Wired for Connection: The counterintuitive lessons a therapist learned from her clients

by Carolyn Klassen

Turns out a therapist learns and grows from therapy with clients. I graduated from counselling school with a ton of head knowledge. I had read 1000’s of pages and written hundreds more and learned the models and the approaches in the books. Did this therapist know enough to actually help people? Turns out I didn’t. That’s where my clients come in. I don’t know if they knew how much they taught me about life, about therapy, and about relationships. So much of what clients taught me was paradoxical. Actually, they didn’t teach me—the most important lessons in life, I think, are better caught than taught . It was counterintuitive to conventional relationship wisdom. Together we learned the way to real relationships was messiness, mistakes and discomfort. We noticed the route to acceptance was authenticity, that tears make life better, and that raw courage is often about tender things like saying, “I’m sorry” and “I love you”. And so much more. Relationships are hard—but we are wired for them. We are wired for struggle and growth. Watching people struggle with their own lives has inspired me to struggle and grow in mine. Relationships are hard for us all. But if we show up to connect, and we do it anything like right, we learn from each other. We learn from each other in ways that surprise and delight us.

173 pages, Paperback

Published July 21, 2023