Instructors nor colleagues ever spoke to me . . . in a classroom, as a supervisor, one on one, or even in a text about therapists’ mishaps and what to do about them. No one ever spoke about them being opportunities for learning and growth.
Instead, when errors were made, I was taught that they were embarrassments, shameful, and dangerous for any mental health professional. They were things to be talked about behind closed doors with an attorney or forgotten about and not to be discussed with clients and colleagues and under certain circumstances maybe even lied about . . . .
Then, several years back, I attended a workshop at an annual conference for the Association of Women in Psychology. The workshop focused on discussing those very things that I was taught should not be discussed . . . clinical misjudgments, errors in thinking, and client-related mishaps. It was, for me, a practice-altering experience . . . to be in the presence of counselors, psychologists, and social workers candidly speaking about their professional and sometimes costly gaffs. It was also a very healing experience . . . to learn that other professionals (many more experienced than me and a few quite well-known) also made mistakes . . . as we grappled together with how to responsibly and ethically admit our mistakes, make amends for our transgressions, and learn from our own misjudgments.
Ours is not the only profession that struggles with how to undo any damage that we may have caused. Physicians are also taught to play it safe when errors are made and keep their gaffs to themselves. However, research is increasingly showing that it is often in a client’s best interest for medical professionals to ‘fess up and admit mistakes made. Check out When Doctors Admit Their Mistakes and also Risk Management: Extreme Honesty May Be the Best Policy.
Here’s my point . . . . I am a better therapist when I am able and willing to tell the truth . . . the whole truth to myself, to my colleagues and to my clients. I am a better person when I am able to tell the truth. And, my clients deserve the best therapist that I can be . . . 100% of the time. Until the mental health professions are able to create a culture and space in which we can take responsibility for and learn from our own mistakes, we are not the professionals that our clients deserve.
Surely I’m not a lone voice for shedding the embarrassment over clinical misjudgment and shelving the self-imposed shame of making errors with clients. When well-trained therapists with good intentions make choices that, in hindsight, are not the most helpful ones to our clients, I believe it should be the standard of our professions to create a space for owning our mistakes and making amends to our clients with dignity and heartfelt regrets.
It’s time for our professional associations and our graduate institutions of learning to model healthy and appropriate ways to create spaces for dialogue and healing and forgiveness when therapists err. It’s the right thing to do . . . for our clients, for ourselves, and for our profession. If you, like me, have ever made a mistake and felt the tug to do the right thing and yet have also felt the fear of doing the right thing, today is a good day to start the dialogue.
great to see you last pm at the blogettes event! what fun.
this is a great post and i hope it reaches MANY readers. none of us is perfect.
blog on.
Hi, Dana! Thanks for taking time to drop in! I hope you’ll drop back in often and join the conversation as we continue to build our community here at Private Practice from the Inside Out!
Tamara,
This is such a powerful piece. If we could all own our actions, realizing that not all we do is perfect, it would open us up to truth. I certainly think that we should do our best, but even with that, things do go wrong. And hushing up about the mistakes rarely seems to help. Using each opportunity to learn–and to heal–seems like the right idea. Thank you for giving us the change to consider this.
All good wishes,
Anne
Anne! How nice of you to take time to drop in and say so! As health care professionals, my colleagues and I should be modeling health rather than denial. And, owning our own flaws is part of it!
I’m sorry that I didn’t take a moment to meet you at the Colorado Blogettes meeting last evening. My ears perked up when I realized that your blogs included Transforming Health and Drawing Attention to Life. ( I wasn’t aware of 2 Dollar Difference but will check that out, too!)
I hope you’ll drop back in often and offer your thoughts here!
Hi Tamara, another wonderful and thought provoking post!
Dianne
Dianne, you are very kind to say so. Hey, how is your practice doing and how are you using social media these days to build your business.
Tamara, you are absolutely right. A few years back, a music therapy colleague and I did a presentation on this very subject (The Myth of the Perfect Music Therapist or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Mistakes), and it was quite well-attended. It really is one of the “taboo topics” of therapy, and it’s unfortunate, because, as you said, our job is to be models for our clients. If we are pretending to be perfect, ignoring mistakes, or just plain being unwilling to grow and learn, then we are not only not serving our clients, but we are making a much larger mistake. A particular book I like is Patrick Casement’s “Learning From Our Mistakes” which I highly recommend. Thanks for an excellent blog topic!
Hi, Roia! Welcome back! Oh, I’m so wishing I could have attended your workshop! Any chance I would find notes referencing this if I perused the archives of your blog? Pleeease?? For those of us that were indoctrinated as children in the Church of Perfection, this is a lesson we just keep needing to get over and over again.
I’ll definitely check out Casement’s book. I’m not familiar with it. Thanks for recommending it. And, thanks for joining the conversation here at Private Practice from the Inside Out. I’ve been hoping your voice would resurface here.
Hey again, Tamara- Thanks for the welcome back (although, really, I’ve been here, keeping an eye on your blog- just don’t always have a moment to comment).
I’ve been trying (trying, I tell you!) to put the handout from the “Perfect” presentation into a blog, but for some reason I’m having all manner of issues. I’ll see if I can find an email address to use on your website here, and I’ll just email it to you. No sense in losing my mind when there are other ways to be dealing with this.
Casement’s stuff is really nice, and he also has one “Learning From the Patient” and, his most recent, “Learning From Life.” Go, fight, read!
Great article. Waiting for more.
Hi, Jacklyn! It’s nice to meet you. Thanks for dropping in here to comment. I appreciate your voice and hope you’ll be back often to join the conversations here at Private Practice from the Inside Out!