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From: Ellen-Marie Silverman
Date: 19 Oct 2006
Time: 06:00:18 -0500
Remote Name: 64.12.117.12
Hello, Sara. I think you have received considerable advice to help you work with the client you wrote about, and what that boils down to is so important, and that is the focus of therapy. Our focus can be primarily on fixing the problem or addressing the needs of the client. While it may seem that these are one and the same, actually they are not. From my experience, unless a client, child or adult, feels known by the therapist and feels engaged in the process of directed change, their committment is not sufficient to establish the change they may want. When the therapist focuses on fixing the problem, the client tends to feel unrecognized as an individual, left out so to speak while the therapist seeks victory over "the problem." So, the therapist's job is first and foremost to connect with the client so as to establish a team mate, together with whom, and only together with whom, meaningful change will be accomplished. Ellen-Marie Silverman