Your Therapist is Hurting

Your therapist is hurting. We need to talk about it.

As a psychotherapist, let me tell you why this is happening, why it matters to you, and how I believe starting to talk about this can promote deeper healing for both client and therapist, and promote broader societal healing.

Do you know what your therapist believes politically? Do you know how many children your therapist has? Do you know what your therapist’s home looks like? Do you know if your therapist goes to therapy? Before March 2020, you may have answered no to most of these questions, but I bet you know now.

What’s that like to know more about your therapist?

This is the first time on a large scale that therapists are experiencing the same trauma as you at the very same time. Of course this has happened before in smaller, more acute doses (think 9/11), but for us, as therapists, it is now impossible to escape the same fear, pain, anguish and hopelessness that plague our clients — day-in-day-out, every day. We are holding space for the politically conservative client who reminds us of our politically divided family with whom we can’t stop fighting. We are supporting the client struggling with active addiction who reminds us of our alcoholic family system — our loved ones, siblings or parents we can’t save. We are communing with clients’ hopelessness and fear about the future while we talk to our therapists about our own hopelessness and fears. All while tolerating the weight of the pandemic.

It’s too much. And yet we will keep holding you. But who holds your therapist?

Your therapist wants you to know that while she has education and experience that give her a leg up on understanding the human experience, she is a wounded healer and still struggles too — especially right now. Recognizing your therapist’s humanity isn’t something we’ve historically asked of our clients, but it’s more necessary now than it has ever been.

I run a small private psychotherapy practice in Chicago. I do not claim to be the spokesperson for all therapists. And while there have been multiple pieces written about how therapists are coping with the unique challenges of 2020, I’d like to investigate the ways we might shift from individualism and neutrality to support the mental health needs of both the client and the therapist.

This is about digging a little deeper into the humanity of your therapist, the way the field of therapy is now forever changed, and how this all affects you as a client. I would go further to argue the challenges of 2020 have proven that the individualistic, success-driven approach to life has been detrimental to both clients and therapists. And that way of being no longer serves us. It’s also less possible and less helpful for your therapist to maintain a neutral stance on issues and keep our humanity to ourselves.

When the field of modern psychotherapy began with Sigmund Freud, the therapist was meant to be a blank slate. Patients were encouraged to lie on a couch with the therapist sitting behind them so the therapist’s affect (think facial expressions, reactions and body language) would not unduly influence the patient.

Therapy modalities have come a long way since Freud’s initial conception of psychoanalysis, yet most therapies I’ve studied and practiced do not seek to incorporate the humanity of the therapist in the therapy room. Speaking of recent trends in psychotherapy, I credit Brené Brown’s work with granting therapists the opportunity to cultivate authenticity in the therapy room. Likewise, the burgeoning trauma modality NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) incorporates a deep focus on the therapist and how trauma impacts the way we show up in our work with clients. Your therapist is a human being and wants to be seen as such. But many times, therapists and clients alike fall into the trap of objectification.

Objectification is to reduce the full spectrum of a person’s humanity into that of an object, to make someone less than human. Objectification is one of the risks of leaving the therapist’s humanity out of the room. The reason people may skew towards objectification is due to our developmental trauma experiences — trauma that happened in early childhood when our caregivers/parents failed to meet our needs.

Those of us who grew up in households with addiction or mental illness may have been treated as objects or extensions of our parents and therefore learned to interact with others by means of objectification. (For example, as a child, “Jessica” experienced the most connection to and affection from her parents when she was getting straight As and winning trophies, reinforcing that she was not just good enough simply for existing; rather, her “good enoughness” was determined by achievement).

One way objectification shows up in the therapy room is a client’s insistence — either overtly or covertly — that we therapists fix them. The designation between “fixed” and “broken” is a binary and limited view of the human experience that thwarts our understanding of wellness…a construction that is not helpful to mental wellness (but that’s a topic for another article). Simply put, a person comes to therapy with anxiety, and wants to leave therapy not having anxiety.

The only problem is that’s not how therapy works.

Expecting your therapist to have a magic wand that’s going to take the pain away is not only wrong, it’s a dangerous amount of power you’re giving away to your therapist. It’s also a superhuman demand that we therapists can’t meet. Instead, we want to encourage you to learn to tolerate your own suffering with compassion and care. That’s where the real power lies, the power to love yourself so you’re able to relate to others with that same level of compassion and love. Rest assured, to see your therapist in her full humanity doesn’t mean it’s your job to take care of her. Taking care of herself is part of her job — to connect with herself and her support communities in order to be with you and your suffering.

According to a study by NORC at the University of Chicago, Americans are the unhappiest we’ve ever been. Even before COVID, there have been a multitude of studies showing the rate of happiness, particularly for Americans, is declining. Researchers have debated the various reasons for this cultural void of joy and one important factor seems to be our lack of understanding that we are all interconnected. The book Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It’s Doing to Us by journalist Will Storr traces the origins of Western culture back to the ancient Greeks and weaves through the various times in our development when we’ve chosen individualism and achievement over connection and contentment and how we’ve ended up with a largely narcissistic society. I find it goes a long way in explaining how we Americans in particular ended up in this predicament.

In 2020, our uniquely American blend of individualism and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality has been grossly on display. Where else would a simple act of public health — wearing a mask to help protect your neighbor — become a political statement pledging allegiance to a particular political party?

So how does all of this affect you and your therapist?

The longer we continue to lean into our deep-seated American individualism and resist a more collective response to COVID, each one of us — therapists, clients and the public alike — will continue to be stretched to the max. Most therapists are conducting sessions via teletherapy, which is wonderful when we have no other options. But we miss seeing you in person, we really do. Many of us won’t return to in-person therapy until we’re certain it’s safe to do so. And it may not be safe to do so until we start thinking less of ourselves individually and more about one another collectively.

I can’t talk about individualism and not speak about the racial reckoning that reached an apex this summer. Individualism has helped to perpetuate racist policies and continues to oppress people of color, who often come from cultures rooted in collectivist values.

Edwin J. Nichols, PhD. observes, for European and Euro/Americans, their value system is largely rooted in objectification and monetary success: “The highest value [for these groups] lies in the object or acquisition of the object. Self­-worth is often determined by the number, size and monetary value of the object.” Nichols contrasts this with his observation that the value system of African/African American/Hispanic cultures is more rooted in relationships: “The highest value lies in interpersonal relationships. Self­-worth is often determined by the quality of relationships and how the member is viewed by members of the same and other groups.”

Building on Nichols’ work, it makes sense to me why in the U.S. we’re seeing very different, and often opposing, reactions and responses to our current crises.

In this COVID era, there’s no object we can buy or wealth we can accumulate that will get us out of this crisis. Similarly, in the therapy room, there’s no way our individual interventions are going to ease the existential discomfort that comes from a global pandemic, racial reckoning and economic crisis.

For therapists, as a field, we need to reckon with the fact that the sum of our individual sessions are at best the equivalent of offering peach-color bandaids to a small number of clients who have surface wounds. While in reality, our clients of all shades are coming to us with mortal wounds that will not stop bleeding anytime soon.

To put it differently, the curse of American desire to go it alone has negatively affected your mental health and put an undue burden on your therapist. Therapists are being asked to carry baggage that is not solely ours due to a system that focuses on acute symptom reduction and individual action rather than preventative root cause care and collective support.

We cannot get through this alone. Prior to the pandemic, I spent years, with varying success, encouraging clients to seek out supports outside the therapy room. Many clients make the choice to rely solely on therapy sessions, 1 hour per week, to fulfill all their mental health needs. But clients who reported the greatest benefit and positive change from therapy were often individuals who invested in cultivating meaningful relationships beyond individual therapy.

We are in crisis. All of us. Individually, collectively, and systemically. This year has highlighted the gaps in our mental health care systems and shown individual therapists just how limited we really are. The only way we’re really going to get out of this debacle is if, as a culture, we ditch the idea that asking for help is weakness, and create more systems to catch us when we struggle. But we therapists can’t simply manifest or use sheer will to create a utopia of mental health resources — believe me, if we could, we would have done so a long time ago!

That said, how do we get out of this mess — as clients, as therapists, as humans?

One way you can take back your own agency and recognize the humanity of your therapist is to seek to cultivate community — shift to a value system that celebrates interconnectedness and support of one another. Therapists must do this as well. We can no longer simply sit alone in our offices choosing not to affect change in larger systems. Therapists can seek out grassroots organizations that are creating positive change in communities and partner with them to create larger coalitions that can affect larger systems. We can seek to practice a liberation-focused approach to therapy. (For more on liberation-focused therapy, check out the incredible work of Shawna Murray-Browne). And we can engage in advocacy work to examine policies that create barriers to mental health care.

Another way of seeing your therapist as human is recognizing the limitations of her “magical” powers and respecting the boundaries of what she can and can’t do for you. I spend a lot of time working with my staff, encouraging them to teach their clients how to be in therapy. Part of that education is learning to sit with discomfort and recognizing that growth comes from being present through both expansion and contraction, pain and joy…in other words…life. It’s not your therapist’s job to “make you feel better.” It’s her job to empower you to find ways to learn to do that for yourself.

So what else can you, the client, do, beyond starting to truly see your therapist for who she is?

Are you, the client, seeking the resources you deserve, advocating for them, and demanding them? How are you holding your insurance company accountable for providing the services you need? (In truth, I’d like to abolish the American insurance industry as we know it, but again, that’s for another article).

Are you telling your local, state and federal political leaders how important mental health is to you and advocating for policies that support mental health care? Now is the time to step up and have our voices heard. We won’t see this confluence of events again in our lifetime, and although we’re all tired, anxious and struggling to maintain hope, we must strike while the iron is hot.

The time to act is now. Start by having an honest conversation with your therapist about how they are — beyond just the usual pleasantries. Not in an effort to help them, but in order to help them help you. Does your therapist have ideas about how the system needs to change and how you can play a role in that change? I bet they do, and I’m certain they’d be happy to tell you.

By sharing in our humanity, we can highlight the gaps in our system and work together to create change. I can think of nothing more therapeutic than starting a dialogue about how we can co-create a system that helps us all.