More than a Mirror: How Clients Influence Therapists' Lives

Description

Whether you're a therapist yourself, studying to become a therapist, or simply interested in the mystery that often surrounds therapy, More than a Mirror will show you the rarely discussed, “invisible” side of the therapeutic experience--how clients influence the person of the therapist. In this collection of vignettes and thoughtful explorations, over 20 therapists describe for you... Read more

Whether you're a therapist yourself, studying to become a therapist, or simply interested in the mystery that often surrounds therapy, More than a Mirror will show you the rarely discussed, “invisible” side of the therapeutic experience--how clients influence the person of the therapist. In this collection of vignettes and thoughtful explorations, over 20 therapists describe for you how particular clients, issues, and the practice of therapy in general impact them as people.

Writing about therapy is almost universally about how therapists influence clients. In More than a Mirror, therapists describe a range of responses to their work: some talk about what they have learned from particular clients; some discuss aspects of the work of therapy, such as bearing witness to stories of trauma or having to report suspected child abuse, and examine how these experiences affect them personally; and some describe the gifts and costs of doing therapy as a life's work. As you share these therapists’experiences, you'll notice some themes running throughout, including:

how doing therapy heals the therapist
empathy as a way to access transcendence
the therapist's responses to encountering racism
the particular struggles of a new therapist
the personal toll of working with the dying
the therapist's sexual feelings
how doing therapy changes the therapist over time
the struggles of working with angry or manipulative clients

Editor Marcia Hill, EdD, a psychotherapist in private practice, elaborates, “It is not easy to examine how deeply and personally both the practice of therapy and individual clients influence therapists as people. This book shows you that therapy is not a one-way process, although the therapist is clearly there in service of the client. . . . Yet therapy affects the therapist profoundly and irrevocably. Every client moves us emotionally; we learn something from each person. The business of bearing witness to so many lives transforms us as no other work could. We may write and talk about therapy as if it were all about how to impact the client, but all the time we, too, are being impacted.”

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My Heart Is Broken by a Five-Year-Old Who “Abandons” Me
There but for the Grace of God: Two Black Women Therapists Explore Privilege
Hope
Bearing Witness to the Unspeakable
Joining the Expedition: Journal of a Therapist-in-Training
Lessons Learned: A Psychologist's Perspective on Psychotherapy
The Effect of a Therapist's Pregnancy on a Therapeutic Relationship with an Inmate Charged with Infanticide
Happy, Happy, Happy
Death Work: One Psychotherapist's Journey
Mystical Experience of a Counsellor: An Autobiographical Journey
Exploring Intimacy in Therapy: Broadening the Interpretation of Arousal
The Wish to Become a Mother
Victims, Survivors, and Veterans: A Circle of Courage
Border-Crossing on a Racist Terrain
Merger and Unconditional Love as Transformative Experiences
Female Therapist, Male Client: Challenging Beliefs--A Personal Journey
Traumatic Therapy: How Helping Rape Victims Affects Me as a Therapist
Frank Revelations of a Difficult Therapy Experience: Countertransference Observations
Parallel Process: Client and Therapist Explore Motherloss
Overcoming My Model of Goodness as a Psychotherapist: Setting Boundaries--The Case of Tina
Mandatory Reporting and Professional Dilemmas: A Case Study
Changes: The Personal Consequences of the Practice of Psychotherapy
Index
Reference Notes Included

Author(s)

Biography

Marcia Hill

More than a Mirror How Clients Influence Therapists' Lives

Description

Table of Contents

Author(s)

Biography

SOCIAL NETWORKS

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