The 1 Thing A Good Therapist Will Never, Ever Do

Counseling sessions can feel like a heart-to-heart with a close friend — a friend who won’t see you outside their office and is totally OK with trauma-dumping. But unlike get-togethers with a bestie who will drink wine and offer (sometimes unsolicited) life advice, your therapist should be more focused on empowering you.

In fact, there’s one thing a good therapist will never do, even if your friends would: tell you what to do.

This may sound a little counterintuitive at first. If your therapist can’t give you advice, then will you ever learn how to cope with anxiety or set boundaries? Actually, yes. A good therapist will help you find those answers for yourself, without being bossy or overbearing.

“Therapists exist to help you uncover your own inner wisdom,” Sally Scheidlinger, a psychotherapist in San Francisco, told HuffPost . “By telling you what to do, a therapist is essentially saying, ‘You don’t know what is best for you, but I do.’”

“This invalidates your judgment and robs you of the ability to uncover what may be right for you,” she added. Not to mention, no one wants to go to a session where you are being lectured the whole time.

Here are a few other reasons why you won’t find many therapists telling you exactly what to do:

You’re the expert in your own life.

In news that surprises no one, you know yourself the best. Even better than your parents, your significant other — and yes, your therapist.

“Clients — and not their therapists — are the experts on their own lives,” Patrice Le Goy, an international psychologist, therapist and adjunct professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, told HuffPost . “They know far more than a therapist ever could and only share what they choose to.”

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