I hope you also don’t take advantage of my choice to stay in this work and help people just like you. I have been tempted sometimes by the jobs of the outside world. They seem so much less all consuming.
I hold your experiences in confidence. But you should know that I do this equally for all of my clients, so as you can imagine I have a lot stored in my head. Sometimes I forget things, like appointment times, responding to emails, or the names of someone very important to you. It’s not on purpose, I promise. When this happens, show me the grace that I show you. Sometimes my brain is on a low battery. I promise that when I make a mistake I will apologize, and not be angry at you for pointing this out to me. I promise that I will make a mistake more than once, and I will apologize every single time.
Even though sometimes emergencies happen we have to stick to our cancellation policies. If you have an emergency we feel deeply for you and hope that you are ok, but without cancellation fees we do not get reimbursed. Imagine if everyone had an emergency in 1 day, That could impact our ability to stay in business. This would mean our relationship would end, and that I would probably go do one of those other tempting jobs.
Sometimes therapists have to say things to you that are hard to hear. This is exactly why you should not seek out someone you have a close relationship with as your therapist and why we can’t be friends, even if it feels like we are sometimes. It is not personal, I am sharing them because I care about you. It is also ok for you to be mad at me and not want to come back when this happens. But I challenge you to come back in spite of this. I double challenge you to tell me that you felt angry with me, too because that always leads to more healing, and strengthens our relationship.
Be nice to us. Being a therapist is a labor of love. Most of us are deeply in student debt, have our own healing in therapy to do and are undervalued by other helping professionals constantly. Think of how during Covid everyone praised teachers, doctors, nurses and while they deserved it of course, most of them were in therapy to cope with the high demands, stress of grief and loss and burnout. We are behind the scenes in many people's lives. In spite of our work together most people still don’t admit we are a part of their lives and as part of our job, we need to respect that and we of course, understand. But sometimes our cups are empty because we give so much of ourselves and don’t always get that back.
We have a responsibility to offer our clients an unconditional positive regard and are deeply empathic. We feel what you are feeling and have been trained to show very little emotion when you share stories with us. This can take a toll on us. We sometimes need time off that will cause you to miss your normal time with us. Our time off is important so that we can stay well to be able to get you well.
You should know that we love our jobs, or we wouldn’t do it. But in order to keep doing it we need our clients to know that we too, are human.
Much Love and Stay Well.
