The Importance Of Not Getting Emotionally Involved In Cases

Be psychologist It is not an easy task, despite the fact that there are people who still believe that to be one you just have to sit down and listen and get paid for it. We are complicit every day in many testimonies, some more serious than others, but regardless of that, they all carry a great emotional burden and suffering for those who suffer from it. Whoever goes to a psychologist places his trust in a person he knows nothing about and hopes that he can help him resolve his conflicts and lead a more satisfactory life. So, we have a great responsibility towards people.

But that is not the main handicap of being a psychologist, you have to learn something that they do not teach you in any subject at the faculty and that is achieved with practice: fair implication with the cases.

What does fair involvement with cases mean?

Especially when you are a novice psychologist, With little experience, you want to go all out and sometimes that entails excessive involvement in the cases, so you end up suffering with your patient’s suffering and then you cannot do good therapeutic work because you lose objectivity.

On other occasions, however, the opposite happens, you are so concerned about being correct and not making mistakes, that you stop bringing naturalness to the therapeutic relationship and it does not work because it seems cold.

To understand this better, I am going to explain my personal experience from when I started working as a psychotherapist and my journey until I achieved what I consider to be a fair implication:

When I left the race, my feeling was that I had no idea about anything. It is assumed that when you finish the training you have to have the necessary and sufficient tools to open a firm or work for other people but I felt totally out of place (in fact, today I confirm that the degree in itself is not enough to be able to practice and a master’s specialization is fundamental and essential). So by chance I came across a two-year practical training where from the beginning you see patients and are constantly supervised by several professionals who analyze in detail each session carried out. This training, despite the fear I had from constantly being in the eye of the hurricane, was what opened the doors of confidence in my professionalism. During that time, they taught me how to act when you found yourself in different difficulties and situations and they also taught me to keep my distance from patients but appear close at the same time (a quite complicated task due to the inconvenience it entails). The thing is that when I left and started working on my own, I observed that many patients did not manage to generate a therapeutic bond and left after a few sessions. I didn’t understand why, if I was strictly applying everything they had taught me, how was it possible? So I went to the opposite extreme, getting too involved. I still remember a patient with whom this happened. He was a man with leukemia who from the beginning generated great tenderness in me. And perhaps because of the complexity of his situation, because he was alone and because I wanted to do everything possible to help him, I got overly involved. When I left work I kept thinking about how to help him and once I was so absorbed in the session that I spent 2 hours with him, twice the recommended therapeutic time. But one day I realized that what he was doing was not professional (I called him several times as if I were his friend to ask how he was doing while he was hospitalized). Until I was able to put on the brakes and change the relationship. That made me see that I needed more training, so I ventured to take another master’s degree where they helped me get involved just enough, that is, to be empathetic but not excessively and at the same time be natural and myself (before I appeared to be very professional). . Therefore, reaching the middle point is complicated and requires experience.

What can you do to have a fair involvement with the cases?

So much over-involvement and under-involvement is not very therapeutic and harmful both for the patient and for you as a professional, so I am going to give you some guidelines to achieve that balance:

1. Set specific hours for case review: At first it is normal to fill your free time with case reviews. You think about what has happened in the sessions, you talk about it with professional colleagues to ask for another opinion, you review what you have worked on in therapy and look for strategies to apply specifically with that person. And all that is good, but it is important to regulate it and not make it take up too much of your time. Remember that you have to disconnect from work like anyone else.
2. Work on your empathy: To be a good psychology professional, empathy is essential. It is necessary to put yourself in the person’s shoes and think how he/she thinks to access what the situations that that person has experienced may have implied. But once you leave the session, you have to do a reset. You can’t go into another session thinking about the previous patient. One thing that works well at the beginning is to leave yourself some time between visits to think about something else, look at your phone and then think about what you are going to work on with the next person.
3. If you have psychologist friends, try to talk about the cases as little as possible: It’s one thing if you have a question and want to ask it, and quite another to meet friends and continue “working.” In the same way that doctors, when they hang up their coat before going home, leave their profession in the box, you have to do the same when you finish your day. And even if you don’t meet psychologist friends, if you meet friends, try to be yourself, stop being a psychologist for a while.
4. Be as natural as possible with your patients but remember that they are not your friends: Leaving the profession leads to a certain emotional involvement, but try to think objectively, which is how you can best help that person. If you act like just another friend, you will not be fulfilling your role and the work done will not be good. You will have an excellent therapeutic relationship but that will not help the person, it will be difficult for you to tell them things that may hurt or bother them and you will not realize possible alerts that are there. So try to abide by the code of ethics and do not skip the fundamental ethical aspects.
5. Monitor your most difficult cases: We are not all-powerful beings. Sometimes we need outside help. Don’t be afraid to do it, especially if you think you are getting too involved or if someone is rejecting you. The opinion of another professional will help you continue doing good work.

Encarni Muñoz Silva

Health psychologist, registered number 16918