“We always carry a few cases that we feel we didn’t do well” - Esther Perel

First! I LOVE ESTHER!!! I hope one day to meet her and cry just seeing her in person. I am a like like Kristen Bell … if I am sad 4/10 or a HAPPY 9/10 I am crying! And these days I happy cry so much!

Back to this blog topic of professional failure and humility.

Esther is talking about professional failure. About humility. About the weight that therapists carry quietly, long after the session ends. And she is right.

I've only been doing this work since May 2020 — a short six years — and I already have a handful of moments I replay in my head. Moments where I think, "Dammit. I shouldn't have said it like that."

I think about all the other ways I could have delivered the same truth. Because a client once said something to me that I've never forgotten:

"You can say what you mean without being mean."

That landed. And I try to carry it with me into every session.

Here's the thing — I believe in honesty. I think one of the most loving things a therapist can do is tell you the truth when no one else will.

“If you don’t believe you will get better you won’t. That is your self fulfillingprophecy”

“I hear that you are saying she is not allowed to say it to you, but you know you are a low maintain friend?”

“Father’s Day is next week, maybe that is why you are having a hard time?”

But how that truth lands? That's on me too. The same message can heal or harm depending on how it's delivered, and sometimes I've gotten it wrong. That brings me to a sad tear as I write this, honestly.

It hurts me to hurt you. Even when it's part of the work. Even when honesty is necessary. One of the harder realities of this profession is accepting that a client can hear something true and painful, and quietly leave — without explanation, without a chance for repair. No goodbye. No closure. Just gone.

And counselors have to sit with that.

But here's what I've come to understand: that is part of what makes me a good therapist.

I don't take my clients' struggles home with me — that's a boundary I hold carefully, for their sake and mine. But I do take their wins and their losses with me. And I am responsible for some of those losses. I own that. My goal is to get as close to zero harm caused by me as possible — knowing full well I will never actually get there, because being human I am not perfect.

None of us are.

Esther Perel has decades on me and she still carries those cases. A sign that we actually care — that we're paying attention, that we're growing, that we haven't gotten too comfortable to notice when we've missed the mark.

I hope I never stop feeling it. Because the day I stop caring about how I land is the day I need to find a new profession.