Therapist on a Tightrope
Dealing with Issues of Therapist Boundaries and Notions of Responsibility
This workshop grapples with the ever present challenge for therapists of remaining well engaged
without joining the clients' emotional system and becoming overly helpful.
The more a therapist starts functioning for a client (eg. determining what they feel, think and need),
the more the client is invited to give up their own functioning.
A reciprocal pattern of stuckness can ensue.
Becoming incorporated into the clients' emotional system can be a subtle process for both experienced
and beginning therapists and becomes evident to the therapist by indicators such as:
extending sessions,
between session contact,
ruminating about clients,
making allowances for client lateness,
doubting their own competence and
therapist burnout.
Bowen believed that the most important therapy intervention is for the therapist to stay
out of the emotional system (ie. not get triangled).
This workshop will focus on understanding how being overly helpful fits into emotional
process and how a therapist can avoid the subtle invitation to join the clients' system.
The effects of therapist over-responsibility will be considered as will the family of origin contexts
that prepare those in the helping professions to over-function, rescue or take responsibility for others.
Participants will be encouraged to recognize their own "over responsibility" warning
signs and to develop strategies for shifting to a role that invites the client to take responsibility
for their own change efforts in collaboration with a compassionate and engaged therapist.
Program includes:
Understanding the therapeutic relationship from a Family Systems perspective:
What does it mean to be engaged with the client system without becoming part of the emotional process?
Comparison with other therapy approaches?
The invitation to triangle: How therapists come to the party without "rsvp"ing
- recognizing the subtle invitations to move into an over responsible role
Video excerpt: A dominating father and under functioning adolescent:
How does the therapist get organized?
The underfunctioning / overfunctioning dilemma: Understanding its role in managing anxiety
Understanding family of origin roles that program us to rescue, fix, mediate and protect.
Trainers will illustrate this from their own families.
A case example: Getting stuck and finding a way back on track.
Who is responsible for what? What are the therapist's responsibilities? What are clients' responsibilities?
What about duty of care?
Walking the tightrope: developing strategies for maintaing a self focus while staying connected to and
engaged with the clients problems
Questions and wrap up discussion | 
