Counter Transference Essay

Transference and counter transference are essential the part of the patients and clinicians relationship. And as a professional I must become aware of how my own feelings, attitudes, and relationships with patient as it will influences the helping process, self-reflection and utilizing this awareness for the benefit of patients are major components of my professional self. Many patients/clients will experience transference and as they relate to the clinicians, but their thoughts and feelings about the clinician is actually based on other relationships experience with others in their lives, like patient, or a spouse and therefore reacts inappropriately to the clinicians. However at my placement site even though is it a clinical setting
I do not always have the opportunity to have consecutive treatments with the same patient as a result of my schedule. Additionally if a patient had experience transference during our working relationship I did not notice this occurrences. Partly because I was not attuned or fail to recognize any transference that a patient may have towards me. On the other hand, I did experience counter-transference once with a patient.
I fined that I gravitate to patients who are of similar ethnicity, race , background, and age, I feel a stronger connection to than others.
I feel they could relate to me and me to them during treatments. At one time we had several patients of the same culture as me Jamaican. One of the patient in particular and I became very close almost immediately. I had strong counter transference toward this patient. She was split image of my sister, with whom I am very close with. Her personality and certain things she would say reminded me her. Yet she was having trouble trusting me to engage with me. So, I used the only resource I had left. Which was me using myself as a resource (self-disclosure) to build our working alliance/ relationship to help this patient overcome challenges. I believe that the self-disclosure helped to reduce the power differential between me and the client. It should be done solely for the purpose of helping the client, and not to meet the needs of the therapist. For example, I was working with a patient who was having trouble engaging with me. And so, because I knew her background and she did not know mine. I decided to disclosure that I share the culture norms and that I had similar experiences as she does, and I said in our native tongue and she laughed and that broke the tension. My here was purposeful and the intention was build a rapport with patient so, that we can move on the treatment goals. Self disclosure should only be used in extreme circumstances for purpose of moving forward and intervention. So, I was very careful to not disclosure too detail about my experiences to the
patient.