FINDING MY VOICE

Over several years of online networking with many other therapists who are also survivors I have gained a deeper appreciation of two separate issues which can combine to leave survivor therapists feeling profoundly isolated by our experience of both of these roles.

First, professional boundary considerations often exclude us from accessing the support of survivor communities, whether through online or face to face groups. Face to face survivor support groups may be perceived as completely "out of bounds" (particularly in small rural communities) and even online survivor support forums which encourage anonymity may still present potential boundary confusions. Therapeutic relationships are qualitatively different to the reciprocal relationships needed in mutual support groups (ie. both parties equally giving and receiving personal support), and yet in online anonymous support communities there is no way to be certain that a reciprocal relationship has not unknowingly been formed with a past, present or future client (a fact which may then be incidentally discovered*). As well trained psychologists/therapists we have been taught to keep our own issues to ourselves within the therapeutic relationship, in order to ensure the safe context essential for our clients' healing. There are many good reasons to carefully protect professional boundaries and the protection of our clients within the boundaries of a therapeutic relationship must always remain of paramount concern. For example, while many survivors appreciate knowing that their therapist is a trauma survivor,others prefer not to know this, and most (including myself) prefer not to know any details.

However there is also the issue of professional stigma which can keep survivor therapists isolated not only from other survivors in general but also from each other. I believe this issue needs to be exposed for the blatant prejudice it helps to perpetuate against all survivors. Not only will most survivor-therapists feel excluded from survivor support communities by boundary concerns, but most will never consider it wise to publicly acknowledge themselves as survivors even within their own professional circle of colleagues. Those who do so often experience society's prejudice entrenched throughout the "mental health"profession itself. Sometimes this prejudice is actually institutionalised in the guise of professionalism. In my own state in Australia, a disclosure in the workplace of one's own abuse history can apparently form the sole grounds for dismissal for some Department of Health employees. Mostly though, the prejudice endemic within the mental health industry is more subtle. Especially likely to be shunned or to have their competence questioned by professional colleagues and supervisors are those of their own ranks, who by owning their trauma history, challenge the much cherished but often illusory differentiation between those who are mental health professionals and those who are trauma survivors. This schism is also reflected in most psychotherapy literature, where those who are professionally competent therapists and those who are trauma survivor clients are invariably portrayed as if mutually exclusive. As one of many alternating between the "chair" of a survivor client and that of a trauma therapist, and working hard to reconcile these competing realities within my own life, I now find myself compelled to do what I can to challenge the stigma behind this myth.

Elysha (pen name)

Psychologist / Survivor

"finding my voice"