Beyond Caretaking: Caring Beyond Fixing

What is Caretaking?

No matter what we’ve learned in school, no matter what we’ve read in books, every time we close the door and enter into a one-on-one space with our clients, we tend to play out old patterns of relating. Those patterns are conditioned by: our childhood, our experiences in life – good and bad, our feelings of self-worth, our ability to communicate, clients’ expectations of us, and our perceptions and beliefs. These patterns and beliefs cannot be trained out of us.

Most of us do not have enough understanding of our clients’ psychological patterns to recognize the warning signs that trigger our caretaking patterns. When we honestly appraise our prejudices, our needs to fix, our discomfort with other’s suffering, and our difficulties maintaining appropriate boundaries, we can begin to relate to our clients in healthier ways.

In sessions our gifts, patterns, weaknesses, and strengths come to the fore. Most of us work in isolated settings, with little collegial contact. Our training and our professional paradigms predispose us to fix our clients. Therefore it is important that we each have a system of support made up of: colleagues, consultants and therapists.

How these patterns result in trying to fix our clients

Most clients expect us to remove their symptoms and we want to oblige them.
Isolation from our colleagues leads to few opportunities for peer support.
We don't fully understand our own psychological conditioning and inner patterns.
We don't fully understand our client's psychological conditioning and inner patterns.
Our professional paradigm and training limits our understanding of our work to physical and mechanical effects.
In challenging client situations we tend to become depleted physicaly and emotionally. 
In certain helpless situations we may overcompensate and mechanically overwork the client.

Specific Class Activities

Examine our practices: what's working, what isn't working?
Each participant will supply a current profile of his/her practice.
Case Studies: Looking at our relationships with clients from the perspective of caretaking versus caregiving. Each participant will supply a case scenario from his/her practice to be worked on with peers in a small group.
Discuss the addictive nature of caretaking from the perspective of other caregiving professions;
Why is it so hard to break our ingrained patterns?
Discuss factors in our personal history that led each of us to become a bodyworker.
Explore the symptoms of caretaking in our practices and personal histories.
Explore the impact of caretaking on ourselves and our clients.
Explore methods for getting beyond caretaking:
    Look at areas for educational need.
    Practice being present with our clients.
    Practice supervision with colleagues.            
    Outline our personal therapy issues.
    Look closely at our money issues.
    Establish criteria for professional supervision
Develop a plan for implementing these methods.