ABSTRACT
Countertransference reactions are integral to, ubiquitous, and expected in our professional endeavors. The need to cope with and work through countertransference difficulties is imperative for optimal training of all members of the health-care team, including physicians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and the clergy. The group modality serves to counteract their potential sense of isolation and alienation about working with the dying. The training process assumes that the most meaningful way to tap into our emotional hooks and countertransference in palliative care and near the end of life is to let them emerge, in a systematic way, from the unique nature of the helping professional's experience. The exercise process makes poignantly clear the paramount necessity of carefully nurturing, regulating, and ensuring the development of a self-protective, self-healing, and self-soothing way of being as a professional and a full human being.
