I want to set the record straight and say a few things in defense of the much misunderstood profession of psychotherapy. Namely, what a psychotherapist is and is not.
What he/she is: A person who is trained to develop a capacity for undying humanness and patience in order to be able to offer a wounded other the chance to pick up the pieces of their fragmented lives within the context of an interpersonal relationship.
What he/she is not: A person who should be expected to put up with utter incompetence and disrespectful behaviour with a smile. They are trained to be patient and understanding with their clients. Not with lying, careless staff members of an organisation who have no regard for another's time. It is unfair and unwise to expect them to have tolerance for all kinds of nonsense, just because they do so with the delicate psychological selves that their clients bring before them.
If that were the case, if psychotherapists really had to take an oath of unconditional patience and understanding, then no psychotherapist would ever participate in socio-political movements to better the state of mankind, to state one example. They would be too busy being a doormat for people to walk all over, you see.
A psychotherapist has as much as of a right as the next person does to be opinionated, or get pissed off and raise their voice against incompetent staff members, government departments, or violations in human rights. Their skill lies in remaining neutral in a certain context about certain things. To illustrate with an example, just because a therapist may vociferously condemn wife beating as an act, does not mean their capacity to offer help to a wife beater, should he seek it, will be adversely affected. In fact, it demonstrates their capacity to differentiate between something that warrants a certain judgement from them and that which does not.
Just because they are meant to be patient people, does not mean they will take every damn thing that is thrown their way lying down.
And while we are on the subject, if a psychotherapist expresses disappointment at your gross incompetence in carrying out your professional duties, don't illustrate your sheer lack of discernment by equating that with disappointments experienced within the context of a therapeutic relationship between a client and his or her therapist.
Therapists and counsellors are trained to be patient with clients because of the special nature of the relationship. It is unlike any other dyad, where one has to be mindful of the many reasons why clients may disappoint the therapist or vice versa. Many of those reasons stem directly from the vulnerabilities for which therapists are there to help.
So please, next time you call a therapists' therapeutic skills to question because they didn't pat you on the back and say "aww baby, it's okay" after you made an error that could very easily have been avoided had you paid a little more attention, think about what I have said.
And don't ever, EVER, make the mistake of comparing yourself to one of their clients after behaving in the above-mentioned manner. If you do, don't be startled when they put you in your place in no uncertain terms. You asked for it.
