5 things to remember about me, your therapist.

What do you think of when you hear the word, therapist?

This?:

Or this?

Orrrr, maybe even this?

Are you starting to see a theme? You should.

What connects all of us as therapists and mental health clinicians is not our education, our therapeutic modalities, or our ruthless fight against depression, anxiety, and the like. No, what ties us all together is that we’re human. Too.

I want to share 3 things that I want you to remember before you sit down in that chair across from me (or any other therapist for that matter).

1. My goal is not just to provide you with answers. Most of the time, I am just as bewildered as you. I don’t know the answer. And If I did, I’m sure someone close to you would have pointed it out long before you had your first session with me. My goal in treatment is to provide new perspectives, skills to manage your struggles, and teach you to be curious about you and your life again. Too often, people come into treatment believing that his/her therapist will provide them with the magical answer. The cure to all of their pain. I’m sorry, I won’t be able to do that. I hope no therapist operates on that belief.
2. I can help only if you’re being transparent and willing to share. Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t expect you to sit down and be ready to talk and share about things that you’ve never shared with anyone before. That would be unfair. I don’t expect it in the first session, or the 100th session. I know these things come with time, rapport, trust, and clinical purpose. But it wouldn’t make sense for you to go to an MD, report that your leg hurts, and then refuse to show him your x-ray. Without that crucial piece of information, all we’re left with are assumptions and educated guesses. I’m trained to connect your experiences, thought patterns, and emotions. I try to look for patterns, both maladaptive and productive. Without transparency, I’m working with inaccurate data. And with inaccurate data, we make inaccurate conclusions.
3. I experience transference too. It’s called countertransference. Transference is the unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another. So, your feelings towards me. Counter-transference is the emotional reaction of the analyst to the subject’s contribution. So my feelings towards you. I do this because I am human too. Yes, I am moved by your painful experiences. Yes, I am angry for the injustices you encountered. And yes, I am also annoyed by nuisances in your behavior that many others in your life have experienced. That doesn’t make me a bad therapist. It makes me human. I use that information, the things your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, elicit in me, to build a stronger relationship with you. For me to be mindful of what you bring out in me is a powerful tool that many me and many of my constituents use. Otherwise, you’d be talking to a robot. Nobody likes talking to a robot.

4. I don’t (or ever will) think you are just your diagnosis/diagnoses. That’s too reductionistic. You are who you are today because of the melody of your intrapersonal, interpersonal, and environmental influences. All of this over the span of your life. For me to see you any less than a complicated figure, diagnosis or not, is to sell you short as a person. Since you are complex, your issues are complex. No diagnosis will (or should) completely explain the suffering your experience. It will provide both you and me with an umbrella to operate under, but it will never be the only light in my treatment of you.

5. My goal is to lead you to acceptance (and hopefully beyond). This may be a personal belief, or perhaps the guiding principle I created from the experiences I’ve had in my own practice. This, I find, is the most difficult mountain for most of my clients to climb. I speak more about acceptance, or radical acceptance, here. Acceptance for your past. Acceptance for your diagnosis or struggle. Acceptance for where you are and who you are today. It always begin with that. The means to how I or other therapists get you there may differ, but we’re all trying to reach the same conclusion. To deny the entire truth of you is the biggest roadblock to progress. Both the good and the bad. The beautiful and the ugly. The things you love about yourself and the things you despise.

Thanks for reading!

I am on a mission to challenge the stigma and provide education on the various topics of mental health.

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