Why Therapy is NOT working--because of a therapist
2024.10.25
Hello, this is Tatsuya Arakawa, a licensed mental health therapist (LMFT).
On this blog, I would like to discuss why therapy is NOT working because of a therapist. Perhaps, you have been seeing a therapist with satisfying outcome or maybe you are not really happy with your current therapist. Either way, knowing how therapy should not be provided can be helpful.
Giving advice too much
A therapist should not give advice too much. This is a general rule. There are many reasons as to why.
- The goal of therapy for a client is to stop seeing a therapist. Therefore, what both a therapist and a client should try to avoid the most is the situation where the client is being too dependent on a therapist because it makes it difficult for a client to graduate from therapy.
- It is human nature that we do not want anyone to tell us what to do. Giving advice is basically a therapist telling a client what to do. Even if clients ask for advice, if they hear advice, most of the time they will not follow the advice. Rather, receiving advice usually tends to lead them to feel negative feelings such as not feeling understood.
- A therapist is a human too. Just because we therapists have license, it does not mean that therapists know better than clients and that therapists figure out all the life issues. Besides, what a client suffers is not the same as what other clients were suffering; nothing is the same including gender, race, age, genes, etc.…
There are more reasons, yet these are good enough to understand why giving advice is not helpful for clients.
Note: some therapists might argue that this depends on what type of therapy is provided and the therapist’s style of how they provide therapy. It is true that some types of therapy encourage a therapist to give advice. Also, if a therapist’s style is aligned with giving advice, you might hear more advice than therapists with other styles.
Talking too much about themselves
Even though a client tends to want to know more about a therapist once they start to trust the therapist, this does not mean that the therapist is allowed to talk about themselves too much. Because therapist-client relationship should not be robotic and should be human-to-human relationship, there is no such rule stating that therapists should NEVER share about themselves with a client. However, when we share about ourselves, we need to make sure that the content should be beneficial for clients. If a therapist shares about themselves, it should be FOR a client.
The reason is simple. Therapy time is FOR A CLIENT, NOT for a therapist. Clients should be able to feel that they can talk about anything with a therapist. However, if a therapist talks about themselves more than they should, the dynamic therapy changes, which most of the time leads a client to think that client needs to give some time for a therapist to talk about themselves. However, if that continues, therapy time might not feel like therapy; rather, a client might feel like it is similar to talking to a friend.
I hope this helps you understand more about how therapy should NOT be provided.
Tatsuya Arakawa, LMFT 82425