Notes on Countertransference
by
Mitch Hall, M.A., M.H.R.S., C.Y.T.
for
Presentation and Discussion at Niroga Institute Yoga-for-Youth Teacher Training
Sunday Afternoon, June 19, 2011
Countertransference...
•refers originally to a therapist’s emotional reactions to a client or unconscious emotional entanglement with a client
•is connected to transference--a client’s unconscious redirection onto a therapist of feelings related to another person (e.g. a parent, partner,...)
•was first mentioned by Freud (1910) in “The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy” as a result of the client’s influence on therapist’s feelings
•was later elaborated by others with variance in usage
•can be experienced in any close or meaningful relationship
• is interactively, yet unconsciously, created in the relationship
•is relevant for yoga teachers
•is communicated unconsciously through tone of voice, look in eyes, attentiveness or lack thereof, facial expressions including micro-expressions, body posture and tone, ...
•entails cognitive distortions of another person’s reality based on one’s own past experience
•is stimulated by reminders of past issues--neglect, abuse, trauma, betrayal, hurt, frustrated needs, loss, etc.--stored in implicit memory
•can be provoked by students’ behaving in ways, both overt and covert, that will lead teachers to confirm students’ unconscious assumptions regarding themselves and others. This reduces the tension of potential cognitive dissonance.
Types of Countertransference
•Personal countertransference has to do with the feelings and life story, including repressed memories, of the therapist/teacher.
•Diagnostic countertransference provides information about the client’s/student’s story.
•Embodied countertransference, a.k.a. somatic or body-centered countertransference, is hypothesized to be due to activity of mirror neurons and spontaneous empathy or sympathy for others.
•Countertransference may be a blend of any combination of the three types.
Neurobiological Perspective
The brain’s alarm network, centered in the amygdala, rapidly signals danger and generates a physiological reaction of fight, flight, or freeze before conscious processing. It takes only 14 milliseconds to react unconsciously to sensory information regarding safety or danger. But, it takes 400-500 milliseconds to become consciously aware of sensations.
Signs of Countertransference
Emotional reactions to a student, may include, but are not limited to, feeling...
•locked out, unable to reach or affect a student, unable to make connection
•hopeless regarding change for the better
•angry
•hostile
•unacknowledged
•silly, inept
•overwhelmed
•confused
•dysregulated
•annoyed
•overly involved
•obsessed
•sexually attracted
•like a rescuer
Special Considerations in Yoga Classes Relevant to Countertransference
•Releasing tensions and improving breathing and movement through yoga can release memories and scary feelings that had been warded off, through somatic freezing, at time of trauma. Release may lead to possible panic, projections, reactions, and unconsciously motivated efforts to regress to familiar, even if dysfunctional, status quo ante.
•Yoga fosters self-regulation. Dysregulated, at-risk youth did not benefit from secure attachment early in life, otherwise they would have become self-regulating.
•In teaching yogic breathing, asanas, and mindfulness, the yoga teacher is serving as a transitional attachment figure and temporary caregiver. The practice of yoga deeply affects the same neurobiological, somatic, and psychological functions shaped by early attachment experiences.
•A secure attachment figure is attuned, empathic, secure in self, appropriately available, and provides a safe haven and a secure base for the beneficiary.
•The better the yoga teacher can behave in a sensitive, secure, empathic, balanced way, the more likely it is that the student will be able to separate childhood projections from present experience.
•If the teacher is relatively insecure due to early loss, abandonment, abuse, neglect, and/or trauma, students with these issues may trigger countertransference reactions in teacher.
•It can be helpful for a yoga teacher who experiences countertransference to speak with a trusted, understanding, supportive peer or supervisor.
•Becoming conscious of countertransference can contribute to a yoga teacher’s own spiritual path. It is pertinent to the yamas of satya (truthfulness) and ahimsa (harmlessness) and to the niyama of swadhyaya (self-study). The teacher needs to remain mindfully open to learning from her/his own experience and that of students. Teaching yoga in this spirit can contribute to the twin yogic goals of selfless service and self-realization.