Many therapists have been overly trained to view a client's ego as fragile and unable to handle dynamic truths about their condition and behavior.
I agree and disagree with this training. I agree that we therapists must provide a safe interpersonal environment in which our clients can risk disclosing themselves. I disagree that we must walk on eggshells in order to do so.
Would you rather a physician or dentist hide the results of what they knew about your condition in order not to make you anxious, or describe what is causing your pain and what effective treatment will entail?
However, professionals who do optometry, dentistry, and surgery perform physical treatments to a patient's body, whereas we therapists rely upon a client's subjective and personal dialogue with us to achieve therapeutic goals.
I had this point driven home to me when I worked in a medical clinic and received physician in-house referrals to treat people's anxiety or depression. Every one of the fifty or so clients I worked with perceived me through the lens of the medical model. That means they would sit there passively looking at me while waiting for their anxiety or depression to magically go away. I found it extraordinarily difficult to engage them in dialogue to draw out the attitudes, thoughts, and feelings behind their clinical symptoms. They just didn't see the point.
This disappointing experience guided me all the more to affirm in Compass Therapy the need to be straightforward with people from the first session forward. Yes, a therapist listens with empathy and reflect feelings accurately so clients know they are being understood. But we must be fearless in bringing forth our clinical intuition and the findings of our psychological testing so that clients can perceive how important their free will choices are in relieving their symptoms.
This rhythmic movement between empathic listening and truthful engagement gives clients tools, concepts, and practice in thinking and feeling their way to personality health and wholeness.
Here is where Compass Therapy introduces a construct not present in secular psychotherapy; that is, the human soul. Human beings are God-created individuals who are called by God to purposeful lives. As therapists we are called upon when people feel bogged down by overwhelming stress, relationship dysfunction, or the grinding self-defeat of personality disorders.
We are graced with a degree of scientific knowledge about psychopathology and healthy personality growth, combined with our spiritual faith that God will help the therapeutic process along. I don't know about you, but I never begin a day of therapy without prayer for God to bless, heal, and guide the clients he sends to me.
In the Compass model, where psychological truths are co-mingled with spiritual and biblical truths, clients are encouraged to face their disorders so that they can meaningfully outgrow them. I may tell a man with a paranoid arguer pattern that his perpetual anger and need to put people down is going to assure that he'll die as he has lived...grumpy and all alone. This is a wake up call to his soul that says, "Your therapeutic growth stretches need to include learning to make amends to the people you have abused, and learning to value love and forgiveness more than hatred and revenge."
Or, I might tell a woman who is trapped in the rigid pattern of dependent pleasing and placating, "Your efforts to make everyone happy is what leaves you depressed. Learning healthy assertion will help you develop a personal identity."
In my experience, clients respect truthfulness and take pride and pleasure when they act on psychological and spiritual growth stretches and get gratifying results.
The Compass Therapist does not hesitate being a cheerleader when people start thinking more effectively and regulating their emotions more appropriately. "Don, I really like how you stood up for yourself to your boss this week. Now he's lost his power to damage your self-esteem."
Scripture has a way of illuminating all human activities. In providing therapy, Jesus passed on a truth worth trusting: "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32).
