Doctor Ducky Psychotherapy

There often seems to be a power differential inherent to the therapeutic relationship. The therapist is an expert in psychology–they’re literally getting paid for that expertise–and since psychology is what you’re there to do, what can you, the client, possibly bring to the session?

The answer is that you are a world-class expert on yourself! No therapist can ever know as much about you as you can, and that should actually put you in the position of power. You’re not in therapy to “do psychology”, you are there to work on your own feelings and your own goals, and nobody knows as much about those as you do.

Therapy is for and about YOU.

This means that therapy should be focused on the topics that feel important and relevant to you; not something that the therapist thinks is interesting or the cause of your issues.  Therapy should be guided by the goals you want to achieve; not by goals that the therapist believes are important.  Therapy should be a process of collaboration where your input and your desires are what is most important.  

Many people don’t even want to start therapy because they are afraid to have someone else dictating what is right for them. This is a very reasonable fear! Therapy with that dynamic is going to be ineffective at best and more likely harmful. That’s why it’s so important to define boundaries and goals right away, in order to find your power and come to the therapy as an equal and a valued client. Good therapy that is client-led can be transformational, and you deserve to have that!

The rest of this blog series will be different tools and approaches to actually putting this into practice, but they all come back to this central theme and idea. It’s so important that I’m going to say it one more time:

THERAPY IS FOR AND ABOUT YOU!

The more you can feel that with your therapist the more possibility there is for you to change the things you want and grow into the self you create!  I hope you can use these posts as a starting point for hope that you can get what you want and need in psychotherapy.