Goodbye is not The End

Keep in mind that everything you do professionally reflects on you and your practice. This includes the way you deal with difficult clients. Someone once advised me, “If your clients have a great experience, they will tell one or two other people. If they have a terrible experience, they will tell ten.” Sometimes things don’t work out in the clinic. Perhaps you find your client personally hard to work with and you cannot find a way to improve your relationship. Perhaps your client has had an upsetting emotional release or reacted badly to a misunderstanding around something you said. Or perhaps the acupuncture simply does not work as quickly as your client would like, and he decides to stop treatment. Whatever the case may be, when things do not work out, you still have to be professional and deal with your client openly and with compassion.

I recently heard a story of a teacher who told his class that when he didn’t like a client, he needled her badly, so she would go away and not come back. Now, I heard about this third-hand, so I am going to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt and assume that this was meant as a joke. It was not, unfortunately, heard in that way by his student, who thought this was a valid option in the clinic. I am going to… suggest… that intentionally causing pain to a client is not only a horrible and immoral idea, but that it is also a terrible business practice. This one is for all you out there for whom “horrible and immoral” is not enough to deter you from thinking that this intentional-bad-needle thing is a good idea: If a client were actually treated in that way, you would not just lose one client. That client would revile you, by name, every time acupuncture came up in conversation.

Imagine a group of people talking at a party somewhere. One person mentions that he is considering trying acupuncture for the first time. Standing nearby is a former client of yours who, for whatever reason, was not helped by your treatment. One of two things happens next. In the case where you intentionally caused her pain in order to get rid of her, she chimes in that she tried acupuncture and saw YOU (she will remember your name) and that you were terrible and it was the most painful thing ever. Hmm... In the case where you held a compassionate space for your client, dealt openly with her and perhaps referred her to the homeopath down the street, she chimes in that she tried acupuncture, it didn’t work out, but that her practitioner (she might not remember your name) tried very had and ended up referring her to her awesome homeopath who did such wonderful things for her.

Everything you do professionally reflects back on your practice and your name. So treat every client how you would want to be treated if you were in their shoes.

Keeping an Open Heart

It is inevitable in building our practices that we will see clients who are belligerent, unpleasant, and just “push all our buttons.” The most important thing to ask yourself in such a situation is whether you can have love for this person. In order to do your best treatment, you need to feel a love-your-fellow-human love for each of your clients. This love helps you to see the best in people. When you see the best in your clients, you will be looking for possibilities for growth and healing, and your treatments will always be successful. Regardless of whether symptoms go away, you will be moving your clients towards a better state of health in their lives, and doing your job correctly.

Without love, you can get bogged down in your work by things your clients may do or say that upset you or make you feel diminished in your authority and validity as a practitioner. You do not have to like everything your clients say and do. What you have to do is be as grounded as you can in the face of whatever comes, and address things that have become difficult. A strain on the relationship between you and your client that is not addressed will grow over time. It will be like the proverbial elephant in the room for you, and will create a distance between you and your client. At that point, you will no longer see the best in them, you will miss opportunities for helping them get to their best health in life, and you will end up allowing your own greatness as a practitioner to be diminished.

The other day, on my way to work, I was stopped at a traffic light near some road construction that narrowed the space for cars to get through. As the light was about to change so I could go, a lady surged forward and stopped suddenly to spectacularly block the grid, forcing everyone to wait until we could squeak around her. For three blocks, I was pissed off. After that, I was able to breathe and think about the look on that woman’s face. She wasn’t trying to inconvenience anyone. She just made a mistake. And she was clearly embarrassed and off-center as she sat in the middle of the intersection. This is what I mean by love. When I was angry, all I saw was the bad in her. When I was able to open my heart, I had compassion for the fact that she was probably a good person  who was just having a bad day.

Your clients will have bad days. Heck, they could be in the middle of a bad month or year when they come to see you. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Hold a space of love for them. Try to see the best that they could be, and do the best you can to help them. And if all else fails, do the right thing and give them a good referral to another practitioner you respect and who you genuinely think could help them.