I'm in a relationship with a therapist; It's complicated.

There aren't very many socially-acceptable relationships I can think of when one member is expected to be open and honest, and the other member shares little or nothing personal. However, that is pretty close to how many therapists and their patients see the process of therapy.

Depending on the model of therapy the clinician is using depends on the amount of personal disclosure from the therapist. It's all about professional boundaries and what works for the client. A good question to ask as a therapist is, "How does this self-disclosure benefit my client?"

I do think at times keeping boundaries too rigid can be almost as destructive to treatment as keeping them too loose. It is difficult to promote hope within your client by taking the role of a expert, while at the same time, allowing your client enough space to believe that you are human and make your own mistakes. So basically, it seems to work like this: The more expert the therapist appears, the more helpful the client perceives him to be, but at the same time the more broken the client feels. He has more hope for change, but he takes less responsibility for it, because that is the job of his expert therapist. On the flip side, the more human the therapist is, the more normalized the client feels. Since the expert therapist isn't there to do it all, the client has more responsibility for change, but along with that comes less hope, because the client feels he doesn't know what to do.

This theory would look nice in a little graph that I might make some day. In the mean time, I would like to shatter the belief that therapists are perfect people. I have my own challenges with my behaviors and the behaviors of others, just as everyone else does. I get my feelings hurt by my friends, my family, and even my clients. So, I am a therapist, but I am a human. The journeys that I make with my clients happen together. There is no single set of foot prints in the sand here.

Michael Baker, LMFT
Learn more: www.reachfamilythearpy.com

PS- I would love to hear comments from therapists and lay people alike about how they experience this blog. Also, would you mind reposting, retweeting, sharing on facebook, or whatever? I find it much more fun to write and keep up with my blog when I know people read it!

Are you a scaredy cat?

Motiviation is one of the most misunderstood concepts in psychology. What motivates one person doesn't always motivate another. However, fear tends to be a motivating factor to most of us in some way or another.

Consider this example: I've never met anyone who enjoys paying their taxes. As tax-paying citizens, we pay our taxes out of fear. We don't want the IRS to levy our belongings, throw us in jail, or make our life more difficult. And so, it seems to make sense that for most people, fearful response is automatically programed within us. We do things we would rather not do because the annoyance of doing those things is much easier to sit with than the fear of what happens when we don't do those things.

One of my favorite books, Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments by Kent Keith challenges the idea that fear need not be a motivating factor. As a therapist, I find myself focusing on Keith's last two commandments... 1.) People really need help but may attack you if you do help them... Help people anyway. and my very favorite... 2.) Give the world the best you can and you'll get kicked in the teeth...Give the world the best you have anyway.

Often times so many of my clients will elude to the idea that their lives would be so much easier if they didn't understand fear. I hear things like... "if only I could trust her not to cheat.." or, "if only I knew I could follow my plan.." or, "if only I knew he was going to stick around this time."

The bottom line is this: no therapist on the planet can predict your future for you. Life is difficult. Life is unpredictable. Life is scary. And, although it is always a good idea to collect information, make rational decisions, and avoid reactivity, at the same time, being a scaredy cat will bring you nothing but exactly what you are getting now. It seems that finding the balance between being a risk-taker and being a scaredy cat is most likely what we are after.

Learning to sit with our fear and the anxiety it causes us seems to be a great skill to master if we wish to meet our life-long goals. If we follow Dr. Keith's advice and we give the world what we have to offer by helping others when we can and giving the world the best we can despite the fear we feel if it all goes wrong, I am willing to bet that 9 times out of 10, things will turn out fine. And those are odds that I'm willing to take.

You can find more about Dr. Keith's book here.
Find out more about Mike at www.reachfamilytherapy.com