My supervisor said, “Why don’t you share with him your experiences when you’re worried?” I froze. It was a gut reaction. You see, I’d received many mixed messages about self-disclosure. During my first week of training, a facilitator said she found it useful to point out that she was clearly from a different cultural background- that’d remove the elephant in the room. But someone else hauled me up for doing that.
Some said the client-therapist relationship is meant to be sacred and pure. It should be about the client; and nothing about the therapist should be disclosed. Of course, Web 2.0 makes this difficult– today it’s common not to patronise someone if they’re not found online. Needless to say, I was confused.
Yalom's Wisdom
Irvin Yalom writes about how therapists should disclose to some extent. If it helps clients to understand themselves better. Clients have confidentiality; therapists don’t– as long as the therapist isn’t worried about about that information becoming public, it’s okay.
“Do not permit this concern to restrict your work and make you so overcautious and self-protective that you lose your effectiveness. You cannot protect yourself from patients’ presenting you undistorted fashion to their next therapist”
But he cautions that clients will resist it, for they “want the therapist to be omniscient, infinitely dependable and imperishable”.
Accepting imperfection vs disclosing imperfection
I’ve struggled with these two camps. I’m clearly imperfect and am continually making peace with my imperfections. But my fear of disclosure– from the conflicting advice I’ve been given– kept me quiet. But deep down, it also stemmed from a fear of getting into trouble with supervisors.
As therapists we subscribe to different schools of thoughts. Some of us believe purely in one model. Others like myself don’t. And then if you scratch the surface, there’s in-fighting and competition amongst the different advocates of each school. As long as we don’t acknowledge our need to be “more right” or better than another, we may use points like self-disclosure against another therapist’s way of working.
In short, I learned: someone will tell you it’s wrong, another will tell you not. In between the starkness of black and white, there’s infinite shades of grey. If we guide our clients to be comfortable with uncertainty, perhaps so should we.
Walking the talk
That week, I opened my mouth and shared a story of how my brain and body react when I’m anxious with that client. My client nodded, saying he was glad to hear my 2-minute piece. It could have easily been the story of someone else, because anxiety symptoms are somewhat universal. But it taught me to rise above my fears.
Later that week, I had a review with another client, with whom I never self-disclosed. She told me with a smile that I spoke from the heart, and she knew that I had changed my own life too. She said, I knew what I was talking about. Theory, technique, experience. I was startled. Such feedback also came from other clients with whom I hadn’t self-disclosed. They said they liked knowing I was human.
And it struck me that perhaps not all clients expect their therapists to be perfect.
Perfectly imperfect
Years later, I’ve interviewed many on their thoughts on these subject. They’re clients of other therapists, coaches and healers. What I’ve come to realise is that:–
- Some of us expect perfection from our therapist. It helps us feel better. But there comes a point when we realise we also need to face where this yearning for perfection comes from.
- It is in our human-ness that we connect. When we know pain, joy, suffering, hope, fear, love, and everything that lies in-between.
“I want to know that my therapist has overcome. It doesn’t need to be the same experience or difficulty. But I know then that they really understand.” – (Respondent)
Perhaps, as long as our therapist isn’t spending all the time talking about themselves, self-disclosure and the acceptance that we’re all imperfect beings helps make life a little easier and relatable.
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