Category: Transference/Countertransference

Beginning therapists typically struggle with a particular issue that can be the cause of much consternation given that they tend to be “nice” people. You might already know where I’m going with this—therapists struggle with interrupting, cutting off, butting in, or engaging in any kind of behavior with clients that might be perceived as rude.

Under what conditions would a therapist ever need to resort to anything that resembles rudeness? I could give you a number of reasons, but I’ll limit myself to just one. A client could consciously or unconsciously avoid a certain topic for fear that it will be overwhelming for them, or because they don’t want to own up to something or acknowledge the impact of X on their life. A “nice” therapist will not want to upset their client; they will indulge the client’s avoidance by following the client-led conversation along a subject-hopping surface-level path. But ultimately, this is not to the client’s benefit.

We are not in the business of being nice, we are in the business of healing. And healing can hurt. If I am truly committed to the healing of my clients, I have to be willing to be rude, or at least act in a manner that may strike the client as such—to interrupt their avoidance and redirect their attention, sometimes kicking and screaming, to the topic they are sidestepping. My motivation is not to be sadistic, for I know that those areas that clients avoid are usually those that contain the greatest potential for growth and healing. But by indulging in their avoidance, I potentially infantilize my client. I reinforce the implicit notion that they are weak and incapable of facing the issue. Therefore, I have to notice the niceness tendency within myself and purposely tell myself that what feels comfortable is not for the ultimate good of the client. I then have to step outside of my comfort zone and act out a behavior that in most circumstances would be considered rude. This might include talking over my client by raising my voice and refusing to stop until they relinquish the reins of the conversation.

Now, this is where the art comes into play. When interrupting, I am trying my best to be artfully rude, but never disrespectful. I never denigrate or judge my client. I never put them down or do anything that undermines their dignity. Rather, my rude interjection comes from a place of empathy and understanding. I get it! I avoid hard stuff, too! It’s painful to look in the metaphorical mirror and face yourself. But avoiding the mirror only elongates my problems; it only gives more time and space for my issues to grow. So, if I truly love myself, I must drag myself over to the mirror and force myself to look. I need to love my clients in the same way.

I remember working with a middle-aged mother who had recently suffered a number of setbacks in her life. I remember looking at her and thinking to myself that she seemed so sad. Despite my best efforts to focus on and build up the positives in her life, no footing could be found in anything resembling hope. I remember one session in particular, where she kept talking about her knitting group and one group member’s relationship problems. I asked why it was important to discuss this person and not what was going on in her life. She said she was worried about her friend and was really trying to help her. I kept pressing my client to get a better sense of what she was thinking and feeling.

Over the course of our conversation, it became clear to me that my client felt as if her life was over—she had no sense of a future, and she was just trying to help someone, anyone, before she took her own life. She didn’t say this outright, but I could read between the lines that my client was considering suicide. I felt an internal panic when I realized this. I really liked this client. She reminded me of my own mother in some ways. I also felt a tremendous urge to keep the conversation away from the topic of suicide, to indulge my client’s wish of focusing on her friend in the knitting group. I also knew I could not let her leave my office without assessing her risk level. I took a deep breath, and as kindly as I could, I interrupted her and asked if she had been or was currently thinking about hurting or killing herself. The tears started rolling down her cheeks. What followed was a very helpful conversation that involved a safety plan, engaging with a support network, providing contact information in case of an emergency, and pulling in additional services. The conversation shed light on her under-the-radar risk for suicide that had developed over the last few weeks and provided a space for planning and support. That conversation needed to happen.

And I thank the art of rudeness for giving me the insight and words to respectfully interrupt my client and ask a tough question.

I don’t typically assign homework to patients, at least not in the traditional sense. But when patients ask for something to work on during the week, something that would help maintain the momentum they’ve gathered in resolving distress, I suggest they think about our work—to reflect on the themes we’re uncovering and how they apply to their current experiences. I emphasize that while growth starts in session, it is a process that continues after.

The work of therapy is not limited to 50-minute sessions every week; it’s happening during all that time in between, too—for both patients and therapists. I think about my patients after sessions as well; it is only natural when we’re working persistently, week after week, to understand sources of distress and facilitate change. Some of my own insights about my relationships with patients occur when I’m off the clock. And in the same way I ask patients to make sense of their thoughts, it’s equally important that I do the same.

The Regulars

While picking up the living room the other night, it suddenly occurred to me: my patient earlier in the day had spent the entire session attempting to get my approval in the same indirect way he tried to engage with his mother in the past. Amaan* and I had been working together for almost two years, and a large theme in our work has been recognizing his mother’s limited capacity for offering emotional support and the impact this has had on his efforts in current relationships. Amaan has made great progress in integrating his experiences of his mother, coming to terms with what she may never be able to give him; I realized suddenly that he was trying to cast me in that now-vacant role. In session, he had listed the areas in which he felt he had grown, the insights he had fostered about himself, and the clarity with which he felt he could move forward. I actually agreed entirely with him, but there was something about the way he expected me to corroborate his own opinions, as though anything but clear agreement on my part would undermine all his progress.

I thought about why this did not occur to me during session; after all, this is someone I’ve come to know very well, and was part of a conversation related to the exact theme we’ve been identifying for quite some time. I’ve gathered that at times, my patients’ ways of relating directly complement my own—I enjoy validating their experiences and highlighting progress we’ve made together. Recognizing Amaan’s progress would also mean an opportunity in recognizing my own as his therapist, but I have to remind myself this is not about my own ego. With this discovery, I can return to future sessions with even more awareness of what Amaan is attempting to reconstruct in our relationship and identify his efforts in real time. More importantly, I can encourage him to take faith in his own progress as he recognizes it, not through me.

Realizing blind spots are not the only reasons I find myself thinking about patients, though. Sometimes I find myself thinking about them out of genuine care, concern, and curiosity for what they are going through. Did their husband take the news well? They were grappling with whether to call their mom—what did they decide? Did our session help provide any clarity? When I find myself wanting to know more, I think about what this says of the patient more than it says of me. Perhaps the patient’s general motivation is to keep others engaged by employing a “stay tuned” attitude—and it certainly works. Maybe it is unlike a patient to attract this much concern, which is even more telling of the gravity of their distress.

Other times, a patient stays with me in a gnawing way, long after the session is over. I wonder if they’re feeling it, too. This feeling lingers after sessions where it felt like a patient was not feeling something enough. These moments feel like a dramatic irony, in which I see the whole story but they’re not yet ready to. Depending on the patient, I may use these thoughts to motivate an intervention—point out distorted thinking or question their assumptions. But if it feels so strong, I may realize that this patient needs me to hold on to the feelings they cannot yet own until they are fully capable of doing so. And that guides our work—preparing them for a realization instead of directly handing them one.

The Absentees

What about the patients who regularly cancel or forget? The patients who are ambivalent about therapy, saying that they really want to be here, but their attendance say otherwise. How is it that the patients we see less often seem to take up the most space in our minds? I’ve gathered that they use their absence to communicate something to me—to shake things up, to make me feel more toward them, to get me more engaged, only for them to walk away. When patients cancel repeatedly, or even no-show, I’ve learned that rather than take feelings toward them at face value, it’s more beneficial to use these feelings as a cue to their ambivalence about treatment.

Melanie* is a newer patient of mine, unknown to therapy in the past. In session she would often say she wasn’t sure if therapy would be helpful and was confused as to why she was here in the first place. After her initial distress regarding her relationship with her father had subsided, she grappled with how to use the space, minimized other stressors, and looked to me for direction. Her anxiety about being in therapy but not knowing how to make use of the time likely explains her frequent cancellations without request to reschedule.

Initially, I offered to reschedule and was usually met with the impossibility of doing so. Over time, I began to feel resentful of the way in which she treated our relationship and disappointed in being more interested in her experience than she was. These feelings stayed with me, and I wondered for a while how to make sense of them. Why did I seem to care more than she did? I remembered how she had a “one foot in, one foot out” attitude at the start of most sessions but eventually warmed up after a few minutes. Her ambivalence made sense all of a sudden—she needed validation for the pain she felt so deeply before being able to commit to the space and herself.

The Graduates

And then there are the patients I’ve worked with in the past. I wonder so often how they are doing—if they ever married that guy we spent so many sessions talking about, if they ever found what they were looking for that we could not seem to find together, if they think about the relationship we shared at all. For some time in both our lives, we were constants for each other. For as much as I was a part of their lives, they were a part of mine. Therapeutic relationships coming to an end means coming to terms with possibly never hearing from our patients again. But I still let myself wonder how they’re doing. When I think of these patients, I am reminded of what seemed to be most helpful, what wasn’t, what they learned, and what I did. I think about how much I’ve grown and changed because of every relationship I have had with a patient and how to make meaning of this growth for myself and other patients.

From time to time, I have run into some previous patients. Pauline* stands out to me, since I ran into her at a time when I was going through some personal life transitions and was caught off guard in seeing her. But in the few minutes we spoke, she shared that she had made many steps forward in ways we hadn’t even spoken about but in ways she was very proud of. And I was so proud of her, too. I remember when our work ended, I wondered if I could have done more to foster more insight and self-compassion. She had not accomplished her goals in the ways she intended at the start and our work had to end abruptly. In running into her, I learned that even if our relationship ended, the work continued. She too was changed because of it, and it continued to impact her motivation to take steps toward herself.

***

Patients wonder if we think about them just as they are thinking about us. When I tell patients that I think of them or disclose that something they said has stayed with me since the last session, I can detect both surprise that they are remembered and relief for finally being seen. We want our patients to make meaning of therapy and take in the work. I think that when they realize we’ve internalized them, they’ll finally do the same.

Each week, my interns submit a summary of their clinical hours along with a “process note,” pretty standard training fare. These notes are supposed to document their internal ups and downs; the good, bad, and ugly of their week with clients whose challenges and pathologies are probably a bit above their current pay grade. Good learning opportunity, I often rationalize, especially since they have competent on-site supervisors who are there to teach, train, and support their burgeoning yet fragile clinical identities.

If the academic/clinical interface were a bit tighter, I would have these folks work their way up from simple and acute disorders to the more severe and chronic pathologies as they evolved through their training. But such is not always possible. So, for most of my trainees, this entails some arduous hikes on those steep and unmarked learning curves that we more seasoned clinicians have experienced—and still may.

Sure, we process some of the more complex clinical challenges in class, and they are in resource-rich learning environments at their sites, but for the most part this is boots-on-the-ground OJT-101. Such was recently the case, when one of my interns wrote in his process note, “I find myself dealing with [a] therapeutic boundary [with a client who] was giving signals of perversion [related to] the dress code. I felt uncomfortable and reported [this] to my supervisor, and the client was confronted. I felt supported and protected.”

I was curious about what he actually meant by the word “perversion,” given the loaded and historically pejorative nature of the term. Upon follow-up, I discovered that in this intern’s culture, women are quickly and quite aggressively shamed and oftentimes punished by family and community if they act or dress in a way that is considered immoral and violates biblical principles.

The client was a 32-year-old female attendee in a day-treatment program who, in the intern’s words, had chosen to wear “a cut-off shirt without a bra and see-through sport leggings without panties.” In that moment of discomfort, my intern abruptly ended the session by telling the client that he had to attend an intake session. He then went to his supervisor for guidance. While I was very glad that the intern took this immediately to his supervisor who gave him the support and protection he needed at the time, I was dismayed that in that very uncomfortable moment, perhaps understandably, he simply told the client that he had an intake to perform and abruptly ended the session. He lied to her.

Apparently, this was not the first time this client had approached therapy with a male clinician in this manner; she was subsequently transferred to a seasoned female clinician after her brief visit with my intern.

In retrospect, my intern understood that this might not have been the best way to handle the situation, but he had clearly been taken off guard by this “attractive woman,” was intensely uncomfortable, and expressed concern that if he did not act immediately that his “imagination” might get ahead of him. While he momentarily considered the possible role of transference in this client’s wardrobe choice, he was even more relieved that his supervisor and the clinical director handled the situation “sensibly and professionally.”

This scenario brought me back to an incident during my own training when, during a practicum placement in a state psychiatric hospital, my supervisor decided it would be instructional to set up an intake for me with one of the “chronic” patients. Soon after being ushered into the seclusion room with me—a strange choice of setting—the patient sat down facing me with her bathrobe open and nothing underneath. All I remember about that tortuous moment in time was that I froze. As then, as if from thin air, my supervisor emerged from behind the one-way mirror and into the room. Upon my supervisor’s entry, the patient immediately sat erect, closed her bathrobe, and had the most delightful conversation with my supervisor, who later said to me, “I can write a book about any patient after meeting with them once.”

In retrospect, I believe, knowing what I later learned about this man, that it was an exercise designed to humor him and shame me. After my initial embarrassment and sense of ineptitude receded, the shame set in.

Getting back to my own intern, I was very aware of not wanting to shame him and wanting his own moment of torture to be a learning opportunity for him and the rest of the class. So I asked them all to consider what they might have said in that moment, while my intern listened in and then reflected upon their responses. These included, “I probably would have done something very similar,” “I would have told her about boundaries and that I was not comfortable continuing the session,” and “I would have ended the session and rescheduled after telling her that her attire was inappropriate for the setting.”

Each of their responses was appropriate given their level of experience, but in retrospect, I was a bit disappointed, perhaps unrealistically, that none of them had considered the possibility that this client’s choice of attire might actually not have been a choice, at least not a conscious one. So, I wondered out loud with them about the possibilities that she had been sexually assaulted or trafficked or both, and/or had come to rely on seduction to navigate relationships of power imbalance, particularly with men. It might have been erotic transference. Or perhaps, it might have been none of these, and she was simply proud of her body, and had chosen not to heed past messages around the inappropriateness of this behavior.

***

As I write this, I am an hour out from my supervision class in which I hope the incident will come up again; if it doesn’t, I will bring it back into focus. I’ll be most interested to know what about that client’s behavior triggered my intern to consider it a “perversion.” Hopefully, he will not feel the shame I did many years ago, and we will have a rich discussion.

What would you have done?
 

"Yo, call me back ASAP!,” read the text message from Carl, a 20-year-old man who has self-identified as a gang member for the past seven years and who has struggled with anxiety and depressive symptoms, alongside antisocial personality traits.

I had an impulse to explain boundaries to Carl but decided against it. I knew that a dispassionate instructional ACA-type lecture would be distancing—especially via text.

Carl has been in counseling with me for three years as a requirement of his probation. He is a member of a local gang who has mentioned how his affiliation got him into trouble while growing up. He also shared his initial fear of telling me he was in a gang because of how I might “react” to him. I maintained a neutral position.

Gangs were part of the social fabric of Carl’s youth—I, too, was gang affiliated. Thus, I was personally familiar with that life, but I believe that it was because I have historically been the only Black male therapist in most of the psychiatric settings in which I worked that I was often given complex and challenging cases. This often meant working with male gang members and other males who had been charged with sex offenses (perhaps a story for another time).

I returned Carl's call because I was concerned that he had done something inappropriate with which I could help him. I was also mindful of my own insecurity. I felt as though little progress had been made in our work. Carl was also inconsistent with taking medication prescribed by his psychiatrist and in attending sessions with me. Yet he constantly told me how much he “appreciated” working with me. I viewed his text as a plea that might allow me to do something meaningful with him. I hadn’t gotten his message quite yet.

Carl answered the phone on the first ring. “I am sorry about the capital letters in my text, I don't want you to worry about me. Do you have time to talk?”

He went on to say, “I need some therapy right now.” Carl mentioned that after a domestic dispute with his girlfriend, she had been considering leaving him. “I don't know why I'm so angry” and “I wish I could get over this anger,” Carl cried.

This was refreshing and far different from Carl's usual sessions, which he tended to begin with a detached, “I'm doing good. I am safe and in good health.” Eventually, I came to realize that after being in both penal and psychiatric institutions, he was used to giving knee-jerk responses to risk assessment questionnaires. After his pleasantries, there was always a laborious discussion of his video game adventures. Today was different, although I did not understand how at that exact point.

Instead, I felt anxious in that moment. This may have been my own internal reaction to Carl's sense of anxiety. However, I also felt a strong inclination to capitalize on Carl's plea for help and felt as if I needed to come up with a clever “intervention.” I had to strike while the iron was hot. Should I use CBT? I could re-emphasize the cognitive model to Carl and how his distorted thinking contributed to his ongoing patterns of anger. No. Carl had already admonished me in the past for using “big words,” referring to clinical jargon.

Maybe, EMDR?! Could some eye movements mollify his intensity? While I am trained in both interventions—and believe they have some merit—I thought it might be better to just shut up and let Carl talk.

After a while of silent sobbing, Carl exclaimed, “I think I know what this is.” He paused.

“I used to be soft” in grade school, he went on, and after years of bullying he stood up for himself. “That's when I learned that I could fight,” said Carl, his voice cracking as he held back more tears. Carl mentioned that after a while, he learned to become the aggressor as a preemptive way of sending a message that he was a formidable opponent.

I felt stuck. Was now the time for an intervention? I fought against the impulse. Instead, I simply asked, “How do you feel now?” Carl shared that he had felt a little better and that he was glad that he could “get this off my chest.” Ironically enough, almost immediately after this revelation, the call dropped. The call dropping likely saved me from myself. I had an urge to say, “I just want you to know that you're not that little boy anymore.” I probably heard this line somewhere from a supervisor in the past. I do not actually believe it. Carl knows full well that he is not the little child who was bullied, although he might still feel like it.

I wish I could say that Carl no longer expresses anger in an unhealthy manner. I believe that it will take more than one 45-minute session for that. However, I do trust that the session was meaningful to him (and in retrospect, to me as well). He appreciated that I listened to him. I appreciated that the session felt like real therapy. It involved all of the ingredients that make therapy special: attunement, minimal encouragers, brief re-statements, warmth, empathy, compassion, the list goes on.

While still a relatively new clinician, I find myself frustrated and impatient with the mental health industry. In my brief time practicing, I have noticed that I am encouraged to quickly create and implement rigid and concrete treatment plans with goals and objectives that might say things like “decrease frequency of anger by 30% by such and such date.” I am not saying we should abandon these measures. They have a place. However, it creates a false sense of urgency to “do” something in sessions in lieu of “being” myself.

I have been in my own therapy for a few years. A secret that I have not shared is that I would cringe if my own therapist held rigidly to one treatment modality. I appreciate that she is flexible and willing to meet me where I am. However, the issues I often bring to counseling pertain to deeper questions I have about the contradictory elements of life. I do not know if the cognitive model can get me through that.

It is seductive and somewhat satisfying to have a ready list of tools and interventions that I can provide to clients. It makes me feel smart and prepared. It is not as sexy to promote the tried-and-true skills that have been empirically validated. As a disclaimer, I am not saying I reject these treatment modalities. If that were the case, I would not have spent 80+ hours learning them after graduate school—I think. I am simply saying that I should not disregard the elements of psychotherapy that have, time after time, proven themselves effective in my work with clients.

I founded a clinical think tank centered on helping gang-affiliated adolescents. It began in New York and expanded to Denver. Over the four-year course of mobilizing clinicians to research evidence-based interventions to help this population (there are none), what keeps coming up are the same principles that work with Carl.

I am reminded of how fascinating it is when I ask clients what they find helpful about working with me. I almost never hear anything about a specific intervention. What I do hear is that I am “kind,” I am “engaging,” I “relate well” with them, I am there for them during difficult times, I am “real,” and other similar sentiments.

As I look back at my three years with Carl, I can see that I have been unfairly critical of myself. I had viewed our relationship as ineffectual up to that moment I discussed at the outset of this essay. I focused on select symptoms (i.e., anger) and his inconsistency in coming to sessions (I told myself that if I were a better therapist, he would not miss sessions and he would be less angry). However, I mistakenly dismissed the fact that he often expressed his appreciation for me and had adamantly refused to work with anyone else in the past. I also ignored the fact that someone who defines themselves as “solid as concrete” is capable of being vulnerable with me.

Carl appreciates me because I strive to connect with him. For the past three years, he has known he has at least one person who doesn't view him as just a gang member or someone who is antisocial. He can look forward to my showing a genuine interest in him as a person as opposed to probing for tendencies that may deviate from the norms of society.
It is my hope that fellow therapists seek to be human with their clients prior to employing so-called standardized interventions in a reactive, knee-jerk fashion. Perhaps more of a focus on therapy and less on treatment protocols will allow for the true healing power that comes with the relationship, which I thoroughly believe is the element that heals.