Sparky’s Cylinder Model
Beginning students of psychotherapy inevitably wonder how therapists can close their office doors at the end of the day and go home without being haunted by all they have heard from clients. I have struggled with this important question throughout my career. Empathy is not something we can turn on and off like a light switch; it is as much a part of ourselves as our breathing. Our nerve endings are out there and subject to being buffeted by everything and anything that comes along. Accordingly, it becomes essential to be able to set limiting boundaries to our reactivity.
Try to imagine your therapist self as a cylinder open at both ends. My cylinder is made of stainless steel, although yours could be macramé, paper-mache, or whatever material strikes your fancy. The impressions and emotions expressed by clients enter the front of the cylinder, go through several filters, and come out at the other end. But when emotional material gets stuck inside the cylinder, we open ourselves to the dangers of emotional overload or burnout to a crisp degree.
The filters must be monitored routinely in order to not impede the flow.
Naturally, from time to time, I take feelings encited by a therapeutic moment home with me. This is a warning bell. It means that something in the client’s story has touched me, engaging a part of my own psychological process that I may or may not clearly understand. The fact that I remember the event, however, signals thaat I have to deal with it somehow. I can try thinking about the event’s symbolic connection to my own history or I can talk to someone, a wife, for example; someone with no psychotherapy diplomas but gifted with practicality and common sense. Often such a person is very helpful, uncovering points of view I had not dreamed of considering.
If I am unable to resolve the issue at this level, I will move to a second step in the self-monitoring process, calling a professional colleague for peer supervision. I have done this fruitfully throughout my career and colleagues have reciprocated, from time to time bringing their parallel issues to me. However, I do not find asking for help easy to do—it is one of my imperfectly resolved issues. But knowing that I must use every method to get the clarity needed for my own health and that of the patient, I am able to overcome any resistance.
In any well functioning group of professionals, people naturally reach out in this way all the time. The process can take place informally ‘round the coffee pot or more formally in a consultation hour. What I get in return for my investment is blessed piece of mind.
On the other hand, if we should be so dense and insensitive as to ignore these important interior warnings, we increase chances for disaster. While it has never happened to me I can too easily imagine being phoned by an emergency room technician informing me that a client of mine has just overdosed on every pill in the medicine cabinet. Were we to be caught off guard by such an event, it means there is something very important that we are not seeing because of our particular blindness.
Though you will find that by and large the cylinder model works well, yours (like mine) may acquire permanent nicks and dents. I remember working with a particular client, doing a role-play of a typical family meal. The client chose the family members from the group participants and assigned her father to the head of the table, her mother to the foot of the table, and the twins, Terry and Tony, across from her. When it came time for her to join the table she crawled under it and her voice came from the floor. “Judith”, I said, “What in the world are you doing?” Her unforgettable answer: “My father told me that since I ate like an animal, I had to eat my dinner on the floor under the table like an animal, and until I was 16 and left home, I did so.”
The details of this young women’s daily humiliation were too much for me and I could not go on. My co-therapist observed what was happening and was able to smooth over my reaction until I could get my marbles together. I had hoped that by telling this story here I would somehow diminish its emotional impact but the tactic has failed. Because the event occurred more than twenty years ago, my reaction to it looks permanent. We should call such experiences occupational hazards.
The vital thing, however, is never to ignore an emotional topic that we carry away from the office. Though the Cylinder Model may be rough around the edges, in looking closely at those topics, I always learn a lot both about myself and about the nature of my connection to the client. Moreover, we therapists have the peculiar benefit that when we are working on our own emotional problem, the very next client through the door miraculously exhibits the identical difficulty.
Who can imagine the greatness of the Being that arranges all such co-incidences? As therapists, we can only be grateful. And, in general, it seems only fair that if I am encouraging a client in the direction of self-growth, I subject myself to the same expectations.
Of course, I will never ever understand how, when I am wrestling with a personal issue in my own life, the very next client in the door has the uncanny knack of presenting me his or her parallel problem. It is uncanny! Who keeps track of all of that? I have long ceased wondering about it but simply regard it as an ongoing phenomenon.