"Trust the Process" - a case-study on how therapy works

Some time ago I had a client who was angry with me, unsatisfied and wanted to "sack me".

Now I completely understand that I am not the best therapist for everyone in this world, but what made this case a little bit different is that we had developed just the sort of relationship that is normally conducive to a successful therapy, whereas it usually becomes quite clear early on if we're not right for each other.

I believe in my clients' right and ability to choose, so in this case I was OK to let him go, but used the time we had left to look at why he didn't want to continue. His anger was mainly around the fact that I didn't "offer him enough support". Now I do pride myself in exactly the opposite - being there for my clients, above and beyond what can be expected.

The big misunderstanding was that he believed I should take responsibility for him and his decisions, whereas I was convinced he needed to make his own choices - and that he could do so successfully.

The process in psychotherapy is to use whatever comes up, in this case his anger with me, and to use it to gain understanding on how the client functions in his other relationships, as there normally are patterns that keep being reproduced.

In this case, he was looking in his life for other people to take care of him, and this was undermining his relationships. In a way, he was looking for a parent. In my role as a therapist, I often will play some parts of that role, in that I offer a therapeutic relationship where I am completely there for my client, without judgement, and with an unconditional (platonic) love.

But the great difference is that I don't consider my clients to be children, so I don't tell them what to do. On the contrary, I consider them to be functioning adults, and I offer them support to work out what they want and how to change what they decide they need to change.

My work with this particular client had a happy ending. Once he realised that he was only reproducing with me what was a non-working pattern for him in real life, he decided to continue his therapy with me and successfully worked on that pattern that he hadn't been aware of.

"Trust the Process" in this case meant for me not to try and frantically give my client what he was asking for, not pleasing him or colluding with him, not playing the "rescuer", but instead to stay in my role as the therapist, fully trusting my client's ability to find his way, and supporting him along his journey.