In Reply to: "Dirty dishes" & getting dirty posted by Stumped on February 08, 2004 at 20:59:35:
When I did clinical work with sexually abused kids, we worked as a team to process these kinds of issues. Abused kids will bring out your unresolved personal issues IN SPADES, and a treatment specialist can very easily fall into some unhealthy communication and behavior patterns.
This happens in part because the therapist has to meet the kid at his or her level in order to connect. This means lowering some personal boundaries in a calculated way to facilitate unguarded behavior in the child. The idea is to get the kid to let down their defenses so you can develop trust and communicate. A lot of times, this is done by being playful. The danger in becoming TOO playful is that you may get blindsided. Many abused kids will play in a way that recreates the victim/victimizer relationship. It can happen in a heartbeat.
Unhealthy relationships are based on unhealthy communication patterns, which stem from irrational beliefs and twisted values. Someone who gets close to TF must be able to communicate with people who have irrational beliefs and twisted values. People with irrational beliefs and twisted values suffer from the habits of bad mental health. Such people are contageous, and people who work with toxic systems like TF need to know the basics of good mental health--how to take care of themselves so that they do not fall prey to symptoms of the disease they seek to treat.
When I worked with abused kids, we always did lots of team supervision to keep ourselves from falling into unhealthy relational traps with the kids. I believe that if someone wants to work with people who have abuse issues--and exfam DO have abuse issues--they should regularly counsel with an independent person and/or team of people who are not directly involved in the system of toxic relationships in which they are trying to intervene.