Therapy is in some sense a healing profession as much as any medical pursuit, and there are many kinds of psychological healing just as there are many kinds of physical healing. To physically treat a patient, a doctor needs a clear assessment of the body, maybe imaging of the internal organs through scans, and so on, to know what steps to take in order to help the patient get better. For a psychotherapist, forging a connection with the client is one of the most important factors for a therapist to make headway along the healing path.
A therapy session with no connection is one in which a client will sit and go through the motions, not developing any insight into the problems they are facing or how they are responding to them, the same way someone might sit in a class in which they find the subject uninteresting and absorb little information. Obviously, this is not an ideal use of the time for client or therapist, with the former missing out on the chance to pursue self-improvement, and the latter having to struggle to make the session valuable. With the right connection, on the other hand, a client will take the kind of active interest in the process necessary for successfully pursuing and reaching therapy goals. Exploring the following elements of this connection will help you understand how to achieve a productive therapist-clinician dynamic, and how it shapes healing.
For clients to experience the benefits of therapy, it necessarily requires a degree of candor on their part that is unusual when talking to a stranger. Clients, in order to address their problems, have to get into topics they might not be comfortable talking about with anyone but their closest friends or relatives (or maybe not even them). As a clinician, establishing a degree of trust is necessary to get a client to open up to this degree.
A part of this can be accomplished by making the client understand and appreciate the legal framework within which therapists have to operate, that is, that outside of particular cases, a mental health clinician is legally bound not to share details that clients discuss with them. But trust goes beyond just legal concerns. When a client can feel like what they are saying is being assessed thoughtfully and fairly, and that a clinician is making judgments in good faith with an authentic desire to help, that is when trust is truly formed, and the connection can start.
Just as trust shapes healing, so does empathy. This does not mean that a therapist has to necessarily have been where a client has been, had the same experiences, hold the same beliefs about the world, etc., though in some instances that may help. It is more about a clinician developing the emotional understanding to appreciate how another person might feel, and the conclusions that person might draw about their world and the people around them, having experienced particular life events or circumstances. If a client knows that a clinician in some sense “gets it,” they will further accept that the clinician has their best interests at heart.
The empathy required here is not an empathy that is entirely free from criticism, or synonymous with limitless validation or affirmation. Rather it is an empathy that aims to understand life from the perspective of the client before suggesting paths of improvement.
Trust and empathy are two foundational pillars of the connection necessary for an honest, productive client-therapist relationship. With this connection, healing can happen.
Healing, just like in physical medicine, looks different for each individual. Some may, of course, carry around debilitating psychological wounds in desperate need of intensive treatment, while others might need help navigating problems rooted more in the immediate and situational; help healing a bruised ability for dealing with some element of the world they live in. Regardless of what the issue is, the clinician, through establishing trust and empathy, can form a connection that lets the process begin.
When it happens, a client will feel that they can speak truthfully, and can trust that a clinician’s guidance comes from a place of understanding their goals, their concerns, the hurdles they face, and their emotional toolkit for facing them. When the connection is there, the client will not only be open to confiding, but will be open to advice and even thoughtful criticism, as they will see and appreciate that their therapist has their best interests in mind. When the client-therapist relationship is right, the client’s success at living better is the clinician’s success at providing therapy, and the client knows it.
As any therapist knows, making the connection is not always easy. It can take time and effort. Personalities, levels of comfort, and clinical presentations vary drastically from client to client, and therapy is as far from a one-size-fits-all pursuit as you can get. But there is one small, simple thing that a clinician’s office can do up front to address one of the biggest barriers to establishing trust and empathy.
When clients come to therapy, especially for the first time, they’re likely not aware of all that goes into it; what the mutual expectations are, how privacy is treated in a therapy setting, and so on. This can lead to exactly the types of misunderstandings and miscommunications that thwart an effective client-therapist relationship. Client onboarding can solve this.
Client onboarding lays the therapy basics out clearly. With a good onboarding solution like ShrinkThink, a therapist’s office can, before the first session, send the incoming client a link with video content produced by experts that explains everything they need to know; what they should expect, and what is expected of them. With this as the starting point, clients will be more at ease in the environment, aware of the expectations, and can more readily open themselves up to establishing the connection that will start them on the road to healing, whatever their therapy goals may be.