Therapists in the Therapeutic Relationship

Have you ever wanted to know more about your therapist? Wondered what it was like for them to be a part of your therapeutic journey? It’s easy to assume that, for therapists, working is like a regular 9 to 5 in which they work, go home, and go on about their day as normal. While that might be the case for some, it certainly isn’t true for all. As you already know, therapy is a very intense and intimate act between two (or sometimes more) people in which so much is shared. It can often feel one sided in that, we as therapists have the privilege of fully knowing our clients, whereas our clients know little to nothing about us. As therapists we often talk about what it’s like for us on a day-to-day basis, dedicating time to consultation and supervision so that we can fully process what’s going on for us both personally and professionally. I asked my colleagues here at Wild Tree what they would want clients to know, here are some of their responses: 

• “I do not know all the answers to life. I am just figuring out life right along with them and it is not my job to hold all the answers to life and tell them what to do with theirs.”
• “I too get a little nervous meeting my clients for the first time still. I truly do care about my clients, so I do have real feelings that show up in the space I share with them, and I do think about them after our time together. I am not always good at listening to my own advice or suggestions”
• “It takes courage to be able to open up this way and I always feel happy when a client is truly comfortable enough to engage in this process.”
• “I have always found it to be such an interesting experience to be a therapist because my clients are such a big portion of my life (being a full time working adult and spending many of my waking hours at work) and yet I am only an hour of their week or month. Just a blip in their life experience. And I don’t often get the privilege to see them through the good stuff in their life. So while I still think about clients from years ago now and then, I have no way of knowing how things turned out from them. That’s an odd feeling.”

I always explain to my clients that our relationship is like a road trip, in that they are responsible for getting us there and I’m there for them and with them along the way. While I may recommend a few stops and change the tunes every now and then, they are in charge of our journey and will get us there eventually. We will rely on one another throughout the trip, but once we get there it’s time for us to go our separate ways. Through this blog I wanted our clients to know that we absolutely love and value the work that we do; we care about our clients just as much, if not more than they care about us. 

Blog by: Cody Flynn, MA
Photo by: Photo by Alex Green via Pexels