 PSYCHOBABBLE 2B
In sequel to my article, Psychobabble 2A about Transference, this will address the other side of the coin: COUNTERTRANSFERENCE This topic from a therapist's view is subjective, so I am going to allow myself to be vulnerable and write mainly in the first person. If any reader finds her/himself with like experiences, thoughts or feelings, then be my guest and we can travel this part of the road together. In my article Retraumatization,(http://www.goessoftlyishere.com),I wrote in the section on Transference/Countertransference, about how we can, in misuse of our countertransference, retraumatize ourselves: << When I write that we can retraumatize ourselves I mean that if we do not recognize what our clients have raised in us positively or negatively, if we do not see how to keep the boundaries in the transference of our patients and we do not seek skilled supervision, we are in danger of losing perspective, insight and growth. In so doing, whatever traumas we may have sustained in the past or present there is the potential of remaining STUCK in their effects. We wouldn't be experiencing countertransference if our past has been worked through. We experience countertransference because it hits us where it hurts the most, where we are the most vulnerable and where we HAVEN'T healed ourselves. So it is good to remember what we can do to ourselves as well as our client. >> Countertransference is all about making the painful and painstaking effort to recognize, acknowledge and OWN what our clients have brought up in us. We may be aware of what that is, and we may be unaware , but the unawareness can be helped into consciousness with a skilled supervisor, or, if we are willing to swallow our pride, and I haven't heard of anyone yet who has died swallowing it, (choked on it, maybe, but not died), learn from our clients if they are insightful and courageous enough to tell us we are bringing in our own stuff and not theirs. I include this word in psychobabble because I have bandied it about at times without being honest enough to truly look at where I am experiencing it, or simply tell myself, " Bit of countertransference going on here" and it travels about as far as it takes to say that then STOPS without acknowledgment, ownership or dealing with it. In this, I am using the word psychobabble defined as jibberish - it makes no sense to me and certainly does not help my clients. Worse, as quoted above, I can retraumatize myself AND them in running from my unhealed and undealt with traumas. When I am able to fully work through my countertransference issues as they come up I will have earned the right to say the word as being "specialized to my profession" (Quote one dictionary definition). I am a firm believer that I can ONLY help a client in their recovery and healing to go as far as I, myself, have gone. To help them heal only to the extent that I, myself, have healed. Head knowledge is one thing - I could rattle off a wordy definition of what countertransference is but countertransference is SUBJECTIVE, not objective. Whether positive or negative, it is the material, or the client him/herself that stirs up something in me to produce a strong reaction, a triggering or a response not associated with the story and experience of my client. I would like to use an illustration of an experience I had to show the different aspects of countertransference. I was running a group with teenagers in an Acute Locked Residential Facitlity for Children and Adolescents. The group consisted of eight or nine multiethnic boys and girls and during the discussion, one of the Caucasian boys started taunting a colored girl in the group. Others started to join in until we ( my co-facilitator and I) stopped it and brought things back to order. However, something overwhelmingly intense welled up inside me so that I excused myself on the pretext of going to the bathroom and there, I cried. Not long, and I was back within a few minutes. The countertransference.(CT) This was countertransference. It hit me where I was most vulnerable at that time. Having to listen to the sneering, cutting and cruel baiting that only kids can throw at one another. The comments were not about race, they were about the opinions of the jeerers of this colored girl, and how they felt she would be hopeless on a team in the games to be played soon after group. My own "stuff" was about racism and remembering how it was to be the recipient of being despised, verbally and physically abused because of color, demeaned and rejected for any reason, least of all, sports since I excelled in that. My countertransference concerned the colored girl because I thought I knew exactly how she was feeling. Recognition of the CT Since those days over twenty years ago I have had many clients from varied ethnic backgrounds, adults, children and teenagers. I have run many groups for teenagers with racist problems and prejudices but these do not trigger me now and I am comfortable working through dilemmas far more intense than the example above. The point here, is that had I not recognized what was going on in ME at that time and dealt with the CT emotions I would still be STUCK in a place where any hint of racism would keep me blind and deaf to what my client might be talking about, if the issues relate to color. A case of being color blind! We all have our weak and vulnerable spots that hit us usually at unexpected moments and when I find myself reacting strongly not on BEHALF of my client but BECAUSE of my client, then I know I am into my own stuff and not theirs. It takes a while to learn this lesson of CT recognition but it is VITAL if we are to heal ourselves and help others to heal. Rescuing through CT It was tempting to want to jump in and rescue the colored girl. To shout at the ones "dissing" her ( disrespecting), to lay off and chill out, but I didn't. It is always a temption, but a very harmful one for our clients, to try to rescue them from pain, distress and suffering. When I was in the Orient, one night I got under the mosquito net and found a moth fluttering about beating its wings against the netting trying to get out. I gently, closed my hand around it, put it out of the net, tucked the net around me and went to sleep. In the morning I went to get out of bed and was shocked to see the moth dead on the floor. The only conclusion I could come to was that it died because of the touch of my human hand. I had tried to rescue it and it had died. I have not forgotten that lesson. My client can die emotionally, and/or psychologically if I go on a rescue mission. It is in the struggle and the pain that they heal and find strength to push their own way through the entrapping net to the freedom they can see and long for on the other side. We can be rescueing without being aware that that is what we are doing. We see our client in huge distress, sobbing, moaning, sometimes writhing in somatic memory pain and the rescuer in us wants to say soothing words, offer to help, shorten the time of torment. All this is rescueing and all this stops them finding their wings, building their strength and understanding the only way out is THROUGH. I have not reached anywhere I am without going through. True, I have tried my utmost going around, over, under, my traumas, any which way but THROUGH - but I have always had to come back to the start and begin over. When we learn this lesson we can walk WITH our client because we have been there so we know talk isn't necessary, and silent understanding is much more powerful than psychobabble jibberish. Mother henning through CT. Simliar to rescuing but in one way, potentially more harmful to the client, is the maternal or paternal instinct to "mother hen" our clients. I dearly wanted to take the colored teenager under my wing, to cluck soothingly at her, dry her tears, tell her I knew what she was going through ( I didn't), and make things better for her. This is not care giving, it is care-taking, and support isn't being the prop for someone to lean on, but helping them stand on their own two feet. CT feelings tend to want to do things FOR the client instead of empowering them to climb their own mountain and swim against their own strong currents. When this need to cluck, to shelter, feed and protect comes into the session it is MY stuff. I have made many a mistake, and am sure still do, in not recognizing that what I think of and perceive as helping and providing therapeutic tools, is actually coming from my need to be needed, to feel I am doing something, or worse, meeting my needs through my client. With the colored girl in group, I didn't tell her oppressors to shut up, I asked them to be quiet and then asked her what she would like to say to them about how they had made her feel. This led to a discussion about how we come over to another person and the effect we can have on them. The urge from my CT was so strong to cluck, but I crowed instead! Dangers for the client in CT a) Retraumatization. In the section on transference/countertransference in the article Retraumatization, I wrote: << One of the most traumatizing things we can do to our clients is to project our own countertransference on to them as being their transference. In so doing, we not only retruamatize them by reenacting previous experiences in which, and because of which, they feel blamed and that they are to blame for whatever is happening, but the saddest part of this phenomenon is that the therapist remains blinded to their own issues and the need to self-examine. It is one of the easiest cop-outs for a therapist to avoid looking at him/herself by turning errors back onto their client, e.g. "due to your abuse, I can see how you think this, behave in such a manner, perceive me as doing whatever". How often have we relieved a twinge of guilt by projecting onto our clients, what we need to look at in ourselves? We retraumatize ourselves and don't even know it! I am not proud of the fact that I have done this. >> This danger of turning my errors back onto my client is one I cringe at because of the effect it has on the therapy . To avoid it, I must recognize my own issues, and be totally honest with myself about those issues so I am not making CT a jibberish word but a true one in which I silently promise my client to deal with ME. When I am out of my depths, beyond my skills, wading though new waters and I don't know what I am doing or where I am going and neither does my client - it is easy to put it all on the client and excuse myself for any stalemate. When I do this I retraumatize by projecting my own CT onto them. Unwilling to own I might be contributing to the impasse because I am stuck in my own past or present but rationalizing/justifying/explaining/defending to myself and my patient that what is happening is because of some distorted thinking on their part due to abuse. I find this so very distasteful and yet I have done it. We need skilled supervisors to help us at these times and I will ever appreciate the two supervisors in my training days, my individual and my group supervisors who taught me by empowering me in how to empower my clients. b) Who is in the picture ? In one of my articles I write that to truly help our patients WE must be OUT of the picture and our patient be the only one IN it. In the session time, place and agenda it is CT if we project ourselves in anyway over the needs, feelings and the material the clients bring. I cannot help my clients see their dilemmas and what to do about them if I am running my own agenda. It is my personal policy not to call my client unless they call in an emergency that needs intervention. If I am calling to meet my own need for reassurance that they are alright, or because CT emotions are running concerning them, this is all CT and I need to watch my step. One thing I dread, is if through my CT I would ever try to meet my own needs through my patients. For me, this is unethical, unprofessional and profoundly harming for my client. Perhaps this is getting too long winded and should come to an end. There is so MUCH more in the arena of transference and countertransference, and one could not possibly touch on everything. Again, I hope we can find it helpful to continue to self-examine, ask questions, find answers and help one another in the wonderful task of healing, be it of ourselves or our clients. 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