Another very interesting post by Dr Stein, using a ‘thought-experiment’ to elicit the difficulties inherent in the notion of friendship between therapist and client. This follows on from both Dr Stein’s original post on the reasons behind clients’ ‘exclusion’ from their therapists’ lives, and from my own post on how that feels, from the patient’s perspective.

As with Dr Stein’s other posts, I believe his points are very well-made and hard to argue with, and are put forward both carefully and compassionately. In common with many, I think, the challenge for me is to somehow turn this intellectual knowledge and acceptance of ‘how things must be’ into an emotional understanding and acceptance. It will come, with much work and with digging deep; but in the meantime, every time, as clients, we come face to face with feeling excluded and ‘bump up’ against the boundaries of therapy, we have an opportunity to talk about how it feels, to discover the origin of those feelings, and to start to heal from them. It’s all ‘grist for the therapy mill’, as a friend of mine would say….!