|
Even therapists can get buffaloed, even by clients that they've had for a long time and in theory know well. Maybe especially if they know the client well and consider him/her a friend... Therapists can be led by emotion, too (and that's actually the prime reason that I am no longer in full-time practice. I am really hideously bad at the continual detachment required; I can't turn it on and off the way some people can.)
I seem to recall that Doug has, among other things, Borderline PD. One of my training advisors, lo this decade ago now, sat me down one day and gave me the best advice about being a therapist for BPD clients possible: the person on the other side of the desk is not reliable. It's not personal and it's not a reflection upon either therapist or the client's best intentions... it's a wiring fault and it has to be managed like a chronic illness or addiction recovery. It can't be cured, it can only be mitigated and the therapist's job in those situations is to teach mitigation strategies and observe the client's behaviors and entire world, not just what the client perceives and relates. BPD is tragic mostly because it DOES put people who are basically well-intentioned and well disposed in a situation where their only effective survival strategy is to manipulate their environment and the people in it. Thus, she really reinforced to me that when dealing with a BD client, the people who can best assess the client's behavior are not the client and therapist, but those around the client on a highly regular basis. I never forgot that, but my advisor had been in the field for all of her adult life by that point, and a lot of therapists seem to forget that very basic rule from time to time.
As for the breach of trust in showing the email, that was utterly unforgivable. To tell any client that their primary care giver is in need of respite (which is basically what you need and is both utterly reasonable and utterly sensible and what should have been happening all along) when that client would immediately consider respite to be abandonment is not only irresponsible and unethical, but cruel. The fact that you have not had respite built in to the care for Doug from the beginning is a lot startling to me to begin with; Even ten years ago when I was still in my internship, we always set up respite care for cases where a client needed supervision or assistance and there were few primary caregivers. That was standard operating procedure, whether the respite was getting a day nurse in three times a week for the physically disabled or getting a child into an educational-therapeutic center, or having trained care workers come into an Alzheimer's patient's home.
Were you two my clients, I would not consider it an unreasonable or at all threatening to the safety and security of Doug. It sounds imminently sensible. And yes, I would work with him to realize that the classes he needs and the supervision he needs are the best things for him... but jeezie creezie!! There's such a thing as TACT. That's my bloody definition of the job: the person who is paid to tell you the things you don't want to hear in a way you can't refuse them and will make you like what you have to do that you don't want to do. Yes, maybe she was having a bad week... but her job is to leave her bad week outside her office door. If she can't do that consistently, she needs to get out of the job and get into research (my choice) or do something that is less critical to the functioning and future of the people she works with, like bomb disposal or smoke jumping.
The only thing I can offer other than virtual hugs and support is this: what's the trauma of finding and establishing a new relationship with a therapist going to be like? Is it going to cause more upheaval and pain and suffering than having a sitdown and come to Jeebus meeting with the therapist, one on one?
(I walked away from this post for a bit because I needed to work on something I was cooking.... but of course I was still thinking...) One other thing... Have you had any indication that perhaps the therapist would like Doug to move on to another therapist or that she's tired of working with the two of you? A stupid breach of trust like that (and it really is stupid - not something I'd expect of an experienced and long-term therapist-client relationship) may be her way of trying to force the situation, to force you two to "fire" her so that she doesn't have to "quit." Then she can make herself believe that she was innocent and blameless and that she no longer has to be responsible. It basically could be a way to get herself out of a situation she can't handle anymore without subjecting herself to the guilt of walking out. It's that whole emotional conflict of being both a therapist and a friend; having lost the detachment of being a therapist, the only way to get herself out of the therapeutic relationship is to cause a breach of such mind-bogglingly idiotic consequences that there are no choices left for you and Doug but to break off both the therapeutic and friendly relationships. (Which of course is about the worst possible thing for Doug, since abandonment issues are all over the place...)
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
