Do I Tell A Client What to Do

In a typical therapy or counselling session, we as practitioners listen, and reflect. In so doing, we help our clients draw out their inner wisdom, so they find answers, solutions or resolutions on their own.

A therapist/counsellor is not there to tell a client what to do, as we cannot decide for anyone else. With that said, throughout my years of practice, I find we don’t need to rigidise anything that we think is “good” or helpful. Besides the lines of “Tell me more about it”, and “how does that make you feel” to reflect back a client’s own inner resources, there are also places for our flexibility, relatability and intuition.

Today I worked with two female clients. Right now sitting at my desk in the evening, having just received both of their text messages, I found it quite interesting: how alike the two cases were in a sense, even though they were not aware of the existence of each other. Or maybe as Chinese would say, “Good things come in pairs.”

The first client Olivia (not her real name) is a regular. As she was updating me, she pulled up a blanket and settled herself into the recliner. I took the cue and knew it was her way to be ready to go into a hypnotic trance.

So I started my monotone and invited her to relax the body so the awareness could take a cosmic journey – her favourite induction. And I was speaking, it appeared to me Olivia was still not quite settled. So I slowed down my speech. Olivia eventually slowly reopened her eyes.

“What are you aware now?” I asked.

“It doesn’t seem to work. My mind keeps thinking about a joint.” Olivier was so embarrassed that she almost giggled.

“Okay. What would you like to do with it?”

“I don’t want to smoke weed anymore. It’s not very productive for my work. But yesterday I had one toke. That was so relaxing. Now since I came to Vancouver to see you, my mind knows I can get some easily, and it seems to be obsessed. I think I’ll go to Grandville Island and get some after the session.”

“Okay.” I said quietly.

“It’s really a bad habit, and I want to get rid of it.”

“Okay.” Again, I quietly acknowledged that thought.

“What do you think Kemila?”

“I think you should make a decision and go 100% with that decision. Either way don’t make a problem out of your own decision.”

“But… I shouldn’t take it, should I?”

“It is your choice, Olivia.”

“But that’s the problem!” Olivia threw her arms in the air and stretched her legs on the recliner, facing up to the ceiling, “I don’t know how to choose anymore!”

I leaned over, “Do you mean, you want me to choose for you?”

Olivia looked at me, and nodded her head.

I looked into her eyes, knowing she was ready to follow anything that I was going to tell her. So I decided to choose it for her, the choice that in a long run, she would appreciate herself more with.

“No, don’t go.” I said.

There was a pause. Olivia looked at me a little more. “Okay.” She softly said before shutting her eyes.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

My next client was 28-year-old Bonnie. It was Bonnie’s second session. She arrived reporting she felt much more confident in general in the past week after our first session. There was only that one incident – When she was making a presentation to her bosses, the VP in the company laughed at her new idea and commented, “That’s an assumption.”

The idea was already discussed with her director, who had approved it but who was sitting in the meeting room remaining silent.

It was one thing for the VP not to agree with the idea, it was another to laugh at it. In the meeting, Bonnie gathered enough strength and courage to justify it by saying the idea was called “neuro-marketing.” But the VP laughed harder.

Bonnie’s face turned and she ran out of the meeting room.

As we were preparing for the hypnosis part of the session, Bonnie said that she still felt the angst.

I decided to go from there.

“Where do you feel it?”

Bonnie’s left hand went to her throat and upper chest area. “Here.”

“Okay. If the sensation of anxiety in your upper chest and throat area has a colour, what colour does it take?”

“Oh… dark purple.”

“Yes, the dark purple there in your chest, what shape does it take?”

“It’s… like… smoke, very smoky. It moves.”

“How does it move?” After a pause, I continued, “Use your hand to illustrate its movement.”

Bonnie showed me with the same hand the slow smoke movement.

“Okay. Now.” I instructed Bonnie to place her left hand on the upper chest. “Now we are going to grab hold and take it out into your hand.” I had her hold the hand up, “You are holding this dark purple smoke in your hand now. Does it still move?”

“Oh Yeah, it does!” Bonnie sounded she was a little surprised. The movement was very real for her.

“It is in your hand right now. See how you would like it to change.”

“I want it to transform.”

“How? Can you, for example, change its movement, to maybe to another direction?”

“No. I want its colour to change.” Bonnie took initiative.

“Instead of dark purple, which colour would be better, for you?”

“Yellow.”

“That’s right. Yellow colour. Let’s change it. You can do it, every breath you take, see how the change is taking place… Let me know when it’s done, to your satisfaction.”

After a little while, Bonnie said, “Okay. It’s done.”

“So, how to feel about it now, yellow enough?”

“Well, it’s not easy. This thing has a mind on its own, right? It doesn’t want to be yellow as yet. It is brown now.”

“So you want to accept it as it is for now?”

“Yeah. It has a mind on its own.”

“This angst has a mind on its own, but it’s your chest and throat. You are in charge. If you invite a homeless person to your home and sleep on the couch, the homeless person has a mind on their own too, but it doesn’t mean you have to oblige.”

“You mean,” Bonnie was obviously surprised, “I can just decide the colour?”

“It’s YOUR chest. Yes. Make it your home.”

“Wow. Okay.” Bonnie seemed to be very delighted and empowered. She went ahead and made the smoke turn very yellow.

“Would you like to keep it as smoke, or would you like to change its quality as well?”

“Smoke is fine.”

I helped Bonnie move her hand, palm up, back to her upper chest, to put the “transformed” yellow smoke back to her chest.

Bonnie took a deep breath, and smiled.

I emerged Bonnie out of hypnotic trance. Bonnie’s beaming.

“By the way,” I said to her, “Do you know yellow colour represents confidence?”

“Really???” Bonnie was giggling. “How did I know that was what I needed?”

“You are certainly intuitive. Now I don’t know for what reason your VP didn’t like your idea. It doesn’t mean it was not a good idea though.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

When the evening came, I received two text messages.

One from Olivia: “So wonderful to see you again and thank you always… Have a rad trip and I drove straight home this morning!”

And one from Bonnie: “I feel very calm. Very very calm.”