Gifts for My Psychologist

---

Other therapists will not think to talk about the topic, especially with older clients they may have seen longer than a year. For instance, if your doc likes to fish, a fancy new fishing lure might be appropriate. A gift card to a favorite local eating place is fine. Stay away from jewelry or gifts with special meaning to either you or the therapist. The best gifts reflect the tastes of the receiver, not the giver. But because cards are exchanged even amongst professional colleagues, some therapists may be more accepting of receiving a card.

Gift-giving or card-giving to your therapist is likely to be a one-way street. Very few therapists exchange gifts with their patients, or give out cards to each client.

Is It OK To Give My Therapist A Gift?

Such a tradition is one that is usually best shared with close friends and family. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Computers in Human Behavior and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

He writes regularly and extensively on mental health concerns, the intersection of technology and psychology, and advocating for greater acceptance of the importance and value of mental health in today's society. And when you do, you're on the path to fulfillment. Verified by Psychology Today. December brings the annual pleasures and challenges of holiday gifts and how to deal with them in dynamic psychotherapy.

Although it is relatively easy to follow a simple rule about this, ideally a good deal of thought goes into a therapist's decision about whether to accept a patient's holiday gift. Below I will give a couple of examples of this from my own practice, and how psychodynamic theory guided my response. All beginning dynamic therapists are taught not to accept gifts from patients. This rule follows from the principle that the therapist should decline all gratifications from the patient aside from the fee paid.

Can I Give My Therapist a Gift?

A therapist who is swayed by the patient's generosity , physical attractiveness, political connections, or other factors invites a conflict of interest in himself, and thus risks distorting the therapy in pursuit of his own needs and desires. Accepting a gift would be an example of this. Afterwards, the therapist may feel disinclined to challenge the patient, to induce anxiety or point out a contradiction. Conversely, the patient may feel the therapist should reciprocate the generosity, leading to disappointment and possibly anger when the therapist fails to do so. Naturally, patients often do not know this rule, thus some arrive to a year-end session with a gift in hand.

Some are expensive, some less so. Some are "for the office," others intended more personally for the therapist.

Some are homemade, or reflect something personal that had been discussed earlier in the treatment, while others are more generic. Likewise, the nature of the treatment varies from patient to patient, from relatively supportive and concrete, to very "uncovering" transference-based therapy.

Given these variables, there is room for some discretion in the no-gifts rule. A number of years ago I treated a woman who painfully described feeling unvalued by others. Men only appreciated her because she gave them sex ; her employer did not value her as a person, but only for her productivity.

Our therapy was fairly psychoanalytic in nature. Arriving to a session around the holidays, she handed me a large, beautifully wrapped gift box.

Can I Give My Therapist a Gift?

It looked store-bought and expensive. I imagined she had taken significant time and trouble to purchase and bring it to me. With some apprehension I told her that we needed to discuss the gift before I could accept it.

Post Comment

She was initially hurt by this. However, it soon became clear to both of us that her gift reflected her belief that I, like others in her life, did not value or appreciate her as a person - she hoped I would value the gift and therefore her. On that basis I thanked her but did not accept her gift, a decision she ultimately understood and agreed with. It turned out very differently with another patient, an older Russian woman who saw me for supportive therapy.

Around the holidays she presented me with a bottle of Kahlua, unwrapped if I recall. We had not been working with transference; I did not see how such a gift could damage our work.

Also, it is customary in Russia to offer such gifts to one's doctors. I accepted the bottle with thanks, and pleased my patient. No harm done, and perhaps a bit of good in strengthening our working relationship.

How Our Helpline Works

• Gutted (Gus Dury Book 2)
• Up and Down in the Dales (The Dales Series Book 4)
• Novenas for Grandmother
• Things I Couldnt Tell My Mother: My Autobiography
• Trade Fair Training (TRAINPLAN Book 1)
• Duh-Votions: Words of Wisdom for the Spiritually Challenged
• Assassins Of Athens: Number 2 in series (Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Series)