N.B. +

Nota bene:  I have been blogging here, not too feverishly, for about three years.  After about six months I got a flurry of questions about the ethics and  confidentiality of what I was doing.  I think many of them came from pastoral counseling students.  I think I reassured them, as I will try to do again, that I am very aware of the importance of confidentiality as a part of therapy.  I believe that any patient must feel that anything they say to me will not be revealed to anyone.  I inform them of the very few exceptions, such as imminent danger to themselves or others.

I don't think any of my clients could point to anything I write and say "that's me."  Although I hope they could say, "that could be about me."  I write her to attempt to sort out themes. The theme for me in the last post was partly about how sad it is when someone feels so battered that they choose to retreat from the world. But the other part was about the limits of my influence as a psychotherapist.  I can only influence anyone so much.  I have come to believe that people cannot, and should not try to do what they are not ready to do. And, they may never get ready, because what I may see as possibilities for them may be something that they will never be interested in doing.

I know that one of my faults as a therapist is to set goals for people that are often different from anything they ever envisioned themselves doing.  For many of my clients I have some idea that, if they have not already done so, they should go to college, open their own business, and be in enriching, mutually beneficial relationships. Now realize, I never verbalize that, and I often can see that those are not things that many people expect, or want to do.

The point is that I feel no one should be limited by anxiety, worry. loss, depression, self-doubt, rotten parenting, or any other emotional difficulty. --- There was even that story on the front page of Sunday's NYT that told of a schizophrenic woman who built her own business to keep her psychic demons in check.

Not everyone feels that they can, or want to pull themselves together to the degree that I would like to see.  I have to honor that. 

And I won't name any names.