Thread by @JonathanShedler

1/ It's not just 'helpful' to view the world from patient's/client's perspective, it's a basic requirement for doing therapy & goes without saying (if it must be said, something is already seriously amiss—unless therapist is a beginning student). Therapists strive to enter their

2/ patient's subjective world, see from their perspective, know their desires & fears & understand their experience of self & others "from the inside"—keeping in mind that something about how they are viewing & experiencing the world, self, & others has become a source of pain or

3/ distress. But—and this is key—we enter our patient's subjective world NOT in order to conform the therapy to the experience they are already having of the world, or to duplicate their existing patterns of experiencing self, other & the world in the therapy relationship.

4/ We do so to help them to be able to have DIFFERENT experiences, to create opportunities for other ways of seeing & experiencing that they cannot readily envision, or cannot envision at all. We keep in mind that their current ways of seeing & experiencing the world are

5/ intertwined with their difficulties.
So when a pt cannot conceive of being with another person & allowing themselves to be immersed in experience of the relationship—without monitoring their phone throughout, allowing it it impinge on their experience, allowing it repeatedly

6/ direct & redirect the focus of their attention—we should NOT address it by declaring it to be "an invaluable component of therapy," & couch that as if that were somehow a testament to our therapeutic skill & flexibility. We might instead become curious with our patient, and

7/ invite our patient to become curious with us, about the function the phone may be serving for them, how it may be altering or influencing our respective experiences of ourselves & of one another, and of our relationship in the room—and how it may be doing so in ways that

8/ can all too easily escape our notice & that we may or may not desire. That is therapy.
And why I find it highly problematic when author says, "Eventually I 'surrendered to machines & began viewing technology as... an invaluable component of therapy."

No. A thousand times no.