As therapists, we may be comfortable helping our clients examine the roles they play in their relationships, but how often do we allow ourselves to slow down and carefully examine our own roles? As we all know, our personal and professional roles may shift and evolve, requiring re-examination.
What are Roles?
As I started brainstorming about my own personal and professional roles, I started with the basics…wife, mother, daughter, therapist, supervisor and more. But, I knew I wanted to take a deeper look at my roles, to identify the commonalities between them and more.
As I have been reflecting on this topic, I took a look at how several different dictionaries define the term “roles”. The definitions included several phrases that really stood out to me and helped me identify additional roles that I hadn’t originally considered. The phrases are:
- A function or part
- Position or purpose
- Assigned or assumed
- Socially expected behavior pattern
An Invitation for Reflection: The Intersection of Your Personal and Professional Roles
If you are up for a little self examination, I invite you to ponder the following questions. You may want to consider the phrases listed above to help you take a deeper look, too.
- What professional roles do you have?
- What personal roles do you have?
- In what way do these roles affect each other?
- How do your colleagues define your role?
- How would your clients define your role in their lives?
- Are their common themes that emerge across your various roles?
- Do you find yourself functioning in similar roles across various settings and positions?
- Which personal roles seem to have the most profound effect on your work?
- How do you handle differences in perceived roles?
- How does reflection on the above questions influence how you may want to approach your work (and life outside of work) differently?
My Reflection on my Personal and Professional Roles
I thought I’d take a moment to share some of my personal reflections on this topic. My intention is to share my own perspective and how I’ve used the information I’ve gathered from this reflection over time to adjust my practices. I hope that you can take time to reflect on how personal and professional roles intersect for you and make any adjustments to your practice that seem fitting for you.
As I think about about my own personal and professional roles and have come to recognize that my “list” is always incomplete. Each time I come back to reflect on this topic, I add more roles to my list or tweak how I think about my list in some way. It is an evolving process.
A common theme that I have noticed is that I tend to play the role of “helper” or caregiver across various relationships and positions. Like many of you, I enjoy being able to support others in my personal life and through my work, but that can be exhausting at times. Over time, I’ve developed better boundaries around this in order to make sure that I am not depleted and giving too much to others. Yet, it is an ongoing process. I noticed that this became increasingly more important after the birth of each of my children and after I started my private practice. When I first started practicing therapy the majority of the children and families I worked with had experienced a lot of intense trauma, but over the past five-six years, I have found the need to have more balance in the types of families I work with in order to avoid feeling burnt out.
Another common theme that I noticed for myself is that I am often the “rule follower” and also lean towards the tendency to want to please others. There were times where I previously would have identified as a “people pleaser.” It is interesting to reflect on how these two roles may have helped and/or hindered me at different points professionally. I work to be mindful and purposeful in my decision making in order to ensure that I feel comfortable with a decision versus letting my “rule follower” or “people pleaser” tendencies take the lead. Over the years, I have found my own style to slow down interactions and allow myself the space needed to fully think through situations that may arise in therapy sessions, meetings with supervisees and connections with colleagues.
By far the one role that has had the most profound impact on me personally and professionally is becoming a mother. I have touched on this in several of my previous posts, but will attempt to elaborate more here.
The element of direct responsibility for the well being of others that comes with being a parent can feel so heavy at times. Having this experience myself, has helped me better understand how to approach my work with families. I better relate to my adult client’s experience of being a parent, but also have a different look at how children view the world through the eyes of my own children.
Since becoming a mother, I believe I bring more empathy, understanding and flexibility to my work and am better able to meet my client’s where they are at. I feel myself connecting with my clients in a more authentic way. While I still have boundaries around sharing personal information about myself and my family, I find that many of the clients I am seeing now want to know that I have children and may be able to relate to some of their struggles, so I am open to sharing a little more than I would have in the past.
On the other hand, since becoming a mother I find that I have to be much more intentional in staying fully present in all areas of my life inside and outside of the therapy office. It seems that I become more easily distracted in session, if I am worried about the wellbeing of my children or if something that comes up in session that reminds me of one of my children. On the flip side, when I am home with my family, I have found that I also need to put effort into staying present and not thinking about my never ending work to do list (this seems to be more about my business owner role than my therapist role).
That is a little bit of what comes to mind when I reflect on the intersection of personal and professional roles in my life. Now it’s your turn.
If you are so inclined, I’d love for you to leave a comment about which of your personal roles has had the most impact on your work.
Sarah