Making Mistakes

Making Mistakes

Recently, I was at a conference: Together Again, For the First Time: Gestalt Therapy and Inter-Subjective Systems Psychoanalysis and had a chance to talk with Lynne Jacobs, a Gestalt therapist and an analyst, one of the co-presenters and someone I have long admired. Emotional process and relational process are central in Gestalt therapy.  We track the emotional process of the client. We constantly offer situation specific support.  This also includes when I've tried, and missed, meeting the client where he is. I know it's my responsibility to make the correction.  I don't always know I need to.  The two of us, my client and me, are fumbling our way along together.  He knows what he most needs at any moment, so correcting and guiding me is certainly possible.  But often it doesn't happen.  What can I do?

First I need a stance to ground me.  And here it is. Lynne Jacobs:  "I don't expect the therapist to actually know what's best before he or she does something or doesn't do something.  It's not finding our way along by putting the responsibility on the patient to guide us, but rather that we'll make our best guess. If it doesn't work, I don't assume resistance, I assume I made the wrong guess, so I'm still responsible for doing the thinking about what might be needed."  (undated interview) Then I need words.  Lynne helps me out with these at the lunch break. "I didn't get that right, did I?"  "I missed you there."  "I didn't get what you really meant, did I?"  "I was insensitive." Words to train my clients to notice and tell me. When I've been the client and hear words like these, I feel a little bigger inside, more valuable. And each time as a therapist I say words like these, I get a little more resilient about my shame.  My shame that I make mistakes. What do you think?