(no subject)

[rivka]

The thing about my job is this:

No matter how good a therapist I am and how much I care, eventually they have to leave my office and go out into the world. I have no control over what happens to them there.

Comments

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

There, there. I'm sure they worry about you, too.

:-(

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

It's the same feeling I have about my children leaving my protection to go out into the world. I have no doubt you feel it as intensely as I.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Boy, do I ever know what you mean...

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Ouch. I think I may be able to wrap my mind around that, a little bit.

Hope things go better than you fear.

-J

[kightp.livejournal.com]

No control, no - but I suspect you've helped give them better tools for surviving out there.

[snippy]

I asked my therapist once whether she thought about me between sessions, and she told me that would be rare and would mean she hadn't done her job during the session right.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It is rare. Usually I'm emotionally engaged during the session, and then I disengage neatly at the end, as I'm writing the chart note, so that the next client can have all my focus.

But when someone might imminently need hospitalization, or I think they're in danger, you damn betcha that I think about them between sessions. It doesn't keep me up at night, but I worry.

[snippy]

You must have to care for patients to be able to help them? Even on a detached level. I am sad for you and your patient and hope things work out easily and well.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

You must have to care for patients to be able to help them?

Yes, absolutely. But it's... structured caring. Genuine positive emotions, but they're purposely constrained by various elements of the professional role. *inarticulate handwaving*

[ororo.livejournal.com]

I don't think anyone could be a good therapist if they don't realize that going in.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

A while back, I realized that doctors don't heal, bodies do. Doctors can only set up healing, and hope the body does its job.

It works the same with the brain and the emotions, it seems. Which really sucks when you want nothing more than to be able to reach out and *do* something.

[ranunculus.livejournal.com]

Here is a poem that has hung on my buletin board for years. I will admit that it is a bit florid, but I absolutely love the first two stanzas.

And how can the healer
not love those whom she heals?
for she has embraced them in entirety
of body, soul and mind.

And within each human, regardless
of whatever evil or disease
she might find,
she has touched the indelible essence,
the purity, the absolute manifestation
of human kind.

Through this touch
deliverance is a reflection in kind.

For the essence is love, and the
healing touch is said reflection combined.

For that which heals is already the core of all human kind.