There is a client I feel particularly protective of. I care deeply about her well-being, and I don’t want to see her get hurt. Of course, I care about all my clients, but something about this particular client brings out an especially strong desire to protect her.
I’ve wondered whether that protectiveness might actually get in the way of helping her. Am I being too cautious or holding back from challenging her in ways that might be uncomfortable but ultimately helpful? And perhaps most importantly, am I trying to protect her from getting hurt, or am I also trying to protect myself from the pain of watching her get hurt?
I don’t necessarily have all the answers, but I believe asking ourselves these questions is essential. Sometimes our greatest strengths as therapists—our empathy, compassion, and genuine concern for our clients—can also become our blind spots.
As therapists, we spend years learning approaches such as ACT, CBT, DBT, and IFS. These are valuable tools, but I believe something equally important doesn’t always receive the attention it deserves: our own therapy.
No matter how much training we receive, the most important instrument we bring into the therapy room is ourselves. Our personalities, histories, emotional reactions, and conscious and unconscious motivations all influence how we relate to our clients.
We are not simply the people providing the treatment. We are part of the treatment itself. We bring ourselves into every session.
Every therapist has emotional vulnerabilities, defenses, and blind spots. A client’s anger may awaken something from our past, while a client’s dependency may stir feelings we don’t fully understand. Perhaps we become overly protective, struggle to tolerate a client’s disappointment, or feel compelled to rescue them. A client’s reluctance to make changes may even leave us feeling personally ineffective.
These reactions don’t make us bad therapists. They make us human.
And they remind us why knowing ourselves matters. Sometimes what gets in the way of helping our clients isn’t what we don’t know about them, but what we don’t know about ourselves.
Our own therapy helps us recognize these patterns and distinguish between what belongs to us and what belongs to our clients. Two therapists can use the same intervention and create entirely different experiences because each brings a different personality, emotional history, and way of relating into the room.
Our clinical knowledge tells us what we might do. Our self-awareness helps us understand how, when, and why we do it.
After more than 30 years as a therapist, I continue to believe deeply in doing my own psychological work. I participate in individual and group therapy, in addition to professional supervision. Each offers a different opportunity to explore my emotional patterns, understand myself in relationships, receive feedback, and reflect on my clinical work.
These experiences continue to enrich my work and remind me that knowing a great deal about psychology is not the same as knowing ourselves. We can understand attachment theory beautifully and still struggle with attachment. We can recognize our clients’ defenses while remaining remarkably attached to our own.
I’m not suggesting every therapist needs to remain in personal therapy continuously, but I believe ongoing attention to our emotional lives should be an essential part of professional development. Our unconscious doesn’t disappear when we receive our licenses, and our personal histories don’t become irrelevant simply because we understand those of others.
The question is not whether we bring ourselves into the therapy room. We inevitably do. The question is how well we know the person we are bringing.
For me, being a therapist means remaining a student of human nature, including my own. I hope I never stop learning new approaches, but equally important, I hope I never stop being curious about myself.
Ultimately, the most powerful tool we bring into the therapy room is not a technique, a theory, or a certification. It is the person we are. And that person deserves our ongoing attention, care, and understanding.
Jerusalem
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