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As a massage therapist, clients come to you to help them find a solution to a problem they are having – whether it is pain, stress, an injury or other disease. They are seeking an expert to help them with their condition.

Whenever someone is seeking another for help, it creates a power differential in the relationship meaning that the client perceives the massage therapist as having some answer or solution to their problem. It starts from the second they make the effort to find someone to help them. The role of the massage therapist is to provide massage as a solution – to meet the clients needs.
Often in a relationship where there is a power differential it creates a dynamic called transference – the person tends to think of the authority in the way they related to their parents or other significant caretaker early in their life. Without knowing it, a client will often be acting or speaking from an early childhood wound where their needs for attention, nurturing, appreciation and respect were not met. It is an unconscious process and it happens in all relationships. Some signs of transference include but are not limited to:

a client tells you their whole life story in the first session

a client wants to see you socially as a friend or even as a date

a client asks questions like “how many massage have you done today?” or asks more about your personal life.

There is another short list in this article in which
Ben Benjamin defines transference as

In transference, unresolved needs, feelings and issues from childhood are transferred onto the helper

The thing with transference is that it happens constantly in relationships like the one that is created between the massage therapist and the client as well as with other relationships where there is an imbalance of power – boss/employees, teacher/students. Because we have the added influence of touch and how it can relax a person along with the fact that people take their clothes off and feel more vulnerable from the start, the transference is really high in the massage profession. While massage therapists are in no position to do psychological therapy with a client, what they can do is learn more about themselves and understand your own issues around being a massage therapist which are not often clear and straight forward.

Countertransference is when the therapist transfers their feelings and issues from childhood and transfers them onto the client and tries to get their own needs met through the client relationship. Countertransference begins the minute one starts thinking about becoming a massage therapist. The reasons that someone chooses the massage profession where they take on the role of the expert or person of power are usually filled with deeper agendas that are usually unconscious. Countertransfence is what usually brings many to the massage profession. They want to find a job that they are more appreciated in, that they can find more meaning in and help caretake others. Feeling like you need to always have results or you are not doing a good job can be a sign of countertransference along with these other things:

wanting to be friends with clients

thinking you have to take every client that calls

working with cancer patients exclusively because of your past with cancer or any other specialty (working on abuse victims because you were abused, working on sports teams because you wanted to be a athlete or were one)

thinking you need to work longer on a client than the assigned time to get better results
or make them happier so they will come back

feeling resentful of not getting a tip or gift

feeling unappreciated after all you do

thinking your work is better than everyone elses and if people go to other massage therapists it will be their loss

feeling drained after a session or day of work

thinking you have to resolve the clients issues all in one session.

Transference and Countertransference are a natural part of the helping relationship. It isn’t a matter of if it is going to happen – but when is it going to happen.
It isn’t that doing these things is bad in any way for either the client or the massage therapist. It is just that these old ways of reacting and thinking are just that- based on old beliefs that just aren’t true. It is important to become aware of both sides of the dynamics of transference and countertransference and learn to get your needs for appreciation, attention, to be needed and nurturing met outside of your massage practice.

As a massage therapist we can best serve clients by becoming more aware of ourselves and our own countertransference issues which will allow us to stay more present with clients. In doing so we can serve their needs better as our own are taken out of the picture and met in our personal life rather than in our practice.

Peer Supervision is the best way to get in touch with this other part of being a massage therapist. Group or individual sessions are necessary to help become aware of these issues and it is also a place where the massage therapist can get their needs for appreciation and other needs met.

The Wounded Healer What’s in Your Baggage? By Arlene Alpert

Transference by Ben Benjamin

How Countertransference Jeopardizes the Therapeutic Relationship Nicole Cutler, L.Ac.

I have a theory I am

working on for a book that I call “The Code of the Caretaker”. The theory is that people who are massage therapists and others in the helping professions are driven by the need to please others at the cost of giving up part of themselves.

For massage therapists it shows up in the struggles of building a successful practice in things like:
- Not setting clear cancellation policies: Letting others get away with not paying for their missed appointment at the cost of losing money for the business
-Giving free massages : thinking that is the only way you can get clients in the door
-Giving more of your time in sessions than the alloted time: thinking that you have to take more time to get that knot out or to relieve that pain for the client instead of having lunch
-Thinking doing massage is all about ‘fixing’ others pain. It isn’t. It is about taking care of yourself enough so that you can remain present for another to witness their healing.

These are just a few of the things for starters. What all of these are related to are the ways you sacrifice yourself to please others. It is also called co-dependence.

What we do for others – caretaking, giving up our time and money for others, sacrificing our selves so that others may get massage – often is a ‘code’ of behavior. We are doing for others what we wish someone would do for us.

This deep need to please others comes from wanting to be accepted and appreciated by others. It comes from those wounded places in ourselves that think that we are not good enough just as we are. It often has it’s roots in our family histories where we were taught that having feelings was wrong and that having needs was also wrong. Not having our needs met at an early time in life leads us to think we are not worthy of having those needs met.

So the drama that we create in our lives is an attempt to get those early needs met. So we keep trying to get our needs for attachment, love and acceptance met but sacrificing ourselves thinking it will get us what we need. In truth, as David Rico says in his book “How to be an Adult”

Our problem is not that as children our needs were unmet, but as adults they are still unmourned! The hurt, bereft, betrayed child is still inside of us wanting to cry for what he missed and wanting thereby to let go of the pain and the stressful present neediness he feels in relationships. In fact, neediness itself tells us nothing about how much we need from others; it tells us how much we need to grieve the irrevocably barren past and evoke our inner resources of nurturance

We can only truly “help” (be of service to) others when we have first been helped ourself and have accepted ourselves as the people that we are – with all of our pain and hurts and joy.

As a people pleaser we are also a rescuer – trying to save others from the pain that we ourselves have not yet dealt with. We focus on taking care of others so we don’t have to take a look at this in ourselves. To stop being a rescuer (people pleaser) the only way to do this is to start taking more responsibility for ourselves and doing our own healing. It often is hard for rescuers to see how much they actually need help. When they start to feel their own feelings, it is often easier just to cover them up again and find someone else to take care of. When you are trying to ‘caretake’ others what you are actually saying is that “you are not whole”. “I know more than you do”. “I don’t trust that you can handle this yourself”.
When you are constantly rescuing, you are not taking care of yourself. You fear that if you don’t take care of others that you will be left alone.

Ironically, the thing we often try to give to others is the thing that we ourselves need the most. When you can start to give yourself this first, you will soon win the love and support you need without all of the drama – just by being yourself.

The best way to help others is to be doing what you really want to be doing…Do you want to be working late or taking that last minute client when you were wanting to go home to your family? Do you keep asking for less money than you need from clients as payment? Do you forgive ‘no shows’ or late arrivals by saying “It’s ok and making excuses for others rather than asking for what you need – a no show payment and just giving a late arrival the amount of time left in their alloted time?

This is probably more about what happened to you. No one trusted you or saw you as whole and taught you that being needy and having feelings was wrong.
We act out. We are hurt by others words and actions when they actually have nothing to do with us. Getting to a place of feeling and knowing your own wholeness is a process of learning to become aware of what your emotions are telling you. When you are feeling sadness, anger, frustration or any of the negative emotions, you are feeling those because you are believing the old stories and beliefs. When you are attempting to please everyone, you are actually attempting to control others. You are actually giving your power away.

Gary Zukav speaks of it his book “The Heart of the Soul”

An individual who needs to please is constantly trying to see how others are feeling so that she will know how to be with them. She cannot take their requests and communications at face value. She tries to guess what they are really saying or requesting. That is because she herself, does not communicate what she is feeling, thinking or requesting….If another person is unhappy, she tries to determine how to make that person happy so that she will be more safe….An individual who needs to please, is always tense….
She ignores herself. Because she does not take care of herself, she waits for others to take care of her. She does not feel worthy to ask for what she needs. When she does not get it, she feels resentful. She feels that her devotion-compulsion-to care for others is not reciprocated,…The pain of rejection you seek to avoid goes unexplored, and continues to create the need to please…The goal of pleasing is to avoid experiencing emotions that are too painful or shameful to confront..

The chapter goes on…

But how does that actually apply to building a business and being a massage therapist?
How do you know when you are ‘people pleasing’ or when are you just doing things that you think you need to do to build your practice (like giving free massages)?
If you are giving away your time and you don’t really have it to give. If you are giving away sessions, when you don’t have the money to live….

The difference may not always be clear. Your feelings will tell you. Does your giving make you feel more alive or does it leave you feeling drained?

The thing is that you will probably never really get rid of this but becoming more aware of it you can begin to change. When stressful situations arise, so will your people pleaser most likely.
How do you tell the difference? How do you deal with your “people Pleaser”?