This hits me deeply when I hear it, I understand it, I even weave the concept indirectly into my practice, but hearing another person say it aloud makes me ruminate on what it actually means. Both sides of that coin ring true: you tried your best and you arrived at where you are / your best attempt, given all possible permutations, only amounted to this. A tough pill to swallow, but a welcome awakening if there is something to follow it.

Casting a critical, moderately objective, observation upon a person’s life is usually less than helpful without something to back it up – the concept of tough love, telling it like it is, getting through to someone, has foundations in a form of intervention; if you want that intervention to be a driven wedge. Therapeutic intervention is about subtlety – the nuance of exploratory questioning that underpins motivational interviewing, which promotes critical thinking, and supports the client arriving at their own realization: that change is necessary. I have been a firm believer that if you can feel a theme emerging, or if you can attune to a disclosure (or even to an epiphany), then it is worth far less if it comes out of your mouth, and worth so much more if your client arrives at their own conclusion. Therein lies that magic we seek within sessions, the penny that drops so hard it rings through building and bone, with the hope of forever changing a perspective, or a cycle, or shining a light into a darkened corner.

There is a saying that hope springs eternal, this might be so, but nothing is springing anywhere without a fissure, or a gully of some kind – from within it must rise to the surface, if we are to witness it. The skill is in either opening and closing the housing professionally, or rending it lit by insight that empowers.