My guess is that most therapists, even if neither trained in or actively practicing CBT, are familiar with the technique of Exposure with Response Prevention (ERP). Simply put, it is one in which the client, typically struggling with OCD, is systematically exposed to thoughts, objects, images, or situations that fuel their anxiety, which in turn triggers their obsessions and compulsions. As they are guided through the exposure scenarios, which can be imaginal, “real,” or more recently through the use of VR technology, they are provided with alternative skills for coping with and reducing the triggering anxiety. Over time, the anxiety diminishes, as do the obsessions and compulsions.

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I had been working for a relatively short time with my newest clinical supervisee, S, who shared a heartrending account of a childhood scarred by parental instability and early sexualization, profound feelings of vulnerability and insecurity, and his subsequent trajectory beginning in adolescence along a painful path of sexual compulsion and risk-taking behavior, including high-risk sexual hookups with strangers.

This was quite distressing to hear, considering that he was working in a treatment facility with highly disturbed clients, half of whom were referred for “mental health” issues and the other half for substance use disorders. Triggers abounded for this emerging clinician, who thankfully and much to his credit was simultaneously receiving counseling, attending Sex Addiction Anonymous (SAA), and supervision with me.

And then came C, an attractive, thirty-something, HIV-positive client with an early family history not very different from S’s, and who like him was a self-described “sex addict,” was involved in a BDSM relationship with someone considerably older, who worked in a sex shop much like the ones S historically frequented, and who also sought sexual hookups with strangers like he had (up until only recently).

While my primary obligation was to my supervisee, I was also technically accountable to his client. And in light of the similarity of their early adversities and subsequent behavior, I was compelled to carefully monitor what I considered to be the inevitable emergence of countertransference.

As a clinician, clinical educator, and supervisor, I am familiar with the many manifestations of countertransference, especially among freshly-minted therapists and those who may not yet have met, let alone confronted, their own demons. And I know that although clinicians sometimes benefit psychologically from their work with clients, there is a powerful edict in our field that says, “thou shall not use your clients for self-healing.” But it happens, and sometimes, as they say, the universe sends us the clients we need, although it remains important that the clinician not use or exploit the therapeutic relationship for their own psychological gain.

At the outset of his work with C, and much to his credit, S immediately recognized similarities between his and his client’s story and problematic behaviors. He knew that a minefield lay ahead, saying to me, “My mind was racing 100 miles per hour when he told me about his life.” C was the kind of person—young, attractive, needy—that he might have hooked up with on the outside, although he very quickly recognized that crossing this particular boundary would be career suicide and would leave everyone devastated in its wake. While he wasn’t concerned that he might cross that particular line, S was deeply concerned that his client would trigger him to act out in his own life, so had to be vigilant for feelings and thoughts that heightened his own anxiety and which were historically triggers for his compulsive use of pornography and search for hookups. I was very relieved that he had broached this difficult topic with his own therapist, was sharing it with me in supervision, and had been attending a local SAA meeting.

Along this path of inquiry, I have conceptualized S’s treatment of C as his own, rather than his client’s exposure with response prevention (ERP). In this case, the ERP is not being used directly, or even consciously, in the service of the client’s sexual obsessions and compulsions as it might otherwise be, but instead as S’s own means of monitoring the triggers that the therapeutic work has evoked, and thus as a way to mitigate the impact of those triggers within himself so he is able to control his own sexual obsessions and compulsions. While I initially thought it might be more effective to keep this insight to myself, I decided that sharing it with S might aid the supervision, and in turn positively impact his therapeutic work with C.

And so, I inquired and learned that in addition to his own therapeutic and supervisory work, S was doing some powerful internal work when in the room with C. Like himself, C had survived, albeit scathed, from a traumatic earlier life and had stopped growing in early adolescence. It helped S to conceptualize him as a vulnerable teenager who needed a deeply supportive and empathetic clinician who could relate, although not project. Only in this way could he simultaneously help C to develop more mature, effective, and developmentally appropriate intrapsychic and behavioral coping skills for addressing his own intra and interpersonal challenges. My supervisee and his client, both wounded and fragile in their own right, are growing together.

***

As of this writing, I have yet to speak with S’s therapist and may or may not, but I am very appreciative to know that together they are discussing, among his other issues, countertransference matters and how they are factoring into his therapy with C. I felt and still do that it is my role to carefully explore the countertransference for the purpose of helping S recognize not only the triggers in the therapeutic work, but to become as aware as possible of the ways they impact not only that work but his own personal life.



File under: The Art of Psychotherapy, Musings and Reflections, Therapy Training