This Kind of Love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI9DvgMZIi8

There is the kind we feel for our family.
The kind you feel for our friends.
The kind of love we feel for our partner.
And yet another for the love we have for beautiful things – nature, art, life.

What about the kind of love that happens when you are a therapist?

We’re not entirely “supposed” to have it but any therapist is lying if they say they don’t (or they’re not very good at their job).

This love is hard to define. Sometimes it feels like a mother-love, wanting to cover and hold and wipe away tears. Sometimes it feels like a friend-love, wanting to spend time and laugh and defend. If we are not careful, it becomes an unsafe love. There are many warnings and laws and (rightfully so) boundaries between client and therapist. But how to we love well and love healthily within the context of this relationship?

I suppose professionals have been writing about it for years – making rules, establishing laws, publishing books. All of that is good.

Except when it comes down to how to live it out daily. How do I hold dear what you share with me, how do I treasure it, how do I show my love and compassion for you are not family, friend or partner? When I come home at the end of a long day, and in our hour together you managed to tell me your worst memory, how do I honor that? How do I make sure it doesn’t tear us both apart while we’re trying to piece you back together?

I don’t have the answer entirely. I suspect I will be working on it for the rest of my professional career. And that’s okay.

For now, I am wading through the mess of it with what I know best; writing.

To my clients:
Your stories are not mine to tell. I do what I can to give you tools to form them, to articulate them for yourself. But at the end of the day, they belong to you.

Still, your stories sidle up next to mine and move through me for a time. Sometimes they change me.

You change me.

You always make me better.

There are things I wish I could tell you. Words I try to express with my eyes because to say them would be inappropriate or unprofessional.

But maybe it would be okay to write about how your stories intertwine with mine. Maybe it would be okay to just write you a letter, even though you will likely never read it, because my story – of how you change me – does belong to me. It is something that I can tell.

Here is the truth of it.

I love you.

Letter #1: Dear D