This Post About Therapy Blew Up for a Reason

I posted a video on my social media yesterday that created a bit of a fervor, if you will, that kind of surprised me. And basically it was like, nine things that I wish other psychotherapists do.

And it was just some of my thoughts, some of my ideas based on my experience in this field and traveling the world, meeting lots of clinicians and working with lots of organizations and all those things.

And one of them, I said that, “Psychotherapists are not fixers. We are healers.” Now, I want to be very clear on what I meant by this statement.

When I say “We are not fixers.” A lot of therapists, when a client comes in with a problem, let’s say the client is not sleeping well, the therapist will sometimes take the idea that we have to fix that problem so that the client can sleep.

But the truth is, we are healers. What we do is a healing art. So what we want to do is heal the trauma or injury that happened to the client that is causing them not to sleep well. And people in the comment section were like, we’re not healers. People heal themselves. That is literally the dumbest, craziest thing I have ever heard.

There’s something about psychotherapists where, number one, they get crazy offended when you say something that is incongruent to what they’ve been taught, instead of treating it like new information.

And number two, we hear things, psychotherapists will hear things, that wasn’t said.

I didn’t say we do the healing for the client, which is kind of how these people responded. What I said was, “We are healers.” Which is true, because if you’re not doing anything and the client heals themselves, then why are they coming to you for services? We are not healing them. We’re not healing for them, but we are playing a role in the client’s healing journey. And that’s just the reality. That’s just the fact.

It literally blew me away when multiple people were like, “No, clients heal themselves.” Then they shouldn’t come and see you at all if you’re not gonna play a role in their healing. Again, we’re not healing for them.

And let me tell you a story to kind of make this point. I have a scar on my lower leg, on my right, on the side of my calf muscle. I had broken a bowl. I had a bowl in my kitchen several years ago. I dropped it, and it just cracked in half. I took the bowl and I put it in the trash can. Now, later on, I took the trash can out of the bin so I could take it out into the garage. But I just left it sitting in my kitchen. And then I walked past that trash bag. My leg hit that bag just right. So the glass inside of it sliced my leg wide open. And I looked down, and there is a gash so deep that it wasn’t bleeding. You could see muscle. It was a really deep gash. So I said, oh, my gosh. I immediately go to the emergency room, and there was a guy there who was the doctor. This man came in, and I had to get butterfly stitches, basically, and he had to stitch the wound together. So we start talking, and I said, “How does this work?” And he said, “You know, a lot of people think as the doctor, I’m the one healing this wound, but it’s your body healing the wound.” So I said, “So what are you doing?” And he said, “I’m gonna put your body in a situation where it begins to heal itself.” And I said, “How do you do that?” This wound, it was really long, like 4 inches long and wide. And he said, “I’m gonna stitch it so each side of the wound comes closer together, so then your body will take over from there and will repair the wound naturally.” So they gave me these stitches. I was supposed to come back two weeks later, and they were going to cut the stitches out, which I did.

I was like, “Wow, that’s interesting that your job as the doctor is to make sure that the wound is pulled closer together, so then my body will heal it.” It would be inaccurate to say that this doctor healed me, but it would also be inaccurate to say that he didn’t play a role in the healing process.

That’s exactly what happens in the field of psychotherapy.

When the client comes into the office, it would be inaccurate to say that I healed them, but it would also be inaccurate to say that I did not play a role in the healing process.

Except what we do, instead of doing things to the physical body, we do things to the emotional state and the environment and the system within the client world where the system exists. And when you do that, the client takes over from there, and they heal thyself.

So I don’t understand why psychotherapists are so sensitive.

I don’t understand why psychotherapists respond in the ways that they do, but it’s ridiculous, and we need to stop. Because if you are a psychotherapist, you are participating in your client’s healing journey, period.