Are You Working Harder Than Your Client?
from Just Listen To Me Hosted by Julia Shay
As therapists, we care deeply about our clients. We prepare, reflect, research, analyse and constantly think about how we can help them move forward. But when does caring become over-functioning? In this therapist-facing episode, we explore what happens when you start taking too much responsibility for a client's therapeutic process — working harder than they are, trying to find the “right” intervention, filling the silence, rescuing, or feeling responsible for an outcome you can't control. We also look at what happens when we get caught in a client's relational system, including how countertransference and our own nervous system can pull us into patterns we're trying to help the client understand. Most importantly, we'll look at what secure therapeutic practice actually looks like: staying engaged without taking over, trusting the client's agency and pace, and knowing when to intervene and when to step back. Because being a good therapist doesn't mean working harder and harder. Sometimes, the more skilled intervention is to stop carrying what was never ours to carry.
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