Counselling Dilemma: An “Emotionally Draining” Client
You have been working with a male client who has been experiencing anxiety and depression issues. He said that he came to see you after his wife asked him, because she said he was “suffocating” her when anxiety is a major feature in his life.
The first session revealed that the anxiety may be persistent as he was not happy at work, although he did fleetingly mention that he is not talking to his brothers because “they let him down”. When he attended the next session, three weeks later, he was upbeat and said that he had managed to stave the anxiety and depression as he had addressed the work issue. Whilst enquiring about the abilities and resources that he used to help him, you suddenly feel drained.
What would you do next? Would you ask yourself any questions about what you are experiencing? How would you stay present? Would you consider it appropriate to raise how you felt with the client? Does gender affect the way you would communicate with the client?
I think if you felt it might help the therapeutic process then “yes” I would bring it up, as it may help to work through any incongruences or miscommunication that has occurred,; whether they are from the client’s end, or the counsellor’s. You would of course need to stay as present as possible, so talking about how you are feeling with the client may help. Another option would be to try and stay as focused as possible and then perhaps take this issue to supervision, and also do some self-reflecting yourself to work out whether it was really just you or the client.
If you are still adamant it was the client, you could bring it up in your next session. Personally I don’t think the fact that the client is a male would make any difference to how I would work through this issue, as I would want to remain as authentic and congruent to the client as possible.
Working from a transpersonal approach it would be useful information to notice changes in my body and the loss of energy is clearly that. I would first reflect on whether I thought the feeling belonged to me or not. Is the client draining my energy? Has the client triggered this response in me? If I felt that the feeling did not belong to me I would describe the feeling to my client and ask him if he is experiencing or had experienced this feeling recently.
My experience with working this way tends to always confirm that the feeling belongs to the client and that I have picked it up empathically and intuitively. It would be very appropriate to raise this with the client because it might help him discuss these feelings further. Together we could explore what the feeling meant to him and how it affected his body, his energy levels, his emotional well-being and his behavior as a result. The fact that he was a man would make no difference to my response.
If I believed the feeling belonged to me and that the client had triggered that response in me I would take this issue to supervision to discuss with my supervisor. A reaction like that would be very important to discuss so that I can move through it and work productively with the client in the future. In this instance my supervisor and I would work on finding out why the feeling was triggered within me and then we would work on addressing the reason so that it healed within me and did not affect the client.
I would not advise the client of how I felt as they might become worried about my wellbeing instead of their own and I would view this as being unprofessional. I would take note of my feelings and ask myself what it was about what the client was saying to me that might be making me feel this way; whether I was being triggered by his comments, and why.
I would take deep breaths and breathe through the heaviness and perhaps choose this moment to ask the client how he was feeling about the resources he chose to use. I might talk about a heaviness in the room that I was picking up at the appropriate moment and enquire if he felt it. This might create an opening for him to think about and talk about any possible deeper feelings he might be having.
If he were masking his apparent recovery he might feel it appropriate to reveal this to me at that point. I do believe gender does affect the way I communicate with clients. This no doubt will have a subconscious element and a conscious element to it based on my past experiences with men. I would be mindful to ensure my body language does not reflect any of my issues and I would strive to ensure I had unconditional positive regard for my client.