The poet David Whyte says, “Poetry is the art of overhearing yourself saying things that you didn’t know you knew.”

I love this, because it acknowledges that the tricky thing in life is to actually make contact with the truth, goodness, or beauty that we suspect is there, but to which we don’t quite have access.

In a similar vein, I might say that good counseling is “the art of helping people articulate things that they didn’t know they knew.” Mediocre counseling involves the counselor telling the client things that the counselor thinks the client should know. But good counseling creates a uniquely attentive space in which the client becomes able to speak words that have been waiting to be spoken.

I don’t have a lot of interest in telling people what to think. There are people who want to turn therapy offices into venues for indoctrination or moral re-education; I think this is a huge problem—and makes for very bad therapy. But I love how magical it can be when authentic dialogue and listening opens the door for someone to overhear themselves saying something that they didn’t know they knew.