On Making Mistakes in Therapy

In therapy there sometimes comes what is called a moment of rupture - a moment in the therapeutic relationship where the connection is threatened, or even damaged. Such challenging moments are quite possibly inevitable, given that out in the world of daily life they occur, relationally, all the time. Our job as a therapist and client dyad, working together, is to be as open and attentive to these moments as we can, because they provide significant opportunities for growth. Such moments can leave us both with no choice but to fall back again on our own resources, and (hopefully) from there to return to one another - having been reconfigured by our individual understanding of what happened, and what it meant, and from this emergent way of being and understanding - rather than backing out - to continue inching forward, toward each other, and ultimately, toward our own selves.
 
Something good can come from difficult moments; it can almost seem at times as if the unconscious of both therapist and client have colluded to create such an opportunity. If consciousness is a stream, and behaviour and conscious awareness of its determinants are what we see at the surface of the water, well, then - the deep flows just as incessantly.