I wasn’t planning on posting today. I had been taking a break after a hectic few weeks and I figured I would post again once my battery had sufficiently recharged. Turns out that time must be now. Inspiration can strike at an unexpected time.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about being client led. I find myself thinking about this more every time I have the realisation that I wasn’t being as client led as I thought. Turns out my understanding of what it means to be client led is forever evolving, I never really reach the destination. Every time I think I’m ‘there’, the meaning of it deepens for me even further.
To paint a picture of what I mean here’s an analogy. Therapy with my clients is often like being in a rowboat with them, but there’s only one set of oars. We can’t both row at the same time to steer the boat. Up until this point of my career I have put it on myself to row the boat – thanks to my fear of not being helpful.
I had myself convinced that I was still being client led, even when I’m the one doing the rowing. I told myself client led simply meant having agreement with the client on where we are going (therapy goals) and on the tools we would use to get there (action plan).
While I have been getting better at having clients row the boat to lead me to their goals, I still tend to take the oars back when it comes to responding to the client with the action plan. If they suggest they are experiencing values disconnect, I’ll feel compelled to jump in, reflect what I’m seeing back to them and suggest a plan of action by exploring their values.
My tendency to jump in can be even stronger if a client landed on the root cause of their presenting challenges, but responded to the discovery of that cause by saying something like “I feel like I get it now, but what do I do about it?” or they were too “scared” to react differently to the root cause. I told myself in these situations that I would be leaving the client hanging, if I didn’t jump in to help them – and at the end of the day it’s my job to help them.
Is that really being client led?
I think there’s more to it. I was only seeing the half the story.
My definition of what it means to me, to be client led, is starting to evolve. I can feel it. There’s more to the tape that I hadn’t seen play before – but now it is. I now think that it’s not enough to say I’m being ‘client led’ so long as the client is agreeing on where they want to go, to just pursue the client’s choice. In order to be client led, the client needs to be rowing the boat. The oars need to be in their hands. Yes, the two people in the boat can agree on where to go, but at the end of the day the one with the oars is leading where the boat goes.
How can it be truly client led if I’m the one rowing the boat then?
So of course, this recent epiphany has fuelled my efforts to put therapy in the hand of the clients. After a lot of searching for things to help me and some tips from fellow psych’s on Facebook, I landed on the work of Caroline Padesky, who has delved into the concept of socratic questioning.
Her own work has evolved into the concepts of socratic dialogue or guided discovery. In using the principle of guided discovery, she leans heavily on asking questions to the client as “a process of teaching clients to evaluate there thoughts, behaviours, moods, life, circumstances and physiological reactions to make choices that are more adaptive”.
In my head, the choices they make will be far more powerful if they discover them themselves, instead of me providing the choices for them.
I’m not saying being therapist lead is never the way, but my desire to change comes from relying on it more often than I would like.
I’m still scratching the surface of Caroline’s work and after reaching out to her she was very kind to offer me some resources to look into. For now though I have been keeping it simple – just allowing myself to ask clients more open ended questions. I’ve started to notice even when I do this a lot, clients don’t seem to get sick of it. I plan to keep going and see where my clients will take us. It’s time to let them take hold of the oars and give them the power to lead their own journey.