Therapist's 'How Does That Make You Feel' Counter Reaches 1 Million

Clinical psychologist Dr. Morris Reflector has uttered the phrase 'How does that make you feel?' for the one millionth time, a milestone he has been tracking on a discreet tally sheet kept inside his desk drawer since he began his practice in 1994. 'I started counting as a joke,' Dr. Reflector said, displaying a worn ledger filled with hash marks spanning three decades. 'It stopped being funny around 200,000. By 500,000, it had become an existential exercise. At one million, I'm not sure what it is. A record, I suppose. A monument to a single sentence.' The millionth utterance was directed at a client identified only as Patient N, who had been describing a disagreement with a coworker about office thermostat settings. 'She said her colleague kept lowering the temperature to 64 degrees,' Dr. Reflector recounted. 'And I said how does that make you feel, and somewhere in my desk drawer, the counter rolled over to seven digits. It was not a dramatic moment. It never is.' Dr. Reflector estimates he has asked the question an average of 110 times per working day across a 30-year career, a frequency he attributes to 'the phrase's extraordinary versatility.' 'It works in every situation,' he explained. 'Client says they got a promotion: how does that make you feel. Client says they got divorced: how does that make you feel. Client says they found a spider in their shoe: how does that make you feel. It is the universal therapeutic prompt. It has never once been the wrong question.' His wife, who is also a therapist, has banned the phrase at home. 'He asked me how the grocery store made me feel,' she said. 'I told him the grocery store made me feel like a person buying groceries. He wrote it down.' Dr. Reflector has set a new goal of two million, which he expects to reach by retirement. 'Or I could try a different phrase,' he mused. 'But what would I even say? Tell me more about that? That's only at 600,000.'