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From: Walt Manning
Date: 13 Oct 2008
Time: 11:57:11 -0500
Remote Name: 141.225.97.59
Rick, as others have suggested there are many variables here, including gender, age, timing of treatment. I assume, by the way, that you are talking about a speaker who is an adolescent or adults. The clinician can support and encourage the speaker by understanding, challenging, and taking the field with the person they are assisting. Not asking the speaker to do something that you (as a clinician) aren't willing to do first is a good guideline. The speaker's successful management of is their responsibility just as running a long race is the ultimately the runner's responsibility. As a clinician, it is their race, not mine. But as the coach it is my responsibility to create conditions where they are likely to succeed, gain insight, self-esteem, and begin to make better decisions that result in a more fulfilling life. How that is done with different people at different times is the challenge and the excitement of treatment. As clinicians we cannot "push the river" as the Gestalt psychologist J. Zinker has said but we can "prepare the canvas".