What do we actually do in counselling and psychotherapy?
Do you ever ask yourself this fundamental question? What are we actually offering our clients? What are they paying us for?
Many years ago before the idea of becoming a therapist had entered my head I was really interested in cars. I’ve visited three car factories – Ford in Dagenham as a boy, Mini in Oxford and Mercedes Benz in Stuttgart.
Up here where I’m based for now in the far northwest of Scotland, I’m just off a tourist route called NC500. The clue is in the name – it’s a 500 mile long road running all along the north coast of Scotland.
The roads up here are single lane and the top surface is made up of small stone chippings to create adhesion in the ice and snow. The other day I counted a convoy of 13 supercars on the NC500 near here, Ferraris, Porsches and McClarens. These cars looked incongruous on the narrow highland road. A tractor would have looked much more at home than a £250k supercar. So what are these cars doing up here?
In the car loving days of my youth, I was intrigued by one of those stickers which car dealers used to put in the rear windows of the cars they sold. This sticker was different. It read:
SGT. Station Garage Taplow. We Sell Freedom.
This sticker and its message has stayed with me for all these years. What does it mean to ‘Sell Freedom’?
In the summer I was driving past the very beautiful bay just along the road from where I’m living. I was intrigued by something I hadn’t seen before. The usually empty machair grass area just behind from the water’s edge was full of campervans, mobile homes and tents.
I was hit by a thought. All these people in their Ferraris, campervans, mobile homes and tents were all looking for the same thing. Freedom. And this got me thinking about our clients.
It is so easy for us to pathologise our clients’ struggles. OCD, BPD, NPD, we’ve got a whole lexicon of terms to refer to our clients’ problems. But how about thinking about our clients’ struggles in a different way?
Just like the man in the Ferrari and the older couple in their huge mobile home with ‘Adventure Before Dementia’ proudly signwritten on the back, our clients come to us looking for the same thing. Freedom.
They want us to be alongside them guiding them along their own road to Freedom. Freedom from their problems, difficulties, issues, struggles. If we think of our work in this way it can help us to think of our clients and our work with them with a much more positive mindset.
So, what do we Talking Therapists do? What are our clients paying us for? What are we offering? What are we selling?
We Sell Freedom.
Do you resonate with this topic?
If so, get in touch to see how I can help you today.