I hope everyone enjoyed the convention. I have been continuing to think about Susan Regas' Presidential Address on raising self-awareness and self-acceptance among psychologists, particularly during training, to help us all become better clinicians. As psychologists, we are acutely aware of the experiences of our clients. We try to support them through their times of stress, anxiety, grief, joy and resilience. It seems impossible to do this without awareness of our own experiences that we bring in to the room. We need to stay as aware of our personal growth as we do of our professional growth.
Personal values and life experiences inform our work, which becomes even more complicated when working with families, as we have to consider the way each member of the family system is experiencing the family dynamics and the way they are experiencing the session. Each family member's responses can vary from moment to moment, session to session. It would make sense that our own values and experiences may influence each member of the system differently.
I have been thinking about self-awareness, self-recognition and how my own experiences influence my work, leading me to think about self-disclosures as a therapist. There is strong support for the use of self-disclosures as a therapist, and indeed, Janine Roberts states, “Research shows that clients consistently rate therapists' disclosures as useful — when they're done skillfully (2016).” However, I know for many of us, when and how to use self-disclosures is a personal choice. Furthermore, the decision to self-disclose or not self-disclose is one that requires nuance and certainly an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the client, and their ability to receive the information.
Self-disclosure can be deliberate or non-deliberate, verbal or nonverbal and avoidable or unavoidable. There are certainly times when the self-disclosure is inadvertent. For example, I am currently pregnant, and at a certain point, self-disclosure that I am expecting a child is inevitable. Pregnancy is not something that can be hidden — from anyone. People at the supermarket stop me to “guess” whether I am carrying a boy or a girl (it's a boy), ask if it is my first child (it's not) and ask how far along I am (not far enough given the Georgia heat over the summer). There is a detachment in the way I move through these encounters. When my clients ask these questions, however, it is much harder to decide how to answer. We are all aware of the intimacy and alliance necessary in a therapeutic session for the therapy to be productive; it seems disingenuous to expect my clients to open up to me while I give them a contrived, supermarket stranger, answer to the questions they have about my growing belly.
The clinical work I do also factors in. I work with families in transition or going through divorce. Many of my therapy clients are seeking guidance about how to cope with their divorce and remain child-focused. Am I unintentionally conveying that my family is blossoming while theirs is, in their opinion, falling apart? I believe that self-disclosure can, when handled appropriately, show our clients our own humanity and vulnerability and allow for a greater connection. However, in this instance, I worry my unavoidable self-disclosure shifts the focus of the treatment away from the patient or family I am trying to help. When working with many members of a family, the self-disclosure is filtered and interpreted through multiple lenses.
As always, I have found it helpful to consult with colleagues and mentors who have been in this position before me. I have sought guidance about how to handle my pregnancy while maintaining my practice and relied on my clinical judgments to navigate this inadvertent disclosure of my personal life.
Do you have thoughts about the Presidential Address or therapist self-disclosures? Is there an area of clinical practice you would like to see in this column? Would you like to tell the membership about yourself and your clinical practice? Email and let me know.
In conclusion, I want to congratulate our newest fellows to Div. 43: Robin Deutsch, PhD, ABPP; Shalonda Kelly, PhD; and Patricia Pitta, PhD, ABPP. These individuals have made significant and distinctive contributions to family psychology in one or more of the following areas: scientific achievement, professional practice, leadership and administration, teaching and training and/or recognition of excellence. Over my next few columns, I will be featuring these new fellows and their contributions to the area of family psychology.