Always Question Canned Social Work Practice Advice

by Pamela Szczygiel, DSW, LICSW

     Banal practice advice typically fails to address the complexities inherent within the helping relationship and, ultimately, fails the client. To this point, there is a specific piece of advice I’ve gotten throughout my career that has always generated a sick feeling in my stomach: “Never work harder than the client.” Is there a grain of truth in this helping profession proverb? Perhaps, if we consider a practitioner’s unyielding attempts to offer an array of interventions that just aren’t resonating with the client’s experience, we may see a bit a wisdom in this advice. 

     However, implicit in this adage is the assumption that our clients are not working hard, not working hard enough, or that they just don’t care as much as we do. In my humble opinion, this cannot be further from the truth. So, we must consider the evidence we use to arrive at such a conclusion. Is it that the client isn’t showing up for appointments? That they aren’t engaged as fully as we would like in a session? That they didn’t complete their therapy homework? If so, it may be time to check our judgments at the door and go back to our profession’s hallmark social justice values. By the way, I’m saying this to myself as I say it to you. 

     There are endless reasons why a client may appear or behave in a less-than-industrious fashion. Toxic stress and trauma paralyze the mind-body-spirit.  Depression may also function in this way. Here I am reminded of the frustration I often experienced, years ago, when working with a client who seemed not to care one way or another whether she met with me or not. When asked simple questions like, “How often would you like to meet?” the client often responded, “It doesn’t matter; whatever you want.” This young adult client had endured years of sexual abuse by a family member. These harrowing experiences gave rise to a flood of anxiety and depressive symptoms, along with dissociation, shame, guilt, and general fragmentation. This client’s survival depended on her ability to placate others in order to keep herself out of harm’s way.

     In retrospect, I now understand how she was frozen in fear. Not only had she been cut off from her physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs; she was understandably petrified of what it really meant to “work through her trauma.” We sometimes assume that our clients can demonstrate colossal progress in the face of unspeakable disrepair. Again, I say this to you because I’ve been guilty of it myself.   

     We know that our clients attempt these enormous feats while experiencing multiple environmental and systemic challenges that may render them unable to engage in the most productive ways. We may find ourselves relying on trite sayings to justify something every single one of us has done at some point or another, i.e., blame the client. We make these practice mistakes because we are human. By recognizing them, we can help one another get back on track.  

Pamela Szczygiel, DSW, LICSW, is an assistant professor of social work at Bridgewater State University in Southeastern, Massachusetts. She maintains a psychotherapy practice and is a volunteer workshop facilitator with the Services to the Armed Forces Division of the American Red Cross, as well as a Give an Hour volunteer, offering pro bono therapy to trauma survivors.