Alice was sitting in the dayroom. I sat down next to her. She looked very sad, her eyelids as well as her mouth, drooped. Her mouth worked as if she wanted to talk, but she was quiet. I asked her about her job decision. She said that she had not taken it. I said, "You look so sad that I feel like holding your hand." Her hands were in her coat pockets, but she looked at me and smiled weakly. I said, "Sometimes a conflict of wanting to do two things at once in the present and not being able to can bring up the feelings of a past very much more important similar experience." Alice just shook her head up and down and looked at me. Alice is in her mid-forties. Later I was walking down the hall to leave saying goodbyes to various people. Alice came out of a side room, put both her hands out to me, and said, "goodbye and thank you." In a previous contact Alice had discussed her suicidal thoughts with me. 3. I verbalized my acceptance of patients' expressions of feelings with explanations of why I experienced these feelings of acceptance when I could do this authentically and appropriately. _Example_ I met a new patient at coffee. Later she was the only patient in the dayroom when I went in. She had not spoken at coffee. Now she sat very stiffly in her chair. I sat down next to her and reintroduced myself. She looked scared but told me her name. Her shifting eyes reminded me of a cornered animal. She blurted out, "I don't believe I've met you." It was like she had said, "go away." I smiled at her and said, "We were introduced at coffee, but with so many new people it's hard to remember." Conversation continued to be tense. At one point Marion bolted from her chair toward the door. I thought she was going to leave. I stayed in my chair. She went to the fish bowl in the corner. We continued to talk about the fish. Marion came back and sat down a few seats away from me. I said that I felt I'd been asking her an awful lot of questions but that I was only trying to get to know her. Marion seemed to relax in her chair and gave a great deal of information about herself in a strange stiff sort of way often inserting a word that did not have meaning for me. I encouraged, supported and showed my interest. Finally she said that she {115} had been admitted to McLean in her third year of nurses' training just before her psychiatric experience. She had been in therapy there, one-to-one for a couple of years. I teased her about knowing the ropes, yet giving me a difficult time. This was an attempt to increase her feelings of adequacy by bringing out the similarities of the old situation which she knew and this new situation. For the first time she really grinned at me, almost laughed. Marion is in her early thirties. 4. When verbalizations of acceptance were not appropriate, I acted out this acceptance by my behavior of staying with or doing for when appropriate. _Example_