On Evaluations

Wht counts?

Most clients in therapy want a time machine.

Couples thereapy is the worst. When not turning their counselor into a judge, clients typically have some sort of unawares fantasy about time travel. They bring up old hurts and sore points that they’ve focused on for years, desperate to be liberated from past pain.

When we’ve hurt each other, somethings can be repaired. Others merely need to be accepted as something that happened and left behind.

This proves to be easier said than done.

In schools, the progressive way to evaluate a student involves judging their most recent and most consistent work.

Their best and worst grades get thrown away.

In a year long course, that crappy test, taken under durress in September, is assigned a lower percentage of the overall grade than a student’s most recent work.

Unfortunately we humans offer this grace to each other much too infrequently in our individual relationships.

As a therapist, I regularly hear about one matter or another causing relationship distr…