VT Works

Suit the Action to the Word, the Word to the Action ~ William Shakespeare

Have you ever made a mistake in the therapy room? Not the “oops, I forgot to prep the Hart Charts” kind of mistake, but the kind that hits in the gut. The kind where a patient’s reaction, or lack of one, makes you stop mid-session and question everything. You find yourself thinking, “Did I just completely miss the mark?” Maybe you assigned something too advanced. Maybe your feedback accidentally shut them down instead of building them up. That sinking feeling of “oh no, that was SO the wrong thing to say”?

Yeah, I’ve been there, too.

Mistakes like that are hard to sit with. If you’ve ever read up on why humans struggle with making mistakes, you’ll run into charming words like rumination, guilt, anxiety, and regret. In clinical work, those feelings can sneak in fast. Especially when what you did felt right in the moment, but clearly wasn’t. The intellectual act of analyzing what happened and how to do better next time is important. But let’s be honest: sometimes it’s little comfort when you’re driving home replaying the whole thing on loop.

And yet… isn’t that what we ask our patients to do every single session?

We hand them a task. They try it.  Sometimes it goes terribly awry. And then we say things like, “Let’s pause. What would you do differently next time?” In vision therapy, mistakes are part of the process. We encourage them to observe, adjust, try again, and then celebrate the effort, not just the outcome. Why should it be different for us?

Vision therapy isn’t a perfect protocol. It’s a dynamic, messy, beautiful conversation between two nervous systems – ours and theirs. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we fumble the dialogue. We say “relax” while assigning something that makes their whole body tense. We talk about progress when their visual system is quietly overwhelmed. These mismatches happen.

But when they do, we can always learn from the Shakespeare line: “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.” If we’re building confidence, our activities should feel empowering. If we’re teaching flexibility, we need to be flexible too, especially with ourselves.

Sometimes the most therapeutic thing we can do is pivot. That might mean simplifying a task, stopping an activity midstream, or revisiting something we missed weeks ago. That doesn’t make us bad Vision Therapists; it makes us present ones. When we stop performing and start responding, that’s when the real work begins. The work becomes healing, not just for them, but for us too.

Really good Vision Therapy is equal parts science, empathy, and improv. It’s informed by clinical training, yes, but it’s shaped in real time by what we notice, what we feel, and whether we’re brave enough to adjust. That’s not chaos; it’s clarity. It’s the art of letting our actions match our intention, and letting our intention shift when the moment calls for it.

So if you’ve recently had one of those “what the hell did I just do?” moments, rest assured, you are in good company. This club is full of people who’ve been there. We meet on Thursdays. Jackets are on backorder. Existential contemplation is free.

Cheers!