Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses

103 Managing Countertransference: How to Turn It into a Powerful Tool in Therapy

• Dr. Kate Walker Ph.D., LPC/LMFT Supervisor • Season 3 • Episode 103

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What happens when your client's behavior stirs up unexpected emotions within you? Join us as Dr. Kate Walker shares her profound insights into countertransference in therapy, unraveling how therapists' unconscious emotional reactions, influenced by their personal histories, can impact their therapeutic relationships. Learn how to transform these reactions from potential obstacles into powerful tools that enhance your practice. Dr. Walker's relatable analogies and practical examples, like the grape jelly-smeared projector, will help you recognize and manage your own emotional responses more effectively.

In this episode, we also dive into real-life scenarios where countertransference can manifest, such as a client reminding a therapist of their own family member. Discover practical techniques such as genograms and recommended readings like "The Dance of Anger" that can deepen your understanding of your emotional responses. Whether you're a new counselor or a seasoned professional, this discussion equips you with the confidence and strategies to clear your mental "projector" and better support your clients. Don't miss out on these invaluable insights that can take your therapeutic skills to the next level.

Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.

Speaker 1:

Let's say that lots and lots of people in your family became ill or died because of smoking and you never really think about it every day. And yet you've got this client and every time they come in, maybe they smell like smoke and you find yourself not being able to come up with a treatment plan for this person, or you know what? They're just so resistant and they never listen to you. Oh no, counter-transference is in the room. This is the Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses podcast with Dr Kate Walker, where I teach you, texans and non-Texans alike, the latest research-based information to hit your income goals, stay out of trouble and make a bigger impact in your community. Join me and let's fill the gaps in access to mental health care and create a counseling career you'll love. Let's get to work. Welcome to Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses, where it's all about working smarter, not harder. And here's your host, dr Kate Walker, who taught her kids mindfulness and can teach you too. Episode 103 of Pick my Brain is what the heck is countertransference and how can it be your best friend if you recognize it and a relationship-destroying beast if you don't? Sounds like a horror movie, doesn't it? This is the second episode in my series where I'm plugging in my counselor-educator brain and explaining a concept lots of counselors get wrong and show you how to use it in the best possible way with your clients Clinical supervisors. If you'd love even more tools and you'd like to pick my brain, live, there's still some time to catch me on my virtual book tour. Just go to katewalkertrainingcom. Slash bonus Now let's get to work. Bonus Now, let's get to work. Hi, I'm Dr Kate Walker and welcome to your Tuesday coaching. And today it's all about counter-transference. Now I'm plugging in my counselor educator brain. Today, counselor educators, we spend a lot of time with new counselors. I mean, you guys know this Supervisors, you spend a lot of time with new supervisees.

Speaker 1:

If you're watching this and you're a grad student or you're listening to this and you're an associate or someone who's provisionally licensed, you may be wondering okay, counter transference, I kind of know what that is. It's a word that I know will appear on an exam. So, and even if you're seasoned, you might be like, oh crap, I know that's one of those words that I had to learn back in grad school, but I don't really do Freud anymore, so I don't really think about that. I'm more of a this, this, this type of person, so it's okay, it's totally okay. This, this, this type of person, so it's okay, it's totally okay. I'm going to strip this down to the basics. My goal is to give you information to identify it and do something with it. My goal is that you leave this training or coaching session with some bravery, I guess, some confidence, and get rid of the shame around counter-transference. It is what it is, so there's just no way of ever just sweeping it away and somehow cleansing ourselves of all the counter-transference. I mean, I'll get into that more in a little bit and it's okay. I guess that's really what I want you to hear from me today is that it's okay and it's a great tool, as I mentioned in the description of today's topic. And it's a great tool, as I mentioned in the description of today's topic. It's a wonderful tool if you know how to use it, and it's a relationship destroying beast if you don't. And here we are, in October, when I thought about that, I was like, oh my goodness, that is scary. But yeah, it can be. I'm going to put my glasses on and I asked chat GPT. I said what is countertransference and who thought of it? So here's what ChatGPT had to say.

Speaker 1:

Countertransference refers to the emotional reactions, feelings and thoughts that a therapist unconsciously projects onto a client, often shaped by the therapist's own personal experiences and unresolved issues. It is the therapist's emotional response to the transference, where the client transfers feelings and attitudes toward important figures in their life, like parents or partners, onto the therapist. And the concept of countertransference was introduced by Sigmund Freud, and it goes on, but I'm going to stop. There was introduced by Sigmund Freud, and it goes on, but I'm going to stop there. So there are a couple of things that tend to confuse people about what I just read. So there's an element of a projection right, this is what I'm putting onto my client, but there's also a feeling which is kind of a receiver thing. Right, this is what I'm feeling, and so I know that sometimes hard, especially when we're teaching this to help people understand I'm doing this to somebody or it's happening to me, and the answer is both, and here's my analogy.

Speaker 1:

So imagine that you have a projector, right, and you have this amazing projector and it's going to project these wonderful home movies that you found, and so you turn on the projector, but before you turn it on, you take just a second and you go over to a jar of grape jelly and you dip your finger in the grape jelly and you smear it all over the lens and so the movies start. You sit down and you watch and you're like, ah, this movie's terrible. This guy like purple stuff all over it. Oh, I can't believe that they made this movie and it somehow made its way to me. All right, pause. You see what I did there. Right, I did the thing and then I reacted to the thing that I did.

Speaker 1:

Now, the thing about counter-transference yes, you are projecting on to your client and the grape jelly those are the things from your past, from your trauma, from your family, from your experiences as who you are in society. So, remember, we're picturing that lens. There's a light shining through the lens and it is projecting an image onto a wall and that image is blurry or unclear or not the true image. So if it's a movie about a cow, you're not seeing the whole cow. You might look at the movie and say, oh, that looks more like a donkey, that looks more like a horse. Yep, that's definitely a horse. I know it's a horse. That's because you smeared grape jelly all over the lens. So, with our clients. What we're doing is we're projecting onto our clients from our past experiences, and so counter-transference is going to result in a feeling just like you had when you looked at the movie and you said I think that's supposed to be a cow, but it looks like more. It looks like a donkey to me.

Speaker 1:

Or you had a feeling when you turn the movie on and you're like, oh, this is covered with grape jelly. This is a terrible movie, right. So you had a feeling of maybe irritation or anger, that it was different or it wasn't what you expected. All right, in the analogy, let's go into the therapy room. So if you remember I don't know, maybe this was a seminal, wonderful tool back in the day when I was seeing all kinds of folks kids, families and it was called S-T-E-P, it was called Systematic Training for Effective Parenting and I loved that book, not because I was a mom Well, actually it was because I was a mom at the time but it was a wonderful tool to give parents, because one of the things that taught parents was if you are feeling this, then it's likely your child's behavior means this, and I'm going to misquote it, but here's the example.

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So if you're a mom and you're feeling irritated, then your child's behavior is likely a cry for attention. Another one would be okay as a mom, if I'm feeling angry, then your child's behavior was likely to be a behavior acting out of revenge for some injustice they perceive. And so, again, don't quote me on that. But I loved that because it was something that it gave the parent, this internal sort of barometer or flag, right, if you will, that it wasn't just like, oh, why are you doing this? It was like, oh, wait a second. If they're seeking attention, then when I'm done doing the dishes, I'm going to get on the floor and I'm going to play Legos with them. Or if it was something where it was revenge to me, then I had to think back and go okay, did I take a toy away from them and give it to their sister, or is there something going on here you know sibling wise that I'm not aware of? So it was wonderful because it made me go deeper.

Speaker 1:

So if you have this feeling right now we're back to the receiving part. I'm looking at the behavior, I'm listening to my client talk, I'm watching how they treat their partner. If it's a couple session and I start having a feeling Right, I'm annoyed, I'm angry, I'm irritated, I'm disgusted. Wonderful, and I know that's weird. But when I was a supervisor, when my supervisees would come in for supervision and they would say, oh my gosh, I had this client and man they were just annoying. And I trained my supervisees to do this Right, because they knew that if they had a feeling, it was totally okay in supervision and I was going to help them do whatever they needed to do next.

Speaker 1:

So when you have that feeling, then we know, okay, counter-transference is in the room. And I wish it could be as simple as, like you learn in a cultural diversity class. You know, like a values clarification right, we have our students do values clarifications, like, okay, how do you feel about suicide, how do you feel about abortion, how do you feel about same-sex relationships? And we have them go through and really check all these boxes so they understand the ones that they're aware of. Yeah, countertransference is stealthy. So if they're coming in and they're feeling safe I'm talking about supervisees coming to supervision then you have a space where they can start to go. Huh, where does that come from? I wonder what that reminds me of. Let me think back to a time it reminds me of that so-and-so person, right? So how do we start to shed a light on this, especially if you're a seasoned professional and you don't have a supervisor, right?

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If you're doing this all on your own, you don't have a consultation group and you're just. You think I'm just. It must be four o'clock and I'm annoyed with everybody. Okay, that might be the case. You may need a nap or a sandwich, but this is your opportunity to go deeper. So criteria number one for supervision If you want to help your supervisee go deeper, you're going to have to have a trusting relationship.

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If the relationship is ruptured in some way, this is not likely to happen. Or if your supervisee is developmentally a level one and they don't know you that well, it's going to be hard to go here. Know you that well, it's going to be hard to go here. Or if you have ignored the OER triad. Oer triad stands for orientation, evaluation and remediation and you skipped your orientation, where you could welcome your supervisee in with a packet that let them know they would be exploring counter-transference, right? And you just go surprise, we're going to explore countertransference today, right?

Speaker 1:

If you don't have a trusting relationship, it's going to be really hard to shine a light on countertransference, because it's scary, I mean it's, I don't know. I mean they don't know what they're going to find. They just finished this graduate school program and now they're going to have to go deeper. And if they'd never had therapy before and they're not used to going there and supervisors, you may just be like, oh my gosh, you're hungry and this is a big old juicy steak because you get to put on your counselor hat Whoop. But you know, and I know, you cannot stay there. So for you to delve into this, if you've established the trusting relationship, there are tools to help your supervisee understand what the heck is going on and seasoned professionals. This is where you can jump in right. If you don't have a supervisor, you can just jump straight to the tools. Jump in right. If you don't have a supervisor, you can just jump straight to the tools. Now I will tell you I read books every morning and I think if we're in this business, we need to do this so we can shine a light on what's going on inside.

Speaker 1:

Because if I were to finish our definition of countertransference, what we're reacting to is the transference we perceive coming off of our clients. Right, it's going through the grape jelly. It's coming back to us and it's not making sense. Or best example I can give you is if I'm sitting with a male client and I start getting annoyed and then I take a deep breath and I recognize oh, this client reminds me of my son when he was 17 years old. And I look at my client and they're putting off behaviors, maybe body posture, maybe choice of words or tone of voice. Something about my client is transference right. So they're acting like a 17-year-old boy. And that could be because they perceive me like an authority figure, a mom or a dad or a teacher. Right? We could really get deep into this, couldn't we? So our counter-transference, if Freud would say, is in reaction to our client's transference right, who they perceive us as. Again, all of this is unconscious, right? Nobody's sitting there going. You know, you remind me of my dad, right? At least, usually that does not happen.

Speaker 1:

Supervisors, if you'd love even more tools and you'd like to pick my brain and ask questions in real time, you can catch me on my virtual book tour for my new book, the Clinical Supervision Survival Guide. I'll be live on Instagram, youtube and Zoom October 21st, 22nd and 25th at five o'clock central time. Instagram you can catch me at Kate Walker Training and YouTube at Dr Kate Walker. That's D-R-K-A-T-E-W-A-L-K-E-R. Want to take it up a notch and get a chance to win some fabulous prizes? Easy Go to katewalkertrainingcom. Slash bonus and you can join me via Zoom, which enters your name, and a chance to win a free copy of my book and some other amazing resources.

Speaker 1:

But wait, there's more. For those of you heading to Dallas this year for the Texas Counseling Association Annual Conference, I'll be presenting on the ethics of SEO and marketing your practice. If you come by my booth with a screenshot of your fabulous Amazon or Google review of my book, I'll have a special gift just for you. I can't wait to connect with you. So if we're trying to help our new counselors or seasoned folks, if you're trying to help yourself, then you're going to want some tools to really understand. Okay, why is this client annoying me?

Speaker 1:

A great tool to use is a genogram. A genogram where you map out your family and maybe three or four patterns related to health, related to education and maybe two or three other things you choose that feel important to you. And when you start to map out a family over, let's say, three or four generations, at least three, and there are books about this and you can grab those. It's amazing what you find out, right, and I can't even begin to describe what things can pop out of a genogram. Here might be one.

Speaker 1:

Let's say you look at your genogram and you notice that lots and lots of people in your family became ill or died because of smoking, and you never really think about it every day, and yet you've got this client and every time they come in maybe they smell like smoke and you find yourself not being able to come up with a treatment plan for this person. Or you know what? They're just so resistant and they never listen to you and you give them good advice. Oh no, counter-transference is in the room. Take a deep breath. Good job, right, because ultimately that's what counter-transference is for. It's that flag waving that says uh-oh, danger, danger. There's grape jelly on the projector, right? You're not getting the whole picture here, and so that bias, remember it's not related really to values or religion or anything like that or something that you might be consciously aware of. This is related to something that you didn't even realize you were picking up in that marvelous computer called your brain. A genogram is marvelous for. And you know what I would say do this anytime you have a client who, when you leave that session, you are like done. I would say even, do it for clients that you like, really look forward to them coming back or feel like, oh, we could be friends. That is a very slippery slope. The ones we don't like are the ones we like too much. That is our counter-transference waving the flag, sounding the trumpet, going hey, there's some more information here. You've smeared the projector with your grape jelly fingers. We got to figure out how to clean this thing off so that you can go back to helping this person and not just reacting to them.

Speaker 1:

Another good book I know when I was first starting out as a brand new counselor, my site supervisor made me read the Dance of Anger, y'all, I think. At that point it was like I was I don't want to say done, but it was like a growing up moment, like I read the Dance of Anger and all of a sudden my entire childhood made sense. I can't make it any simpler than that. So it had this effect on me of helping me understand when I was disgusted with a client who wouldn't do what I told them to do, who maybe, oh that client's being a bully to be. They're being so mean to me. Open the dance of anger. Look at my genogram. Nope, that's not what's going on here. What's going on here is somehow this client is reminding me subconsciously of somebody or some situation I don't even remember or I'm not consciously aware of. So, number one in order to get to the bottom of this trusting relationship. Number two genogram. Genograms are amazing. Number three a great book. And then, once you know these things, then counter-transference is like your best friend, I know, with me.

Speaker 1:

I worked with couples, you know a couple surviving infidelity, and that's a tough population. And a lot of times the mistake new and seasoned counselors will make is they'll pick a side and they don't mean to. It's just they feel that they may not feel the bias or the bias makes sense. Well, they're the one that did the bad thing, so they're the ones that has to be, you know, has to be punished, and so we side up or we team up on the offender. And that situation, that population, really helped me understand my countertransference. There was no shop vac that I took to clean up my countertransference and make it go away. It's not like that. It was simply an awareness and I thought I was good until yep, you're right, I've got a story.

Speaker 1:

So this was years into my professional counseling career and I was doing some marriage counseling with an older couple We'll say an older couple is late 60s, early 70s and they came in my office. They were from a different country and we talked about culture, we talked about traditions, things like that, and so very, very different from me and my family of origin, in the way they spoke, how they looked, how they presented, just wasn't anything ringing any bells from. You know the McClellan family, you know from when I was a kid, so countertransference. There were no flags waving, there were no horns sounding On my end it felt like the projector was really clear, until the gentleman got angry with me and he leaned forward and he pointed his finger and shook it at me.

Speaker 1:

I started crying. I know it surprised me too. I was just mortified. There I was in a professional session in a situation I'd been in a hundred times. Clients get mad at us, it's okay, they're supposed to, and I was a mess. And so of course the session ended and the couple both felt terrible. He felt terrible and they both tried to console me, which mortified me even more, and long and short of it is counter-transference can sneak up on us at any time, even though this couple was, in my conscious opinion, my conscious view, very different from my parents, my family of origin.

Speaker 1:

When that gentleman leaned forward and shook his finger at me, he became Mick McClellan, my father and it was not something unresolved inside of me just decided to wake up and take over the therapy session. And you know, it's when that happens. I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop crying for a few minutes and then I got myself together and then I went into therapy for a little while. Because I mean, honestly, that's a seasoned therapist. I'm talking to you now. Well, because I mean, honestly, that's a seasoned therapist. I'm talking to you now If you don't have a supervisor, then get your butts into therapy.

Speaker 1:

Right, if something sneaks up on you like that and you're not able to manage it in a therapeutic way, first of all, have some grace and compassion for yourself. It happened, it's okay. You can talk to the couple or the client and make it all smooth it over, but you are important in that moment. You finding out, okay, what just happened can most of the time, I mean yeah, there's some great books out there, but you got to get your butt into therapy and figure it out so you don't find another landmine as you go through the developmental stages of counseling. Right, we're developmental too. I mean, I was what? 30 years old when I started this and now I'm almost 60. So, yes, I've grown up, I've changed, my memories have changed and when I do counseling, you know I'm a different person than I was 25 years ago.

Speaker 1:

So it's okay, beginning counselor to have it First of all, understand. There's no shame, we're not trying to cure you of it. You're not a success if you don't have it. Grad students, associates, it is okay. It is normal to have counter-transference and your supervisor will show you how to deal with that. Seasoned counselors, ditto.

Speaker 1:

Countertransference is okay, you're allowed to have it and you just need some different tools to deal with it, since you don't have the supervisor to help you out. So get the books, do the therapy and then oh, my goodness, what a relief. It is this flag that will wave and it will say hey, intervene over here. I think you missed a spot. Ooh, you know what this flag's waving and you know what? I think this over here might be a thing with your client. Get a feelings chart handy. You know I started putting one in my phone. Just you know more than happy, sad, mad, afraid, surprised. And it blew me away after a session If I just scrolled through my feeling list and just okay, what was I feeling during this session? And it would take me in these spaces to intervene with my client that I wouldn't have come up with if I hadn't gone a little deeper. So, long and short, I love counter-transference.

Speaker 1:

Don't be afraid of counter-transference. Your clients will never know what counter-transference is unless you cry in the middle of a session. And anyway you don't have to tell them it was countertransference. You can tell them it was allergies, I don't know, but your client's transference is normal. Your countertransference to that transference is normal. So if something just feels off and you can't get to the bottom of it with the books and the genogram and the things, then get your butt into therapy. All right, guys, take this information and go do amazing things with your client.

Speaker 1:

Take care, the clinical supervision journey can be even lonelier than your counseling journey. Supervisees can be unpredictable. You're worried about your license and you're afraid that if you do ask a consultation group a question about the rules or best practices. They're going to jump down your throat. Look, you already know there's a soft, fuzzy blanket of nurturing mentors in the Texas Supervisor Coalition that have your back and there are no silly questions, lots of free resources and a live virtual consultation group every month. But how would you like a supervisor consultant in your pocket or on the phone? That's what my new book, the Clinical Supervision Survival Guide, is all about. It's like having great advice at your fingertips and there are resources you can download immediately after you purchase the book. There's a QR code that you can scan and bam, you get interview questions logs, remediation plan templates, assessments and more. Grab your copy of my new book, the Clinical Supervision Survival Guide, on Amazon today and start downloading the resources you need so you can supervise and put more amazing therapists out into the world.

Speaker 1:

I can't wait to join you on your journey. I'm Dr Kate Walker. Thank you so much for listening to Texas counselors creating badass businesses. Thank you to Ridgely Walker for her lovely voiceovers at our introduction, and do me a favor when you get a second. Please like, share and subscribe and write us a review. That's really how we get picked up by other RSS feeds and we get this information out to the mental health badasses who need it. Thanks again and keep saving the world with excellent therapy you.