Dear Therapist: Charlie Brown’s Pig Pen

With clients who give you that "I feel like I really need to be on for them..." feeling, note this as what's coming up in the room, rather than a personal experience of pressure. If you can both acknowledge the feeling, a deeper insight into how they place pressure on others can be explored. I often use the metaphor, "If we are all Pigpen from Charlie Brown and the Peanuts, we each have our own dirty dust cloud. Sometimes the line between your feelings and those of others is blurred. But if you can name it, clarity comes."