I’ve just returned to personal therapy. I’m confident this is a good thing for my clients, as well as for me personally.
Being a client reminds me how it is for my own clients to be in therapy. How strange it is to come to a first session, and the nerves that come with imagining sharing the deepest parts of ourselves. How vulnerable we become.
Being a client supports me to have more empathy and understanding towards the various parts of myself, on more and more subtle levels, and this self-empathy increases my capacity to empathise and be with my clients and what they are bringing.
Being a client reminds me that we are all in the same boat. I know how it is to be wounded and to have fears and triggers. As a therapist I’m not working from a place of, “I’m all sorted” but from, “I know how it is to be human, and to support other humans like me”.
Being a client means that I am getting support for my own fears and triggers, and when my own wounded parts feel taken care of it’s much easier for me to take care of my clients, and what they are bringing to sessions.
