Being Taken Advantage Of?

When I moved to Brisbane (returning to the US in August!), I developed a referral list for my clients. Last week, one of my regular clients dropped me a note and told me her company was closing. One of my reactions was "damn! This is why I have the Pay What You Can model! So in times like these, she could continue to receive massage! Now I'm not there to do that for her!".

But then I read further in her e-mail and she mentioned that the MT she's seeing (the one I recommended) had offered to cut her fees for her while she was unemployed. Suprisingly, I felt like that therapist -- Gaynor Bourgeoise, God bless you -- had done me a personal favor. I was so touched that she was doing what I would do and she was taking care of my client so well.

(I still get a little weepy thinking about it.)

People come to us for all of the obvious reasons -- pain relief, stress relief, energetic jam-up relief, etc. -- but underneath every single massage is a simple desire to be taken care of.

All humans sometimes need someone to take care of them. It's one of the sweetest parts of our jobs, taking care of people even if only for an hour.

When someone experiences financial setbacks -- like unemployment -- we are handed an opportunity to respond to their needs specifically. Maybe we offer financial relief, maybe we don't. They're both reasonable choices given the specifics of our practices, our policies, and our relationships with our clients (and with nods to Connie Ridgeway, with ethical repercussions as well).

What I've noticed is that when MTs consider setting discount policies (sliding scale, Pay What You Can, donation, etc.) there is often a fear of being "taken advantage of". That is, someone who doesn't really need to reduced rate will use it or will keep using it long after they really need it. We're often so very very afraid of that happening that we don't offer any leeway.

I've been reflecting on that (in response to Gaynor's generosity) and a few things occur to me.

We may get hurt. Our relationships with our clients are (professionally-well-bounded) intimate. They give themselves to us but we also give ourselves to them. When we offer them financial breaks, we are trusting them. If they take advantage of that inappropriately, we're likely to take it personally.

Of course! And it hurts. And no one likes being hurt. All true. And I can go on to tell you all about how intimacy requires vulnerability and that being vulnerability allows us to grow spiritually, yada yada yada but, yeah, it's gonna hurt.

Can we handle it?

Do we trust our instincts? Some of us seem to be afraid that we won't recognize when someone is taking advantage of us; therefore we will be getting robbed without realizing it.

In my experience, though, if we get in the practice of tuning into our intuition and taking it seriously, we will know when we're being taken advantage of.

Can we recover from it? If we're taken advantage of, we fear it will destroy us financially. We'll lose our homes, our businesses, our lives as we know it (and probably have to live out of a grocery cart under the 14th St. Bridge....). The odds are that even if one person takes advantage of us, we are unlikely to lose our metaphorical shirts. In my practice, the worst case scenario is that I'll lose a few hundred dollars. I will notice losing that much money (and it will hurt) but it won't destroy me.

We can't say "no" / we can't confront / we can't be "not nice". I suspect this is the bigger barrier for most of us. When we suspect someone is taking advantage of us, we have to stand up for ourselves. We have to speak up and we have to be in conflict with someone. A whole lot of us would rather chew off our left foot than "do" confrontation.

Conflict is an unavoidable part of being alive and being in relationship with anyone. Anyone. It's not possible to have a close relationship that is so perfectly harmonious that you'll never have a conflict. Sometimes the other person will be the source of the conflict, sometimes you will.

You can run and hide from conflict, expending absurd amounts of energy avoiding it (and I know lots of people who do) but that's not a grown-up thing to do.

In addition to being loving, caring, compassionate caregivers we are also business owners and adults. It's crucial to learn how to look a client in the eye and say "no". Doing that helps us maintain all our sane ethical boundaries and we also need to be able to do it when we're being taken advantage of.

How many of our clients would be further ahead if, in addition to allowing us to take care of them, they learned to take care of themselves? As massage therapists and business owners, we have to be able to take care of ourselves as well. There are simply going to be days when "taking care of ourselves" means looking a client in the eye and saying "no". Saying "stop". Saying "I can't do that for you any more."

How do we avoid being taken advantage of? Well, literally, we can't. There's always going to be somebody who can get at us. But if we confront our fears, learn to trust ourselves, and get good at standing up for ourselves, we really reduce the the chances of it happening.