Ask a Therapist

Why don’t therapists say much about their private lives? Well, the therapist-client relationship is quite different to a friendship. A friendship is a mutual thing, right? You tell me your stuff, I tell you my stuff. You tell me what’s hard for you, I tell you my struggles – and great, that’s what friendship’s for. But the thing about that is it erodes all the open space between us. The habits and patterns of the friendship are kind of set, and it doesn’t necessarily allow for either of us to say things that are offensive or embarrassing or that show weakness or that are even false and experimental. So, that’s why a therapist removes their part from that dynamic to allow the open space for the client to say things that might be any of those things that you can’t say in a friendship.

And think about this: if I, as a therapist, told you too much about me – for instance, suppose I said, I don’t know, “my father died ten years ago”. Who knows the impact that that’s going to have on the client? Maybe they’ll never be able to talk about death again, or their father, or loss. It’s not possible to predict. So, we don’t do that. Therapists stay out of the picture to give the client the full freedom to express however they need to, without caring for the therapist.

Because fundamentally, we’re here to care for the client, right? And if the client is trying to care for the therapist, and is asking lots of questions about their private life, that’s a thing to notice and to talk about, because it might suggest that the way the client survives relating to other people and relationships is by excessively caring for the other, rather than also allowing themselves to be cared for.