I appreciate this, as someone who comes to this profession via disability and infant care work. These roles require a different disposition and frame. I think it is important to be discerning about helping and being in or of service to others in a particular manner. “Helping” in matters of the mind and meaning making, to me, requires us to see patients as incompetent or unskillful, rather than whole beings who have agency/autonomy. I care about my patients. I can’t imagine not caring about patients, since I am generally fond of people, but it is a relationship like any other that requires time to naturally develop a deeper sense of care and connection. I have found a degree of frustration in some training/professional development environments in which it is insinuated that I lack care or warmth, because I’m not an overtly kind of saccharine person, which I worry stems in part from this idea of needing to be stereotypically “nice” or “caring” to be “helpful.” I often perceive that, a veneer of nice and helpful, is preferred to authenticity, and perhaps a less obvious but nevertheless genuinely compassionate stance. I have found thus far in this role that patients respond well to challenges to this idea that I should be helpful to them. A part of them might want me to fix their problem or absolve them of something. A part of me may also wish I could as well. I typically light heartedly remind them, and perhaps myself, that I am neither god nor a priest, and I haven’t met many people who truly enjoy being told what to do. I find that folks are receptive to being supported in creatively exploring and developing their own agency when provided a rationale for my reluctance to “help.”