Training for helping professionals places a great deal of importance on engagement. How to establish a therapeutic connection where good work can happen. How to develop and deepen understanding of this unique individual. How to navigate trust and foster a sense of safety. How to connect in a genuinely authentic but appropriately boundaried way.
As it should. The basis of good treatment or support is a strong relational foundation and yet so many of the the people we support struggle with exactly that – forming safe, two way relationships where needs can be explicitly negotiated and met. For many people, the most dangerous thing on the planet is another human.
Yet we don’t spend nearly as long honing the skills of how to end the relationship. Termination, as it is so often referred to, is seen as an end of the work. Even the term itself has a brutality to it. At best, termination means reaching the last station of this train line. At worst, it is a ceasing to exist.
We know we need to be sensitive in how we go about it. Place the work in a broader context. Fan the flames of the person’s own sense of agency and forward momentum. Maybe leave the person with a small bouquet of achievements, plans or referrals. But essentially it is the moment where the work we do together is over.
Ending helping relationships well is one of the most therapeutic things we could do. It’s rare for any of us to experience a healthy and mutually respectful end to an intimate relationship. More often they are ended abruptly by death or conflict, or fade away through neglect or distraction.
Supporting people to experience a mindfully guided beginning, middle and end of a meaningful connection is an opportunity to help people process and navigate the life course of any relationship. It’s not the end of the work, it is the work.
Helen Mentha 