Compassionate Therapy

In some cases, these difficult clients drove me to the brink of exasperation; nothing I tried with them seemed to make the slightest difference. And yet from working with them, I learned more about myself and about doing therapy than from any supervisor or instructor I ever had. It is the truly difficult clients who do not obey the rules we think are so important. They force us to be more flexible, creative, and innovative than we ever thought possible. And they require us to look deep inside ourselves to examine every one of our own unresolved issues that get in the way of our being compassionate and effective — both as professionals and as human beings.