As a therapist, your relationship with the client can make or break the success of the therapy. The good news is that our greatest asset is using our own personality, knowledge and clinical reasoning with our clients.Tthe more we understand ourselves, the better we will be at adjusting to different clients and different circumstances and the better therapists we will be. Though developing our therapeutic use of self takes time, we can begin to build it by working on several core principles: trust, practicing active listening and being empathetic are all aspects of this understanding. This is something that I am just now understanding and have longed to better understand in the past. Even before OT school, I can think back to my days of student teaching where I struggled to adjust and know what to do in certain situations with particular students. Certain techniques weren't always helpful or applicable to all of my students, and I wasn't sure how to adjust between students without being inconsistent. I am thankful that OT allows me more space to learn how to do this well. It is built into our curriculum, and will especially be formidable during fieldwork. I long to be the best OT therapist I can be. I never want to give up on a client or think that I can't impact them because they were too hard or that I couldn't form a relationship with them... Therapeutic use of self will be what help me work better with my clients. This is going to take time, mistakes will be made, but I am going to learn from them and push forward to be the best OT I can be.