Faranak Sabetian

The biggest thing I learned from my field is that environment and our family shape who we are. When we see clients, it's not okay to judge them. I learned that we can't judge them because we've never been in their place. We've never been in their shoes. The biggest thing I learned is to just treat them without any bias and without any judgment, because I've never been in their shoes. I try to talk to them and make a non-judgmental place for them, and a safe place for them to feel free and comfortable to talk about their problems with me. The biggest thing is that we are not here to judge people, because we've never been in their shoes. The only thing is just listening to them, not being judgmental, and helping them to understand the situation. We need to let clients lead us through the problems. When they lead us and when we follow them, we can find what's the reason and how we can help them to manage them.

I want to tell people who want to start studying this major: you know nothing. Don't judge clients. Don't think that you know. Let them talk. Let them lead sessions. Let them tell you what's going on. Don't think that you know anything. Don't think that you know their problems. No, you know nothing. You've never been in their shoes, you never grew up with their parents, you've never been in the area they grew up. So don't think that you know a lot. No, sometimes we know nothing, because the difference is the situation's different. You know nothing in the session. Let them lead you and take you where they were before, and then it can help you to see clients better, not from your perspective, no. We should see them from their perspective. In modern and postmodern approaches, they say to us, we know nothing about the client when we see clients in a therapy room. We should think that we know nothing about them.

Sometimes helping clients understand their problem is difficult, because they don't want to accept they have problems. They want to just see that the problem is out of them - it's people, it's environment. I understand sometimes our problems are people and environment, but sometimes the problem is us, the way we understand and interpret everything. Sometimes our interpretation is very negative, our behavior, or the ways we use to solve problems is kind of maladapted. So sometimes it's difficult with some clients to explain to them or help them understand that part of the problem maybe they are. I just want to help them learn new ways of solving problems, new ways of interpreting things. Sometimes it takes time to help clients understand that if they think better, they do better. It's sometimes a challenge. Another challenge is when there's a client with trauma. Sometimes clients try to avoid the trauma because we need to help them through their past trauma. Sometimes it's difficult, they're not ready, they try to avoid sessions, because they don't want to confront or talk about their past or trauma. But it just needs patience and time and helping clients and using different techniques to help them get ready.