It was more than 30 years ago, but I remember the following experience with great clarity. I told my manager about an interaction with one of my clients – a tiny 10-year-old boy who probably weighed less than 50 pounds – and just gave her a quick recap of the start of our session before moving on to more important things related to my work with him .
I said casually: “When I asked him what he was doing over the weekend, he said he had 'gone to the moon'. Obviously he made it up. ”I was about to continue, but my manager interrupted me – as it should have been. More on that in a minute.
I was in my first year of supervision, but I felt safe working with children. That was in 1987, apparently a very long time ago, a time when almost no one specialized in children. While some theorists like Anna Freud and Clark Moustakas invested in children almost a century ago, this hadn't become a common specialty by my graduate school. I knew from the start that I wanted to work with children, but there wasn't a single course in my graduate program that specifically focused on this client group.
As I sifted through scientific catalogs, I found very few resources available that focused on therapeutic work with children. So much of what I learned back then, I learned the hard way – either by guessing the right action or, just as often, by guessing the right action incorrectly. This interaction with my client, as small as it may seem, was one of those times when I made a serious mistake. So let's get back to my superior.
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Illustration of a "true or false" meter with a needle pointing to the true side
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Igor Kisselev / Shutterstock.com
I sat in front of her in silence for a moment and wondered why she had stopped me at such a seemingly trivial point in my summary. "Why should he lie?" She asked me. It was such a sincere question that it amazed me. She certainly didn't mean that my young client actually went to the moon over the weekend.
"You assume that your client is lying," she continued. "What do you think, does that tell him about you?"
Ah! That was a great question, and I was embarrassed that I hadn't considered it. I had automatically ignored his story, although I should at least have recognized and respected it.
What if my client had to tell me about a frightening secret he was carrying? My attitude showed him that I would decide whether to believe him based on my own feelings about the worthiness of the story. What a disrespectful way of dealing with my client.
It would be easy to think that this situation only applies to children, but it is not. We are all trained to respect diversity, and a fundamental tenet of almost all theories of diversity is that if we haven't dealt with it, our inner prejudices show up. For example, if I have negative feelings towards my transgender clients, they will eventually see through my smoke screen, no matter how I try to convince them that I value all people.
In my interaction with this little boy I assumed that he was not trustworthy by disregarding his story. But if he couldn't trust me with something like that, I could never expect him to trust me with experiences that might seem just as incredible. Needless to say, the fear of not being believed is one of the scariest things our customers face.
I wrote earlier that all of our customers will betray us at some point. They can reduce or change their behavior, leave out information or just lie. There are many reasons our customers deceive us, but a common reason is that they test our trustworthiness. How easy is it to test ourselves with a story when there is a much more important story that you really need to tell.
Since this experience with my supervisor, I almost no longer accept what a customer tells me as the truth. If nothing else, it is their truth at this time. I won't risk my bias interfering with what they have to tell me. Of course there are times when we have to confront or challenge our customers, but I rarely do that during the rapport building phase.
If I could revisit that moment with this little boy, I would do what I have done a thousand times since then and say, “You did? Impressive! Tell me about it. "I have learned to be far more worthy of the trust of my clients.
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Gregory K. Moffatt is a senior counselor with more than 30 years of experience and the Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Point University. In his monthly “Voice of Experience” column for CT Online, he wants to share the theory, ethics and practice lessons from his diverse career as well as inspiration for today's consulting professionals, whether they are just starting out or have been practicing for many years. His experience spans three decades of working with children, trauma, and abuse, as well as a host of other experiences including working with schools, businesses, and law enforcement agencies. Contact him at [email protected].
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Opinions and statements in articles appearing on CT Online should not be construed as the opinions of the editors or guidelines of the American Counseling Association.
