It’s okay to feel incompetent

From Walter H. Manning’s Clinical Decision Making in Fluency Disorders, Third Edition (page 349):

Luterman (2001) stresses the importance of accepting our limitations and recognizing that particularly difficult cases will cause the icy finger of possible failure to threaten and test our confidence. Nonetheless, if the clinician is learning, if he or she is a truly responsible professional, he or she should be operating on the fringes of incompetence (Luterman, 2001). Effective counselors, clinicians, and people in general should take risks and occasionally make mistakes, or they will not grow.

Ah, it’s great to have permission to feel incompetent: it means that I’m pushing the edge of my learning and experimenting with my knowledge and therapy base. If I’m not feeling stretched, I need to reevaluate and push myself further.