The importance of meeting your client where they are.

You might have heard this term from time to time in your classes during your masters degree period.

I cannot stress to you how important this really is. As my current supervisor said " when you are meeting your clients where they are you are not changing yourself or who you are; you are simply adjusting they way you present yourself to aide the client in their therapeutic endeavors".

To further explain what meeting your client where they are looks like/how to do it here is an example: you might end up let's say with a very wealthy real estate investor as a client that always comes to session on time and dressed in a suit. Now in order to meet this client where they are you would probably make sure that you are professionally dressed, you would have perfect posture in your chair, on time, and used the same level of vocabulary as they do.

Now let's turn this around and say that you have a client who is a 24 year old who is recently out of college and has been unsuccessful in finding a job in their field and now works in a bar. For this client you might curse a little when talking to them on session, you would use vocabulary words or slang words that they used in session, you might be in more casual clothes ( depending on where you work as well) , and you might slouch or sit comfortably in your chair.

Simply what I'm getting at is in order to meet your client where they are you need to adopt some of their mannerisms.