Ethics Consult: Homesick for the Holidays

Dear Ethics Consult,

Every year, many of my clients spend the holiday season talking about visits with their families. Before their visit, they’re anxious. After the visit, they’re annoyed. I get it—families are hard. I do my best to take the discussions as they come. But if I’m honest, I hate this part of my work.

Eight years ago, my own family fell apart. My parents divorced. Their acrimony spread to me and my siblings, and everyone took sides. We’re mildly tolerant of one another now, but there hasn’t been a real family gathering since then. 

There seems to be an unspoken understanding that we’re all better off this way. Still, I miss my dad and my brothers, who took his side. I miss the family we used to have. And when I look at my own family, which has crumbled, it’s hard for me to empathize with clients’ complaints about their families, who are finding ways to stay together.

How am I supposed to manage this? Saying “don’t talk about your family” doesn’t feel right, and pushing clients to “be grateful for what you have” seems like overstepping my role. But I can’t bear the thought of several more weeks of clients griping over what seem to me like petty disagreements with people who are making time to be with them.

— Maybe Next Year I’ll Take Eight Weeks Off

Dear Maybe Next Year,

I’m so sorry to hear about what your family has gone through. That would be painful for anyone—therapist or not. Your longing for the family cohesion you’ve lost is palpable. Forgive me if the questions here are presumptive, but a couple of thoughts immediately came to mind.

First, where are you in your own grief process? Even if no one died, you’ve undoubtedly suffered a significant loss. The strength of your pain to this day leads me to be curious about whether talking openly about your grief may be helpful. Grief specialists have largely discarded the idea that grief goes in sequential stages. So don’t worry if you feel like you’re somehow not doing it right. You might find that talking about it, especially if you haven’t done so for a while, brings some sense of relief.

My second question is whether you are, to the best of your knowledge, the only one in your family who feels the way that you do? I don’t want to create false hope, and it’s important to have a clear understanding of where others in the family might be on this. But it’s at least theoretically possible that, after eight years, your parents and siblings might have less interest in taking sides, and more interest in healing together. To be clear, the family you once had is gone, and you can’t turn back the clock. But, just perhaps, there remains some faint hope of a future that is warmer and more connected for your family than the present.

You might wonder where the ethics part is in this ethics consult so far. It’s in there. When NASW updated their ethics code this year, they highlighted self-care for the first time. And while other codes say it more indirectly, they agree on the principle: We need to take care of ourselves in order to be fully present for our clients. Taking care of ourselves means, in part, that we actively work to get our own stuff out of our way.

I admire your self-awareness about your reactions to these client complaints. You’re able to see that your reactions aren’t ideal, and are driven by your own family history—and that they make it hard for you to empathize with clients in the way you normally would. That’s a form of clinical impairment, and so you’re quite right to assess whether you can reasonably continue caring for clients in the presence of those reactions.

I’m not sure that taking eight weeks off over the holidays each year is the answer, though. I mean, if you can afford it and your clients are cool with it, more power to you. But I suspect you know that would be an over-reaction.

Instead, I would suggest finding a consultant or supervisor, as well as a grief therapist. Yes, both. The grief therapist is to help you. Don’t talk much about your clients there—that’s not what you’re there for. The consultant or supervisor is to help your clients, by ensuring that your countertransference doesn’t show up as judgment or condescension in session. The consultant or supervisor can also help you make informed and proactive choices about self-disclosure, which may be helpful in some instances and harmful in others.

We all have days when it’s hard to be a therapist. For you, the holidays are one such time. Knowing that, you can take some proactive steps to help yourself and your clinical relationships get through the season. You don’t mention whether you have a partner or kids yourself, but I hope that you’re able to find comfort and joy in the presence of those who love you. And I hope future holiday seasons are better than past years have been.

Good luck,

Ben