How Embracing Self-Determination Can Unburden a Therapist
By Alicia Kwande
As a therapist, you’ve probably all said it at least once, “I’m going into this field because I want to help people.” Yet, once you enter the counseling room, the helping can start to look very different than what you imagined.
Clients come to you in pain or struggling with certain issues and sometimes the path out of suffering seems like a clear and unquestioned direction for a client to take. Possibly, you hold values that you think are the key to a successful and happy life because those values have led you in a positive direction. Our good intentions may be good, but they also may not be for every client who comes to you for counseling.
Balancing Between Helping and Doing with Clients: Self-Determination
Sometimes people will ask me how it is that I can sit with people all day who are in such deep pain and who are suffering, and not be negatively impacted. While there are many components to approaching counseling so that you don’t carry it home, one important key for me was embracing client self-determination.
Clients come in with their own experiences and knowledge of the world. While you can provide challenges to irrational thought patterns, destructive core beliefs, and unhealthy relational dynamics, you cannot fully be the expert on someone else’s life.
As a counselor, if you’ve been instructed to “meet the client where they are,” you have some sense of the idea that clients have their own process. But do we really believe that they are the experts on their lives? What do you do when someone seems to be making terrible life choices, or you can see how the decision they are making will play out to harm them? Can you let them be the expert then?
How to Not Place Your Values on Your Clients
You care about your clients and want the best for them. Yet, there is a difference between being an objective sounding board, with reason, sound judgment, and clinical wisdom; and placing your values upon a client because you know that your values will lead to a satisfied life.
It worked for you didn’t it? Wanting the best for clients, with self-determination in mind, means that you want them to find their own path to what brings satisfaction and fulfillment aligned with their own values. It is identifying what stands in the way of living out their values rather than imposing your values on them.
Learning to Let Go as a Therapist
Once I learned to really let clients fully hold the ownership of goals, doing the therapeutic work, and determining the values that matter to them, the burden they are carrying did not become my own. At the same time, I also have the energy to come alongside them and lend support to them as they carry the burden, while offloading bits of it each time we talk.
We as counselors have responsibilities to our clients, but are not responsible for our clients. Making room for self-determination lets the responsibility live where it belongs and can unburden you of carrying that for your clients.
How can we help
If you are struggling with balancing caring versus self-determination with your clients, consider joining our consultation community for licensed therapists where you can get support to process through this!
Author Bio
Alicia Kwande is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) and Clinical Supervisor. She provides group and individual clinical supervision for provisionally licensed counselors and social workers, along with clinical consultation for independently licensed therapists. Alicia enjoys helping therapists develop confidence in their abilities, especially those in their second careers, and practicing from a multicultural lens.
