Do Therapist Talk About Their Clients?

Sara Rice, LLPC on Sep 24, 2019 in Mood and Feelings

So, I always want to encourage people to seek out mental health professionals if they feel like they have a significant issue or if they just need a mental health tune-up. I am a passionate advocate for mental health awareness, which means that I am trying to make the mental health experience a little less scary. I want to share what it is like not only being a therapist but being the one “on the couch”. I have mentioned in one of my related articles, “Getting Comfortable with Psychotherapy” that I have been on the receiving end of therapy, twice. So, I have a pretty good idea of what is going through your mind when you make the phone call when you wait in the waiting room when you sit down in front of a stranger who knows nothing about you but is supposed to bring you back to equilibrium.

​​Today, a few questions that I wanted to answer are “do we miss our clients” and “do we speak about our clients”. First, in terms of speaking about our clients, mental health professionals SHOULD ALWAYS maintain strict rules of confidentiality. Only ever bringing you up in clinical situations in order to garner the best help possible for you, our client. I going to be honest here, there are some really difficult clients that lead to really difficult sessions. To keep giving you the best care, we absolutely have to digest with somebody, a colleague with whom we maintain strict confidentiality with. True confession here, there are and will be times where we have to talk over what happened in a session and possibly talk over a diagnosis, but I stress again, this is only in a clinical private/confidential setting. I do not talk about you with my spouse or my BFF. Speaking for myself and my partner at Koinonia Counseling Center, we believe that confidentiality is one of the most important things in counseling because it allows us to maintain a therapeutic relationship, which is essential to having a successful therapeutic intervention. The relationship between you and your therapist, the honesty, being able to know that what you say is held in strict confidence (barring there aren't any items that break confidentiality like abuse or threats of suicide and there are no court order documents that we have to give up) are all vital aspects of counseling.

In regards to missing our clients, yes, I would absolutely say that we do miss our clients. However, we also know that we have to maintain a professional relationship. We are not allowed to call you up and say, “hey we want to be your best friend, do you want to go out for coffee?”. There are actually strict guidelines for us in terms of when we could ever see our clients out of the office, date our clients or have any form of sexual relations with clients. The ethics of our profession demands this in terms of years and certain relationships could cause us to lose our license.

I can share that I miss clients in terms of seeing them happy with the progress that they have made throughout our sessions, knowing that my life’s purpose is helping you. I want to state that while I thoroughly enjoy helping people, I would definitely say that you shouldn’t expect to hang out with your therapist. Don't go into therapy having the expectation that they're your friend. Psychotherapist/ counselors are around to care about you 100%, there to have your best interest at heart, they’re there to be a neutral party. We walk a fine line of being on your side but making sure that you are grounded and can maintain proper boundaries.

So yes, we as therapists do talk about our clients (clinically) and we do miss our clients because we have entered into this field because we remain hopeful for others. I pray that other therapists go into the mental health field because they want to help people become the best versions of themselves that they can be.

Sara Rice is a Counselor in Wyoming, MI.
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