Therapy is a collaboration between 2 experts

I always feel honoured when I meet a new client and they mention that this is the first time ever that they’re attending a therapy session. It doesn’t happen that often, and I kind of mentally do that thing where you look over your shoulder, then point to your own chest and mouth the word “who, me?”, about being chosen to be part of that person’s first therapy experience.

Whether someone is a therapy newbie or a veteran of the professional chat, it’s often helpful to discuss who’s bringing what to the room. As a psychologist, I bring a lot of professional training, study and experience to the relationship, and try to provide a nice private space for the conversation to take place. But it’s misleading to think that I would be in charge of a therapy session in terms of what we talk about - the therapist is not the boss or the only expert in the room.

All of my training and experience is valuable only in context, and the client is the one who brings all the context. A client’s life history, experiences, and current difficulties are the context to which therapeutic knowledge is applied, and nobody knows more about a client’s life than the client themselves. This is particularly important when therapy passes the assessment stage, and gets to the point where the therapist says things like “I wonder if what you’re describing is related to… (x)?”. There’s a reason why the therapist has that hunch, but if it doesn’t land at all, it’s so important for the client to feel able to say “I can see how you’d wonder that, but they honestly don’t feel related at all”.

In this sense, therapy is a collaboration between two experts, who are bringing their expertise in two very different areas together, in order to create something that is more than the sum of its parts. By pooling their knowledge from different areas, they are able to create new understandings of problems together, and produce new solutions to try which neither would have been able to think of before. This is why it’s so important for clients to be able to feel safe enough to say “That really doesn’t resonate with me” even if the therapist sounds confident, because the client’s expertise is just as important in working towards new directions in therapy.

It’s about creating a balance - if it’s mostly the client talking all session, that feels closer to supportive counselling, and if it’s the therapist speaking for the whole time, it’s less likely to create new connections in the client's brain. Some sessions will vary in who speaks and how often, but it’s so useful to think about what would help you to feel comfortable speaking your mind whenever it feels relevant to the process, not just when you think the therapist gives you permission to speak. The best outcomes come from the best collaborations, so trust that you’re an expert in your own life, who deserves to speak with equal authority in the therapy space!