It's only a guideline in some professional counselling and psychotherapy bodies that counsellors oughtn't encourage clients by accepting cards and presents. Neither, for more understandable reasons, should they offer them. However, I sometimes gave my psychotherapist Christmas cards and he never threw them back in my face, I'm glad to say. Once I gave him some CDs I'd burned with an interesting audiobook on them. I'd been bringing my thoughts about the book and its relevance to my sessions for a while and thought he might like to listen to it. The following week he very sweetly returned the CDs to me and explained that he couldn't accept them. I felt fine about that. I knew that he celebrated Christmas, however. Not because he put decorations up - he was very careful clinically - but because I'd asked him and being a straightforward, non-mystifying type, he answered me. If he'd then refused my cards, I would've been offended.
When I was on a counselling placement I had a client who insisted on thanking me for the work we'd done by making me a dreamcatcher. I explained to her that unfortunately it wasn't appropriate for me to accept it, and she was confused and put out. She genuinely wished to gift me something in return for the support I'd offered her, shall we say. In our last session she said it was just as well I couldn't accept it, because she hadn't had time to finish it. Some counsellors and therapists might read something into that parting shot, but I understood she had (largely, at any rate) simply wanted to show thanks for something she wasn't expected to pay for but in a very human way felt moved to honour reciprocally somehow. An aspect of relationships which psychotherapy sternly discourages and stifles. I mean, let's be clear - there's a world of difference between taking a small symbolic item from a client as their expression of thanks, and conspiring to make them feel as though they can never be loved unconditionally! But what do I know..?
Some time later - in an ethically legitimate arrangement, I should add - she came to me as a private client. After an initial 2 or 3 months in which she had struggled with the boundaries of the sessions in a way that she hadn't when I saw her at the charitable agency, Christmas came. Under orders from my supervisor, I made a mess of handling her attempt to leave me a card and gift bag at the end of our last session before Christmas. She went away in tears, feeling extremely hurt and upset.
I didn't open the card or look inside the gift bag in her absence, but when she returned in the new year we discussed things and I 'accepted' them from her. The gift was in fact the dreamcatcher she'd been working on for months, and it was incredibly well-made and beautiful. We negotiated that I'd accept it as payment for that session. Sadly, my supervisor was adamant that for certain reasons I shouldn't continue working with that client, and shortly afterwards we ended.
The powerful, colourful dreamcatcher hangs in my window to this day, casting multiple rainbows across the room in the mornings when the sun passes across a large crystal pendant that hangs from the bottom of the hoop. I'm often reminded of that client's incredible spirit in the face of the extremely challenging life she's had, and how she turns it all into beauty through her creativity. Rightly or wrongly, I treasure her gift to me, and I don't regret finally accepting it from her.