Teachers open the door but you must enter by yourself.  
Chinese Proverb

Dear Successful Client,

I’ve been noticing a change in you lately. You seem lighter and brighter. You have a smile on your face that wasn’t there when I first met you. You laugh more easily at my corny jokes. I might be wrong, but you seem to have less “heavy stuff” to talk about. Our conversations seem more, what’s the word, “conversational” in nature. These are the moments when I feel a wonderful shift in your energy, good feelings rippling out from you. Thank you for that!

As you know, we talked recently about what you were like when you first stepped into my office (or appeared on my video screen). What did that feel like, going back there? You instinctively compared that time to this time, the present. You teared up a bit as you felt the difference (and so did I, admittedly). You were able to list the ways you feel or behave differently now. Your smile became even brighter. Even more energy rippling out. Wow!

As you consider all the changes you made, I also invite you to consider what it took for you to get where you are now. You had to:

 

• • have enough courage (and maybe desperation?) to look for help

• • make some calls to people like me

• • wait around until one of us responded

• • describe your situation to a total stranger over the phone

• • decide to try therapy out

• • show up at your first appointment with (again) a total stranger

• • trust the process a little at the beginning

• • trust the process more and more as you went along

• • consider some of the ideas I floated by you

• • consider some of the insights you came up with (even more important)

• • allow yourself to “feel the feelings”

• • allow yourself to think different thoughts

• • allow yourself to behave in different ways

• • allow yourself to use your body as a barometer

• • allow yourself to trust yourself

• • allow yourself to let go of what didn’t serve you

• • allow yourself to hold on to what did serve you

• • and on and on.

Whew! I’ll bet your never realized you were doing all of that. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?

Well, it is! Yay for you!

At this point, I really invite you to tune in to how much effort this has been and how much you’ve put into our process together, really YOUR process since most of it happened outside of our work together (a humbling thing for most therapists).

Also, please know that while I may have given something to you, you have also given a lot to me. It has been such an honor to be your companion along the way, to watch you grow and blossom, and to learn from you (yes, you’ve been my teacher as much as I’ve been yours). For me, this is payment in full (along with your co-pay or fee or whatever). This has made it all worthwhile for me.

But, don’t ever forget that you have been the major factor in your own therapy success. As I always say,

“You couldn’t have done it without you!”

Take care,
Dan

Copyright 2020 Daniel J. Metevier