You have to read the title “This is 2020” in your best Barbara Walters’ voice. In case you have no idea who this woman is OR you just want a blast from the past, click the Youtube link below. It’s been 16 years since this famous broadcast journalist announced the beginning of this Friday evening tv news show…which I watched LIVE every Friday night for way too many years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dit9pFP3lOk#action=share

Back to this new decade. I, like many of you, are hoping that this year is full of joy, peace, love and abundance. It feels like there is an extra special possibility that this could happen this year, as opposed to other years, doesn’t it?

What I have found that ensures that every day is a good day is HOW we think. Our thoughts affect our feelings and that affects our behavior. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, baby. Maybe THIS year is the year we lasso those negative, limiting, self-sabotaging thoughts and throw them to the curb!! How does that sound?

As I think about my counseling practice, and what I want for my clients, I want something that may sound just plain dumb from a business sense.

I want my clients to not need me or even come see me anymore. WHAT?!

Let me be clear - I love my clients. They are on my mind and heart even when they aren’t on my couch. I want to be friends with them and hang out outside of my office. (Which, unfortunately, is an ethical no-no.) My point is that I like and admire my clients. They are the ones doing all the hard work in their lives! It takes effort to come to counseling and pay for it! BUT I want everyone to come see me, get the help they need, and then move forward in their lives!

Yes, I want clients to come and then go. For their benefit.

I have heard way too many times of therapists that guilt their clients into staying in therapy for FOREVER. (There are situations where people do need the continual support of therapists so I am not discounting the need for that.) I do not want a client to become dependent on me. I’m not God. I want clients to become self-sufficient and create/maintain their own network of family and friends. I want them to go out into the world and be who they were created to be.

I also love helping people and I can only help a lot of people if I have a lot of people rotating in and out of counseling. I have a rather small caseload in comparison to some counselors that work 12 hours a day. I can only fit in so many women and couples. I also have a life and want to balance work, family and friends.

This is 2020 and it may just be the year for you to come into counseling or maybe even leave counseling. Either way, I hope that you will become more and more like the YOU that you’ve always wanted to be!