Your Therapist is Not Your Friend

     I recently had someone tell me that they think of their therapist as their friend. This person told me that they felt like their weekly therapy appointments were just two friends hanging out and chatting about stuff. This person also thought the therapy they received from this therapist wasn't helping them, but, since they thought of the therapist as their friend, they didn't want to find a new, more helpful therapist. This situation is not a good one, my friends. This is not how a client-therapist relationship should look or feel.

    Your therapist is not your friend. Your therapist is not supposed to be your friend. Forgive me if that sounds harsh. A client-therapist relationship is like a business partnership. The client and the therapist are the business partners, with the therapist as the "senior partner", there to guide the newer, more inexperienced business partner (AKA the client) through the business venture of rewiring their brain and healing their trauma. Like with most business partners, there are certain boundaries that are defined from the beginning by the client and the therapist when they agree to work together. (A therapist usually defines the parameters of the client-therapist relationship and the expectations for the process during the in-take appointment.) If you ever feel like your therapist is your friend more than you feel like your therapist is a mental health professional providing a needed service, the boundaries have become blurred or weren't enforced properly, and this is not good for the therapeutic process.

    When your therapist becomes your friend instead of your mental health counselor, the whole therapeutic process can fall apart. Think about how you interact with your friends. You might hide things from them or lie to them to avoid having them think or feel differently about you. You're also likely to ignore help your friends try to give you, or if they tell you that certain behaviors are becoming a problem. You can't do those things with your therapist. You have to tell your therapist everything, and you have to put in the work outside the sessions that they expect of you or therapy won't work.

    Your therapist also has a duty to remain objective when it comes to treatment. If your client-therapist relationship has turned into more of a friend-friend relationship, it can become difficult for the therapist to remain objective and for the client to place their trust in the therapist's ability to treat them adequately. (Note: if a therapist has lost the ability to be objective with their client, it's unethical for them to treat that client any longer.)

    I hold my therapist in high regard, and I trust her with my life. I enjoy the way she has worked with me for the past five years. However, I know she isn't my friend. She is a professional, much like my primary care physician, that I am paying to provide a service that contributes to my overall well-being. We have boundaries. My therapist is a warm and caring individual, and I truly believe that she cares about me as a person. However, my appointments never feel like we're just two gals chillin' over a nice cup of tea. My appointments feel more like business meetings. I'm not making idle chit-chat or asking her about her life during my hour session, and she doesn't share details about her life with me. We work during my appointment to change the way I function and interact with my mental health condition. We meet with a thing to accomplish and an end-result visible on the horizon.

    I'll end with this: It might seem weird to think of the person you share your most troubling experiences with as "not your friend", but your mental health counselor is not your friend. It should never feel like your therapist is your friend, or like your counseling appointments are just two friends hanging out. If that happens you need to address the issue and possibly find a new therapist that can provide objective and professional treatment.