Therapeutic Thursday

This hangs on the outside of my office door: 

Treat people as if they were what they should be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming.

--Johann von Goethe

When I hung it up more than three years ago I hoped it would not be something I became so used to I would forget the meaning and so I reflect on Johann von Goethe's statement often.  

This week several of my long term clients are graduating high school.  All going in various directions.  One will join the military, one will enter the workforce, one will go to college, one will go to trade school, one will get married, one will move to an adult group home, and one will serve a religious mission.  Others will follow family patterns of low productivity, crime, and drug abuse.

This week I am asking myself if I did them justice.  Did I adequately look past their presentation to their potential? Did I see a light at the end of their tunnels which, upon arrival, is full of possibility?   I hope so.

Was I distracted from their capabilities?  Was I captured by their problems?  Did I buy in to their belief that they will be nothing important?  I hope not.  

But I can't shake the feeling that I can do better.

A special supervisor (and friend) taught me what it felt like to be treated as if I was what I ought to be.  

It was uncomfortable at times.

I didn't always believe her.  Sometimes I was compelled to prove her wrong, to let her know I wasn't nearly as great as she thought I was.

It never worked, she always saw me as if I was already the best version of myself...

                     EVEN WHEN I WAS BAD

In fact, she was HONORED to know me.

     

                 She told me once 

       (acted like it millions of times).

She also asked me one day this, incredulously:

How is it possible you don't know how perfect you are?

And I cried

                     for past hurts.  

And she cried with me.

And then I began becoming what I was capable of becoming.

I am still on the journey.

My life purpose as a wife, as a mother, as a friend, as a sister, as a daughter, and as a therapist: to give the gift she has given me; the one Johann von Goethe is speaking about.