You are powerful in ways you do not see

on giving and receiving compliments

You must think I’m really screwed up?

That question arises with a combination of both hope and shame from most clients. A lot of the time tend to cast their psychotherapist and counselor in the role of ‘normal well adjusted person’. In that role, therapists get cast as the arbiter of healthy vs unhealthy.

Yesterday I wrote that people find it surprisingly difficult to ‘be themselves’.

Even more difficult? Taking compliments.

It’s a funny thing though. People’s neurosis - how they’re dysfunctional in the world - that’s usually quite an incredible creative adaptation. Most of the ways we’re neurotic, they’re a gift. For example people who people please neurotically frequently do quite well in a team based environment.

Sure, they can burn out. Yes. They leave themselves out. But the people pleasing? It’s a tool. An overused tool? At times. And, just because I’ve broken a few screws by hitting them with a hammer, I’m not one to villainize hammers.

I wish that people wouldn’t do that with th…