Assisting clients to become aware of and transform the unconscious dynamics affecting their businesses can be tremendously painful. Although we enter this work knowing that a critical part of the job is to allow ourselves to feel what the client is feeling, this cognitive knowledge is lightyears removed from what it actually does to us. Because by really feeling what the client is feeling, we actually open ourselves to, for a moment, 'become the client'. We allow the client system to inhabit our being in order to offer us the opportunity to feel and explore the client's emotional experience, from the inside.
When this process of laying bare one's psyche for the utilization of another brings forth insight and transformation, the relief for client and consultant is great. Take note the quality of the consultant's satisfaction is more akin to relief than to victory. Because the victory is the client's. If the client doesn't work with what the consultant makes of their experience, no breakthrough is possible. Our relief, as consultants, lies in the fact that the re-integration, by our clients, of those parts of themselves that temporarily resided within us, releases us to be ourselves again, free from the other's conflict and pain.
However, when the client refuses to collaboratively re-integrate what they have put into the consultant's being (heart-mind-body-spirit), the consultant is left with all of those feelings, often resulting in the client feeling repelled by the consultant (for the consultant as mirror reflects an intolerable and despicable picture) and thus compelled to cast the consultant out.
When this happens I sometimes wonder: Why on earth am I doing this?
When this process of laying bare one's psyche for the utilization of another brings forth insight and transformation, the relief for client and consultant is great. Take note the quality of the consultant's satisfaction is more akin to relief than to victory. Because the victory is the client's. If the client doesn't work with what the consultant makes of their experience, no breakthrough is possible. Our relief, as consultants, lies in the fact that the re-integration, by our clients, of those parts of themselves that temporarily resided within us, releases us to be ourselves again, free from the other's conflict and pain.
However, when the client refuses to collaboratively re-integrate what they have put into the consultant's being (heart-mind-body-spirit), the consultant is left with all of those feelings, often resulting in the client feeling repelled by the consultant (for the consultant as mirror reflects an intolerable and despicable picture) and thus compelled to cast the consultant out.
When this happens I sometimes wonder: Why on earth am I doing this?
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