While I was doing some sessions with a Healing Shame practitioner, I really liked some of the things she said throughout our sessions. I had never heard a practitioner use all of these phrases, and I realized how it helped me to feel more welcome and safe to express what I needed. I found it really helpful for a variety of reasons. I talked about this with my co-counseling partners and we started incorporating this introduction into the beginning of our co-counseling sessions. We have all found it to be effective and beneficial.
Every session, week after week, the person in the role of the counselor or practitioner always starts with saying this in his or her own words and customized to the day or the week if possible.
- “You are welcome here. All parts are welcome here without judgment. Scary parts, sad parts, anxious parts, ashamed parts, angry parts. Parts that want to be here. Parts that don’t want to be here, etc. They are all welcome.”
- “We are a team. I want you to let me know before, during, or after, or anytime that is comfortable for you, what you need to help you the most. Please give me feedback of what really works well for you and what you want more of or phrases you want me to repeat to you, and of things that don’t work for you and that you don’t want me to do again.” – This helps to build the mindset that “We are in this together” and helps the client to start asking for what he wants and needs, asserting himself, and setting boundaries.
- “I will probably make some mistakes at times. I might not always get it right. I might miss something or forget something at times. So let me know if you don’t feel heard or seen or understood.”-This helps the client to not to think of the practitioner as the “expert”, who is above or out of reach to the client, and the client as someone inferior and inexperienced. This also gives the practitioner a little bit of breathing room, because sometimes they will get some things wrong and not attune enough to the client, so some of that weight of doing it “perfectly” can be put off.
- “I want to hear what you have to share with me. I’d love to hear what you have to share today.”-Many of us with trauma and illness already feel that we are bothering others. That they are only helping us because they have to, or need to. That they don’t really want to spend time with us. This helps the client to think that “Hey. Maybe my practitioner really does want to be here with me. She wants to spend time with me. She chooses to be here with me today. Maybe I am valuable. Maybe I am worth someone else’s time.”
This introduction literally takes less than 2 minutes, but can have really big effects.
As a counselor or therapist or practitioner, are you willing to try this and see if it could open things up for your client? If you are a client and this resonates with you, what about printing it out and sharing it with your therapist and asking if they’d be willing to try it out?
