Retraumatization
heart and attention. If I am not listening carefully, I will miss the triggers, fail to recognize the transference process and reenact traumatic responses already experienced by past abusers - it is the culmination of how to retraumatize a client.
The positive thing about all this is that NONE of it need happen!
It depends entirely on how willing we are, as committed therapists to work on our own "stuff", with honesty and integrity, to take our concerns to a skilled supervisor and train ourselves to be constantly self-aware of how we are with our clients. It is when WE get in the way that our clients get OUT - out of the place of healing, progress, understanding and growth.
I do challenge my colleagues to test their honest integrity in self-examination from which we are so prone to run. May we remember the emotional, psychological and sometimes physical life of our clients depends on it.
May we give sober and serious thought and consideration to how we can better help those we work with that we do not add to their dilemmas and suffering by willful or unaware retraumatization.
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