Do you ever wonder about how your therapist does it? If you are a therapist, do you ever have a day when it takes everything in you not to reach over and slap your patient silly? Or raise a white flag in defeat?

Occasionally people ask me, “How do you listen to peoples’ problems all day long without becoming depressed yourself?” The answer is the same for whatever the job is: we need to pay attention to balance. I do my best to balance the hours I dedicate to work, for family time, and for just plain old time off and play.

But to be perfectly honest, there are those days when I find myself severely stressed out. It could be I’ve over-booked myself too many days in a row, or had a series of challenging sessions or maybe just one person I wonder if I’m really helping.

On those days, before I decide to chuck it all, I remind myself of what Dr. John Ludgate, of the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Center of Western North Carolina, wrote. He says turnabout is fair play and invites the therapist to use the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques they share with their patients on themselves.

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