While I’ve chosen not to practice counseling for the time
being I still have all that training and even some real-world practice under my
belt. So people know that and, frankly, they will occasionally get a little weird around me.
I think that's because people are scared of being found out and judged.
The same sort of thing happened when I was a pastor. You
sometimes got the feeling that people were not altogether comfortable being
around a religious professional (whatever that means).
My point is that we’re all, religious or not, kind of scared of being found out
and/or judged. But that's fairly rare on the counselor side. It wasn’t rare at all as a pastor. In fact, judgment seemed
to be the primary expectation of religious people from others.
I did my best to disabuse people of that idea (which didn’t always
sit well with the more starchy pants-wearing church members). But it’s a surprising thing to
watch what happens when you treat people who are used to being judged and
dismissed as if they matter just as much as Charlie Churchmember (sounds Dutch)
who shows up every Sunday.
Because, you know, they are
just as important.
