Helping a Challenging Client
Montage by Victor Bloomberg, December 29, 2015
This particular client is a very wealthy white woman. She doesn’t recognize her privilege. She came to me with significant family difficulties. That is what I was mostly working on with her. However, along the way it became clear she was someone who was supportive of our previous president. This was not an easy client for me to work with and stay open with. There were times when she said things that made me cringe, especially on some social justice issues. For example, blatant racism, blatant homophobia, blatant transphobia. At this point in my life, I do not let it slide. You have to be very careful how you choose to address that in a therapeutic setting. I’m not there to champion social justice issues, but I am there to affirm the humanity of all people. I give a few little hints here and there, statements to help her to change her perspective a little. I think they started to take seed a little bit. It was hard to see. I had to take a lot of deep breaths when I was in session with this person. At one point, and it was in the Teletherapy time, there were many occasions where I just sort of pointed out perspectives of other individuals with whom she came across them in her life; and where that person might have been coming from to behave this way. She asked, “Why is this young Black man walking past my house? I’ve never seen him before. Do you think he’s casing the joint?” I said, “You know, schools are closed. Recreational places are closed. People are going out for walks now that didn’t used to go for walks. Maybe the young person was just out for a walk.” Anyway, she was relating a story to me that was about being at a store. As she was berating the sales clerk, she suddenly had a realization. She said that, in the middle of her rant against this person about why things should be done her way, it came to her that she was being unfair to this person. She stopped and tried to look at herself from the sales clerk’s eyes. She realized how horrible she was being. She stopped what she was doing and apologized. She basically just had a change of heart in the middle of it. She realized that this poor person wasn’t the evil one trying to harm her. She had a shift of perspective. There was a little bit of softening about her as she told me the story. We had a few other exchanges after that where I saw glimmers of a more open perspective. Perhaps a little more empathy for those who are not of her ilk. I totally didn’t expect her to have compassion for people outside her immediate circle.
That one hour in my office is the only time in these people’s lives that they are fully present with another individual, or another individual is fully present with them, without any distractions. Especially in this day and age of checking our devices, many times per minute, even. And just being fully focused on them. It’s such a rare occasion for most people. I try to be as non-judgmental as possible, which is not something one comes across much in everyday life. Through professionalism I hold their issues without imposing my own issues on them. My knowledge and expertise on personality styles, and knowing realistic expectations for this person given the way they are wired. Knowing what is the reasonable goal for someone who’s wired the way they are. A consistent presence so they know what they’re going to walk into from one week to another. They probably have enough of not knowing what to expect in their lives with other people.
I feel there is an energy exchange going on too, where I genuinely have positive regard for my clients. I’m very engaged with them to be their best. I don’t write anybody off. So many people have surprised me. I thought it was going to be a couple of sessions, to just get past this one issue, and then they ended up being long term clients who really made major changes in their lives. And conversely, I thought this was going to be a really engaging, energetic therapy, and they say they took care of what they needed to do and that’s that.
The Psychotherapist has 33 years experience, their approach is Relational, and began to use Telehealth years prior to the pandemic.
