Silent Partner

During school, I was easily swayed by the Vocational Colleges commercials that showed the brand new massage therapist carrying her massage table and working with dozens of clients a week.  I was under the impression that the minute I put up my massage therapy sign, clients would start beating down my door for an appointment.   After all, I was a really excited about my new career, wasn’t everybody else?  I practiced the ‘law of attraction’ in school so many times, I ‘manifested’ my ass off.  I was sure this would be enough for my dream career to take off right away.

It doesn’t entirely work that way. You will have to work really hard when you first start in this industry. I don’t mean just physically, I mean emotionally and spiritually.  You may need a second job for a while, you will need to talk about yourself and your business A LOT to everyone you know (over and over).

More than these things, you will need to learn to work with people. If you don’t like people, or helping people is not ‘your thing’, DO NOT get into this industry.  If you do it for the money, you will have a very frustrating job.  Not every one is the same, you will need to adjust your personality from time to time, and you will need to suck up your pride once in a while.

One of my last clients was referred to me through a doctor. Suffering from an injury, I was told he was seeking pain relief in his neck.  As usual I greeted him with full eye contact, smiling, shook his hand, thanked him for coming and sat him down for our intake. I asked him a series of questions to which he did not respond.   I asked him about his accident, he didn’t answer. I asked him to describe his pain, he said, “I dunno…its pain”.  I asked him if he had massage before, he laughed and said, “of course!”  I asked him what types of massage he had, he responded, “I dunno”. I sat with this gentleman for at least 8 minutes and asked him a dozen questions, to which he either would NOT respond to me or would respond, “I dunno” with a blank look on his face.

This is the situation you have to ask yourself, ‘do I want to help this person’.  This is the perfect client who will test your enthusiasm for your career.  There are so many reasons clients behave the way they do, you will drive yourself CRAZY trying to figure out why *this* client was rude, or why *that* client wasn’t responsive to your questions.  The best way to save yourself from this frustration is to know TWO things.

First, this client came to you because they need relief from pain (physical, or emotional).  Pain can make you do funny things. It can make you cry, it can make you really pissed off for no reason, and it can change you into a total A-Hole and offensive to just about everyone you meet (and you have no idea you are doing it).

The Second thing is that *YOU* are the person this client chose.  Maybe it’s because they have a friend who believes in your skills, maybe your website was the prettiest, maybe you specialize in a technique they need, whatever the reason… you’re the lucky one. That means something.  The compassion you feel for helping others will carry you through situations like this one. Your need to help this person will outweigh any personal issues you have with their personality.

When you are done with your session you will be amazed at how nice they are to you. I have been thanked, hugged, and even had a few clients cry from relief at the end of a session that started out horrible.  This is what confirms your decision to enter into massage therapy, and re-affirms our belief in compassion.

~ by rachelestelle on October 22, 2010.