Therapy is truly a bizarre space for clients to step into. It is a purely one-sided, incredibly intimate experience, that only exists in one single setting (either the therapists physical office or in my case, the Zoom office). Clients are expected to share their most personal and private memories, experiences, and thoughts without knowing hardly any details about the professional they’re talking to.
In graduate school we talked at length about therapist disclosure and overwhelmingly the consensus was that therapists do not share personal information with their clients and this mirrors the overall consensus in the field. This boundary is one of the most important to follow because it reminds therapists that the focus of the work is always the client.
My personal/professional belief is that the client can absolutely stay the center of the work and at times, therapist disclosure can facilitate that.
As with all areas in life, we tend to get the most uncomfortable in the gray zone because the ambiguity and complexity can be very disarming to navigate. This is generally how therapists tend to feel about personal disclosures; it falls into the gray zone, which makes it hard to figure out, so many forego the opportunity altogether.
I’ve heard far too many stories in which a client was trying to connect with a therapist on a personal level but because the therapist was uncomfortable with disclosure, they shut down the interaction or turned it back on the client. The therapists rigidity of this boundary can feel artificial and distracting at best, and deeply rejecting to the client at worst.
I tend to be quite fluid with the information that I share with my clients but I always ask myself two questions before I lean into sharing personal information:
- Is my sharing relevant to what my client is experiencing at present?
- Will my disclosure be helpful to them?
It has taken many years of being in private practice to do this questioning and analysis in a matter of seconds and it is absolutely worth the effort to do. Whether we share too much information or too little, this becomes a preoccupation for clients, which can distract them from their personal work in therapy.
But possibly the most important thing to keep in mind is that the single most healing factor of therapy has nothing to do with modality and interventions, but has everything to do with the relationship that is formed between client and therapist. And there are rare and special times in which sharing your own experiences that run parallel to what a client is experiencing can be incredibly meaningful and not only humanizes a therapist (because my oh my, how people love to assume that therapists have all of their own sh*t together) but gives clients hope.
The goal for a therapist is to be both professional and personable and the impact that this can have on clients is truly revelatory.
