Transcription
I find it very important that therapists not set the goals of therapy, but clients set them. My job is to help clients achieve their goals. My job is not to figure out what goals a client should have.
On the other hand, that once I know what their goals are, I'm paid to know how to get there. Okay? I I tell my students all the time, you don't know how to get them there, don't treat them because that's what we're supposed to know how to do. So, I have to kind of know what the client wants.
In general, as far as I know, cutting, trying to kill yourself, I don't know of any goals that clients have had that these are the behaviors that will get you there. If a client comes to me who's trying to kill themselves, I have to point out to them that if they kill themselves, therapy is not going to work. So we have to get them to agree not to kill themselves at least for some period of time. Now it may be, you know, for the next two hours or it could be till the next week. But I but the facts of the matter, our therapy doesn't work with dead people. So they need to at least know that.
I don't ask people to agree to never kill themselves. What I asked is would they like a therapy that would help them build a life where they didn't want to kill themselves. Would that be a reasonable goal to have a life where you don't want to kill yourself? And the average client wants that. I've never had someone come to therapy saying, "I want help not killing myself." I've never absolutely never had a client say that. That's because they don't believe that there could be a life where they wouldn't want to kill themselves. So I say, "If that were possible, would you want it?" Yes. Okay, fine. We'll do that.