This week on prac I learnt a big lesson... I have a new client who undoubtedly has a personality disorder (which I feel very strongly is the borderline type) although there is no formal diagnosis as yet. Tuesday was my first treatment session with him and before that because we went on holiday we left all our clients with some things to work through during the week we were away. Mainly things like values clarification, self discovery exercises and some questionnaires. So I arrive on Tuesday all planned for a session with him in my mind thinking I wont let him manipulate me I will be in control blah blah blah....
Well did that turn out badly.. I could not even do the session I had planned because he proceeded to question me as to why I was asking him so many questions in the documents I gave him, what did I want from him and it progressively got worse until he started interrogating me and telling me I was a young white girl that knew nothing and many other rather soul piercing things.
Naturally you want to get defensive but I knew that would only make the situation worse and in my head I kept saying he is manipulating you, he is just doing this to get his way....
But I then thought no, maybe he has reason to feel threatened. I had literally just gone in asked him a long spread of questions and then given him more stuff that picked at very personal pieces of information. Fine for a client without a personality disorder who can understand the process and what my intentions were but for someone like him it made him very paranoid and resulted in intense feelings of dislike towards me.
So now I have to take it two steps back with him and purely work on forming a trusting open relationship with him before I even think of starting to address some of his problems.
Even though this client does have a personality disorder I needed to take a look at my own actions and see that what I had done was actually causing the problem and it could easily cause problems with a client who has no personality disorder.
First take a look at yourself...
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