To the Protege: Counseling Profs May Frown
When I went to college a hundred years ago, I majored in counseling. Getting new counselors to adopt the habits, roles, and practices of being a good counselor is one of the major tasks professors of the therapeutic arts seek to achieve. It’s possible mine have failed (or I have).
You see, one of the methods counselors are taught to practice is to signal very little of their own emotion, their own opinion, their own advice. Every counselor has known that moment when the visitor just collapses under the weight of responsibility and asks, "What do YOU think I should do?" There are probably 25 techniques that inform the answer, but they can be summed up mostly in the retort: "What do YOU think you should do?" And this is as it should be. Creating dependency, misuse of power, and even extending self-doubt by failing to differentiate where the counselor stops and the client starts can create more problems than are solved.
But sometimes a visitor may say the words, "What should I do?" when they are in fact asking, "How does one do that?" or "How do YOU do that?" They are looking for a concrete example, a procedure, or some motivation. When the way is not clear within and the clamoring emotions have created a fog all around, one concrete story that shows things can be different goes a long way in helping friends get moving again.
But there's more to their "What/How" question at times. They want to know: Have you ever experienced what I am going through? Do you "get" me? Are you only giving me theory? Am I your paycheck or is this real for you?
They want to know if you are credible.
So, protégé, I advise: ask to see their credentials. Ask for the stories. Ask for the procedures THEY followed. Ferret out the theory from the practice. Make your mentors name what matters and what mattered. Give them time to dig. Give them time to be quiet. Give them time to say, "I do not know what you are going through...I have never been through that exactly." And of course, a doctor need not have had cancer to be of tremendous benefit to those who do.
But wait...they need time to say what comes next: "But if I were in your shoes..." This is the sentence in which empathy can be found. This is the practice of legitimizing the need to make a next faithful step. This is recognition that respect is being exchanged between healthy and whole people.
I think patients, counselees, clients, protégés are smarter than the counseling professors may be giving them credit for. While there are thousands who live lives of deep emotional confusion and distress, there are millions who are self-assured of their starting and stopping places when engaged in learning relationships. They are not asking for the mentors or coaches to live their lives for them or to tell them what to do, instead, they want to benefit from a second set of eyes.
So protégés, don't let the helping professionals and resource people like coaches, sponsors, and mentors off the hook when they seem to be following that age-old advice against transference, projection, codependence, and other enmeshing possibilities in such intimate relationships, let them know you need to know you are engaged in a credible process, a human process, and a shared process. That’s why you are there.
Ask to see their credentials.
Then, the ball is in their court.
