Ask a Therapist

Do therapists judge their clients? Depends what you mean. I mean, yes and no, and depends what you mean by ‘judge’.

So, we’re human beings like anyone else, and we get an impression of someone, and we may form an opinion about the rightness or wrongness of the choices someone’s made, or their behaviour. So that’s just a normal human thing to do, right? We can’t help, on some level, being moral people and having opinions about other people’s behaviours.

I think the difference with therapists is, while that’s happening we should, and try, and are trained to, pay attention to what we’re doing. To not just run with the feeling or opinion we have about someone. It’s to think: why did I form that opinion? What is it about this person that causes me to form this opinion? And that’s information, and that’s data the effect that person has on other people. If you have that effect on me, probably you have that effect on others. And rather than just running with that feeling about you, or that judgement, or that opinion, I’m going to notice myself doing that and somehow bring it back into the work we’re doing. Like, use it, not as something I identify with and hold, but as something that I can bring back to the client. Something that can help them understand themselves, and maybe an effect they have on people without realising it, or how they replay something with everyone else. Something that allows them a new awareness of themselves that perhaps they can use, or we can use together to help them shift something about how they are, how they interact with other people.