I'm in a relationship with a therapist; It's complicated.

There aren't very many socially-acceptable relationships I can think of when one member is expected to be open and honest, and the other member shares little or nothing personal. However, that is pretty close to how many therapists and their patients see the process of therapy.

Depending on the model of therapy the clinician is using depends on the amount of personal disclosure from the therapist. It's all about professional boundaries and what works for the client. A good question to ask as a therapist is, "How does this self-disclosure benefit my client?"

I do think at times keeping boundaries too rigid can be almost as destructive to treatment as keeping them too loose. It is difficult to promote hope within your client by taking the role of a expert, while at the same time, allowing your client enough space to believe that you are human and make your own mistakes. So basically, it seems to work like this: The more expert the therapist appears, the more helpful the client perceives him to be, but at the same time the more broken the client feels. He has more hope for change, but he takes less responsibility for it, because that is the job of his expert therapist. On the flip side, the more human the therapist is, the more normalized the client feels. Since the expert therapist isn't there to do it all, the client has more responsibility for change, but along with that comes less hope, because the client feels he doesn't know what to do.

This theory would look nice in a little graph that I might make some day. In the mean time, I would like to shatter the belief that therapists are perfect people. I have my own challenges with my behaviors and the behaviors of others, just as everyone else does. I get my feelings hurt by my friends, my family, and even my clients. So, I am a therapist, but I am a human. The journeys that I make with my clients happen together. There is no single set of foot prints in the sand here.

Michael Baker, LMFT
Learn more: www.reachfamilythearpy.com

PS- I would love to hear comments from therapists and lay people alike about how they experience this blog. Also, would you mind reposting, retweeting, sharing on facebook, or whatever? I find it much more fun to write and keep up with my blog when I know people read it!