Working with "Draining Clients"
Often I hear massage therapists indicating that they are feeling
drained after working - that their clients are somehow sucking the life out of
them.
Do you often feel tired and exhausted after a day of working
with clients? Is your body in pain? Do you run to the shower
thinking that it will help to get rid of that excess energy you are picking up
from clients?
Making a statement such as this says more about yourself than
the clients. Someone can and will drain you if you let them. A
statement of saying "I feel drained" is acknowledging a feeling - You
are drained. A feeling is just an
indicator of whether or not our needs are being met or not. A
negative feeling such as this means that there is some underlying need that we
have that is not being met.
Our needs are often unconscious. Carl Jung has stated
"What we are unconscious of will become our fate." All we
need to do to see what we are unconscious of is to examine what we do have in
our lives.
As massage therapists, it is often easier to see what others
need and work to take care of those. Knowing the difference between "caretaking"
and "caregiving" can begin the process of discovering the underlying
needs that we have.
| "When we caretake we assume responsibility for our
clients’ healing. When we caregive we support clients in assuming
responsibility for their own healing.
In all helping professions it is necessary to discern whose needs are
being met; the practitioner or the client… this is a major reason for
supervision. At the deepest level the issue is over who controls the
healing process, the client or the practitioner, and for how long?
Difficulties arise when we inappropriately assume a parental or
caretaking role with our clients."
Jack Blackburn
www.presencingsource.com
(see articles section) |
Caretaking is another word for rescuing or "fixing". (see
also The Drama Triangle) We are really on the Drama Triangle when we are
trying to fix or rescue clients. We are caretaking when we are constantly
trying to give our clients advice. We recommend that they go to our
favorite health care provider. We give nutritional advise that is out of our
scope of practice.
There may be instances of certain people who are so called
"energy vampires" who are extremely needy and work to manipulate
others. You will know the difference because you will feel
immediately uncomfortable after the session or you will start noticing that you
don't look forward to seeing this client.
You do have a choice in who you work on. One of my massage
teachers always asked "Are you working on nurturing
clients?" We do have the right to "fire" any client
that we don't want to work with for any reason.
The way to heal the "feeling that clients are draining to
work with" is to discover the needs that are underlying the feeling.
When we can become conscious of this need and learn to get this need met in
other places besides our practice, we will often see a soft shift in our
lives.
Working with a supervisor or peer supervision group can help you
become aware of the ways you stay stuck in this pattern of caretaking.
