I know the drill. You've thought about going into therapy, and despite whatever ambivalence, fears, or concerns you may have, you're ready to take the next step of actually setting up an appointment. Now comes the task of wading through the abyss of providers to try and find a good match. You begin asking a series of questions: Are they covered by my insurance? Do they have availability that matches my schedule? How do they work? What do they look like? What if they're a weirdo? Do I think I'll be comfortable sitting in a room with them? What is their online presence? Do they even have an online presence?
Taking the initial steps of setting up an actual appointment with a complete stranger, in many ways is a huge leap of faith. Will this person be any good at their job? What experiences and credentials do they have? Will I feel safe enough with them to be vulnerable and share my innermost thoughts? Can I trust that I will not be met with judgment? How do I know that this person will not use their position of authority to try and control me, or dictate how I should live my life? What if they're not engaged enough, or it feels like I am talking to a brick wall? Many people want to have a better sense of the person they will be meeting with before they agree to an initial intake. Once they are in treatment with a professional who seems to be a good fit, many patients still yearn to have a better sense of their therapist.
There are many professional reasons for a therapist to not reveal too much about themselves to their patients. Personal details about the treatment provider can serve as a distraction from the reasons that the individual is seeking therapy in the first place. Looser boundaries can shift the relational dynamics, leading to a role reversal where the patient begins focusing on the needs/details of the therapist's life, instead of the therapist creating a space that is reserved solely for the patient, to use as she or he wishes. One aspect of treatment is called the "transference." This is a phenomenon where a patient will come to have feelings for their therapist that mirror other relationships in their lives (with parents, romantic partners, siblings, etc.). By working with this aspect of the therapeutic relationship, old patterns and issues can be worked through and resolved, as the therapist does not respond the same way as these important people in the individual's life. Old conflicts can have a different result, and the person may feel freer to express themselves or react to others with more flexibility and agency. Too much knowledge about the therapist can interfere with this transference, as personal details unique to the therapist interfere with who the patient needs the therapist to be (or who they need to perceive the therapist as being). In addition, divulging personal information as a means of bartering trust (so the patient will open up more and share about themselves) is usually ill advised, because if you are not ready to share personal information, that probably means that enough basic trust has not yet developed. This trust needs to be built, and not coerced by means of oversharing.
Despite all of this, I believe it is possible to give my patients a sense of my values and how I think and work therapeutically without burdening them with personal details that fall into any of the categories mentioned above. That's why I decided to start this blog. My goal is to post in fairly consistent intervals for anyone who is interested in reading. I also hope this can be a way of demystifying what occurs in therapy, helping people to feel less isolated with certain issues that are common to human existence, and clarifying some aspects of the field of mental health and treatment that can at times be confusing to someone just beginning their therapeutic journey.