Fear
THE EXPERIENCE: a therapist’s own felt fear in session — of saying the wrong thing, of a client’s pain being too much to hold, of their own inadequacy being exposed, or, specifically in body work, of a medical situation they don’t feel equipped to handle.
REMEMBER: different fears call for different responses. None of them are well served by avoidance.
Where this shows up around disability
Medical anxiety is a real and common therapist experience when working with a disabled or chronically ill client — fear of a medical event happening in session, fear of saying something ableist, fear of not knowing enough about a condition to be useful. Left unexamined, that fear can produce avoidance: steering away from a client’s body, their pain, or their disability entirely, which leaves the client without a therapist actually willing to be present with their whole life.
A lived scene · fictional teaching example
A therapist feels a spike of anxiety whenever a client with epilepsy mentions a recent seizure, and notices he quickly moves the conversation toward how she’s coping emotionally, away from the seizure itself. In supervision, he admits the honest source of his fear: he genuinely doesn’t know what he’d do if a seizure happened during a session, and has never actually found out. That’s not a fear to simply sit with, it’s a real gap in his preparation. He makes a concrete plan, confirms it with the client, and finds the anxiety around the topic drops considerably once there’s an actual answer behind it.
What might happen in supervision
I keep steering away whenever she mentions a seizure.
What’s the fear actually about?
I genuinely don’t know what I’d do if one happened here.
Then that’s not a feeling to sit with. That’s a plan to make.
A process to try
- What am I actually sensing? Name the fear specifically — of what, exactly?
- What are the possible explanations? A genuine gap in competence or preparation, fear of causing offence, or simply how hard the client’s reality is to sit with?
- What should I do with it clinically? A competence gap gets a concrete plan. A fear of offence gets an honest conversation with the client about what language they prefer. Difficulty sitting with pain gets supervision, not avoidance.
Where this concept can help
Turning a vague, avoided fear into a specific, addressable gap — whether that’s a medical plan, a frank conversation, or simply more exposure to the territory.
Where interpretation should stop
When the fear is treated as something the client should help manage, rather than something the therapist addresses themselves; when avoidance is mistaken for appropriate caution.
Evidence and status
Therapist anxiety and its effect on clinical avoidance are well documented in supervision literature generally. The specific categories offered here, separating competence gaps, fear of offence, and difficulty sitting with pain, are a Disability in Psychotherapy clinical framework.
A question worth carrying
Is my fear here about a real gap in my knowledge or preparation, or about how hard this client’s reality is to simply be present with?
You may also want to explore
From the inside
Fear in the therapist’s body
Therapists may feel fear with a client who has frequent seizures from epilepsy or FND, with a client who is very thin or very ill, or with a client who hears voices, because of stereotypes linking psychosis with danger.
Eleanor Longden describes how fear-based, reductionist treatment harmed her. A plan for what to do in a seizure, and an honest look at stereotypes, often reduces fear more than anything else.
Evidence & sources
Sources checked in October 2026, using targeted searches rather than a systematic review. “We have not located” means our searches did not find it.
Our framework
The disability reading on this page is this site’s own synthesis. It has not been formally tested.
Fictional example
Any scenes and therapy dialogue on this page are constructed for learning. The people in them are not real.
Last reviewed: October 2026.
How to cite this page: Donaghey, C. (2026). Fear. Disability in Psychotherapy. Available at: https://disabilityinpsychotherapy.online/what-is-psychotherapy/body-psychotherapy-disability-lens/the-therapists-body/fear/ (Accessed: [date]).
Shared under CC BY-NC 4.0, with extra permissions for teaching, supervision and therapy. Credit the site. See Reusing This Material.