Below is my Aunt Betty’s teaching on the importance of having people who irritate you. Often, those people are acting out parts of ourselves. So, it’s helpful to take note and work through those areas in ourselves.

Remember the Abbot who said to the monk, “Dear brother, if you do not have in your monastery, someone who irritates you, then for the love of God, go to a neighboring monastery and find one for such is essential to growing into the Kingdom of God. And I thought, “Awhh. You mean if God doesn’t put you with your hair shirt, then you need to get a hair shirt in order to work through your crappo?” 

In working with clients, there can be certain people that you hook with, because you haven’t done your work in that area. That’s something we have to be mindful of, because we will get hooked if we have been in denial and playing games. Then we try to work with somebody, but if we ourselves are in denial playing games, we really are not clean enough to work with them.