Professional psychologists can be profoundly affected by their patients and must know how to take care of themselves physically and emotionally while delivering effective treatment. In this paper, I examine the effects of one patient on my personal and professional lives. Over the course of 2 years, the patient experienced numerous losses and became deeply depressed. Her symptoms included suicidal urges and self-harm (cutting). I describe the impact of the patient’s life events on the therapy and on me as the therapist. I enumerate self-care strategies that preserved my ability to treat the patient without becoming distressed or impaired by the demands of the case. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)