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From: Cindy Spillers
Date: 13 Oct 2006
Time: 10:03:39 -0500
Remote Name: 131.212.90.190
Amanda, I've been thinking about your question for the past week. It is very difficult to work with anybody on anything that they are not quite ready to accept. Self-change takes enormous mental and psychic energy, and the individual must be willing to make a commitment to her/himself to go down that scarey road of self-change. A clinician can't force a person to be ready. Logic, cajoling, and other methods of motivating someone externally don't work either. So here's where a clinician's most useful skills are her/his counseling skills. Patience, acceptance, non-judgment, listening to understand, I think these skills will help the client the most. I also think it's OK to have an open conversation with a client about how ready s/he is for therapy. If the client isn't ready for all the work and all of the scarey discoveries facing her/him, then this probably is not a good time in her/his life for therapy -- and that is OK.