Mistakes Happen . . . What’s A Therapist To Do?

Instructors nor colleagues ever spoke to me . . . in a classroom, as a supervisor, one on one, or even in a text about therapists’  mishaps and what to do about them.  No one ever spoke about them being opportunities for learning and growth.

Instead, when errors were made, I was taught that they were embarrassments, shameful, and dangerous for any mental health professional. They were things to be talked about behind closed doors with an attorney or forgotten about and not to be discussed with clients and colleagues and under certain circumstances maybe even lied about . . . .

Then, several years back, I attended a workshop at an annual conference for the Association of Women in Psychology. The workshop focused on discussing those very things that I was taught should not be discussed . . . clinical misjudgments, errors in thinking, and client-related mishaps.  It was, for me, a practice-altering experience . . . to be in the presence of counselors, psychologists, and social workers candidly speaking about their professional and sometimes costly gaffs.  It was also a very healing experience . . . to learn that other professionals (many more experienced than me and a few quite well-known) also made mistakes . . . as we grappled together with how to responsibly and ethically admit our mistakes, make amends for our transgressions, and learn from our own misjudgments.

Ours is not the only profession that struggles with how to undo any damage that we may have caused.  Physicians are also taught to play it safe when errors are made and keep their gaffs to themselves.  However, research is increasingly showing that it is often in a client’s  best interest for medical professionals to ‘fess up and admit mistakes made.  Check out When Doctors Admit Their Mistakes and also Risk Management: Extreme Honesty May Be the Best Policy.

Here’s my point . . . . I am a better therapist when I am able and willing to tell the truth . . . the whole truth to myself, to my colleagues and to my clients.  I am a better person when I am able to tell the truth.   And, my clients deserve the best therapist that I can be . . . 100% of the time.  Until the mental health professions are able to create a culture and space in which we can take responsibility for and  learn from our own mistakes, we are not the professionals that our clients deserve.

Surely I’m not a lone voice for shedding the embarrassment over clinical misjudgment and shelving the self-imposed shame of making errors with clients.  When well-trained therapists with good intentions make choices that, in hindsight, are not the most helpful ones to our clients,  I believe it should be the standard of our professions to create a space for owning our mistakes and making amends to our clients with dignity and heartfelt regrets.

It’s time for our professional associations and our graduate institutions of learning to model healthy and appropriate ways to create spaces for dialogue and healing and forgiveness when therapists err.  It’s the right thing to do . . . for our clients, for ourselves, and for our profession. If you, like me, have ever made a mistake and felt the tug to do the right thing and yet have also felt the fear of doing the right thing, today is a good day to start the dialogue.