{"id":378,"date":"2014-07-16T19:25:59","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T19:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/deep-center-training\/?p=378"},"modified":"2015-02-23T22:00:53","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T22:00:53","slug":"assume-they-want-to-grow-potential-is-there-if-you-look-for-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/deep-center-training\/2014\/07\/assume-they-want-to-grow-potential-is-there-if-you-look-for-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Assume They WANT To Grow: Potential Is There If You Look For It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Buds<\/a><\/p>\n

She races in five minutes late, plops onto the sofa, and starts talking. And talking. And talking. The litany of complaints about her boss, her sister, and her landlord is so familiar now that I can almost recite it to her before she says it. I notice myself glancing at the clock, noticing that time is moving slowly. A now familiar little voice creeps into my head saying, \u201cWhy does she keep coming? Nothing I say or do has an impact on these patterns that keep her stuck. Nothing is happening here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The response I as a therapist offer at this very crossroads in a therapy session or in an entire therapy itself emerges from the bedrock of a fundamental belief I carry about human nature, about what motivates behavior, about what motivates people to come to therapy.<\/p>\n

Do I see my client\u2019s repetitive behavior that shoos away my help as evidence of pathology or sickness? If so, I\u2019ll probably move toward trying in some way to \u201cfix\u201d her, by offering diagnoses, prescriptive advice, lectures about how to change her thoughts, and\/or interpretations.<\/p>\n

Do I see her behavior as evidence that, since \u201cnothing is happening\u201d but she keeps on coming, then either she\u2019s too dependent on me or she doesn\u2019t have anything to work on any more and is just wasting my time and hers? If so, I\u2019ll probably suggest that it\u2019s my obligation to terminate therapy.<\/p>\n

Or do I see her behavior as an outward manifestation of an inner, unconscious (or perhaps barely conscious) pattern that longs to be healed and so is showing itself to me, over and over again, so that I\u2019ll get it<\/em> and help her get unstuck? If so, I\u2019ll probably respond with ongoing curiosity, inside myself and toward her, so that I begin to get a glimmer of understanding that my desire for the session to be over, or my feeling of being unable to get a word in to help her is the very way her unconscious is helping me to understand how she<\/em> feels, deeply buried beneath this swirling and stuck pattern.<\/p>\n

Whether we\u2019re conscious of our beliefs about our clients\u2019 basic motivations or not, our underlying philosophies do inform our interventions at every turn. So it\u2019s crucial for us to ponder this idea for ourselves as clinicians.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think it\u2019s hard to tell that I believe my clients\u2019 behavior and search for therapy is motivated by a longing to heal and a capacity to grow. My responses to their behavior emerge from that fundamental understanding, leading me to an attitude of compassionate curiosity about what protective purpose or communication avenue their symptoms are serving. An attitude of noticing and leading with their strengths, their potential, their sprouts of growth, even in the midst of difficulty.<\/p>\n

This focus on strengths and potential and communication is very different than looking on the bright side or overlooking real problems. It\u2019s about assuming that all people are innately good, and that they want<\/em> to heal and grow and find meaning. It\u2019s about believing that the psyche longs to heal and so it reveals to us its problems in all kinds of ways\u2014verbal and nonverbal\u2014in order to ask for help. It\u2019s about harnessing the very strengths and potential we find in this search to help<\/em> them change and heal their painful symptoms.<\/p>\n

I know in my intuition and in my experience that there\u2019s always<\/em> potential for access to a deeper and true self in every client who\u2019s walked through my door. There\u2019s always potential for growth and healing and vitality, even if it\u2019s very, very small. Even at it\u2019s tiniest, a small dot of light of human potential in each client is a spark\u2014a spark of their life force that is bright enough to shine through a hole in their defendedness, a hole that might be as small as a pinprick.<\/p>\n

My client who keeps coming back, even though \u201cnothing is happening?\u201d Needs my confidence in her. Needs me to fan her tiny spark of potential into embers and then flames. Her returning again and again is<\/em> her strength. That repetition is her determination to show <\/em>me how she feels. So that I can help her learn how to move and be free.<\/p>\n

My trust in people\u2019s growth capacity is bone-level intuitive, but it\u2019s also supported by science and theory. Keep an eye out for a future blog post about the science behind assuming that all people are equipped to heal, grow, and transform.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I invite you into an exploration of your own ideas. What are your beliefs about what motivates your clients to seek help? What are your fundamental assumptions about human nature? How do these perspectives inform your work?<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She races in five minutes late, plops onto the sofa, and starts talking. And talking. And talking. The litany of complaints about her boss, her sister, and her landlord is so familiar now that I can almost recite it to her before she says it. I notice myself glancing at the clock, noticing that time is moving slowly. A now familiar little voice creeps into my head saying, \u201cWhy does she keep coming? Nothing I say or do has an impact on these patterns that keep her stuck. Nothing is happening here.\u201d The response I as a therapist offer at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,12,13],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-motivation","tag-potential","tag-strengths"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/deep-center-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/deep-center-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/deep-center-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/deep-center-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/deep-center-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/deep-center-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/deep-center-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/deep-center-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/deep-center-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deepcenterforgrowth.com\/deep-center-training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}