Intersecting losses: working with the inevitable vicissitudes in therapist and client lives

Therapists working with clients with severe trauma histories over long periods of time may find themselves managing traumatic events in their own lives-illness, divorce, death-at the same time as they are assisting their clients to live productively with their painful pasts. While a few accounts exist describing how therapists deal with single overwhelming events, very little has been written about how therapists manage ongoing or prolonged episodes of severe stressors with a busy clinical practice of clients with severe trauma histories. Yet, we know that support for therapists is crucial to longevity in the field and we also know that learning from the experience of others is a highly recommended form of support. This paper is an account by a senior clinician of how she has maintained a productive clinical practice despite personal losses. Therapists who struggle with personal losses probably deal with choices related to self-disclosure more than therapists who do not have such experiences; they have repeated opportunities to establish appropriate and effective levels of self-disclosure for them and the people with whom they work. The paper presents a template for thinking about the risks and benefits of self-disclosure while at the same time modeling a level of self-disclosure that may be beneficial to therapists looking for examples.