“I matter, too”

Abstract

ABSTRACT This narrative is about a journey of two people in a therapy relationship who come from distinctly different social locations – on the surface, unlike one another from a social context, yet not so unlike at a deeper personal level. One person, the client, is African American, 30 years of age, poor, unmarried mother of two children. The other person, the family therapist, is a 49-year-old Caucasian male, middles class, married, of Italian/Ukrainian ancestry. At first glance, we see little in common between these two individuals who are supposed to work together in the intimate context of a therapeutic relationship. How the therapist, with his supervisor, meets these challenges from the perspective of the Person of the Therapist (POTT) framework (Aponte et al., 2009; Aponte & Kissil, 2016) about a therapist’s use of self is the subject of this article. The premise of the article is that the therapist will need to reach within himself to be able to empathically connect with her in the deep common humanity of their personal lives, while making a singular effort to expand this empathic connection to include her social location and community context