Season 3 Ep 8: The Medicine of Intimacy: Embracing Anger in Therapy
Imagine yourself saying, “I am angry at my client.”
If you immediately need to add a whole bunch of context and caveats to make that statement feel okay, you’re not alone.
Admitting that we get angry with clients is uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable with colleagues and supervisors, and it’s definitely uncomfortable with clients.
It’s even uncomfortable to admit just to ourselves.
But anger is powerful, and it makes itself important, whether we want it to or not. Even the most mild-mannered, even-tempered person can experience anger towards a client at some point. It's okay, and it's a normal part of the therapeutic process.
When anger presents itself, we have two options. We can repress and avoid something important, or we can choose to confront it and deal with it. As I so often tell my clients, before we reliably know what to do with a feeling, we have to actually feel it to get to know it.
Expanding on last episode’s conversation with Dr. K Hixson about conflict with clients, I want to explore some of the reasons why we might get angry with clients–some situational, some due to the very nature of the therapeutic dyad–and where we go from there, even if it gets messy or uncomfortable.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
Why client relationships might, by their nature, be more frequent sites of anger than average interpersonal relationships
How guilt and shame compound our discomfort with anger and get in the way of the curiosity and possibility that come with sitting with it
Why it’s worth learning to understand our anger as a source of information about ourselves, our clients, our client relationships, or all three
How anger is like fire or water–dangerous but capable of being handled with skill and purpose
The social and cultural forces that make us even more reluctant to admit to anger at clients
Why we owe clients and potential clients a view of our humanity within the work
Learn more about Riva Stoudt:
Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat
About Riva
Riva Stoudt is a therapist based in Portland, Oregon. When she's not working with patients, she likes to talk about all the things a therapist isn't "supposed" to talk about.
