SGPsychStud: Analogies - The passenger and the driver

I often think about psychological things and how things work whenever I take a ride. This next analogy took place when I was in a car ride.

The analogy that I thought of was: Doing counselling or being a counsellor or therapist in a counselling session is just like taking a car ride.

With the client being the driver, the therapist would be in the passenger seat. Counselling is done normally with the client being the one in charge of directing the "wheel" or the session, and the therapist's role is to sit by the client's side, experiencing what the driver is experiencing.
Being empathic, the therapist would (or try to) experience similar things as the client, which helps in improving their relationship and as well as reaching the "destination", which is towards resolving the client's issue.
The driver is often usually seeing only the "outside" of the car, which is similar to clients only focusing on the issues. But as the passenger, the therapist can not only see the issues, he can also see what is happening in the inner thoughts of the driver, by paying attention to what is happening in the car.

Work of the therapist is not just noticing the "inner" thoughts and "outer" experiences, but also to see how they link to each other, to find the link between the experiences and thoughts, which will help in identifying the conflict in the client.

Yes the client is the driver, but the therapist's job is to help the client get to the "destination" of resolving the issue. So through identifying the conflict, the passenger can then point the driver to how to get to the destination, but getting there is still the driver's responsibility. The therapist can point out the issue and help the client in resolving the issue, but the choice of resolution is still in the client's hands.

(Hope this analogy is not too difficult to understand. If anyone have any issues in understanding or have any comments about it, feel free to comment. If responses are receptive, there may be more future analogies. Thanks!)    

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