Counselling & Psychotherapy for Women Suffering with Trauma, Emotional Eating & Not Feeling Good Enough.

Why Your Therapist Should Be in Therapy! Featuring Bleachers: I Wanna Get Better [Video]

I wanna get better

Therapists in therapy is a hot topic in training colleges. In one of my daily psychology alerts a few years ago, I came across the latest music and video news in Rolling Stone – I found myself laughing out loud at Lena Dunham and boyfriend Jack Antonoff’s first collaboration for his solo debut, ‘I Wanna Get Better’.  John Bliston writes,

‘Breakups are never fun, especially when they happen first thing in the morning. And when your job as a therapist is to help other people fix their problems when you can’t even seem to figure out your own, it’s even worse. Such is the painfully hilarious setup Lena Dunham crafts for the video to “I Wanna Get Better,” the first single from Bleachers singer (and Dunham’s boyfriend) Jack Antonoff.’

On a more serious note, it got me to thinking about the number of professionals within the mental health and helping vocations who have never had their own counselling or psychotherapy.

When I started my training, there was an age requirement to be at least thirty before potential trainee therapists were accepted into classic, depth psychotherapy training. If the applicant was younger, they must have had significant life experience and a commitment to their own personal and spiritual development.  Entry was based on rigorous application and therapists had to be in 1-5 times weekly personal psychotherapy for the duration of their training – anywhere from four to eight years.  If at any time throughout the training the student and/or supervisor felt they needed to process their psychotherapy training at a deeper level, the student took some time out of the training to do this.

How times have changed.

Academically based PhDs by thirty are not uncommon. Many training organisations do not require personal therapy as part of their psychology, social work, counselling or psychotherapy degrees (however personal therapy is at least encouraged/required in psychotherapy private training organisations). Most professional associations do not require personal therapy as part of their registration requirements (although PACFA in Australia updated their College of Psychotherapy requirements a few years ago and psychotherapists are now required to have 200 hours of personal psychotherapy to become a member).

In my opinion, not requiring students of therapy to participate in their own therapy is an act of professional irresponsibility and negligence.

There is the risk of major harm when mental health workers, psychologists, social workers, counsellors and psychotherapists have not sat in the client’s chair before working with clients. With far greater ethical implications, imagine if a dentist didn’t brush her teeth or a personal trainer who didn’t exercise?!

Why your therapist should be in therapy!

In The Independent, Master therapist, Irvin Yalom states,

‘It is, of course, mandatory for people entering this field to have a long personal experience with therapy. I know I certainly have and have come back to it several times whenever I have had some kind of crisis in my life.’

In Can we be in the counsellor’s or psychotherapist’s chair when we have not been in the client’s chair, Elana Leigh states,

‘…there is a profound quality difference between those counsellors and psychotherapists who have experienced an in-depth psychotherapy and those who have not.

In a series of tweets, Jonathan Shedler writes,

Here are just a few of the reasons your therapist should have participated significantly in therapy:

  • Boundaries: If therapists don’t have a have a deep understanding of themselves, their ability to hold boundaries may be jeopardized. Boundary violations range from abusing power, enabling or caretaking clients, holding sessions in cafes or other unsafe places and using us to meet their emotional, psychological and physical/sexual needs. Leigh suggests that therapists should be engaged in constant soul searching in order to secure the boundaries between their problems and those of the people that they are serving.
  • Projection/Transference/Countertransference: A wide range of feelings, needs and vulnerabilities get stirred up in therapy so therapists need to have a deep understanding of what belongs to them and what belongs to their clients. This is about therapists owning their own their own shadow and light, working through their family history and life story, healing traumas and working with their defences, feelings and needs. Without doing so, these may be projected onto us.
  • Empathy: Leight writes, ‘Being a client is a complex multilayered experience and embraces many primitive needs, usually relating to issues of dependency and all that encapsulates.’ If therapists have not experienced this phenomenon and haven’t worked through their own dependency issues this will impact the all-important therapeutic relationship, their capacity for empathy and has the potential for therapists to use the therapeutic relationship to fulfill or reject their own dependency needs. You can read more about dependency in my blog on weekly therapy.
  • Suffering: Therapists who have been in their own psychotherapeutic counselling or depth psychotherapy are able to see, hear and sit with us in the depth of our despair. They can do this because they have actively engaged in working through their own suffering. They don’t rush too quickly to provide a sticky plaster fix or a quick fix solution because they know this does not provide long-term change. They understand that our symptoms are a cry from the deepest part of our souls and carry the value, meaning and purpose of our suffering – which without exploration will go undiscovered and unintegrated.
  • Self-Care: Vicarious trauma and burnout are just two of the potential hazards of being a psychologist, social worker, counsellor, psychotherapist or other helping professional such as a life-coach, nurse or a doctor. It is impossible for health professionals to be present to us if they are suffering from burnout. Most psychotherapists in Australia and the UK have ongoing clinical supervision – this is not therapy and it is not enough. Therapy, along with supervision, exercise, a balanced diet, sleep and spiritual practice create a good and ethical self-care package.

If you are looking for a therapist, it is perfectly acceptable, and advisable to ask if  they have had their own therapy.

This list is not exhaustive so feel free to add your comments below – I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic 🙂

Counsellors and psychotherapists, come and join your colleagues and I at Opening the Door On Private Practice. 

SHARE THIS JOURNAL

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jodie

Jodie

Sydney Registered Clinical Psychotherapist, Therapeutic Counsellor, Trauma + Eating Disorder Therapist, Jodie Gale, is a leading specialist in women’s emotional, psychological and spiritual health and well-being. Over the last 20+ years, Jodie has helped 100s of women transform their lives. She has a private counselling, life-coaching and psychotherapy practice in Manly, Allambie Heights and Frenchs Forest on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. Jodie is passionate about putting the soul back into therapy!

RELATED JOURNALS

FEEDBACK

21 Responses

  1. Great post and very amusing video Jodie! Many of the therapists I know do or have had their own long term therapy. What concerns me is the hundreds of mental health professionals our universities are producing every year who have never sat in the chair as a client. They are dangerous without knowing it and the public is unaware of this issue. Thanks for raising this important topic.

    1. I couldn’t agree more with your statement “they are dangerous without knowing it” because, even though I’m speaking from the perspective of being a client, I was very aware that it was my therapist who needed therapy. She JUDGED me for having made poor choices in my youth (when I knew these choices were the result of having been abused during my upbringing), she CRITICIZED me for “not being resilient enough to overcome past trauma” (which I pointed out as totally erroneous, since I was still very much alive and sitting there in front of her), and she BLAMED me for placing the shame and blame upon whom it belonged: my abusive family (which I reminded her was the very reason for choosing therapy in the first place). Needless to say, I dropped the therapist, in total frustration, because I still paid her though all I got from her in seven sessions was judgment, criticism, and blame–a total waste of my hard-earned cash!

  2. I agree Clinton. I read an article about this written by a senior lecturer at university. I’ll see if I can find it and will post the link here.

  3. Thank you of an excellent post. Reading with the soundtrack of the video added some power to the content. I wholeheartedly agree that therapists and allied mental health professionals should be in their own process of therapeutic growth. This emerges in some of my supervision work with mental health professionals when their clinical work triggers personal ‘stuff’ in working with a client population. I wonder why ‘ a personal and current experience of a therapeutic process’ couldn’t be added to the requirements of a registration body as it is in some university courses. Is there any research into this and how it impacts on outcomes in therapy?

  4. As a psychotherapist I believe it’s crucial that a therapist is either in therapy or has completed a solid full psychotherapy I would say for not less that 5/6 years in total. Why do I say this? I say this because personally I know deeply the experience of sitting with someone who can “hold” my process and bracket their own projection or transference. It is so important to the therapy process as part of therapy is to be “seen” fully by your therapist. I believe the clear vision to “see” requires a therapist that has been well processed in their own therapy and knows their “triggers”. As therapists of course we get triggered but the skill and finesse of a seasoned therapist who has completed or is in therapy creates more room for their client’s process in the room.

  5. Great article, thank you Jodie.
    I believe that having our own therapy as therapists is essential. I changed my path of studying psychology here in Australia when a prof. told a lecture room full of future psychologists that: “isn’t that crazy that some suggest we would need our own therapy” and everyone laughed with this prof at this ‘crazy’ idea in the room except me 🙁

  6. Thank you for writing this. I also see a good number of US therapists not pursuing their own work. I have a lot of empathy for what is keeping them from not doing their own work. In my practice, I have a sub-specialty of seeing psychotherapists. I wouldn’t be able to offer the work to therapist and non-therapist clients alike without walking my talk and doing my own therapy.

  7. it is shocking to me how many therapists won’t just not go to therapy- but will strongly argue their position. Go- have the experience of finding a therapist, making yourself vulnerable, being real with another human. It is a beautiful thing.

  8. It is good that you mentioned that getting into the physical therapy training is based on rigorous application and the therapist has to be in weekly personal psychotherapy for the entire training period. Since my nephew will get into his first therapy private practice early next year, that will be a useful information for him. He is already seeking for the right place for him to do that as he wants to find one near his place.

  9. thanks for this article, Jodie. Beautifully accessible. Are you aware of any academic literature informing this debate you could point me to!? thanks Laura

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Befriend your body, feelings, mind & soul.

Download your FREE ebook >

CONNECT

INSTAGRAM

Certifications

Befriend your body, feelings, mind & soul

Sign up and receive a free copy of How to Befriend your body, feelings, mind & soul. Our subscribers are the first to receive podcast episodes, women’s workshops, online courses, book release, freebie resources and tools to support your emotional, psychological and spiritual health and well-being.