The work of a psychologist: Interesting and Useful 577 (the photo shows the friendly nature of our conversation :) Good afternoon, Dear Friends! And we continue to study the work of a psychologist and its various features, we continue to share our accumulated knowledge time to practice with experience and my knowledge. I bring to your attention the five hundred and seventy-seventh article in the series! In one of my articles this week I wrote the following: If a client seems to understand a lot (or not even as much) about himself, he talks about a lot of things , to your therapist (about understanding yourself from a psychological point of view). ... It is rather important to ask the question: why is it important for the client to be so understanding and knowledgeable? What is this about? Competing with the therapist? For what? Are you afraid to let yourself in, to risk opening up, to show your vulnerability? Is this such a defense out of fear? Or there is no competition, but there is simply fear, not a desire to let a therapist approach you (perhaps other people too!). In the comments they wrote to me about this: I have been repeatedly contacted by people who know a lot about themselves and have been to other psychologists. This has never bothered me. I saw this as an opportunity to help a more experienced person. Who already has certain knowledge and has an understanding of himself and the structure of working with a psychologist. I have never felt competition from a client, only interest in my methods of work. Again, I apologize to you that I will not completely agree with everything and will probably describe a different point of view! Thank you for your understanding! I’m worried about maintaining good contact with the author of this comment! I wanted to add that the desire to help can also be explored. Why does the client think that the therapist needs to help him in some special way? Not just talk about your pain, but help in some way. It’s also good if there’s nothing special behind it. And if there is, then it is important not to miss it, to understand what it is about. And it is important for the client to realize what and why he is doing. Then they wrote to me the following: It is important to ask such a client why he decided to contact me? What did other specialists like and what did they not like? In this way, you can analyze the history of a client who has already asked for help, but something went wrong. I would rather ask here not why he applied (here there will be some set of our positive characteristics that is insignificant for therapy, most likely), but would ask what the client expects from our work with him. There may be a more workable answer here. I completely agree with the rest of the questions! And they also wrote to me in a comment: Well, speaking, by analyzing and understanding himself, the client may want to quickly move to a certain stage that he has already reached. Explain to the psychologist what level he is at in order to quickly and better find and build a therapeutic relationship. And to realize for yourself whether the current specialist is capable of providing him with quality assistance. It is important for the psychologist to explain to the client that there are no levels in therapy, that we will have our own path. It is important to understand why he is in a hurry? If he is in a hurry and wants quick results, then doesn’t he want to drag the psychologist into his game: he will work in this direction and at this pace. You can’t build a relationship faster; it takes time. It takes months to even get to know each other well enough. It is important to be aware, of course. But this should not interfere with therapy: “I told everything, but I didn’t feel better.” Of course, we listen to the client, ask what and why he is doing, put forward hypotheses, explain... If the client came just to see if a specialist will help him, and not to work (this is like a second task), then he will not help him, rather everything, because a competing process called “look” will interfere. And so, if the work goes well, then the client most often does not even think about how he is doing his job. He is immersed in the process of therapy. This comment perhaps describes that the client is still competing with the psychologist, is not in a client position,! :)