| Photo by Vidar Noesli-Mathiesen on Unsplash
Before empathy became a buzzword in counseling and everyday life, I launched my counseling career fresh from college, and it was a disaster. I did not have formal training in counseling, but I got a job as a drug rehab counselor. During a casual conversation with Lisa, a new client, she unloaded on me an emotional burden that led her to find refuge in drug abuse. It was the untimely death of her father. For the next hour, she narrated a heart-wrenching account of her loss and how it changed her and her family. She told me that the ensuing family disarray had led her younger sister to also use drugs to deal with her grief.
I was completely absorbed in listening to her story, and at the end of our unplanned counseling session, we were both a wreck. Despite my efforts to contain my emotions, my tears rose uncontrollably. We were huddling together, both sobbing, and it was hard to tell who the counselor and the counselee were. My inability to control my emotions and appear professional was embarrassing.
After that disastrous counseling experience, I promised never to lose my cool during sessions with clients again. My ability to listen with empathy to Liza’s story and my failure in emotional self-regulation went wrong. It would have required a high level of self-awareness to notice that I had completely empathized with her emotional state and story and lost my ability to regulate my own emotional state.
“The ability to empathize is an important quality of a good counselor or therapist. This skill, which comes naturally to some people but one that can be developed, opens a pandora’s box of risks among therapists with unhealed emotional wounds.”
But there was more to that story that I only realized much later. Recently, during training in counseling, I told my audience the same story to illustrate the hazards of empathy in counseling when the counselor’s emotional self-regulation fails. Like a lightning bolt, it hit me in a flash of insight that my calamitous initial counseling experience was triggered by unresolved emotional issues I had with my deceased father. Although Lisa’s experience with her father was positive, mine was negative. Both of us were experiencing a deep sense of loss. Both experiences carried the seed of unfinished emotional business.
The ability to empathize is an important quality of a good counselor or therapist. This skill, which comes naturally to some people but one that can be developed, opens a pandora’s box of risks among therapists with unhealed emotional wounds. First, is inadequate counter-transference to a client’s transference. A common case is a therapist who unconsciously seeks healing for his or her own emotional wounds while trying to help a client. Second, empathy could make one vulnerable to vicarious traumatization, secondary trauma from listening to a client’s traumatic experiences. It occurs when a therapist becomes dysregulated or loses his/her ability to emotionally self-regulate while engaged in working with a traumatized client or when processing a client’s traumatic experiences. The repeated exposures to clients’ accounts of adverse life experiences have cumulative negative effects on a therapist’s or counselor’s mental health. It is a major cause of work burnout among helping professionals.
Empathy fatigue or compassion fatigue is a common manifestation of helper burnout. The therapist or counselor suffers from emotional dysregulation and, as a defense mechanism, responds with detachment or indifference. The person’s judgment is also affected, leading to inappropriate behavior towards clients. Other mental health issues include sleep problems and relationship issues.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Fernando B. Perfas is an addiction specialist who has written several books and articles on the subject. He currently provides training and consulting services to various government and non-government drug treatment agencies regarding drug treatment and prevention approaches. He can be reached at fbperfas@gmail.com.
