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"I Sent My Therapist to Therapy": Therapist Reaction

Writer's picture: cameronmosleycameronmosley

"i sent my therapist to therapy"

I’m so grateful that I work with teens or I would not be able to keep up with the latest Gen Z trends and interests! If you haven’t heard this song, the singer’s main point is, “I’m so messed up I sent my therapist to therapy.” This made me sad because there is some level of truth to the sentiment! I want to talk about the truth and fiction related to this idea.

 

Ethics of Therapist Disclosures

 

It would be highly unethical and cruel for a therapist to actually tell their patient that their story was too much for them and might send them to therapy. I do want to acknowledge, however, that there are bad therapists and therapists-in-training out there, so it’s in the realm of possibility that this has been said to someone before. (Hopefully not to the singer!)

 

Therapists are trained to be able to handle their own emotions that can be evoked by listening to the stories of others. Generally, if you are working with someone who is well-trained and engaging in self-care, your story should not be too much for them.

 

Of course, because of the importance of the therapist being emotionally equipped for the task, it is possible that a therapist could not take on particular cases at a certain timepoint. For example, a therapist who is currently grieving the loss of a loved one might decide not to take on cases involving grief for the time being.

 

Referrals to a Higher Level of Care

 

Many therapists in an outpatient setting (meaning your typical once-a-week therapy hour) are not equipped to work with people experiencing concerns such as suicidal thinking, self-harm urges, eating disorders, or psychosis (e.g., schizophrenia). People experiencing these concerns are often referred to a “higher level of care,” which might mean a psychiatric or regular hospitalization or a program that provides more hours of therapy per week (e.g., partial hospitalization or intensive outpatient).

 

This is what could happen: You finally go in for a long-needed mental health appointment and you share that you are having suicidal thinking. The therapist immediately states that they are not able to work with you in their setting and you should go to such and such clinic instead. That could definitely send the message “you’re so messed up!”

 

I actually think this is a major problem in our current mental healthcare system. Every therapist should have competence in working with someone experiencing suicidal thinking, at the very least. If a therapist does not feel equipped to handle that, who does?? We also should have better methods of transferring people between providers and systems when there is legitimate reason to do so. The person thinking “I’m so messed up” might decide not to pursue their referral out of shame and then they would just slip between the cracks of mental health care. Now THAT is messed up.

 

Therapist “Vicarious Trauma”

 

Some therapists are in settings/centers where they work with a lot of trauma: maybe their population is veterans, first responders, foster youth, or women who are victims of domestic violence. They are at risk of experiencing “vicarious trauma” and could even develop PTSD through hearing the stories of their clients. So, they might be “sent to therapy” based on their work, but they have hopefully made an active choice to work with this particular population based on their passion, and attending therapy is their way of taking care of their own health. Their patients are not to blame for any mental health problems that they might experience related to the work.

 

If I were wounded in the emergency department of a hospital, I wouldn’t be thinking, “Oh gosh, I hope I don’t scar my doctor for life!” It’s part of the job. Same thing for mental health. It’s not your responsibility to worry about us and whether we can handle your story.


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