Intersecting losses: Working with the inevitable vicissitudes in therapist and client lives.

Abstract

Therapists working with clients with severe trauma histories over long periods of time may find themselves managing traumatic events in their own lives-illness, divorce, death-at the same time as they are assisting their clients to live productively with their painful pasts. While a few accounts exist describing how therapists deal with single overwhelming events, very little has been written about how therapists manage ongoing or prolonged episodes of severe stressors with a busy clinical practice of clients with severe trauma histories. Yet, we know that support for therapists is crucial to longevity in the field and we also know that learning from the experience of others is a highly recommended form of support. This paper is an account by a senior clinician of how she has maintained a productive clinical practice despite personal losses. Therapists who struggle with personal losses probably deal with choices related to self-disclosure more than therapists who do not have such experiences; they have repeated opportunities to establish appropriate and effective levels of self-disclosure for them and the people with whom they work. The paper presents a template for thinking about the risks and benefits of self-disclosure while at the same time modeling a level of self-disclosure that may be beneficial to therapists looking for examples.

The Witness to Witness Program: Helping the Helpers in the Context of the COVID‐19 Pandemic

“…Many situations over time have occurred where clinicians have experienced a shared traumatic situation and written about that experience, for instance, the London Blitz, September 11 attacks on the United States, and terrorist attacks in Israel (Tosone, Nuttman‐Shwartz & Stephens, 2012). Weingarten has written about navigating “intersecting losses” when she, as a therapist, has experienced traumatic losses similar to that of her clients (Weingarten, 2010a). Neither of these frameworks is exactly relevant to the positioning we assume in W2W since the management of boundaries need not be as strict.…”

The Art of Reflection: Turning the Strange into the Familiar

“…It is not uncommon for one person's traumatic experience to trigger a traumatic memory for us. The therapist's responsibility is to understand what has happened well enough so that she can make a skillful decision to disclose or not to disclose the intersection of feeling or experience (Weingarten, ). The highest priority is to make a decision that will serve the other.…”

Editorial: Narrative and Poststructural Perspectives in Couple and Family Therapy

“…These good reflections, or compassionate witnessing, can transform relationships, turn the strange into the familiar, and engender integration not only in our clinical practice but also in our daily lives. Kaethe's deep and probing articles number among the highlights of our journal over several decades (Kotzé, Hulme, Geldenhuys, & Weingarten, ; Weingarten, , , ,b, , ; Weingarten & Worthen, ).…”