High Dare/High Care Compass: A Guide to Transforming Trouble and Ethical Disorientation in Psychotherapy

Abstract

Abstract The therapeutic relationship is a place in which the unresolved hurts, traumas, and confusions of the past, and confusions of the past, held in both the conscious and unconscious, can play out. Where we were hurt in relationship becomes the opportunity to heal in relationship. The therapist’s job is to navigate the hurt toward healing. This paper is about that process and draws on a contemporary relational perspective on games, enactments, and the heart of deconfusion in psychotherapy. The author develops Sills’s idea of the exploratory contract, introduces the therapeutic role of trouble in relation to affective confusion, and offers a model of the high dare/high care compass to navigate the ethical disorientation that forms a necessary foundation for deconfusion work.