Rebecca Love, LCSW (She/her) discusses the importance of understanding countertransference and its impact on your work with clients as well as yourself. This is one of the most important issues to understand in your work with clients and is rarely discussed.
Rebecca Love is an entrepreneur and army veteran from Sacramento, CA. Her passion for helping others began as a medic in the Army and inspired her to pursue a career in the mental health field. After working as a therapist in correctional institutions and a large group practice, Rebecca decided to open her own private practice in November of 2020. She is now the clinical director for three associates and the practice is growing. Her love of the work of therapy and of teaching has made clinical supervision a natural fit for her.
In addition to cultivating her growing practice, Rebecca is a doctoral candidate in psychology. She is an avid reader and enjoys traveling and being outdoors. Rebecca is an advocate for the LGBTQ population, a certified grief therapist, and hopes to soon start a non-profit that provides critical intervention to suicidal clients who lack resources for specialized outpatient care. She is the mother of three and lives at home with her husband and youngest child. She is a licensed social worker in California, Colorado, South Dakota, and Rhode Island.
OFFERS & HELPFUL LINKS:
Portugal Marketing Retreat October 2-7, 2023
Rebecca Love, LCSW (She/her) discusses the importance of understanding countertransference and its impact on your work with clients as well as yourself. This is one of the most important issues to understand in your work with clients and is rarely discussed.
Rebecca Love is an entrepreneur and army veteran from Sacramento, CA. Her passion for helping others began as a medic in the Army and inspired her to pursue a career in the mental health field. After working as a therapist in correctional institutions and a large group practice, Rebecca decided to open her own private practice in November of 2020. She is now the clinical director for three associates and the practice is growing. Her love of the work of therapy and of teaching has made clinical supervision a natural fit for her.
In addition to cultivating her growing practice, Rebecca is a doctoral candidate in psychology. She is an avid reader and enjoys traveling and being outdoors. Rebecca is an advocate for the LGBTQ population, a certified grief therapist, and hopes to soon start a non-profit that provides critical intervention to suicidal clients who lack resources for specialized outpatient care. She is the mother of three and lives at home with her husband and youngest child. She is a licensed social worker in California, Colorado, South Dakota, and Rhode Island.
OFFERS & HELPFUL LINKS:
Portugal Marketing Retreat October 2-7, 2023
Jennifer Agee: Hello. Hello. And welcome to Sh*t You Wish You Learned in Grad School. I'm your host, Jennifer Agee, and with me today is Rebecca Love—what a great name. Rebecca is a, the CEO, clinical di, and Clinical Director of Heartwise Psychotherapy. She's also a licensed clinical social worker, and she's getting her Ph.D. right now. Busy lady. Um, Rebecca actually started her passion for helping others as a medic in the army, which is impressive, and that is what kind of inspired her to pursue her career in the mental health field. Um, so I just wanna welcome Rebecca to the show. Welcome.
Rebecca Love: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Jennifer Agee: You and I are actually gonna be talking about a really interesting topic today, which is countertransference. It's one of those words that we hear. We have a general understanding of what it means, but I think what it actually looks like in the therapy room sometimes gets, gets lost or we miss it. So, can you give us just a good working understanding of what countertransference is? Let's start there.
Rebecca Love: Yeah, sure. So, countertransference, well, we'll start with transference, right, which people are somewhat, uh, familiar with, which is when your client's feelings about a particular thing or person get projected onto you. Countertransference is our emotional response based on our individual experiences to something our client has said or done.
Jennifer Agee: Okay. Now, I think a lot of us as therapists think, well, we're not gonna have countertransference 'cause we've, you know, maybe done our own work or we've been to all this schooling. But if you don't think that you are subject to that, you are a fool. I'm telling you right now, because...
Rebecca Love: Absolutely.
Jennifer Agee: We're all human beings in the room. So, this is a conversation that starts with a no judgment. It starts with openness. 'Cause unless we own our own shit, we're way too likely to get caught in the weeds. So, let's just have a good, open, honest conversation so that hopefully through our experiences as well, you can start to identify areas where you might be noticing some countertransference and can get on top of it.
Rebecca Love: Yeah. I love what you said about we're all human beings in the room, and I think most of us through grad school were told that things like self-disclosure are just never okay. And then you get out into the real world, and you very quickly realize that presenting yourself as a cardboard cutout of a human being doesn't work. And so, to be a human being in the room without being self-serving, we have to be on top of our countertransference. And I, you know, I 100% agree with you. Gosh, I felt countertransference last week with a client who has very strong political opinions that are very different from mine. And, um, so it can be as, you know, simple and obvious as that, where I know my belief system, and he is clearly saying his, and I don't agree, and I've gotta figure out, right, how to respond to that in a way that's professional and appropriate. But then I also have to think about what is it that he said that was so upsetting to me, right, and where is that coming from so that I can continue to be non-judgmental and, and supportive for that person, even though we see things very differently.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. One of the things, I think, um, that happens a lot in the room is you become aware of your, of your own issues sometimes in working with clients because you realize something really landed on you, and you're not quite sure why it stuck. And it's a good place as a jumping off point for doing your own work, um, 'cause you do, you do realize that. But I wanted to say something about, kind of, the countertransference with regard to transference, what I found with clients over all of these years, is that because we do start out somewhat of a blank slate to them, right—they don't really know us yet—and through the therapeutic relationship we do develop a relationship where they do get to know parts of our personality and things like that. But in the beginning, what I found is people project onto you either what they want you to be or a version of themselves. So, like for pol- politics, right, every client thinks I agree with them on pol-, on politics, you know?
Rebecca Love: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Agee: Because they project onto you what their core values are and assume that you are in alignment with those things because they've chosen you to work with. So, often, you get thi- things put upon you without ever actively doing anything. It's just a part of the client's projection.
Rebecca Love: Yeah. And I think for some people, um, another person's narrative, right, like someone else having a narrative about you that could, that's not true or doesn't align with you, that can trigger a lot of, um, traumatic experiences for a lot of people. Um, and I think, as therapists, we really have to recognize that as well. I heard, uh, my old supervisor described us, as therapists, as like the whiteboard that the client is like writing all these things on and telling us the story, but, um, we really have to think about that, that what we're getting from them is a story, and what they believe about us, we have somewhat, we have some control over that narrative, but we have to be mindful about how we're controlling it and why.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Because if we're not mindful of it in the room, it gets in the way of the client's progress and it gets in the way of our therapeutic rapport. Because, you know, nobody wants to admit it, but sometimes there are clients we genuinely get to know, and we just don't like them that well. Or something in them is triggering something in us. Something in them feels too familiar in not a good way. And being aware of those things, I think is incredibly important to know where your own landmines are. What are the things that people step on that are gonna cause you maybe to not be able to really hold that unconditional space of acceptance?
Rebecca Love: And your landmines, that is, that's a dynamic process. You can't go to therapy for a year and be like, well, I'm good. I don't have any landmines 'cause those are gonna change. And I used to joke, like, I went into therapy so I can worry about other people's problems and ignore my own, and very quickly realize that it is the absolute opposite. The, the importance of being on top of your own shit and knowing where your landmines are is, it's, you know, I can't even think of a good word to explain how important that is and how much more important it is for us to continue to do our work. Helping people can be really cathartic, and that's, I think that's a huge reason why many of us go into this field. But helping people isn't gonna heal you. You have to be doing some active work. It's part of it. It's part of that story, and it's a great way to take really difficult life experiences and turn them around as a way of relating to other people and bring and make that a positive. But that's not the only thing, and we're not gonna heal ourselves just by being therapists.
Jennifer Agee: Absolutely. Being a therapist does change you without a doubt. You cannot sit in the presence of suffering and not have compassion, right? Because even people who are wildly different than who we are, we see the humanness in them and that very vulnerable space in the room, and it does open us up and change us. So, this field will definitely make changes on you, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that's where the healing take place. Awareness comes in, I think, in a part of those relationships and maybe sometimes a little healing, but really that has to be done on your own dime, right? You've gotta get in there and do your own work. What do you wish more people understood about countertransference? Or what do you think they get wrong about it?
Rebecca Love: I think that we have a tendency to think that as we get more experienced, uh, we'll experience countertransference less. Um, and while I think we can, we, there's certainly, we're gonna become more aware, hopefully, if we're on top of it, and we're practicing that mindful awareness, um, and paying attention, and doing consultation, and all that stuff. But I, I think we're always vulnerable to countertransference, and we're always going to see it in the room at some point. And so, I think understanding that part of being a human being in the room is that you're gonna have your own emotional responses because you are a human being, and that's okay. The goal is not to get to a point where you never have countertransference. The goal is to get to a point where you're aware of it, and you don't let it drive the car, right? It's always gonna be in the car. Just don't let it drive.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah, and I think, you know, I, I don't want people to have the impression that countertransference is always just your trigger points, because sometimes I know that I have transferred onto other people positive things that they didn't necessarily show me were theirs, but because they reminded me of someone or they had, um, certain careers or different things like that, my mind lept into assumptions and beliefs about this person that they may not have ever reflected to me. I just put upon them those things based on some of the limited information that I had. So, countertransference isn't always necessarily, um, just the things that we wish weren't there. Sometimes we, we transfer onto people really positive things that aren't necessarily theirs either, which also affects the relationship.
Rebecca Love: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think that's why it's so important to really be–, because countertransference plays such a huge part into when we decide to self-disclose or when we decide to share things. And I agree with you that we can think we're doing the right thing and think we're doing something helpful, but it's actually more helpful to us to see this particular picture, or because they remind us of this person that we care about very much, we're suddenly invested in certain outcomes for them, and we forget that we need to be invested in the outcomes that they want and not the outcomes that we want. And that's very subtle because it feels like we're doing something good, right, and positive. And I think self-disclosure, I have found self-disclosure to be such a powerful tool in connecting and in creating just a space of absolute humanity where you are included in that picture, right? And people can see you as a human being and not as this perfect person who knows everything and makes no mistakes. And you're a lot more relatable when you can be human, and people feel safer and like they can trust you. And that's really important in the therapy room and in the relationship, but we really have to be careful about our why when we're self-disclosing. And when you're not on top of your countertransference, even when you think it's something positive and good, um, you can actually, you, everything that you're doing is affecting the relationship, and everything that you're doing needs to have therapeutic value. So, it's, it's so important to understand where your countertransference is taking you and making sure that it's the client first and you're doing your work somewhere else.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Finding that balance is so important. It's, and it can be sometimes tricky, um, with certain clients based on what your own issues are that you're working on. It could be, you know, it can be trickier, but it's im-, it's important to figure out what that balance is because gone are the days where we really can be a blank slate because of social media and stuff. I've said it on this podcast before. I'm certain most of my clients have probably seen me in a bathing suit 'cause I was tagged in something that somebody had. And everybody Googles you before they come to see you, you know? So, if you think that you're really just this blank slate, you are telling yourself a lie. So, clients are also coming in with inference on you, and, and I know a lot of people that listen to this podcast are also clinical supervisors like I am. And I actually have had lots of supervisees who've shared with me as they've gotten to know me, that they transferred on to me all sorts of stuff based on what they've seen on my social media that, um, I mean, although some of it was true, it, it got into the, got in the way at their authenticity with me because they saw me as so perfect or so, um, accomplished or whatever it is. And in my mind, I'm like, are you kidding me? I'm just Jen. Like, hello. But, but just people infer that onto you, and then it can get in the way of that relationship. So, forming those genuine, authentic relationships is important so that there's space to have those conversations about where the misalignment might be.
Rebecca Love: Yeah, absolutely. And I think as supervisors, it's such an important role that we have. Um, there's, there's such a huge gap between when we graduate and when we get licensed. Like, the, the knowledge gap, which, you know, I'm guessing is why you have this whole podcast. Um, but that knowledge gap is so huge. And this is a conversation I have with my supervisees pretty regularly that there's so much they felt that they didn't understand, and they didn't get. And countertransference is a thing that comes up over and over and over again with supervisees. And as I'm talking with them, I'm realizing, like, this is still a challenge for me. And I, you know, I feel like I'm pretty experienced now, and that made me think about, well, how, what kind of conversations are we having with each other? Um, I see a lot of people doing consultation groups, which I think is so valuable and necessary. Um, and you know, things like group supervision are great because we normalize that experience, and we can talk about it. But, you know, I think as licensed professionals, we can get lost in the minutia of our practice and our supervisees and, you know, the other 80 million things going on in our lives. And one of the first things always to fall off is our self-care.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Love: And part of that self-care is the work that we do to stay on top of our countertransference and our own experiences and our own trauma, um, and make sure that it's not bleeding out into our therapy space. And so, I think it's so important to stay on top of that, and it's just so easy to like, well, I don't have time to see a therapist because I have X, Y, Z things to do, and plus I am a therapist so I can solve my own problem.
Jennifer Agee: Right? If only, right, if only.
Rebecca Love: If only.
Jennifer Agee: You are bringing up the exact point that I wanted to make, which is we have to be very aware when we are entering burnout, we're doing really difficult work in our own life at the time, our marriage or our relationships are in struggles, we're having tension or stress within friendship or with our children, because these are all areas that make us mo- more vulnerable to countertransference and to really unhealthy places that countertransference can go.
Rebecca Love: Yeah. Um, something that I tell my clients frequently and find that I have to tell myself in the mirror frequently is that, you know, we get this kind of dangling carrot mindset of like, well, as soon as this happens, then I'll, you know, focus more on myself; or as soon as this thing is over, then I can; or as soon as this thing happens, I'll be happy. And I tell my clients frequently, like, life isn't gonna stop throwing you curve balls. That's always going to happen. There's always going to be a reason why you put yourself on the back burner. And that's exactly how we end up with burnout and feeling like our clients are asking too much of us, we don't have enough to give, we're spread thin, and then we're– Who we are in the therapy room becomes compromised, and we're not able to give to our clients what they really need, which is authenticity.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Rebecca Love: Truly.
Jennifer Agee: And I would hazard to guess that behind most BSRB auth-, um, authentic complaints, um, authentic complaints to whatever your state board is called—ours is called the BSRB—um, is countertransference. You know, the number one complaint is that there's been sexual misconduct...
Rebecca Love: Yeah.
Jennifer Agee: Between the therapist and the client. And I can't help but think that ha-, that has to do with countertransference—transference and countertransference. I'll tell you; I had a girlfriend tell me one time that, um, she was friends with a group during a period of her life where they all saw the same male therapist. And they had a bet to see who they could get, who could sleep with him first. What, I mean that, my jaw hit the floor. I'm like, are you effing kidding me? But, you know, people don't always come in with good intentions, I guess, as well. So, if, if that was somebody's intention is to make sure they bring up highly sexualized content for a manipulative purpose and working with you as well, you gotta make sure you're on your A-game, too, so that you are not then transferring on, maybe things aren't as good at home right now as you wish they were. Maybe you...
Rebecca Love: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Agee: You hit a dry spell. Maybe like, you know, where are your areas of vulnerability and weakness so that you're not more easily prone to then oversharing, projecting onto the other person, things that you wish could be.
Rebecca Love: Yeah, and I, you bring up such a good point, because countertransference isn't always just this little thing that we're, you know, a little fly that we're swatting, um, trying to keep it out of the room. Countertransference can be career-ending.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Love: And not staying aware of your motivations and your issues and not staying on top of them can lead you down a path that you could actually destroy your career. And if we're, you know, we're not aware and we're not mindful of our own motivations, and we're not doing our own work in any number of ways, right—it can be therapy, it can be support groups, it can be consultation groups, it can be journaling, it can be a mindfulness practice, it can be all of those things. In addition, being a therapist and being a support to other people can facilitate healing for you. It just can't be the only thing.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. And, and I think, you know, that facilitation of healing, that, that's a huge reason a lot of us got into this field in the first place, right? Most of us don't have sparkly clean backgrounds where nothing ever happened, right?
Rebecca Love: Right.
Jennifer Agee: We've been, we've, we've had got some battle scars along the way, so to speak, from, you know, from life. And knowing that that helper-healer part of us sometimes wants to lead, can also lead to transference and countertransference in the room of us maybe wanting more for the client than they are wanting for themselves at the time, or over functioning for them and doing the work, projecting onto them a level of health that maybe they're not really at because we don't want someone to die on our watch or different things like that. So, we can have blinders on in a lot of different areas. And I think that's a part of what Rebecca's talking about is, it's not a one-size-fits-all kind of a thing. If it was just that, this would be a simple conversation, but it's so nuanced that it's important to be, to leave space to actually ask yourself, when am I projecting onto any given client and how is that maybe affecting their healing and the work that we're doing?
Rebecca Love: I had a clinical supervisor when I was an intern. And I became very heavily invested. I, I worked at a shelter for women and children that had a sobriety-first policy. And I had a client who could not get clean, and I wanted this client to stay in the program so bad. And I remember my clinical supervisor pulling me aside, and she said, be careful that you don't want this more than the client does. And those words have stuck with me, uh, always. And I'm, it's something I'm constantly aware of. For example, when I'm writing treatment plans, I have a lot of ideas about what I want for the client, but that's not meeting them where they're at; that's meeting them where I wish they were. And that's my countertransference coming out in that little way, right? That I want everyone to have a success story. And of course, I do, but success looks different for different people. And I know, you know, I certainly have my own colored past, and I wasn't ready to change until I was ready and not one second more. And a million people told me what I should be doing. And a million people had goals and wishes and hopes for me. And it wasn't until I was ready, and it came from inside of me. You know, people changing because other people want them to won't, won't stick.
Jennifer Agee: No.
Rebecca Love: People are only gonna change when they are ready to. So, getting in, like, letting your countertransference lead in your treatment planning and what you want for that client, it's okay to want those things for that client, but that can't, again, it can't drive the car, right? What that client wants has to drive the car. And being on top of the difference between what we want for our client and the goals that our client has coming into therapy is so essential, because that person eventually is gonna feel like you don't see them, and you don't understand what they want. And, and that relationship, when things like that happen, that kind of disruption in the relationship, it's hard to repair.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm. It is. And one of the hardest things, um, lessons I had to really learn as a part of my journey of being a therapist was the awareness that most lessons, most growth usually comes out of pain. And rescuing people from their pain and not letting them feel it sometimes, but just trying to rescue it 'cause we're uncomfortable with their pain, is doing them a huge disservice and a huge opportunity a lot of times for growth and healing. But I wanna ask, what are, like, what are some of the ways that you identify countertransference? What are some things we need to be looking for to be aware of that that might actually be going on with one of our clients?
Rebecca Love: One of the things that I notice in me, um, is that I have kind of a, a way of being in the room, right? Where most of the time I'm this, um, I can be very neutral, I can really have non-judgment, and I'll notice... I, I start thinking about countertransference when I notice, all of a sudden, I have really strong feelings about something, and my urge to tell an anecdotal story gets really strong, and I might feel anger, I might feel anxiety, or might feel pro-. I notice like I get protective of my clients. And, and I don't necessarily think that's wrong, but I have to really think about what I'm about to say when I get that feeling of protection. Um, and when I think I want to kind of step in and fix things, that phrase comes to me, right? Be careful you don't want this more than the client wants it themselves. And I think a lot about a story I heard once, um, about how when a butterfly is coming out of its chrysalis, that it's a long struggle for the butterfly to come out. That struggle is necessary to dry their wings so that they can fly. And if we were to intervene and try to break the chrysalis open for them, we would kill the butterfly 'cause it's, it needs its struggle to be able to fly. And if I'm trying to push the struggle forward or I'm trying to take some control of that, um, that's a big red flag for me.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. We have to leave people's space to push against the difficult parts of self in order to propel them to want something different for themselves as well.
Rebecca Love: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. So, with, um, countertransference, self-disclosure, a, a desire for increased self-disclosure would definitely be one of the, the flags. If you are really aware before you're seeing a client of what you're wearing, um, what you look like that day, if you're putting more effort into other certain days or other days, um, and you noticed that you were aware of what clients you were gonna see that day, and then you chose an outfit because of that, or you chose to put makeup on, you normally don't, or, you know, a million different tiny things, be aware if that's coming into your awareness. This is an area you need to check yourself.
Rebecca Love: I would also add how, you know, we all think about our clients outside of work. Um, but is there a client that's taking more mental space for you? Um, are you having strong emotional responses where, because the client isn't making progress or the client is in crisis, that you are incredibly emotional about that? Um, so paying attention to those things too. And again, you know, we are empathetic people. It's why we're in this field. I think it's okay to have, you know, feelings of sadness or disappointment or worry or protection toward a client, but you have to process that on your own so that you can continue to show up non-judgmental and impartial in those moments with that client.
Jennifer Agee: So, what are some things that people can do when they become aware that they may have countertransference with the client?
Rebecca Love: Seek consultation.
Jennifer Agee: Okay.
Rebecca Love: Don't be afraid. There are, there are things that feel embarrassing to talk about if you feel sexually attracted to your client, you don't really wanna admit that to your colleague. That doesn't feel good, but you have to. You've gotta find somebody you trust that you can talk to about just the weird, raw emotions that come up for us when we are witnessing people in, at their most emotional, at their most vulnerable, at their most raw, you know, times, 20 or 30 every week. Um, things are going to come up. You're a human being. You do this job because you're empathetic, and you do this job because you love humanity and you want to help people. Things are gonna come up.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Love: It's, it's not about never having countertransference. It's about recognizing when it happens and getting yourself the help and support so you can talk it through. And get someone else's eyes and ears on that narrative.
Jennifer Agee: Yeah.
Rebecca Love: And someone you trust who can tell you if you've lost perspective and you need to step away or can walk you through and help you come up with a plan to regain your perspective so that you can ethically keep that client on your caseload.
Jennifer Agee: And if you are a clinical supervisor, I strongly encourage you to ask a question. I'm, I'm gonna tell you a story. So, over the years, I've had supervisees who tell me that clients have shared that they're really attracted to them, or they've started having fantasies about them, um, sexual and non-sexually. I wish you could be my mother. Um, I wish we could be best friends. Um, or I, I'm starting to have, like, really dirty thoughts about you. Like, all of those kinds of things. And the question I used to, honestly, in the beginning, ask myself, should I be asking it, not asking it, and now I just ask it is: Okay, are you experiencing sexual at- attraction to the client as well? Because we have to leave space for that honesty. I mean, sometimes you work, you work with clients that aren't really attractive or parts of them are really attractive.
Rebecca Love: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Agee: Or their, their mental health is a part of what makes you so attracted to them. So, when, um, there's a, a doctorate Menninger who was a supervisor, not of mine, but he was telling the story that, uh, one of the, the new psychiatrists made the rounds, and said, "You know, I spent all these years in school, and I don't think that this is for me." Doc says, "Why, what happened?" He said, "I met with this client, and I just kept thinking the whole meeting, I just want a fuck her. I just want to F her." Right? And so, the doctor said, "Okay, now we gotta go back and say, what is it that she was communicating to you and she was actually telling you that this is how she gets through the world, this is how she gets her needs met in the world, that she was transferring onto you?" You are someone I'm needing my need met through of getting medication, getting good [INCOMPREHENSIBLE], getting good treatment, and her experience and her past trauma has taught her if someone desires me sexually, then they're more likely to treat me with kindness, not abuse me, to use me in ways where I don't feel like the victim, or, you know what I mean. Um, so that kind of stuff. So, there's all this interplay of layers, and if you're not honest with how you are feeling about either what's being projected onto you or what you're projecting back and give space for that, I think that in that darkness is where things can get really tricky and ugly. If we bring those things into the light and say, I don't know what the hell is going on right now, but this is happening and it's kind of freaking me out, and you talk about it, we can bring it into the light. We can, we can figure out what's going on, but if you don't say anything, you can get into trouble.
Rebecca Love: And there's so much therapeutic value in the scenario that you just described. If you can have your therapy hat on, right, and like you're—I'm thinking of Control Mastery Theory, and there's a great book called How Psychotherapy Works about Control Mastery. But a lot of control Mastery is trying to figure out like, what is the client te-, like you're being tested.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Love: So, in that scenario, what does the client need to know, right? That there's more to her than just being sexually attractive. And the test is, I'm gonna throw it all at you, and my hope is that you're gonna give me a different reaction. You're not going to confirm this belief that the, my only value is my sexual attractiveness, and I need someone to disconfirm that. And when you can think about it from that perspective, right, our clients are going to push us. They're going to test us. And they need so much for us to not allow our countertransference to dictate how we respond to them, but really see what is their need here? What beliefs are they trying to confirm and disconfirm? And how can I be a support in giving them the opportunity to see that their, their worth and value is more than just this behavior? Um...
Jennifer Agee: Yeah, that quiet under the surface energetic exchange that's happening anytime you're with people.
Rebecca Love: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Agee: Right? That their system's sending you a message, your system's sending one back, like, and being aware of that. And the more you start to tune into that, you don't fear it. You recognize these things are just providing you information, and based on that information, you can make decisions about what you wanna do or don't wanna do. But I think when you don't have that awareness, that internal awareness that that's happening under the surface with almost every exchange that you have with people, it feels like something that you're doing wrong, or it feels threatening, um, and shaming instead of just being information. Now we have this information; we need to figure out what that's about.
Rebecca Love: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's very easy to overlook or, or to miss that you're getting good information when you have an emotional response based on whatever's going on with you. I had a client, um, who I still work with because we were able to work through this, who initially told me that—it was like the third or fourth session in—initially told me, well, the only reason I picked you is because I saw your picture and I thought you were attractive.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Love: And initially I, uh, like everything inside of me just froze, right? Because I have my own trauma to deal with. And then I said, I wonder why you felt it was important to tell me that. And that sparked this whole big conversation about where he got his, his sense of value and, and being needed and being important was being attractive to women, which had caused all kinds of problems in his life.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Love: Which, if I hadn't asked that question, I don't know if we would've got there. Um, so I think, you know, that feeling of discomfort that came up, like, I didn't, I didn't wanna ask that question. I really didn't. I wanted to just be like [FORCED LAUGHTER] and, and just like move on. But being able to recognize that that was my response, um, my internal response, but I had to keep my therapist hat on and say, what is this behavior telling me? Right?
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Love: What can we get out of this? And there's so much rich therapeutic information in these same behaviors that can make us uncomfortable or trigger us or pull out the, you know, the protector in us. Um, or, or whatever comes out for you. But there's so much rich therapeutic information there, too, if you can stay in your therapy zone, and acknowledge I had a reaction because I'm a human being, and that's okay. And how do I move forward and pull that therapeutic value out of this interaction?
Jennifer Agee: Yeah. I think it's important when people are starting out that they hear, um, seasoned professionals talk about what they actually say in the room with clients, 'cause it starts to give you a template of how to ask questions, how to address tricky things. So, one of the examples I gave was I've often been told, um, I wish you could have been my mother or some version of that. I must lead with very maternal energy. I don't know. Anyway, so, um, what I've learned to do is I just say, "thank you for that lovely compliment. What is it that you see in me or that I represent that you wish you would've had?" Because then that leads me into my favorite topic, which is inner child work. So, then we can go into, you know, into that part, but if I had gotten lost in the compliment of not knowing how to handle it or, you know, then let it bring out my, my stronger maternal parts and not just my therapist self, kind of leading the charge knowing my maternal parts are a piece of that, um, we could have missed some really good conversations that allowed us to go deeper and allowed us to really help do the healing work of where, where the pain was that they're operating from.
Rebecca Love: And it sounds like you had that perspective of like, I'm the whiteboard.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Love: Everything's being put on me. And now I take that information, and I say, what does this mean? And I, I love the idea of like, the reality is if you're a good therapist, your clients are gonna have strong emotional reactions.
Jennifer Agee: Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Love: Because they're safe with you, and they can be their most vulnerable, and they can be their most honest, and they can be their most raw. And there probably isn't anyone in their life that they can talk about these things with and open up about these things in a purely non-judgmental environment. They're gonna have emotions about that, and we have to be prepared. It's not the exception to the rule that you begin to represent something they wish they had or someone they do care about in their life. And you've gotta unravel that with them. And if you are having a strong emotional response to it, you're, you're gonna miss something. And, or if you're having an unchecked—let, let me rephrase that—if you're having an unchecked, strong emotional response, because we're human too.
Jennifer Agee: That's right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And anything you feel like you, you need to keep secret needs to be the number one thing you start to tell, uh, a colleague, a clinical supervisor, consultation group leader. Um, the secrecy– You know how we have that saying, right, secrets make you sick. What we keep as secrets or what we feel shame about or, or feel like we need to hide about in the therapy room, that is exactly when you need to have a conversation with, um, someone that you really trust or someone that's more seasoned that can help walk you through that. You are allowed to be a human being. Rebecca and I want you to still keep your humanness in the room. Don't be a robot; that's not good. But just know that when, when these very human things come up, bring them into the light, bring them into conversation so that we can get curious about them and figure out what's going on, and you're not then more likely to either be acting out of not your client's best interest but your own or unhealthy, repeating unhealthy patterns that the client has had patterned their whole life.
Rebecca Love: Mm-hmm. And those things that you just said are all the things we tell our clients to be doing too, right? Take an attitude of curiosity. Look in the mirror, look at the hard things, acknowledge them. Come in here and talk about them in a place, space of non-judgment. Your colleagues are gonna do the same because they have been through it too. And being on top of your countertransference is how you stay human in the room with your clients.
Jennifer Agee: Absolutely. Thank you so much for this conversation today. How can people connect with you, and what do you have coming up?
Rebecca Love: Yeah. Um, thank you for having me. Uh, this was awesome. Got a couple of things coming up in February. I will be starting a Zoom, uh, group for intern students, associates, and early career clinicians to talk about countertransference and a whole bunch of other things that might be coming up, um, for early, you know, kind of that gap between what we learned in grad school versus real life. Um, and that'll be starting February 23rd. I think I gave you a link.
Jennifer Agee: I'll put it in the description. Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Love: Please. So, that's in the description. Um, they can also email, uh, therapy@heartwisetherapy.com And we also, I've partnered with Erin Corum from Voyage Counseling in Indiana, and we will be holding a retreat, um, in October on, uh, the main island, the big island in Hawaii for therapists to, kind of, dig in and start looking at their own trauma and how that trauma shows up in their practice and how to kind of get on top of that so that instead of a barrier, it is a, uh, way of, um, you know, just improving your, your business more and creating that humanity in the room without overstepping, um, or letting countertransference drive. So, if anyone is interested in that retreat, they can again, they can email me at therapy@heartwisetherapy.com, and we will pass some information on.
Jennifer Agee: Awesome. And if you'd like to connect, um, more with me or go on my training in Alaska or Portugal this year—those are the two I still have spots for—um, you are more, more than welcome, um, to reach out to me. Uh, go to counselingcommunity.com and I will get you connected. Get out there everyone and live your best dang life.