Feb 07
25
Enabling
When is the work and advice we give to clients enabling them and when are we being of service and really working with them to help them find a solution to their issues?
There is such a fine line between the two.
For the most part, clients seek us out to find a solution to their problem – their back pain, their neck pain, their headaches, stress, injuries and to improve their health. In massage school we are taught so many great things about the body that we can get so caught up in sharing them with clients it is easy to lose track of what clients really need and what they are there for.
When we give our advice to clients in pain and seeking solutions are we doing them a service or are we enabling them? They come in regularly seeking relief and then go back out there doing the same things they have always been doing – beating their bodies up with sports or weekend activities, eating poorly, working long hours and they end up right back on our tables with the same old things over and over again.
Enabling is a part of co-dependence. We enable others or rescue them from taking responsibility for their health. They don’t have to take care of themselves because they come to us and we can do it for them. We enable them to continue on with this behavior.
When we give them our advice – stretch more, drink more water, sit at the computer differently and they don’t take it what does that really mean for us? When we give advice that isn’t being adhered to it is really more about us getting our need to be needed and respected met through our client interactions. We can sit there and tell someone what “WE” think they should do but the real power lies in helping them find a solution that they want to do and can do – otherwise we are enabling them to continue on with their self destructive ways.
Enabling is taking responsibility for someone else’s problems. It is doing something for someone that they should be doing themselves. It is making excuses for them when they need to be taking responsibility for themselves.
Enabling is usually a result of low self esteem. We can’t say no -we won’t work on clients because we want to be accepted and needed or we need the money. The whole process of massage school can leave massage therapist feeling like they can do everything and anything -that massage is the end all answer to the world health problem. When we work with people and they don’t seem to improve as much as we would like or as much as we have seen in other people, we start feeling like a failure. We work long hours, work through our lunch hours, work weekends or do other things for clients such as these hoping that we can help them. They come into us and they leave feeling better for the day and go and do it all over again the next day and come in with the same issues. We keep clients from accepting responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences of their actions.
We work with clients and keep thinking there must be something we can do to change this- to help this person. If we had only known more we would be able to help this person more. We think we are being compassionate and only wanting to help when in reality our helping is hurting more.
Helping is doing something for someone that they are not capable of doing themselves. Enabling is doing for someone things that they could, and should be doing themselves.
The solution to the issue of enabling is learning to say no and learning to take more responsibility for ourselves and our thoughts/actions. That is the only thing we can do. When we try to take responsibility for others pain and actions we are enabling.
How can we work more effectively with people who continue to be self destructive?
How can we be more of service to others and get our needs for approval and to be needed met outside of our practices?
What does being of service really mean and look like?
Resources:
The need to fix-www.thebodyworker.com
See Rachel Remen MD’s - In the Service of LifeÂ
The Code of the Caretaker
Marion Woodman, Jungian analyst.said, “Humility begins when we see our
clients not for where they could be, but for where they are.
Related posts: