Should You Be Friends With Your Clients?

If you are from a formal mental health practitioner background, your answer to "Should you be friends with your clients?" would be a resounding "No!", but many tapping practitioners do not come from such a background and answer that question with: "Why not?"

In general, tapping practitioners are naturally warm, empathic and motivated to help. In addition, many tapping sessions are deep and personal. They are intimate experiences where deep feelings are felt, powerful shifts are made and there is a strong connection between the practitioner and the client.

So it's easy to understand why some practitioners and clients might want to go beyond the tapping relationship in the session and into daily life. In other words, they would like to be friends with their clients, what could be more natural for such warmhearted people?

So what's the problem with being friends with your clients?

Unfortunately, becoming friends with your clients is complicated. Here are some of the problems that can arise when you are friends with your client:

Confused Roles

Who are you to this other person at any time, their friend or their practitioner?

Imagine your new client-friend get together for a cup of coffee and a chat. After a while, your client-friend starts to tell you about some difficulty in their life. At that moment who are you to them, their practitioner or their friend? Who are they to you, your client or your friend?

Imagine your new client-friend get together for a cup of coffee and a chat. After a while, you start to tell your client-friend about some difficulties in your life. In this case, who is the practitioner, and who is the client?

Less focus on the client

The practitioner-client relationship is lopsided by design. The practitioner aims to focus exclusively on the experiences and needs of the clients, and establish a therapeutic alliance to help the client reach their goals. The client is there to focus on their own experience and do the hard work of changing. The practitioner and the client have very different roles and responsibilities.

On the other hand, friendships are reciprocal relationships where both people share themselves and their experiences more or less equally, with no other goals than to develop or maintain the friendship.

Blocks to honesty

One of the advantages of being a practitioner who is a 'stranger' is that your clients can tell you things because they feel safe, and they know that no-one else will hear the things they tell you. This openness and willingness to share is essential to help you and your client get to the causes of the problems and make the changes that need to be made.

As a practitioner, you can ask clients direct and probing questions, the kind of questions you might not be able to ask as a friend because that would damage the friendship.

Likewise, your client can answer those questions honestly without worrying that what they say will damage the therapeutic relationship because it is not a friendship.

As 'friends', both of you may feel that some issues need to be navigated carefully to maintain the friendship. As 'friends' you may hold back from asking the hard questions or giving the hard answers because you don't want to hurt or upset your friend.

What could have been a free and open exploration as a practitioner and client, may now be filtered or suppressed to maintain the friendship.

Confidentiality

With a practitioner, a client should feel confident that what they disclose to you will be kept confidential (you have a formal confidentiality agreement to back that up).

With a friend, that level of confidentiality is not guaranteed. Friends tend to talk about each other, to each other. Regardless of how trustworthy you are, there may be a lingering doubt in their mind about how much the practitioner-friend will share with other people.

Unconscious Patterns And Traps

Just like their clients, practitioners are human. We may have unmet needs, and we all have unconscious patterns of interactions that affect what we think, feel and do.

After all, the 'wounded healer' is an archetype for a reason.

In some cases, the combination of the unconscious patterns and needs of both the practitioner and client may soften our professional boundaries and draw us into relationships that are not in our best interests.

Unfortunately, these unconscious patterns and needs are difficult for us (and our clients) to spot because they are unconscious. We are not aware of these hidden currents so we can be drawn into inappropriate relationships with our clients.

How tapping training may make boundary setting more difficult

In my opinion, one of the factors that contributes to the blurring of distinction between tapping practitioner or friend is the structure of most tapping trainings.

At the completion of a Level 1 Tapping Training, students are encouraged to practice their tapping skills on family and friends.

On the one hand, this is very useful. Tapping is a skill and the way to improve a skill is to practice. Working with family and friends gives the tapper access to willing 'clients' to practice these skills.

On the other hand, this practice establishes the idea that it's OK to work with family and friends, implying that you can be a practitioner and a friend.

In most other psychological therapeutic trainings, trainees would be discouraged, or even forbidden, from working with family and friends. While this reduces the pool of people to practice with, it does encourage the development of professional boundaries.

What can we do to avoid these dangers?

I hope I've convinced you that being a practitioner and a friend at the same time is not a great idea.
So what can we do to establish clear boundaries and a friendly disposition to our clients?

1. Recognise the danger

If your tendency is to want to be friends with your clients, notice and reflect on that. Observing and unpacking these unconscious patterns and needs can give you a lot to tap on. This kind of work will help you to maintain professional boundaries and still be kind, friendly and caring within those boundaries. This is where good mentoring / supervision can be very helpful.

2. Be friendly but not friends

Resist the urge to become friends with your clients. It is perfectly possible to feel friendly, warm and kind towards your clients. As just a practitioner, you can have a 'baggage-free relationship' with your client that has clear aims and responsibilities and helps you get the results that they want.

Although it may feel restrictive, with well-developed boundaries, you may be surprised to find just how much kindness and compassion you can fit into what may seem like a small space.

3. Be aware of the power dynamics of the relationship

As the practitioner, the client may see you as the 'all powerful expert' (even if you don't feel that way) putting the client into a vulnerable position which may amplify their friend-seeking behaviour. Having good boundaries and awareness will help you notice and resist any unconscious urges you may have to help and befriend the 'helpless and friendless' client.

4. Get mentoring to reflect

One of the greatest values of mentoring is that it gives you a chance to reflect on what is happening with someone who is on the outside of the problem. It's difficult to read the label when you are inside the jar.

Having someone help you reflect on what is going on in the session can be hugely valuable to become aware of your own blind spots and how best to overcome them

How to gently decline an offer of friendship

If your client wants to be your friend and says so, how can you gently decline their request without damaging your relationship?

This is a two-step process:

1. Acknowledge the importance of the relationship to the client.
2. Say something like this: "If you wanted my help in the future I would not be able to offer that kind of help if I were your friend because I wouldn't be able to be your practitioner"

This approach nicely validates the client's offer, but gently deflects it.

Finally, trying to be your client's best friendly practitioner is much better and safer for you and for them than trying to be their best friend.

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Article by Andy Hunt, Accredited Certified Advanced EFT Practitioner based in Blyth, Northumberland, United Kingdom

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash