So sometimes I think the only thing that separates the client from the therapist is the desk. One therapist I know who sucks her thumb in between sessions, but she’s smart, responsible and effective in her work. Another therapist still puts his current marriage at risk by losing his temper, blaming his partner and distancing himself, until he realizes he’s repeating his old pattern and tries to wind it back. You wouldn’t think a marital therapist would have such a problem, but that’s partly why he became a marital therapist. 

Another friend sees every client through the lens of her own struggle with addiction, saying the person is “addicted” to sugar or “addicted” to giving up too much for love or “addicted” to exercise. Her work is effective, and she doesn’t hesitate to talk about recovery from her own addictions, but her clients probably don’t suspect she may relapse at times. 

And me? I can drive myself crazy ruminating about a relationship problem that is unsolvable—I mean waking up at 4 am thinking about it, driving my friends crazy with discussing it, and chewing on it like a dog with a bone long after all the meat is gone. 

Most therapists are drawn to their profession because they themselves have struggled with painful emotions and troubling relationships, and after extensive training and their own therapy, they are often well equipped to help others. Carl Jung talked about the archetype of the Wounded Healer, and it seems he was profound in that thought. Who better knows the pain and how to extricate oneself from it than someone who has been through it and come out the other side?

I have faith in psychotherapy because it can be so healing to confide privately in someone who is trained to understand and is legally bound to keep your secrets confidential. This opportunity to reveal your private struggles without fearing judgment allows you to say everything, hear it yourself, and feel accepted and relieved. A therapist can offer another perspective, some strategies for dealing with your dilemmas, and the therapist doesn’t have to be a paragon of mental health to do that. 

Yes, a dear friend can do some of this, and often a loving ear is helpful. But here’s the difference: therapists are trained to monitor their own biases and keep those biases out of the dialogue. They are trained to think clearly about what would be most useful for their clients to hear. It’s a learned skill to monitor their own reactions and keep them out of the way or make a judicious decision about sharing a reaction if it will be helpful. 

That’s the true difference between the client and the therapist. Most of the time it isn’t just the desk that separates you. You pay that person to put aside their own agenda and truly focus on what is curative for you.