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Collaboration
Any connection with a therapist that is going to be helpful is going to involve a flexible and genuine understanding of the client's situation and a cooperative, collaborative spirit between therapist and client. This is actually a pretty basic value for us, and it would seem stilted to us to approach psychotherapy in any other way. We want to bring the same qualities to our professional relationships that we strive to bring to our personal ones-including warmth, genuineness, acceptance, non-judgment, respectfulness, responsiveness, emotional generosity, and humor. We tend to be very interactive and open with our own thoughts and to also be interested in your perspectives. The hope is that an open exchange will develop a strong sense of collaboration on the issues that are the most important to you.
In addition to making good practical sense, this type of open, collaborative relationship has been studied and is an important factor in effective psychotherapy generally. Therapists that are more flexible, understand where their clients are coming from, and are creative in finding ways to support clients are better at helping clients establish and achieve their goals. We should note that this research has also shown that clients' intuition about whether they are going to work well with a therapist in early sessions does predict a positive outcome for therapy. Consequently, we encourage clients to "shop around" for therapists, finding someone that they feel like they connect to easily.