Who cares more?

A person who helps you out of love for you, or a person who helps you because you pay them to do it? Let’s assume they are equally qualified.

We could be talking about anything: car repair, home maintenance, therapy, moving, cooking, or any number of things.

It seems to me that if someone does a kind of work out of love, or passion, then they are doing it because they really care. However, if you do it because you are being paid, and you wouldn’t do it if there were no money in it, that this casts doubt on how much you actually care.

As a political activist, I did a lot of hard work for very little money. I put myself in danger from dogs, angry homeowners, overzealous police, and more, because I believed that the changes I was advocating would make a huge positive difference, if we could win. I have never taken a job that I didn’t care about, and as a result, I have never made much money.

Other people don’t care what they do; they just want to make as much money as possible. Now, granted, you can’t give away all your work for free, but you can do a hell of a lot for free.

Some businesses, it seems to really matter if you care. Elder care requires love; health care requires dedication beyond the pay, teaching, investigative reporting, or psychotherapy.

If I’m paying someone to do a job for me, I watch them like a hawk, to make sure they do it right and well. I don’t want my furnace repairman to leave on a night when it’s below zero, and the “fix” breaks the moment he drives off. I want it done right.

Now with something like cars or furnaces, even though I have little expertise in these areas, I can still let them know how interested I am in the end result, and keep tthem honest. However, with psychotherapy, I can’t do this. For therapy to work, I have to be totally vulnerable, and when I’m totally vulnerable, I can’t watch out for myself. So if a therapist tells me the wrong thing out of carelessness, or tiredness, or anger, I can’t catch that. I hhave to trust they care.

Today my therapist told me something that made me feel very bad. She told me I was depressed, and although I wasn’t feeling that bad before I saw her, I certainly was aafterwards. Now, if she really cares, then I can trust it’s part of a process I don’t understand. However, if she’s just doing it for the money, maybe she’s doing a hack job, and this was a big mistake.

How can I ever trust someone I pay but cannot know whether they are doing the rigth thing? If I don’t trust them, how can I get help? Am I misguided here? Too untrusting? Or can I believe people who tell me they care, even though I’m paying them to care?