But, you said

I have probably mentioned it before, but it burned me again this week.  One of my biggest flaws as a therapist is that I often underestimate the craziness of some of my patients.

I am easy to talk to; I am good at that.  I am also very accepting of almost anything, or at least appear to be, that way people relax and tell me everything.  That is helpful.  Often, when they relax and tell me all the stuff they do, it becomes clear  to them, as well as me that they are doing a lot of just plain old crazy shit.  They say the wrong things to the wrong people.  They over-react.  They feel really badly over nothing.  They carry grudges and forget why.  They mope around about things that were said to them ten years ago. They worry about things they said ten years ago.  Because of all this they don't show up for work, or don't pay their bills, or don't clean their houses.  All kinds of stuff.

Often, after we talk about it, it seems very clear to them, that not only should they change those behaviors, but after a while they are very capable of making those changes.  That's great.  Case almost closed.

But they don't.  They go out, and thirty-six hours later, the very same situation arises, the one we discussed, and practiced in the session, and they fuck-up again.

Sometimes it's even worse.  Many of my patients, especially the ones I thought were almost better and ready to be set free, not only make the same mistakes, again and again, they often create fantastic, unimaginable new ones, that go way beyond the old ones. This results in a new form of complex, destructive, painful chaos.

This can be annoying.