Psychotherapeutic Self-disclosure

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

All I can know is how I feel … and at the moment I feel close to you

/ K. Rogers. Karl Rogers' session with Gloria /

A pioneer in discussing the problem of self-disclosure in the process of psychotherapy S. Jurard, a representative of the humanistic school of psychology, said that self-disclosure in itself is a sign of a healthy person, and it is very difficult to avoid it when it comes to building authentic relationships between people.

Attempts to define and evaluate the psychotherapist's self-disclosure process have led to the creation of various classifications. So, R. Kociunas outlined two types of self-disclosure. The first type is a lively personal response to the client's story, the designation of the psychologist's own feelings in connection with what he saw and heard from the client according to the principle of “here and now”. Another type of self-disclosure is the therapist telling his life experience, giving examples from his own life experience, which associatively "pops up" in the therapist's head.

An example of such an association is the message of I. Polster:

“This woman was overly anxious about her debut as a teacher in college. I very vividly imagined how she felt when I remembered myself as a six-year-old boy. children already know something that I do not know. I told her about it, and my memories helped her to feel my empathy. She felt that she was not alone, that I understand her anxiety, because I myself experienced something similar. " (I. Polster. "Inhabited Man").

M. Linehan, discussing the stylistic strategies of the style of therapeutic communication, points out that reciprocal communication is determined, among other things, by the therapist's self-disclosure. “Self-disclosure” involves the therapist explaining to the patient his attitudes, opinions and emotional reactions, as well as reactions to therapeutic situations or information about his life experience.

DPT uses two main types of self-disclosure:

1) self-involvement and 2) personal.

"Self-disclosure of self-involvement"- refers to the therapist's reports of his direct personal reactions to the patient. Self-disclosure takes the following form: "When you act X, then I feel (think, want) Y". For example, a therapist might say, “When you call me at home and start criticizing everything I’ve done for you, I lose heart,” or “… I’m starting to think that you don’t really want my help.” A week later, when the patient's behavior in the telephone counseling improves, the therapist may say, "Now that you have stopped criticizing me in our telephone conversations, it is much easier for me to help you."

"Personal self-disclosure"refers to personal information that the therapist communicates to the patient, this may be professional qualifications, relationships outside of therapy (including marital status), past / present experiences, opinions or plans not necessarily related to therapy. DPT encourages personal self-disclosure that simulates either normative responses to situations or ways of dealing with difficult situations. The therapist may disclose opinions or reactions to situations in order to validate or challenge the patient's reactions.

M. Linehan points out that the benefits of self-disclosure often depend on whether it is expected by the client as a form of assistance from the therapist. For clients who are told that professional and competent professionals do not resort to self-disclosure, the use of self-disclosure is rather repulsive, and the therapist is perceived as incompetent. Client Linehan, referred to by another specialist, stopped attending psychotherapy sessions after the therapist explained in detail where she was going when she needed to leave town. This detailed explanation by the therapist was met with anger and contempt: to the client it meant that the therapist was incompetent. A previous therapist would never have done this!

Remember that the purpose of your self-disclosure is to promote the effectiveness of therapy, recalls I. Yalom. The therapist's careful self-disclosure can serve as a model for the patient: the therapist's candor engenders a reciprocal frankness.

In emotionally focused therapy, self-disclosure is limited to a specific set of tasks - building an alliance, increasing recognition and confirmation of client reactions, or joining clients in order to help them identify the components of their experience.

Example.

Spouse. I feel like an idiot, I shouldn't have let my worries get so out of control that I couldn't even hear my wife.

Therapist. Hmm, I know from myself that it is really difficult to perceive something when I am afraid. Then there is little room for something else.

Someone uses self-disclosure as an important tool for psychotherapeutic work, and for others, self-disclosure is an authentic way of being in the therapeutic process; other therapists avoid even the slightest disclosure of information about themselves in the process of psychotherapy. On the one hand, it is important that the psychotherapist, in his desire to completely "close" information about himself, does not turn into an impersonal character of interaction, performing the "administrative role of the psychotherapist." On the other hand, it is important that the therapist's self-disclosure does not violate the boundaries of the psychotherapeutic relationship and does not shift the role positions of the participants in this interaction. The therapist's self-disclosure should be metered, appropriate, and cultivate hope in the client.

The negative effect of self-disclosure can occur if the therapist demonstrates his unprocessed vulnerability, for example, the therapist reveals his own anxiety in front of an anxious client, which provokes an attack of increased anxiety in the client and leads her to the idea that such a therapist is not able to help her. On the other hand, understanding the nature of the client's anxiety and assessing the possibility of mitigating it through self-disclosure may lead to a different result. So, the intense anxiety that arose in my client after prolonged viewing of filming from space significantly weakened after I admitted that I was sure, if I followed NASA projects as enthusiastically as my client did, I would be exactly the same covered with anxiety.

Premature self-disclosure can in some cases provoke negative transference in the client. I will give an example from my practice. My client N. said that she really doesn’t like going to interviews and would often very much like her to get into a big traffic jam on the way and simply did not have time for the appointed interview time. In a similar way, the fantasies of my client, who also found it emotionally difficult to pass interviews, were built. I told him about my feelings when I had to go through the interviews. His condition improved markedly after my self-disclosure, and he thanked me for that. In the case of N., I also decided to share my experience. However, as I talked about my experiences and interviews, I noticed that N. was tense and embarrassed. I interrupted my story and asked: "N., what is happening to you now, I got the feeling that what I am saying is unpleasant for you." N. stretched her lips in a forced smile and said: "No, everything is fine, I am listening to you." The discrepancy between what was said and what was happening was well felt by both of us, and then N.asked: "How much time is left until the end?" Seven minutes remained. N. stood up resolutely, went to the closet with clothes, said that she was embarrassed all the time, that she was going over the agreed 50 minutes of the session and today is a good time to repay my debt. N. began our next meeting without hesitation and spoke very frankly about the experiences that had captured her in the previous session: “Whatever I start talking about, my mother will tell her own example from life. When you started talking, I was surprised, you never talk about yourself, then I got upset, and then I got angry: “It's the same here! I'm here to talk about myself. If I tell my mother that I have a headache, the mother immediately tells that she has been suffering from back pain for several days, if I say that I do not have enough money, the mother starts talking about her small pension, if I trying to complain about my man, my mother begins to tell me that men ruined her life. On the eve of our previous meeting, I told my mother about my worries about interviews, she again spoke about herself and said that I just did not look for a job in the 90s, when she was not there or everyone wanted to cheat, cash in on you. But it is possible to survive, the most disgusting, when my mother, manipulating me, took away the money donated by my godfathers, I wanted to buy headphones, she was a perfume, I was 16 years old. You know, Amalia, I hate her. When she appears, everything else is swept away. Everything - interviews, work, men, money, you. I want to talk about my mother today. " Here I made a mistake, and I. Yalom's warning will be very useful: "If you start to open up at the very beginning of the course, you risk frightening and discouraging a patient who has not yet had time to make sure that the therapeutic situation is stable and reliable." The self-disclosure episode in the case I told happened at about 9-10 sessions and was obviously premature.

My point is that self-disclosure contributes to the effectiveness of the therapeutic relationship, emotional closeness, and warmth of contact. Self-disclosure requires that I be considerate of both the client and myself. It requires continuous observation of your feelings and reactions, as well as the ability to express these reactions in such a way that they will be understandable to the client and more fully reveal his experience.

I can refuse if I feel that the question asked by the client is an attempt to break the boundaries of what is allowed. In this case, I care about the client - I inform him that I have boundaries, and I defend them, which allows the client to learn to better control himself. There are other reasons for my refusal, I do not forget that I am also responsible to myself, to my life and I am responsible for my psychological state. I can say no if I feel like I don’t want to answer a question asked by a client.

I can only disclose my personality to the extent that it is appropriate in the context of the relationship with the client, and only when it is therapeutically justified and is estimated by me as helping the client, and not acting out my personal "stories" with the client and satisfying narcissistic needs.

If I expect that the client will open up, and even more - I directly offer him to do it, it means that I actually offer him to become vulnerable. If I offer a person to become vulnerable, this also means my inner readiness to be vulnerable in therapeutic contact, but up to a certain limit, there are those “zones” of my vulnerability, from which helping another may become impossible. And when I admit this, by doing so I demonstrate my vulnerability, at this moment the client and I are completely equal before the existential imperfection of human nature, because I also make mistakes, feel embarrassment, confusion and painful feelings. My refusal to provide this or that information about myself is a manifestation of my congruence, i.e. my desire in a therapeutic relationship to be myself, not to play a role. These rare moments of "awkward" questions are very rare in my practice, but they are very important as a reminder - being noticed in a vulnerability is very difficult.