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Chapter 5: Attitudes and Boundaries

Chapter out line: Understanding Attitudes

Basic Helping Attitude’s

Understanding attitudes contrary to popular belief is more than understanding the clients attitude it is the self-awareness of your own personal attitudes. A good service worker would should and always strive to understands one’s own sensitivities fears and other emotional triggers. By knowing these triggers not only will the worker be more apt to be understanding and empathetic but also enhance the client service worker relationship

           A. Warmth

A1. Worker should be friendly, nonjudgmental and receptive (All necessary to put the client at ease)

           B. Genuineness

B1.”Don’t be a phony”, “Be yourself”. Be open and truthful, be true to yourself and others and remember you are human and when and if mistakes are made be honest. Be authentic concerning your background and credentials.

           C. Empathy

C1. Simply put seeing things from someone else’s point of view. “Walking a mile in their shoes so to speak” is learned to a degree in my opinion. Yes we all have an ability to read between the lines but as we progress in our career we will have to use less effort to hear those things that the client is not saying to us and gain more understanding and insight. The important thing is listening well enough to accurately communicate back to the client what was heard and understood. Without properly articulated recapping then the client may feel as if you were not listening or just don’t understand the problem. That’s why empathy is so essential.  

Being Judgmental

Being judgmental is a natural human characteristic that can be consciously overcome if will power has been applied to doing so. Many service workers often look down on and at some clients they see on their case loads. This is a form of discrimination and stereotypical behavior. This is also counterproductive to the worker client relationship. Often workers place their values, beliefs and expectations onto the client. This should never be done and must be recognized and corrected immediately if not sooner.

           A. Reality Checks

A1. The discouraging thing is that this work is extremely emotionally taxing if self-care and personal reflection time is not set aside. Most choose this service work to help others and that is why is it so flabbergasting when we “have to deal” with a difficult person. We don’t anticipate for some reason that we may run into a person this is disrespectful, uncooperative or no personal initiative. We also seem to forget we got into this field to help those exact kinds of people. If all clients we completely compliant and we emotionally, behaviorally and cognitively stable we would have no service work to provide.    

          B. Discouraging Clients

B1. This again could go on for a while as the ways to discourage a client are endless. From insensitivity, patronizing pushy ect. The list could go on and list scores of discouragements. This is not only unethical it is extremely detrimental to the client.   

Understanding Boundaries (Separate from the client)

This is more difficult than it sounds. We all may meet a client that seeks our help but also remind us of ourselves or a similar experience we went through. They may be facing something that we may or may not have dealt with or simply could be so similar to our personality that the worker and the client may have many things in common. This has great dangers for both worker and client. The worker’s judgment and objectivity is compromised and the client is not receiving the proper benefits of the service. Unfortunately many workers gain employment in the service field to work through their personal issues but instead adapt maladaptive behaviors to cope.

           A. “Reminds you of you”

A1.As stated above and one of the ways to understanding boundaries is being aware yourself when you have dealt in a healthy manner with your personal issues. It is okay that a client may remind you of yourself in some aspects or circumstances that we can relate and empathize with. In that case we could help sow effective understanding to give a beneficial service. On the flip side if the worker has yet to deal with their personal emotional issues then the helping session or service could be compromised and the helping/service process would break down.

           B. Client reflection on you

B1. As a Service worker or case worker a person might feel especially if it can be considered a success. The problem with this is if several of clients on the workers case load has positive results then the worker may feel as if they need to push recommendations and previous solutions to “fix a problem”. Knowing that each client and each situation is different the worker succumbs to the idea that they can fix the problem rather than seeking a solution with the client and letting them guide their life.

Detrimental Boundaries

           A. False Attributions

A1. Preconceived misconceptions are often the problem. We all do it is normal and human nature to notice what is different from ourselves. We often think those that look like us are like us and those who are not are different from us this is absurd. We must use caution when dealing with things that are different from our personal norm and be aware of these issues.   

           B. False Power

B1. This seems to be more of a barricade than a barrier. In our own personal desire to gain accreditation, recognition and respect we can often over talk and be somewhat over barring and demanding with our clients which is a quick turn off to those clients and a failure as a worker.

Transference/Counter-transference

           A. Transference

A1. This can be quite troublesome and out of the workers control to an extent it could go in a positive manner or a negative manner either from the beginning or after an amount of time has passed.  

           B. Counter-transference

B1. As the name suggest counter-transference is when the service worker is reminded in some way or manner of a memory, emotion or a person. Similarly the same problems can be created in this as well on the service worker side. The exception is as a service worker we should be aware of these short comings and anticipate how we plan to address them should they arise.  

The video excerpt that I chose to be relevant to this will be attached at the bottom. Please bear with me on this until I become more comfortable with it. After reading and doing my own personal research on the subject of boundaries with the exception of the basic black and white line we should never cross are all rules applicable for all persons and circumstances? If a worker is acting in the best interest only for the client in mind and having a spirit of benevolence and good morals are some of those boundary lines a little more broad and vague.   

Video:  http://youtu.be/GzNZUzJj3oI