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 Written by:
Darren Haber
05/07/2008
But I would argue…that it may actually be useful for us to in this predicament (i.e., being new in our field), and that in a way we ourselves are our first (and last) client – certainly the client with which we have the longest relationship, with whom we wake up and go to sleep, and with whom we must make peace if we want to carry ourselves with any sort of integrity and/or calm. This experience of "newness" thus appears, I think, to help us empathize with a client coming to therapy for the first time.
It’s very easy to forget what these “first times” are like. In recovery, for instance, you’ll hear that the person with 10 days is more helpful to the newcomer than the person with 10 years, since the longer one stays with something, the less new it feels. I am sometimes forced to remind myself to be patient with those clients brand new to the process, who have never opened up about any of their “stuff” to anyone, let alone a relative stranger – hard, sometimes, to empathize with this, especially when you’ve been in therapy yourself (off and on) for the last 25 years! (No, I am not Woody Allen.)
Thus the process folds back on itself in a rather Escher-like way. The accurate empathy we allow for ourselves, for the trials and travails of being new to a situation, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (and eager to the point of being nauseating), can be a nudge toward building the accurate empathy needed for a solid therapeutic alliance. In fact, the idea of newness should permeate throughout; it''''s an idea found in many rich Eastern traditions -- see, for example, the wonderful book on Zen philosophy, "Zen Mind, Beginner''''s Mind." In short: the beginner''''s mind is open, fresh, curious...the mind of an "expert" is closed.
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