The Role of Morality in Client Work
For years now, I’ve gotten a lot of clients that come to me feeling frustrated or hurt or even abused by other therapists. Often therapists I’m in community with. Maybe we all get clients like this?
I’ve learned a LOT from them and they’ve helped me think really deeply about theoretical, practical, ethical concepts in ways that help keep my brain fresh in terms of thinking about how to best do this work. (In fact, these ideas helped me form SomaField!)
Between these clients and also witnessing the therapy and coaching industries via social media, I hear a lot that seems like it has to do with morality.
And there seem to be two major ways this shows up:
Morality Pushing
Moral Framing
I’ll get into what these are and why they’re so detrimental, but first, I need to say that morality will always be in the room with us as we work. It forms the ground of our ethical orientation. For me, I prefer to bring morals into the room that are tied to proven psychological, relational, or social consequences.
For instance, I will challenge dehumanization (racism, sexism, homophobia, and more) because we know that these things and more do harm to people. I will steer away from imposing gender norms for the same reason. I’ll encourage things like consent and empowerment because I see these things having a positive impact.
Of course, different practitioners will have different morals and there’s nothing anyone can do about that. What I do hope to do, though, is to talk about how we hold our morals so as to not harm clients. Which brings me to Morality Pushing and Moral Framing.
Morality Pushing
I define this as the use of practitioner authority to impose moral or ideological positions in ways that constrain a client’s autonomy or agency, or that equate agreement with progress or disagreement with negative outcomes (which then means the client is blamed for not being or thinking right when something difficult happens in their life or when they’re struggling). What’s usually not communicated directly (but the client feels it) is that disagreement is subtly or overtly corrected, pathologized, or redirected.
This ends up creating a little bit of a “my way or the highway” type of a vibe. Which is terrible because what if the client was being helped in other ways by this practitioner but doesn’t want to feel pushed or pathologized like this?
It’s pretty easy to instead say something like, “Here’s a lens (or a belief) I think about and maybe it’ll work for you…” but then not being attached to their adoption of it or not.
Morality Pushing can lead to:
Moral Framing
This is the feeling that some ways of being are more valid here than others. It’s tying certain behaviors or beliefs to morality. It’s the implication or the feeling that certain traits, beliefs, or ways of being are not only more productive, but also are thought of as more developed, desirable, or worthy.
So again. We will have morality and it will be in the room and our clients will feel that. Hopefully that morality is grounded in what we know about the ways people are affected by certain ideas or beliefs. But no matter what we believe, we must accept the client where they are, stay kind, and offer them our respect in ways that help them feel that their autonomy is welcome.
This is just more color around the concept of Do No Harm. The ideas in this post overlap with several SomaField Principles:
Integrity, which is about the ethical use of power in a therapeutic context.
Client Centered, which is about offering the client a space that is dignified and non-pathologizing.
Socio-Cultural Attunement, which is about acknowledging the client’s context and lived experience.
Artistry, which is about skillful navigation.
And Heart, which is about the emotional tone of the process and the relationship.
You could even make a case that it’s also about Nervous System Literacy because of how stressful it is to have morality pushed on you as a client and Attachment Awareness because of how conditional the relationship is when Morality Pushing or Moral Framing are present.
If you love these distinctions, want to learn more, and would love to run client scenarios through this lens, you might be a great fit for the future SomaField Mentorship Lab. I’m aiming for early next year. :)
Please forward this to anyone that comes to mind if you think they’d enjoy it. :)
