You can't always make it better.
I think that most people who pursue a career in psychology do so, at least in part, because they are caring, compassionate, and concerned for the mental and emotional well-being of others. They "want to help people", cliche as that sounds. They want to help others overcome emotional hardship and to come out of therapy feeling stronger and more confident than they went in. While these are the reasons I was personally drawn to psychology, they are also the reasons I have often struggled with the hard, cruel, frustrating, ever-present reality...
You can't always make it better.
Not that I ever expect to be able to "fix" anybody. I get that that isn't my responsibility. I understand that people need to take control of their own lives and destinies and I generally consider myself to be a facilitator more than anything, standing beside my clients as they embark upon their own journeys of self-discovery and healing. I use various therapeutic skills to empower my clients, to keep the process moving, and to inspire a unique way of seeing and understanding their problems, their relationships, their situations, their lives -- in essence, themselves. My hope is almost always that gaining a new perspective will eventually inspire growth and positive change and for the future.
I have several of those whom I consider to be "easy" clients - those who are quick to identify the obstacles that hold them back from being the people they want to be in the world, who are motivated to find ways of tackling those obstacles, and who actively engage in the therapeutic process outside of therapy sessions. I am reminded of one client in particular who struggled with germaphobia, among other anxiety issues. She loved being given "homework" assignments, and we spent much of our time together brainstorming ways that she could teach herself that the fear she often experienced in response to various "germy" situations was not proportionate to actual risk that most of these situations posed in reality. She recognized her errors in thinking and understood that by avoiding her fears, she was reinforcing the anxiety and allowing it to have greater power and control over her life. She believed that the best way to resolve her anxiety was to expose herself directly to the stimuli she feared so greatly to prove to herself that she could overcome it. She would refuse to walk away from the situation until her anxiety dropped to a 1 on a 10-point scale -- we had practiced numerous relaxation strategies in the weeks and months prior to this "experiment" to ensure she would be able to do this effectively -- and much to my client's surprise, her anxiety fell from a 10+ to a 1 in less time than she anticipated. As a result of successfully completing this experiment and overcoming her fear, she felt confident enough to attend an important family event that she might otherwise not have attended due to the overwhelming fear of having an anxiety attack in public.
So: Self-awareness, motivation, active engagement in the process. When one or more of these factors is absent, therapy becomes more complex and less "easy". We encounter resistance from our clients when they are unwilling, unable, or unmotivated to engage. Here, I am reminded of many clients, most of whom attended only one or two sessions at most. I have found these clients to be the most challenging and exhausting to work with and yet, paradoxically, they are probably the ones who would benefit the most from therapy. I am still learning the subtle complexities of resistance, and am only now becoming comfortable enough with it that I can embrace it as an often necessary and integral part of the therapeutic process. Sometimes, I'm able to work through the resistance some clients put up and soon after, they fall back into that "easy" category I was talking about earlier. Other times, though, the resistance is too much - for me or the client - and therapy is, at least temporarily, halted due to no-shows, cancellations, no future bookings, or my not knowing where to go next. I am learning more effective ways to make resistance work to my advantage, though, to not be afraid of it (to expect it, even), and not to take it personally when clients express anger, frustration, or irritation with me when I make the decision to try and move them in a direction they would prefer not to go or simply don't see the benefit in going.
Sometimes it's still hard not to take it personally, though, and in those moments I chastise myself for being unable to help. Unable to inspire.
Unable to fix.
The resistance becomes more about me and less about them and sometimes I have found myself looking for validation that I'm doing a good job simply to satisfy my own insecurities. I'm learning to keep this in check and have begun asking myself if my need to seek this validation is for the benefit of my client or not. I think I'm happy to report that I'm a work in progress, and the self-awareness very present in most, if not all, of my dealings with clients.
I need to remind myself constantly that I'm doing a good job even if my clients don't like me. In fact, sometimes the best work is done when my clients don't like me. And thankfully, there seems to be an inverse relationship between my confidence level and the number of reminders I have to throw my own way.
You can't always make it better.
Not that I ever expect to be able to "fix" anybody. I get that that isn't my responsibility. I understand that people need to take control of their own lives and destinies and I generally consider myself to be a facilitator more than anything, standing beside my clients as they embark upon their own journeys of self-discovery and healing. I use various therapeutic skills to empower my clients, to keep the process moving, and to inspire a unique way of seeing and understanding their problems, their relationships, their situations, their lives -- in essence, themselves. My hope is almost always that gaining a new perspective will eventually inspire growth and positive change and for the future.
I have several of those whom I consider to be "easy" clients - those who are quick to identify the obstacles that hold them back from being the people they want to be in the world, who are motivated to find ways of tackling those obstacles, and who actively engage in the therapeutic process outside of therapy sessions. I am reminded of one client in particular who struggled with germaphobia, among other anxiety issues. She loved being given "homework" assignments, and we spent much of our time together brainstorming ways that she could teach herself that the fear she often experienced in response to various "germy" situations was not proportionate to actual risk that most of these situations posed in reality. She recognized her errors in thinking and understood that by avoiding her fears, she was reinforcing the anxiety and allowing it to have greater power and control over her life. She believed that the best way to resolve her anxiety was to expose herself directly to the stimuli she feared so greatly to prove to herself that she could overcome it. She would refuse to walk away from the situation until her anxiety dropped to a 1 on a 10-point scale -- we had practiced numerous relaxation strategies in the weeks and months prior to this "experiment" to ensure she would be able to do this effectively -- and much to my client's surprise, her anxiety fell from a 10+ to a 1 in less time than she anticipated. As a result of successfully completing this experiment and overcoming her fear, she felt confident enough to attend an important family event that she might otherwise not have attended due to the overwhelming fear of having an anxiety attack in public.
So: Self-awareness, motivation, active engagement in the process. When one or more of these factors is absent, therapy becomes more complex and less "easy". We encounter resistance from our clients when they are unwilling, unable, or unmotivated to engage. Here, I am reminded of many clients, most of whom attended only one or two sessions at most. I have found these clients to be the most challenging and exhausting to work with and yet, paradoxically, they are probably the ones who would benefit the most from therapy. I am still learning the subtle complexities of resistance, and am only now becoming comfortable enough with it that I can embrace it as an often necessary and integral part of the therapeutic process. Sometimes, I'm able to work through the resistance some clients put up and soon after, they fall back into that "easy" category I was talking about earlier. Other times, though, the resistance is too much - for me or the client - and therapy is, at least temporarily, halted due to no-shows, cancellations, no future bookings, or my not knowing where to go next. I am learning more effective ways to make resistance work to my advantage, though, to not be afraid of it (to expect it, even), and not to take it personally when clients express anger, frustration, or irritation with me when I make the decision to try and move them in a direction they would prefer not to go or simply don't see the benefit in going.
Sometimes it's still hard not to take it personally, though, and in those moments I chastise myself for being unable to help. Unable to inspire.
Unable to fix.
The resistance becomes more about me and less about them and sometimes I have found myself looking for validation that I'm doing a good job simply to satisfy my own insecurities. I'm learning to keep this in check and have begun asking myself if my need to seek this validation is for the benefit of my client or not. I think I'm happy to report that I'm a work in progress, and the self-awareness very present in most, if not all, of my dealings with clients.
I need to remind myself constantly that I'm doing a good job even if my clients don't like me. In fact, sometimes the best work is done when my clients don't like me. And thankfully, there seems to be an inverse relationship between my confidence level and the number of reminders I have to throw my own way.
LOVE THIS ONE :)
ReplyDeleteI often find this when working wth children. You work with the "problem child" and help him/ her with his/ her issues and sometimes send them back into this dysfunctional home after the hour is up. This can be frustrating for me.
I struggle with working with kids/teens, for this reason especially. There is only so much you can do to help support them, and until everyone in the system is ready (and willing) to recognize their part in the dysfunction, very little more you can than to help your client cope with everything that's going on and just do their part to stay as healthy as possible. Very frustrating indeed.
ReplyDeleteThe same is true for so many groups of clients - learning disabled ones, for instance, but also drug/alcohol abusers, or even those that are being abused.
ReplyDelete