What Your Therapist
Doesn’t Tell You
A dozen counselors on what it’s actually like to take a seat within the different armchair.
Certain issues, they only can’t
say to your face
“I positively must suppress instincts and take myself out of ‘me mode’ typically. …
… Maybe from my very own standpoint, I’m like: ‘Yes! Break up with that person! Run as fast as you can!’ But from a remedy perspective, I’ve to empower them to make that alternative. I’m solely seeing an individual for one hour per week, and I may not have the complete image, so I shouldn’t make choices for another person. It comes with observe. Honestly, typically you do actually simply wish to leap out and be like ‘Do not do this.’”
— T. Rochelle Tice, L.C.S.W.
“ ‘I need to pee so bad.’ Clients don’t realize that we have five minutes between sessions and sometimes making it to the bathroom is not possible.”
— Jessa White, L.M.H.C.A.
“One time a client asked me to write an emotional-support-animal letter for her pet hedgehog. This is outside my wheelhouse, and I declined to do it. She was so upset that she stopped coming to therapy.”
— Han Ren, Ph.D.
“ ‘What is her husband’s name again?’ I’m terrible at remembering names no matter how hard I try.”
— Jenn Hardy, Ph.D.
“ ‘I suck as a therapist right now.’ ”
— Shani Tran, L.P.C.C., L.P.C.
It is private
“I work with many Asian Americans seeking an Asian American therapist. I feel — and other therapists of color I know feel this, too — as if we do share more of ourselves in the room. When a client says they struggle with shame or guilt from a parent pushing them constantly, I share that I can relate to that, because my mom was also very tough. I only share things that feel kind of matter-of-fact to me, not emotional things that could hijack the session.”
— Thien Pham, L.M.F.T.
Your wildest confessions are
their 9-to-5
“I work with couples, and I’ve seen a lot of truth bombs come out. Once you build the safe space with clients, you get a lot of superintense moments — people have slapped their partners, or decided to break up in the session, or exploded and stormed off — and you just have to keep it together. There’s been quite a few times where someone had an unexpected outburst and I’m just sitting there, internally like: ‘What? Did they just say that? OK, we cannot react, we cannot react. … ”’
— T. Rochelle Tice, L.C.S.W.
The therapy-speak is uncontrolled
“Within the final 5 years, I’ve observed vocabulary coming into the remedy session, which individuals appear to be selecting up on-line. …
… We have normalized going to remedy and consuming psychological well being content material — pop psychology has entered the chat! — however there are cons to it. Young individuals are listening to a whole lot of messaging round every thing being ‘trauma.’ I feel that’s actually dicey. I’m not in favor of widening the scientific definition of trauma, due to the potential to search for trauma in locations the place it might not exist. And I really feel individuals are additionally turning into extra boundaried, shifting to this sort of cancel tradition. Sometimes folks assume that slicing different folks off is self-care, they usually could also be proper. But typically you’ll be able to have a dialog with somebody and allow them to know they upset you, and work via it to have a stronger relationship because of this. I feel individuals are dropping these social abilities concerned in rupture and restore.”
— Jacquelyn Tenaglia, L.M.H.C.
“There has been a large adolescent pool coming in that is familiar with therapy topics — but a very new, broader, more nebulous definition of them. The terminology fluency really caught me by surprise. What’s been really difficult to navigate is when a parent drops off their kid like, ‘Here’s my kid, fix them for me,’ and the kid is like, ‘I’ve been gaslit by narcissists!’”
— Kyle Standiford, Psy.D.
“I think most people are annoyed by the ‘therapy language’ that is coming in, but I want to bring a humility to it. I think the fact that people are coming in wanting to talk about their ‘insecure attachment’ or their ‘avoidant personality disorder’ is kind of wonderful. I appreciate it helping us become less hierarchical in our profession. So I say, let’s be curious with them about it, instead of feeling like, ‘They don’t know what they’re talking about, because I am the expert.’”
— Elizabeth Cohen, Ph.D.
The depth is inescapable
“Twenty years ago, when I used to practice in Argentina, I saw middle-class clientele who came in with employment and health insurance. Then I came to the U.S. and started to work in community mental health. Many of my clients were marginalized Latinos; they had linguistic barriers, they were in constant migration, or escaping violence. You can’t do psychotherapy if a person doesn’t feel safe — there’s no way that’s going to happen. Sometimes you’re veering toward being a social worker or case manager. You’re doing things like getting in your car and meeting someone who just fled an abusive relationship and is waiting for you in a parking lot with a bag full of clothes and nowhere to go, or you’re in heart-wrenching situations with unaccompanied minors who have just made it past U.S. Border Patrol from rural parts of Guatemala or El Salvador. It is deeply meaningful and fulfilling sometimes. But it’s frustrating too, because as a therapist, you feel you can’t really offer what you signed up for.”
— Gabriela Sehinkman, Ph.D., L.I.S.W.-S.
They all see shoppers in another way
“Therapy itself, it’s a bit of a dance — you want to see what the other person is bringing, and you dance with them. If they’re doing a waltz, you can’t break out hip-hop, and there are times when people just don’t want to dance.”
— Peter Chan, Psy.D.
“Most therapists are trained and taught to sit back and not show too much of themselves in the room. But I want to share bits here and there just to make people feel they are not alone, and to make them feel that they’re not crazy. To me, therapy is very much like dating, except, you know, obviously you don’t really want to date the person.”
— Thien Pham, L.M.F.T.
“I spend time in spaces like TikTok and Twitter and the gaming sphere; knowing what’s going on in gaming culture is really important for my young male clients, and this helps me connect with them.”
— Kyle Standiford, Psy.D.
Covid modified every thing
“During Covid, I had this uncanny experience in which different people would almost say the same things in sessions, sometimes verbatim, around their emotions, week after week. People would come in with the same tone and tenor — so it was almost like an emotional forecast, and I could say to people: ‘Listen, this week, don’t be surprised if you feel angry. I’ve heard this three times just today.’ It was uncanny to see this broader, collective grief response. This very intense depression, anger, numbness. It captured a way that we are all connected. It’s hard for an individual to put themselves into context, but there was no denying, for me, these trends that I would see. My belief is that therapy, at its core, is a way to understand our emotional worlds and the ways we struggle as an individual — but while I used to focus more on diagnosing symptoms and putting them into a constellation of a personality structure or a disorder, now I take a lot more of an existential, zoomed-out perspective, and I think a lot of our problems stem from trying to find meaning and purpose in our lives. Now I can see how so many things go unprocessed in our emotions and seem unrecognizable to us. Ever since Covid, I have dedicated a lot more of my time and resources toward psychoeducation for a wider audience.”
— Lakeasha Sullivan, Ph.D.
Interviews have been edited and condensed for readability.
Amy X. Wang is assistant managing editor for the journal. She has written in regards to the voyeuristic pleasures and pains of dogsitting for New York City’s rich and the widespread want for costly designer purses prompting a profusion of low-cost, phenomenally correct counterfeits.