Hey, everybody.
Happy Monday.
Now, today's question is why do mental health professionals
feel like they have to know everything?
And I really, really love this question,
because it caused me to reflect on my own process,
and how I am with my patients, and with you,
and I have a lot of thoughts about this.
And my first thought is that this urge
could come from us feeling responsible
for you getting better.
Meaning we feel like we have to fix everything that's wrong,
or whatever you've come to us to quote unquote fix.
And this really says that we don't have healthy boundaries,
and I've talked a lot about this,
but I think many people don't understand
the boundaries in therapy, so I'll briefly go over that.
When you come to see a therapist,
I know it can feel really weird,
but you're not supposed to know anything about them.
Yes, I mean, if they're pregnant,
you obviously see that, it's there, you know.
Or if they wear a wedding ring, or mention their husband,
or wife, or partner, you're gonna hear about that too.
But it should be very, very minimal.
You shouldn't know if they've been in therapy themselves,
or if their other spouse, or they've been divorced,
their other spouse is an alcoholic.
You shouldn't know all that about them.
Every once and awhile,
a therapist can share their own experience
as a way to empathize with you,
so that you really know that they get it.
Do you know what I mean?
And so, it can be a way for us to help you in your process.
Everything that we share should be with you in mind.
And so, therapy really works
because you share what's important,
and what you want to work on,
and the goals that you're working towards,
and then, I, or any other therapist,
helps kind of guide you in the right direction.
We ask questions that can get to the root of the problem,
or we ask kind of other questions
to best navigate through to even figure out what's going on.
Does that make sense?
We kinda just ask a lot of questions,
so that we can get down to what's truly happening,
and help you heal it,
but we can't work harder than our patients.
And that's where this kind of comes in
where there's no boundaries.
It's like, I can't be putting in all this effort,
and striving to make you feel better,
because I don't have that kinda power.
I can't make anybody get better.
We all know this, right?
All we can do is check in, I can be there,
I can support when you need to,
I can give you some tools, and things, techniques
to use when you're out of my office,
but you have to want to do the work.
I can't do it for you.
And so, I feel like some therapists
may feel like they need to know everything,
and do everything,
because they've taken on that responsibility,
when it's actually our patient's responsibility.
Now, my second thought is that this could come
from us being too confident, or egotistical.
I actually find this more,
and I'm not like, calling anybody out by name,
or any type of mental health professional as being bad,
but I find this more when it comes to psychiatrists,
M.D.s, meaning medical doctors.
A lot of them, because they spent so much time in school,
and they usually did really well in school,
and they are like, the top, I mean it's the most education
in the mental health professional realm
that you can get to, right?
That's like, as high as you can go.
And so, I think sometimes,
people in that level can be really egotistical,
or overly confident, thinking that they know everything.
And that honestly is kind of icky,
and usually we can feel that in session,
and that might be why this question was asked,
is 'cause their therapist, or psychiatrist, or psychologist,
or social worker, whomever,
tends to act like they have all the answers,
but I just think that is bred out of the personality
of the type of person you're seeing.
And that's why it's really important to make sure
that you like your therapist, you feel like they get you,
they're not making these horrible assumptions,
or talking throughout the session.
That's also a bad thing is if your therapist talks,
even if it's not about themselves,
if they just like, try to fix your problem,
and talk it through, and you barely get to talk,
that's not good.
You're supposed to share information,
we're supposed to ask, you know, kinda guiding questions
to get you towards what we think the answer is,
but if you're like that's not working for me,
we try something else.
And so, it's really important, I think,
for all mental health professionals to be humble,
and to know that their patients are the teachers,
and we're kind of the student.
I'm the student of you experience, right?
You're teaching me all about it,
and being too confident or egotistical
could lead to me thinking that I have all the answers,
when in truth, my patient has all the answers.
I just know how to take what they've told me,
and offer some helpful tools and tips
that might work for them,
but again, they only know what works for them.
So, I'm gonna offer all the things I have in my arsenal,
so that I can see what would work,
but at the end of the day, the patient is the expert.
And my third thought about why a therapist
could feel like they have to know everything
is that they could worry
about you having confidence in them,
and needing their patients to validate,
or affirm their own insecurities.
And this really just goes back to a video
I created a long time ago
about why I think all mental health professionals
should see their own therapist,
or other mental health professional,
because what that reeks of to me is like,
countertransference, or some kind of transference,
depending on what's going in the therapy session.
It's kind of hard to pin that down,
but I shouldn't, as a therapist,
be working out my ownish in session.
That time is yours, and it is sacred,
and it's the one hour, of 50 minutes,
that you get each and every week
to talk about your own stuff, and not be interrupted.
And so, a therapist may come across as like,
feeling like they know everything,
because they want you to feel confident,
and I really think that this reason
would be born out of their desire to help,
and their worry maybe, or their own impostor syndrome,
but again, stuff that they should be workin' out
on their own.
Why are we having to deal with this?
We shouldn't.
That's why I see a therapist,
so I keep my ownish out my sessions,
you know, 'cause it doesn't belong there.
And my fourth, because like I said,
I have a lot of thoughts,
my fourth thought
about this is that they may need the money,
and wanna keep you as a patient.
And that's part of the reason
why I've actually never done private practice full time.
I don't know if any of you know that.
I've always done it just an add on
to something else I've been doing, whether I was working
at the eating disorder treatment center,
I used to be per diem around,
there was a local hospital chain in L.A.,
I had three different hospitals
I would attend to every week,
I ran groups, things like that,
I've run other groups on the side
with other colleagues of mine,
I've done a lot of different things.
Now, I do YouTube as an add on.
But I do that all because I don't want
that direct relationship where you see someone for an hour,
and they pay you for it.
I don't want to ever feel like,
shit, if I lose this patient,
I can't pay my bills, or my rent,
or let's say, you know, can't get groceries, I don't know,
because bills keep coming.
We all know that.
I never wanted that to be it.
I always wanted to have another thing going
that was a little bit different
that paid the base of what I needed,
and then all of the money that I made
from my patients in my private practice
was just icing on the cake,
which allowed me to take clients at no cost,
or a lesser cost,
you know, like the sliding scale I've talked about.
You can always ask them if they do that.
And so, I feel like some therapists may pretend
they know everything, or act like they have all the answers,
because they want to keep you around,
because maybe they need the money,
and that's an unfortunate potential side effect
of this whole thing that we call therapy.
And my fifth thought,
I've kind of touched on this a little throughout the others,
but we could not be taking care of ourselves,
and dealing with our own issues in your session,
like I talk about, imposter syndrome,
or working too much, symptoms of burnout showing through.
If you remember, I did this whole series on burnout,
but some of the symptoms are irritability,
struggle to sleep, they can begin to resent their patients.
I mean, we talked about burnout comes from nurses
at a free clinic in New York in 1974, I think it was?
72?
Dr.Herbert Freudenberger, he coined the term burnout,
because he was seeing it in his nurses.
And, so you just think about that,
and I think that's why it's so, so important
that therapists see their own therapists,
because we don't have all the answers,
and especially, I can't therapize myself, I'm sorry.
That's just not gonna work.
It's like a surgeon trying to operate on themself, ya can't.
It's just not right,
because I can sidestep all those questions
that I'd rather avoid.
Or I can pretend something's not a big deal,
'cause I'm not ready to deal with it,
and you really need a therapist
to kinda push you through that.
And so, that's why it's so important
if we are in a job of caring for others in any way,
we need to first care for ourselves,
and so, that could be one of the reasons
why whoever asked this question is feeling
like their therapist, or other mental health professional
is just kind of overly confident,
and pretending like they know everything.
And finally, and this also includes like, all of the above,
they need to suck at their jobs.
Not all therapists or other mental health professionals
are good at what they do.
Not all people get into our line of work to help people.
Be humble, and let our patients teach us, guide us,
and show us where they want to go.
And so, just keep that in mind.
Just like any other job,
and I know sometimes it's hard to consider
being a therapist as a job, or a career path, but it is.
And just like you can get a shitty haircut,
or you can have someone come over to clean your carpets,
and they only do like, 3/4 of it,
or any number of things, right?
We can go to a mechanic,
and our car turns out worse than it was.
People can suck at their jobs,
and therapists unfortunately, are not immune to that.
And overall, the important thing to remember
is that mental health professionals are people too.
We can't know everything,
we can't specialize in every mental illness,
or read your minds.
That would be really helpful, but we can't.
But with the right therapist for you, you'll know this,
you can tell them what's going on,
and what you want to work on,
set some goals together, and work towards them,
because no one said therapy was gonna be easy.
But they did say that it would be totally worth it.
I hope you found this helpful,
and I would actually be interested in your thoughts.
Do you think I covered all the reasons
a therapist could feel like they have to know everything?
This was really fun to think about,
and really great reflection for me.
So, thank you for asking your wonderful questions.
If you have any other thoughts,
leave 'em in the comments down below,
and I will see you next time.
Bye.
(smooth music)