ABSTRACT
When therapists are practicing alongside clients in war or disaster-torn areas, or the therapist or client is afflicted with a critical and clearly visible illness, the complexity and controversy of therapeutic self-disclosure (TSD) is magnified. When trauma or illness is inevitably known or observed by both participants in the relationship, non-disclosure is ill-advised. Some extent of TSD is likely to have a positive and humanizing effect on the relationship, encourage reciprocal client disclosure, enable a necessary sense of client and therapist co-recovery or coping, and help clients progress into related therapeutic topics of grief, decline, and growth. Therapists cannot reasonably be expected to remain entirely neutral during such interchanges, though TSDs described by therapist writers as positively affecting clients were also described as tempered, modulated, and treatment-focused, as mentioned in prior chapters of this text. Thus, the scholarly literature suggests that boundaries may need to be modified in contexts of shared trauma, illness, and mortality/grief, though incrementally and cautiously, as advised in other TSD scenarios. A more conservative approach is also advised in cases where therapists and clients have survived similar interpersonal traumas, which are not necessarily obvious, known, and therefore able to be concealed in cases where therapist restraint may benefit the client more than therapist revelation.
