Holding the Therapeutic Frame

Being a humble and reflexive practitioner #Ethics are to my mind a misunderstood topic in therapy training, a bit like research.

I must say for me it is a topic that always sparked my creativity. Maybe this is partly my Greek heritage and transgenerational history, we are all descendants of Plato and Aristotle after all.

I am thinking of the 'therapeutic frame' in therapy as that which keeps clients safe and the therapy a place for exploration of deepest darkest thoughts feelings, histories and fantasies.

To be that safe place for the client, we must know in ourselves that we are committed to being 'virtuous', in other works ethical. The BACP ethical code, as much as it is detailed, simple, well supported and an all around good guide, will not tell you how to be virtuous at every instance nor it will give you answers and a course of action.

What will then? Our ongoing commitment to our own values, and to continue the investment in the rapprochement between our selves and our practitioner selves, that we live by our principles and those are aligned with the BACP values and personal moral qualities.

And how do we know we are? 'Virtue is a skill, a way of living and that's something that cannot only be learnt through experience' as Aristotle points out; our ethical stance is dynamic and always in the making, through the millions of micro-decisions we make moment by moment in our therapy room and outside, how we consider the ultimate aim of therapy, the best interest of the client and how we translate it into action in every step we take, from the small to the big decisions.

This is why training as a therapist is not a learning, it is a 'becoming' and we become through the iterative process of exploring, owning, being accountable, being candid, our use of supervision and our commitment to our ongoing personal growth.

This is where the training therapy element and use of supervision come in: we carry too much responsibility bestowed upon us by our clients to short-cut any of this and still be able to sleep at night knowing we have done right by our clients and we are accountable for all that we are, say and do.

It's not the work of a two-year course and out in practice we go, it's a journey of a lifetime and embracing our humility about where we are at at each point, and what we need to keep being an ethical and reflexive practitioner, embracing the principles of self-care and self-respect and the moral value of identity, to know who one is and to strive to be the best person you can be and that the client is able to count on it, 'fidelity'.