My sister-in-law, who I love dearly, meets me on the street.

“We were just talking about you,” she tells me, “and this is what we want to know. Do you analyze people? I mean, like when you meet friends, or me, on the street?”

I laughed. And I told her the truth. No, I don't do that.

And I also told her the absolute truth about me. That I am seriously the worst person to be a social worker. Because therapy is all about reading a person. Knowing a person's body language. Knowing the deeper meaning of every nuance of conversations and comments. And I am the most unobservant person in the universe. I simply don't notice things.

In my regular life, as mother (in-law), friend, sister (in-law), or whatever, I just don't notice details. For example, although I remember that my sister-in-law met me on the street a few blocks from work, I have no recollection which street, or of what she was wearing, or even if she was wearing sunglasses or not. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

So what's the deal with me being a social worker? How do I do this work if I am clueless? Unperceptive? If can read books but not body language?

Hey. Hey. Hey. Listen up. I learned this new language. It's called the here-and-now of therapy. Let me explain. What ever happens between the therapist and client, whatever is experienced by client and therapist in the therapy room, is a microcosm of what occurs for the client outside of the therapy room. Keep a client long enough in therapy and the masks are stripped away, the the defenses are lowered, and what is enacted in a million different ways is how the client experiences her world.

It is a crucial piece of therapy because if I only meet with my client for the therapy hour, how can I truly know her life in order to help her? With the here-and-now tool of therapy, the answer becomes much easier. Experience the client, truly and authentically enter into the experiential domain with the client and the client's life, with its beauty and beastliness comes alive for me.

What do I mean by this here-and-now experience?

It can be the body language. It can be the context and content of the session conversation. But it is so much more than that. It is every single action and breath the client takes that reveals herself to me.

Here. I will describe it to you.

My office is up two flights of stairs. A client must ring a bell to enter. Some clients ring the bell ten minutes early, some ten minutes late. Some do not ring at all but enter when someone else does. Or text me that they are downstairs. Once upstairs, some walk right in, taking a seat in the waiting room, while others knock on my door. Some even walk right in. The room is theirs; they do not think that maybe somebody else may be in there. They own their therapy room.

One client will look around, commenting on new knickknack or the sand tray. One will swelter in silence because the air conditioning has turned off; the other will demand the air conditioner, and yet another will wonder aloud if it works, hesitant to be directive.

If I mention to a client that I will not be in on our usual day, one client will ignore me, another will ask where I will be, and yet another will express anger or disappointment or sadness.

One client will let me know immediately that she has read my column, another waits a year; and the third will never mention it all although she tells me she subscribes to Binah. And what does it mean when my client never tells me she has read my column, but tells me what everyone else is saying about it?

The here-and-now is when a client notices my new shoes or asks me about the diplomas on my wall or the books she has noticed on my shelves. It is how she sits on the edge of the chair, how she throws off her shoes, pulls up her feet, and rests her back against the couch.

The here-and-now is when she shares her news of her child's engagement or other milestone; it is how she withholds the information thinking why would her therapist care. It is how she tells me mazel tov when she hears my child is engaged, it's when she comes in knowing my news and her whole demeanor is angry or sad, expressing her distress that she is not my child.

In therapy-language, everything that happens in the therapy room, or in the therapeutic relationship is grist for the mill. Because everything means something.

Whatever is present in the room, exists outside in my client's life. It is a map key that guides me to what she is struggling with. Her jealousy of others, her playfulness. Her passion for her work or children, her preoccupation with pettiness. Her anger at her mother, her love for her spouse. Her insecurities, her inability to engage with other women in the bungalow colony. Her artistic temperament, her fashion sense, her independent streak, her courage, her strength.

It's in how she makes an appointment or her out-of-session-contact. It's how she shares with me her dating through engagement; it's how she walks in one day and announces she is engaged.

It's how she reaches out for help; it's in how she is silent, thinking herself undeserving of her therapist's concern; surprised when her therapist shows her support or is willing to extend herself outside of session, to make a call to help her with a job, to obtain information about a seminary for her daughter.

But when my sister-in-law wants to know if I do this to people I meet in my non-therapist life, of course the answer is no. The only people who get the laser beam of my attention are my clients. I pack in the therapy hour what I do slowly over years with family and friends. I do it consciously as a therapist; unconsciously as a mother, wife or sister-in-law.

When I leave my therapy room, I turn off the switch. I do not need to attend to the here-and-now of other people in my life because I am already experiencing them in real time, in real life.

My clients are special. My attention to them is specialized.

Otherwise, I am perfectly clueless. Unobservant. Unperceiving.

So don't worry.

 NOTE: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BINAH MAGAZINE

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Browse through my previously published articles on my former blog Therapy Thinks and Thoughts at frumtherapist.com/profile/MindyBlumenfeldLCSW

Read current articles in my bi-weekly column THERAPY: A SNEAK PEEK INSIDE in Binah Magazine, available on newsstands every Monday.