Personal and Professional Friendships

Personal friends are very special people in our lives. They are the ones we like, love, know and trust. They are the ones who know us best. They are the first people we think about when we make plans. They are the first people we go to when we need someone to talk to. We will phone them up just to talk about nothing, or the most important things in our life. When we are sad they will try their hardest to cheer us up. They give the best hugs in the world! They are the shoulder to cry on, because we know that they truly care about us. They are the ones who know our deepest fears, and insecurities. They support, sympathize and love us on our journey to becoming. These relationships are personal and close to our heart. 

Professional friends are those we offer intimate services for a fee.  A Professional friend connects with the client in a deeply personal way.  A Professional Friend can be a counselor, therapist, consultant, coach, healer, etc.

In every healthy relationship there is a give and take.  In a professional situation, a Professional friend gives up focus on themselves to focus their attention on the other, their wants, needs, and desires in return for a fee. The form of payment with a Professional friend is usually money.  With a personal friend, we help them with their problems and in return they help us with ours.

Those of us in the healing and teaching fields chose this profession because it is a calling to serve humanity through these modalities. In our profession we draw from many years of personal and professional experiences. We do this services because we love life and deeply want to help.

Those we serve allow us into their private world, they trust us and feel safe with us. They value our genuine caring, our contribution to life, and they feel good in our presence. They sense a bond and friendship that has developed between us. This is healthy, and helps to facilitate healing.

However, after awhile many clients want to know the professional on a personal basis. They want to hang out with them, they want a personal friendship. While the professional genuinely cares about your well-being and growth, they get paid to focus on you.  If you paid them and they focused on their needs, wants, and desires you probably wouldn’t want to pay them because the relationship would feel out of balanced.  

It is my belief that to cross or blur those boundaries  between personal and professional friendships does not serve either parties in the long run.