My Blog

March 29, 2009

Reliability

I rarely cancel or move our appointments once they are booked. Being reliably present and starting our sessions on time are ways that I express my committment to our work together. Effective therapy relies on a frame - boundaries which are clear to both of us, and which allow us both to focus fully on the work we are doing together. Part of my job is to pay attention to setting up the hour with as few distractions as possible. For example, I turn off the phone in my office and do what I can to provide a calm and quiet environment for us to work in. I prepare myself to be focused and alert at the start of each session. Once I've made sure that I am providing a reliable frame for our meeting, then I can also notice ways that you might be distracting yourself from our work together.

Therapy brings the unknown into awareness, and this often involves facing moments of fear. It is very normal for people to unintentionally avoid or delay getting into the work of therapy by creating distractions or obstacles to the work itself. It is part of my role to draw attention to what I believe may be distractions, so that you can make a conscious choice about them. Examples include lateness, chatting about safe subjects, rescheduling, and eating during appointments. There are many more ways, some of them very subtle, that people find to avoid reaching a painful moment without knowing they are doing so. At the same time, any of these things can happen for other reasons that are not about fear or distraction. What I can offer is the reliability of my presence and my focused attention, so that together we can discover and acknowledge what is happening in each meeting.