What I Tell Every Therapist That Admits “The Thought”

There's a thought every therapist has had. Most of them never admit it. Some have lived with it for years and convinced themselves they were the only one.

I am going to name it for you, because someone has to. You are sitting across from a client. Maybe it is the third session, maybe the thirty-third.

They are stuck on something they have been stuck on for weeks. You have used everything you know. And the thought lands quietly somewhere behind your sternum.

I can't help this person.

It comes in about a tenth of a second, and then the spiral starts.

What does that mean about me. Am I in the wrong field.

Is my whole practice some kind of fraud.

Does therapy actually work, or have I been telling myself a story for fifteen years.

You finish the session. You don't tell anyone. You go home and either cry in your car or pour a glass of wine while pretending the day was fine.

That thought you had is not a diagnosis of your ability. It is a tax.

A specific tax that gets levied on therapists who actually care whether their clients heal. The ones who never have the thought are the ones I worry about, because either they have built so much armor they have stopped feeling the room, or they have never sat with a client whose stuckness mattered to them.

The thought visits the people who give a damn.

So if you have sat in your chair and felt that brutal little voice arrive uninvited, you are not failing your client.

You are caring about an outcome you cannot control. That is the actual job description of doing this work well, and it costs something every single time.

The danger has never been having the thought. It is pretending you don't.

Warmly,

Esther

P.S. If you’ve struggled with how to navigate those challenging cases and struggling to find support? I’d like to help! The Trauma Mastery Program was built to provide support and high-level guidance to clinicians seeking to deepen their skillset and challenge the way they work. If this sounds like something that would be of help to you, let’s talk.