Creative Connections & Client Communications
Your Client’s Awareness

In the “Counseling” Essays archived below, please recall the posting entitled “Patience with your Client’s Unconscious”, February 1, 2002. This installment here is related to that discussion, respecting the internal assimilation, understanding, and settling process that very much busies your client during the astrological consultation.

Let us say that the consultation has proceeded very well; that much has been discussed and understood objectively, instructively. There comes a time for summation or linking of the developmental understanding to a strategy plan, an approach to specific actions in the near future. You say to your client, “Well, we’ve understood what the tendencies are here: always [for example] to doubt yourself first, unnecessarily, always to hear the ridicule from the past whenever you want to do something … we need for that to change now. You know that..”

Your client says, “Right. I understand; really I do, and it’s refreshing, a new way of approaching something like this, for sure.”

–I think you can do it and continue to feel good about it, by …”

And your client interrupts, “AND I know just what you’re going to say !!!”

This is a great moment! —When your client says this, what is actually being said?

But first: What is your reaction –your first reaction to that statement? Are you frustrated by it? Challenged by it? Are you ready to say, “OK, what AM I going to say?” Then, are you ready to change whatever it was you were going to say just to be contrary? –These are human reactions to “I know just what you’re going to say!”

But I think this moment is an important consultation opportunity! I think your client is saying, “I know that you’re going to say that … by shutting off that debilitating voice I always hear [for example], I can get on with it … but down deep, I still don’t believe all that, that I can do it, that’s what I know!”

You say, –You have everything to gain by trying, putting away the old pattern.

Or your client says, “You’re going to say I can, I should walk away from a house on fire. Something like that. Of course I should!!”

You say, –If you don’t, you lose your life.

That’s the kind of moment that is extremely helpful in client consultation. The client is processing the discussion. The review comes down to a final moment of doubt (usually habitual), most often requiring just a touch of realistic, practical common sense for resolution. Now, the client can walk away with a feeling, a directive, a mnemonics, all of which support more efficient behavior.

This is a moment of opportunity. –Don’t you think your client would be affected by the statement [or something similar in power] “If you don’t, you lose your life”, delivered kindly, strongly, knowingly, wisely?

So, when the client says, “I know what you’re going to say … !” Try smiling and saying, “OK, YOU tell me!” –I am eager for the client to show her/his understanding of the situation, everything we’ve talked about. I want to hear the resolution come from the client. The client is rehearsing a new way of thinking, behaving.

This is a nice bridge into consultation review, an opportunity for the turns of thought and phrase with which to arm the client as a way of keeping everything in mind clearly … forever.