More than a Mirror

How Clients Influence Therapists' Lives

Marcia Hill

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317993025
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Whether you're a therapist yourself, studying to become a therapist, or simply interested in the mystery that often surrounds therapy, More than a Mirror will show you the rarely discussed, "invisible" side of the therapeutic experience--how clients influence the person of the therapist. In this collection of vignettes and thoughtful explorations, over 20 therapists describe for you how particular clients, issues, and the practice of therapy in general impact them as people. Writing about therapy is almost universally about how therapists influence clients. In More than a Mirror, therapists describe a range of responses to their work: some talk about what they have learned from particular clients; some discuss aspects of the work of therapy, such as bearing witness to stories of trauma or having to report suspected child abuse, and examine how these experiences affect them personally; and some describe the gifts and costs of doing therapy as a life's work. As you share these therapists'experiences, you'll notice some themes running throughout, including:

• how doing therapy heals the therapist
• empathy as a way to access transcendence
• the therapist's responses to encountering racism
• the particular struggles of a new therapist
• the personal toll of working with the dying
• the therapist's sexual feelings
• how doing therapy changes the therapist over time
• the struggles of working with angry or manipulative clientsEditor Marcia Hill, EdD, a psychotherapist in private practice, elaborates, "It is not easy to examine how deeply and personally both the practice of therapy and individual clients influence therapists as people. This book shows you that therapy is not a one-way process, although the therapist is clearly there in service of the client.... Yet therapy affects the therapist profoundly and irrevocably. Every client moves us emotionally; we learn something from each person. The business of bearing witness to so many lives transforms us as no other work could. We may write and talk about therapy as if it were all about how to impact the client, but all the time we, too, are being impacted."

Index

AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), 17, 18, 19, 20

Accommodation, 104, 106

African Americans, therapeutic relationships of, 5–14

AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) patients, 51–56

family of, 54–55

friends of, 53–54

Alanon, 17

Alcoholic clients, 15, 16–20

enabling of, 17–19

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), 17, 18, 19, 20

Alternative Family Project, 58–59

Altruism, 16

Amnesty International, 36

Anger, of clients, 95

Arousal

intrusive memories-related, 103

sexual versus nonsexual, 69–71

Assertiveness training, 128

Assimilation, 104

Avoidance behaviors, as traumatic memory response, 103–104

Bereavement. See also Mourning

experienced by client, 30–31

experienced by therapist, 29–30, 31

as therapist-client parallel process, 119–126

Borderline personality disorder patients, countertransference with, 127–130

Burnout, experienced by trauma therapists, 102

Canada

marginalization in, 85

multiculturalism in, 87–88, 90

Vietnamese refugees in, 85–87

Catharsis, 16

Change, elements required for, 16

Cheerfulness, excessive emphasis on, 45–48

Children

abuse of

deaths caused by, 39–44

sexual, mandatory reporting of, 32, 131–135

as clients

Native-American, 1–4

sexual abuse of, 31–32, 131–132

therapeutic needs of, 1–4

mother’s murder of, 39–44

Clients

anger of, 95

borderline personality disorder, 127–130

children as

Native-American, 1–4

sexual abuse of, 31–32, 131–132

therapeutic needs of, 1–4

male

misogynistic, 111–117

provider role of, 98–99

of racialized therapists, 88–89, 90

ther...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Forewarning
• My Heart Is Broken by a Five-Year-Old Who “Abandons” Me
• There but for the Grace of God: Two Black Women Therapists Explore Privilege
• Hope
• Bearing Witness to the Unspeakable
• Joining the Expedition: Journal of a Therapist-in-Training
• Lessons Learned: A Psychologist’s Perspective on Psychotherapy
• The Effect of a Therapist’s Pregnancy on a Therapeutic Relationship with an Inmate Charged with Infanticide
• Happy, Happy, Happy
• Death Work: One Psychotherapist’s Journey
• Mystical Experience of a Counsellor: An Autobiographical Journey
• Exploring Intimacy in Therapy: Broadening the Interpretation of Arousal
• The Wish to Become a Mother
• Victims, Survivors, and Veterans: A Circle of Courage
• Border-Crossing on a Racist Terrain
• Merger and Unconditional Love as Transformative Experiences
• Female Therapist, Male Client: Challenging Beliefs–A Personal Journey
• Traumatic Therapy: How Helping Rape Victims Affects Me as a Therapist
• Frank Revelations of a Difficult Therapy Experience: Countertransference Observations
• Parallel Process: Client and Therapist Explore Motherloss
• Overcoming My Model of Goodness as a Psychotherapist: Setting Boundaries–The Case of Tina
• Mandatory Reporting and Professional Dilemmas: A Case Study
• Changes: The Personal Consequences of the Practice of Psychotherapy
• Index