Right Use of Power: in roles, relationships, and trust - By: Cedar Barstow, M.Ed., C.H.T.

RIGHT USE OF POWER IS URGENTLY IMPORTANT.
Right use of power and influence is surely one of the most important issues facing us in our emerging globally interdependent world. Interest in right use of power takes us in the dynamic realms of roles, relationships, and trust. We engage with finding out how we impact others and then with developing the skills and compassion to be more and more effective. This is inspiring and valuable process.

UNDERSTANDING MORE THAN ONE ROLE
Some of you are clients or potential clients. Some of you are therapists or helping professionals. My intention is for this article to be of value in whatever role you are in. All of us have personal experience on both sides of relationships of trust: as clients, patients, students, children, committee members….and as therapists, social workers, parents, teachers, guides, coaches, committee heads, body workers, office managers. We have a sense for what each role feels like, but it is often hard to remember what the other role experience is. One of the hallmarks of the right use of power is to make the dynamics and expectations of each role open, clear, and understood by all.

HONORING OUR COURAGE
I want to begin here by acknowledging you. As clients you gather your courage and risk your vulnerability and authenticity in the hope of healing and growing. As therapists you willingly take on a highly responsible and often challenging job in the hope of enabling healing and growing. In both roles you have the desire and capacity to use your power magnificently to repair harm and to promote well-being. We all want and need to be able to use our personal and professional power to manifest our desires and goals.

RIGHT USE OF POWER DEFINED
Now, when you think of the word “power” what comes to mind? For most people the word holds a range of associations from manipulation and abuse to helpfulness but the associations tend to be negative, wounding, or painful. The actual definition of power is the ability to have an effect. Simple. The ability to have an effect. Like money and technology, it is how we use power that matters. Being alive inevitably involves having an effect. We need to be able to have an effect. As clients we can misuse our power, by becoming too dependent on our caregivers and losing our ability to access our own wisdom and self-awareness. As therapists we can misuse our power by being afraid of causing harm, and thus inadvertently not take charge when it is needed. Both of these are misuses of power by not owning the power that is ours and thus causing harm to ourselves or others by under-using it.

Right use of power and influence is any use of power that does any or all of the following: prevents harm, reduces harm, repairs harm, promotes well-being. I invite you to consider trying on and embracing a new and broad based understanding of power. A new understanding that will support you in being more and more wise, skillful, and effective.

POWER DIFFERENTIAL ROLES
“I’m trying to imagine ethics without an awareness of power. That would be like trying not to step on anyone’s toes, without an awareness of one’s feet.)
The power differential is the inherently greater or enhanced power and influence that therapists have as compared to their clients. Understanding both the value and the many complex impacts of the power differential is the core of ethical awareness. Written codes for behavior are based on the strong positive and negative impacts of this power differential.

Clients are in a position in which they must trust in the knowledge and guidance of their therapist. This difference results in a greater than ordinary vulnerability on the part of the client. Consequently clients are unusually susceptible to harm and confusion through misuses (either under- or over- use) of power and influence.

VALUE OF THE POWER DIFFERENTIAL
In the helping professions, the power differential has great value. Used wisely and appropriately, it creates a safe, well-boundaried, professional context for growth and healing. More specifically, when used ethically, the power differential offers clients some very important assurances.
Confidence in their caregiver’s knowledge, training and expertise
Security and safety
Direction and support
Role boundary clarification
Allocated responsibilities

POWER DIFFERENTIAL ROLE DIFFERENCES
To help make the differences more transparent for you whether you are a therapist or a client, here is a summary. As you read this list, please remember what it is like to be in each role. We all have experiences in both roles. Some of you may have difficulty with the idea that one person has more power than another. Power-up is often seen as a devaluing or disrespectful thing. Please understand that power-up does not mean inequality as human beings. Rather, it refers to a role in which having enhanced power is vital to the success of therapy. A role—either client or therapist role—is not your identity, it is more like a cloak that you put on and off.

Caregiver: Power-up role
Is in service
Increased and enhanced power and influence
Is paid for time and expertise
Sets and maintains appropriate boundaries
Own needs and personal process are not focused on.
Lesser vulnerability
Depended on for trustworthiness, earns trust
150% responsible for tracking and repairing relationship difficulties
May be idealized and devalued
May need to assist client in being more empowered
Makes assessments and evaluates results

Client: Power-down role
Is served
Very often experiences a decreased felt sense of power and influence
Pays for service
Accepts or challenges boundaries
Own needs and personal process is known and focused on—self-revelation is important
Greater vulnerability to rejection, criticism, undue influence, being taken advantage of, disrespect
Needs to trust
100% responsible for naming and working with difficulties
More susceptible to idealizing and devaluing
May unnecessarily dis-empower self
Collaborates with or responds to assessments

The chart above refers to clients as being in “power-down” position. Some clients experience power-down as disempowered. They may give “all” their power to their caregiver; or distrust their own knowledge, research, intuition or gut feelings; or be overly self-protective and unrevealing. As a therapist, your role opportunity and responsibility is to teach them to be more empowered and engaged in their healing process. You may encourage them to be more collaborative and pro-active. As a client, your opportunity is to experience “power-down” in an empowered way. You can bring the power of your perceptions, needs, and interests to the therapeutic relationship, and take appropriate responsibility for the relationship working well.

150% EQUATION
It is necessary, however, to remember that even though responsibility is shared, the therapist is considered to be ultimately more responsible. Marni Harmony, a minister, metaphorically calls this the 150% Equation—both are 100% responsible and the practitioner is 150% responsible. Consistently, in the most successful helping relationships, the practitioner actively encourages clients to be honest and forthcoming in their responses to the relationship and the services provided. This collaborative feeling reduces the misunderstandings and increases the ease with which difficulties can be repaired. This is what is meant by sharing responsibility for satisfaction and success. However, due to the increased power and influence the person in greater role power, is the one who is 150% responsible for noticing and resolving difficulties and holding established boundaries.

Whether you are reading this from the perspective of client or therapist, I recommend that you read through the chart of role responsibilities with a view to noticing ways in which you could be more sensitive, aware, or powerful in your role.

EXAMPLES OF RIGHT USES OF POWER
Next, I would like to tell four stories, one related to each of the four aspects of right use of power: to prevent harm, to repair harm, to heal harm, to promote well-being.

1. USING POWER TO PROMOTE WELL-BEING
Story: Robert’s client Henry complained of tightness and pain in his lower back and thighs. He spoke of constantly and actively being on guard for danger so that he could be ready to take protective action. Robert asked Henry to show him how he guarded. Henry described having power in his fingertips that could send out flashes of lightning if anyone threatened. His eyes surveyed and he held his chest up. His whole body was taut with readiness to assert his power. Robert asked about what the alertness was protecting. Henry replied, “My heart.” Robert asked Henry to take his awareness from his fingers to his heart and belly and notice what he experienced. After a long silence, Henry spoke. “I see that when I bring my power and awareness back to my belly, I feel quite strong and safe. When I have my power out in my fingertips, I scare people and isolate myself. And, to my surprise, I feel desperate and much less powerful. You know, like ‘more bark than bite’. After another silence, Henry noticed that his lower back was relaxing. The pain was connected to putting his power outside rather than inside.
Through the explorations in this therapy session Henry had found his true and benevolent power. Beginning to use his power from his center will be good for his own well-being as well as that of the people he comes in contact with.

2. USING POWER TO HEAL HARM
Story: Nancy’s client Elena had seemed quite comfortable with touch. She always asked for a hug at the end of the session and was readily able to access body information. During one session she got in touch with a deep longing for connection, and began weeping. Nancy gently reached her hand out and put it on Elena’s knee to offer comfort. Elena quickly said in a sharp tone, “Don’t touch me!” Nancy was surprised and quickly apologized and removed her hand, thanking Elena for telling her she didn’t want to be touched. Elena responded that she knew that it was okay to say what she needed. Nancy then offered a self-study experiment of offering her hand and inviting Elena to move her hand toward Nancy’s stopping when she began to get anxious. Nancy noticed that was rubbing the fingers of her other hand with her thumb as she moved her right hand closer to Nancy’s outstretched hand. Elena said that her left hand was acting as both a guard against harm and a guide reminding her what good touch feels like. Elena slowly moved her right hand, stopping several times to check for safety, until she lightly touched the tips of Nancy’s fingers for a minute or so. As Nancy watched, Elena began weeping, moved her fingers gently away, looked at Nancy and said, “I stayed….and it was okay.”
In this process, Elena had an unexpected experience of receiving touch and being okay. This experience is the first step in the healing of a former misuse of power involving unsafe touch.

3. USING POWER TO REPAIR HARM
The phone message said, “I want to come in for a completion session because I need to use my financial resources for something else.” Steven, a body psychotherapist, wondered what else might be going on for this client who had not yet met the goals she had set for herself. When Carrie came for her completion session, she focused on how great therapy had been and how thankful she was, and how unfortunately she just couldn’t afford to come anymore. Steven sensed some other energy and asked Carrie, “Is there anything at all that you are disappointed about?” Carrie answered, “No, you have been such a good listener and so patient and insightful.” Steven checked again. “Thank you. As I think about the work we’ve done together, I wonder if you feel discouraged that the problem you came in to work on hasn’t resolved even though you’ve gotten clearer about it?”

Carrie was silent for a time and then, apparently feeling safe and encouraged, took what was a big risk for her. She spoke thoughtfully. “Yes, actually, I am disappointed. I’ve done a lot of therapy and once again it seems like it hasn’t worked. If it was working, I’d feel like my money was being well-used.” Steven contacted her feelings and courage and thanked her for being so honest. Carrie went on. “And something else, I have felt a little uncomfortable with how close to me you move your chair, and sometimes, like when we did the experiment when we were pushing hands so I could find out about anger, touching was too much. But I thought, you’re the therapist and I really want to change and so I never said anything.”

Steven took a breath and responded. “Thank you for telling me. Again that must have taken courage. I am so sorry that I wasn’t tracking the cues you have given me about your discomfort. Could we spend a few minutes with this? I’ll start moving my chair back and you tell me when the distance feels just right.” After finding and experiencing the right distance, which turned out to be about six feet away, Steven suggested an experiment in awareness in which he would move slowly closer. She would hold up her hand when she began to feel uncomfortable and they could both notice what happened. Steven described tracking a slight tensing in her cheeks, but otherwise, everything about Carrie’s demeanor and posture seemed visibly unchanged to him when she was uncomfortable.

Carrie had an insight: “I feel it all inside me and I put a lot of effort into making sure that you won’t notice anything that might not be agreeable.” Steven responded: “Great insight. So it seems that you have been working hard for me not to be able to notice. And you succeeded, but it cost you a lot of suffering. I’m imagining you might be a bit angry that I didn’t notice.” “Well, yes. You’re the therapist. You’re supposed to notice. I don’t want to have to tell you. Then I feel like I’m doing your job!” From this interaction, Steven was able to self-correct by being more attuned to Carrie’s discomfort cues and her fears of not being liked. Carrie had had a successful experience of revealing discomfort and not being rejected. She took a several month break and then returned to work successfully, this time, with being more personally engaged and self-disclosing in her relationships.
Steven used his sensitivity and skill to understand and then repair a serious relationship trust issue that he had not even been aware of. Had he not found a way to help Carrie talk about these concerns, her sense of betrayal and distrust could have escalated into a grievance or into a distrust of psychotherapy in general.

4. USING POWER TO PREVENT HARM
Story: He was a well-loved music teacher. He loved his students. After several months of therapy, he told his therapist that he was ready to talk about something he hadn’t had the trust to bring up before and even then wasn’t sure how it would be received. He had felt for a while that something about the way he loved his students, especially the boys, wasn’t right. Like he had noticed that when he gave one of the boys a hug, he was grasping on, wanting to father him, wanting to give him more than a teacher should. He had then had a dream that he was holding one of his students and then in the dream the student was holding him. The therapist appreciated his courage and helped him explore what was going on. His father had died when he was six and he had experienced an aching longing for father love and attention that he felt as an adult as a deep, vacant place in his chest. In paying attention to this place in his chest, it became clear that this was the emptiness he was trying to fill when he was hugging his students. Understanding this strong need from his childhood helped him find other ways to connect and be nourished—filling himself with his music, reaching out more to friends, being more playful. His love for his students then shifted dramatically to more appropriate expression.
This client’s courage in bringing this issue to therapy resulted in pro-active behavior that prevented unethical behavior that would have brought serious harm to his students.

Power and Heart
Whether in the role of therapist or in the role of client, power is the ability to have an effect. It could also be considered the ability to access and mobilize resources. Combining strength with deep compassion in the journey to mastery is numinous and potent. It brings together personal development and soul work (being) with creation and accomplishment (doing). Love and creativity yearn to be expressed in form. Being resourced by both personal and role power in the full use of Self is a right and a responsibility.

Much is accomplished when we can embrace and use our personal and professional power with heart and are actively engaged in the right use of this power for the good of all. Becoming familiar with the psychotherapy profession’s code of ethics and with contemporary ethical issues combined with doing personal work with our power history and beliefs, we become more skillful in staying related through conflict and keeping our relationships repaired. We are willing to be held responsible for our behavior. We can self-correct. We have proactively self-assessed for our ethical edges, and understand key dynamics around power,

We reach out our hands, not to strike or defend, but to compassionately relate. Our power and influence will be felt as peace and mutual well-being. This ethic synergizes power with the resonating concern of compassion. The formula is simple and yet mastery is a lifetime practice. Right Use of Power is power with heart, activated from the inside out. Be informed, Be compassionate, Be related, Be skillful.

About the Author

Cedar Barstow, M.Ed., C.H.T., is a therapist in Boulder who provides respectful and compassionate therapy to individuals. Cedar is available at GoodTherapy or Therapist Philadelphia

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