Covid Test

Personal or Professional:  Boundaries in the age of Covid
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The gold standard for ethical therapy practice is to use our personhood only for the benefit of the client.  But what happens when a global pandemic crisis pushes more of the therapist’s needs and worldview to the forefront?  And when these views are diametrically opposed to the client’s…?
Where is the line between allowing ‘the client’s process’ to unfold, and protecting ourselves and our families?  How much political pontification about the evil of the ‘other side’ is clinically helpful for the client to express, if any?
In these emotionally challenging and confusing times I’ve found two approaches to such clinical dilemmas helpful:

• Healthy adult relationships are mutually beneficial, including healthy professional relationships.   Each therapist has unique circumstances that inform their barometer around healthy boundaries and personal triggers.  We may be doing the client a disservice if our emotional reactivity, our countertransference, competes with our ability to care for the client.  When is it more ethical to refer a client to a therapist who is freed up in this area?
• The treatment plan provides leverage to confront.  What are the client’s overarching clinical goals?  How might the current process between you and the client be used as a teaching tool.  How might the client’s issues relate to boundaries or managing grandiosity?  Help the client see connections to behaviors that do not get the client what they want in their relationships.

What other therapeutic or relational issues are you experiencing as Covid persists?  Are you able to work well with others who differ radically from your personal approach to managing Covid?  And how are you successful with this?