I wanted to write a bit more of a personal experience about what a therapist or counselor does for you during the process of counseling, to help give a better understanding of what’s happening in the therapy room and through your therapy experience. Therapists do a lot of things in session that a client may or may not be aware of, and to have the full experience of counseling, it’s important to look at all of the different hats that a counselor or therapist wears in a session to help facilitate your growth and awareness. Let’s take a look.

We’re Present For You

In therapy, being present is one of the main ways of being of the therapist. We have to be exactly present with you to see what you’re not seeing yourself, and to help facilitate growth. My form of therapy is Gestalt Therapy, where the emphasis is on being in the here-and-now, where we can unlock the problems that we struggle with from the present moment, not necessarily the past or the future.

One of the benefits for you in us being present is that we usually can see through some of the stories you tell yourself, mental chatter and other barriers to contacting your true self. Our job is to identify these things, point them out, and explore them with you to see how you’ve constructed this system of defense mechanisms for yourself. We’re often not aware of these things ourselves, because we’re conditioned not to, especially from early childhood and growing up. The power of presence can shine a light through these unconscious blocks and allow you to see them yourself, which facilitates growth and awareness.

We Listen Deeply To You, and Connect With You

In therapy, our job is to listen not only to your words, but to what you’re not saying, as well. We reflect what we hear, but also listen in other ways, such as to your nonverbal cues, to your voice and its inflection, to what you’re saying to yourself, and to what you might not be saying at all. We listen with more engagement and connection than might be typical for you in an everyday encounter with those in your life. We follow along with you as an interested and engaged passenger along your journey of life. There is a lot of power in this connection, something that is essential to the human experience and that is often times not available or missing to us in our lives outside of therapy.

We Challenge You to Look at Yourself

We all have blocks, or aspects about us and our personality that we cannot see, because we’re in our own lives and don’t have that perspective often times. We often have misperceptions about ourselves, or ideas about ourselves that may not really resonate with the things about us as they really are.

To some degree, we live unconsciously and don’t have access to this information that we need to grow and evolve. Counseling can challenge those misperceptions, and allow you to see yourself as you really are. It may be uncomfortable and challenging, but a supportive and seasoned therapist can be there with you and help you see parts of yourself that you can’t, or don’t want to see, in the context of helping you grow as an individual.

We Can Help Educate You

Counseling, at times, is also psychoeducational. There may be things that we don’t know, didn’t learn or just don’t have any ideas about that will hinder or hold us back from growing. These skill sets are often critical to know and have, especially in the case of intimate or romantic relationships, or in the case of the relationship with self or around self-esteem.

Therapists also are psychoeducators. They can identify the parts of your experience that need help, and work with you to develop those tools. These can be learning better communication skills, ideas and tools around building healthy relationships, understand how behaviors may be destructive to your life and growth, and self-supportive or self-care techniques. Although psychoeducation is not the primary methodology to facilitate growth, at least in my opinion, it can be very powerful as a secondary tool towards healing and improving one’s life.

The role of the therapist is varied, and therapists that have experience can discern and differentiate these things, speak to the needs to individual clients along their journeys, and know when to wear which hat in therapy to fully support a client and his or her growth at the time that they need it. Most of all, the right therapist will genuinely care about you as a person and in your growth, and want to see you succeed in your life through the therapy process.

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