Setting Healthy Boundaries as a Professional Counselor in Response to Handling Transference and Countertransference
Theresa Schlemmer
CAARR Institute Abstract
This paper will outline what my motivation was for choosing Drug and Alcohol Counseling as a career, my understanding of transference and countertransference as well as how to avoid countertransference and set healthy boundaries to prevent countertransference if a client were to exploit my motivating passion.
Setting Healthy Boundaries as a Professional Counselor in Response to Handling Transference and Counter Transference
My Motivation
My name is Theresa Schlemmer, I am 52 years old and I have been clean from Heroin and other drugs for over 25 years. In those 25 years, many people have told me that because of all of my experiences in life that I should become a drug and alcohol counselor. I have had many people come to me to ask for help with their addictions and problems. I have always
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I will need to learn how to deal with the fact that there will be clients that will remind me of people from my past or things from my past (Countertransference) and it may be hard for me to counsel them. I have been in abusive situations in the past and know that I will have clients who are doing drugs or drinking alcohol and their actions or words may “knock” me back to my past that could potentially make me feel that this is the wrong career for me. I am currently in counseling myself to battle the demons from my past and work toward bettering my life and I feel that continuing my own counseling along with attending meetings, getting together with my female friends and talking to God will help me to deal with my career choice as a counselor and not let Countertransference or Transference get in my way of helping to lead my clients in the direction of a healthy