So the silliness is that I have a personal Twitter. (Sue me.)

Every so often people remark that there are widely misunderstood beliefs about their field, and I wanted to jump start the conversation with my contribution of “Therapists do not make the worst clients, beacause, if you really hold that space in high regard, you would put in the WORK for it.”

A lot of people have a firmly held misperception that people in a career are the worst people for those in the career.

It speaks to a greater issue: We hold firmly that the worst clientle are the ones who deviate from the norm. We believe, in a business aspect, that the worst clients are the ones who won’t let us do our job. That’s why we say this age old addage to people. It comes down to a lack of skill and an inability to actually continue to do the job.

While considering a lot of the internal responses to a full-bodied body-slam of professionals, I leaned into who I am: a quirky girl whose expertise is that her “fancy” economics degree is coupled with an ability to market herself. In short, yes, I do believe that the current industry standardization of therapy is going to produce bad therapy. I’m not saying that all therapists are bad at their job now or even a sentiment of that statement ever having been true. Rather, let’s admit that cookie-cutter therapy utlimately dismantles at the disdain and grief of a disgruntled client.

When I was completing a therapy internship (which is something of a story), there was a client who was older than me by about a decade.While this makes little difference at 40, at 35, the difference is austounding. And so she avoided scheduling, ultimately making a claim that I was following a script. As it is not only rude otherwise but most pertinentely irrelevant unless, that’s all you need to know on her end. Anyway, I staffed the issue and we were successful in being able to find a better fit. That was the goal: deliver therapy, and good therapy, too. But somewhere along the line, there was a destruction of the goal being centered on the client’s wants.

See, the joke isn’t that we ultimately met back up or something. It’s not a feel-good narrative. It’s harsh. It’s raw. It’s the truth of being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, coming up against the River Styx, Community Mental Health Clinic on the other side. No matter what knowledge of the job given, I’m put at an unfair advantage to begin.

The narratization clarifies that I am a young intern with little practice. I would be akin to Thumper, who was the rabbit in Bambi (rather than Bambi? Well, I ran out of animal narratives).

We give the greenest interns the people who have been the most left behind.

I wasn’t unwilling to help or even potentially ill equipped. I actually understood her dilemma and issue and wanted to help. She unfortunately had experienced (I’m guessing) a lot of well meaning newer therapists who just couldn’t help, or had to switch locations, or any number of logical reasons that therapy sometimes fails.

Therapy failing is actually normal.

We’re not all the same, and neither are our clinicians out there. A bad match is actually super common among people. I have countless stories of my own quests to find therapist after therapist failed to understand my situation.

The biggest difference is that I never really thought it was because I was too broken. I’m certain my almost client would have understood I was willing to work through the trauma of that, even though I didn’t sound able to. I hope she’s doing well.

When I began my quest to be a clinician I often thought it would be really easy to engage even the most disgruntled clients. This sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. My style ended up working really well for a lot of my clients but some of them really wanted a different style.

Our success is then in how we help those we are able to help.

I’d like to help everyone. I just honestly can’t. I don’t have the ability to be an expert in everything. But I sure want to learn how to better explain to my future clients that even if I’m not the right fit, that they are deserving of help and therapy. Even if I’m not the choice for them, they should know that they were not the issue with the service.

XOXO,

Dorothy B