28/07/2026
What is a therapist actually for?
Sometimes a client will tell me something important and then immediately argue against themselves.
I might find myself saying, “Can we stay with the thing you said just before that?”
Because sometimes that small, tentative thing is where the life is.
I’ve been thinking about what I actually believe my job is as a therapist.
I don’t believe it’s to know somebody else’s life better than they do.
Sometimes I think I’m a shepherd. Sometimes I also think, rather less poetically, that I’m a plumber! But a large part of my work is helping people become able to hear themselves — perhaps after many years of learning not to.
I’ve written a little more about what that means to me here:
My latest blog post - What is a Therapist Actually For??
People sometimes come to therapy hoping that the therapist will know what to do. I understand that.When we are lost, frightened, stuck or overwhelmed, there is something very appealing about finding somebody who understands the territory and asking them to show us the way out.And therapists do know....
