How Counseling is like Prostitution

As I cursed my clients this morning for the sore throat I had received as a direct result of their presence in my life (I thought we weren’t supposed to accept gifts from clients, especially sucky gifts?), I thought of how much our profession really has in common with prostitution.  First and most obviously, our interactions have led to my contracting some sort of disease that they knowingly (but uncaringly) exposed me to.  Much like the male chauvinist who refuses to use a condom because he’s paying good money, my clients refuse to practice the common courtesy of not breathing on/near me, or better yet, staying home when they are diseased.

But the parallels don’t stop there.  After this realization, they just kept coming.  Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?

We don’t know them, they don’t know us.  They walk into the brothel—I mean clinic—looking for a stranger to be intimate with.  Meanwhile, we are sitting in the back room waiting for someone to come and when no one does, we feel like there’s something wrong with us.  For prostitutes, maybe things are starting to sag, or their makeup is looking particularly drag-queenish today.  As counselors, we question our methods, our friendliness, or maybe our ability to remember to wear deodorant.

When our clients do show up, we awkwardly lead them down the hallway, while our forlorn friends who don’t have any clients watch on in a mixture of wistfulness and thankfulness.  We take them to a tiny, dimly lit room, surrounded by similar rooms where people are doing the exact same thing we’re about to do. We turn on a camera and urge them to forget it’s there.  We ask them, in a nutshell, what they want from us today.  And then we try to give it to them.

It starts out slow.  We both avoid eye contact, and sit too far away.  Sometimes they need a lot of encouragement that they are normal and its okay to use our services. Things build gradually, they begin to trust us and show us more of themselves.  We leave all our “clothes” on, while they are completely naked, because it isn’t about us, it’s about them.  Sometimes they try to uncover parts of us that they don’t need to see because they are insecure about being so exposed themselves.  We chastise and turn the focus back to them.

If things go well, the client finds their release in some form or another.  They often leave with a Cheshire cat grin on their face or maybe just in a state of contemplation after making sure we’ll be available the same time next week.  As soon as they’re gone, we collapse in our chairs, exhausted, and wishing we weren’t non-smokers.  Sometimes we feel like crying.  Five minutes later we start criticizing ourselves for all the wrong moves we made and planning how to do better next time.  Then we go back to the back room and wait for our next session while we regale our fellow counselors with our horror stories, and every once in a while, our triumphs.