You know what I am talking about: If you are a practitioner working as a therapist, coach, or healing professional, you’ve had the experience of working with someone who is dealing with the pain of not getting needs met by their parents.
Also, if you’ve ever been a client, you’ve probably known what it’s like from the other side, too — desperately feeling the unmet needs of our childhood, and wishing somehow they could be met. (And many of us have experienced it from both sides!)
It’s often why we end up in coaching or therapy: some life situation is not working, and we feel the consequences of not being loved enough, or being over-criticized, or being abandoned, or lacking reliable safety as a child. And we still long for love, assurance, connection, and safety.
A good practitioner can empathize with what we are feeling, and in an adult, professional way, give us humane and appropriate moments of love, assurance, connection, and safety. But they can’t give us what our parents did not, because our childhood has already happened, and will always be a shaping aspect of who we are now. The practitioner, simply put, isn’t our parent.
Nonetheless, as clients, we do show up with our pain and our longing. We have to! And sometimes, we hope that the practitioner can pull out a miracle and finally fill the place that feels so empty.
In that situation, a practitioner brings their own history with them, too. Often, professional caregivers have been shaped by a family where they learned to take care of others or perhaps were even shamed for not meeting the needs of others that they couldn’t actually fulfill as children. We grow up, sometimes, into people who long to be able to help in a way we couldn’t as children.
So, if a client unconsciously shows up asking to have their parental needs met, and we as practitioners are still carrying our childhood care-taking instincts, we might also unconsciously try — out of our own guilt and understandable need to feel good about ourselves — to fill that parental slot.
Unfortunately, not-great things tend to flow from this. For one, we will fall short, and if the dynamic doesn’t become clear, the encounter can simply feel like a failure to practitioner and client alike. Another possibility is that we do a good enough job, but now we’ve signed up for the role, which starts a practitioner-client relationship that’s headed for resentment and burnout. And, there are lots of other not-so-great ways it can go.
Everyone is seeking to do their best in these situations, and no one is actually trying to create an unworkable practitioner-client relationship. The client wants help; the practitioner wants to help. But the minute we start to try to fill the parent role, the balance and workability of the relationship is at risk.
I teach my students a simple practice to help avoid falling into this situation. Before the client comes into the room (or on Zoom or on the phone), see the client before you, with their parents next to them. Say to the parents: “You are the parents, not me. Thank you for my client’s life. It is my honor to be of service for a little while if I can.” And to the client: “I see your parents. I have a place of respect for them, no matter how they may have fallen short as parents. I am glad for your life. It is my honor to be of service for a little while if I can.”
Connect with both your ancestors and with your healing lineage — teachers, mentors, founders. Feel them behind you, supporting you in the modest work you are about to do. Ask them to help you to do good work on behalf of your client, for the period of time you will be with them. Feel you are part of something larger.
Lastly, see your client’s ancestors behind them, too. You can begin to see how modest your place is with the client — you are here to do a piece of work, and then release them again to the larger forces to which they belong.
Falling into a too-large role with our clients is an occupational danger. It happens a lot, especially for newer practitioners who really want to be helpful. When we bow to the larger forces, and see with accuracy our modest place, we can honor that our client is here because they had those specific people as parents, who cannot be replaced. Then, our work can begin with power and impact.
What is your experience of this dynamic as a practitioner and/or as a client? Please share on my blog, below.
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