You mention having clients...
if you're a health care professional, a teacher, an attorney or a mental health professional, it may actually be against the codes of ethics that govern your profession to invite clients to get involved with a human potential project or religion- [i:ac7ee22002]even when you're sincerely convinced that you have benefitted.[/i:ac7ee22002]
Depending on the nature of your profession, clients may at times be quite vulnerable in relation to you.
The professional is in a unique and binding position of trust--a fiduciary relationship--to avoid any conflict of interest that could potentially compromise the welfare of your clients.
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'The therapists role is that of a fiduciary (Frank and Frank, 1991); R.I. Simon, 1987). The patient's compliance with treatment requires vulnerability and trust. Patients lack the objectivity and the expert knowledge to treat themselves, and must rely on professionals with special training. Peterson (1992) has emphasized that some exploitative therapists atttempt to disavow this responsibility by disclaiming any disparity in the treatment relationships. They employ seudoegalitarianism to exculpate themselves with the excuse that the patient was 'a consenting adult.' from 'Keeping Boundaries: Maintaining Safety and Integrity in the Psychotherapeutic Process by Richard S. Epstein, page 18.
Not all of this is deliberate exploitation.
Some years ago, in some free wheeling sectors of the human potential movement, young therapists were encouraged to practice what Epstein terms 'pseudo-egalitarianism' and treat clients as friends, as fellow adventurers on a spiritual journey, forgetting that the clients were actually quite vulnerable and could not be considered peers.
A young therapist who bought into this ideology would, with the best of intentions, have ignored the existence of the actual power imbalance between client and therapist and would have forgotten that clients were in fact vulnerable and protection.
Ironically these pseudo-egalitarian interpretations of psychotherapy were sometimes taught by flamboyant, charismatic teachers who were powerful but denied their actual power.
Unless this mis-perception was later identified and addressed in the student therapist's training analysis, he or she might embark on private practice without the skills needed to maintain boundaries and would risk entangling clients in dual relationships by inviting them to get involved in belief systems or human potential project shared by the therapist.