Dear Therapist, Remember the Role You Play in Your Client’s Life
Dear Fellow Therapist,
There are moments in therapy when a client looks at you with a kind of trust that feels almost sacred.
They tell you things they have never told anyone. They cry in front of you. They bring you their anger, shame, fear, loneliness, relationships, childhood memories, disappointments, and sometimes the parts of themselves they have spent years hiding.
You listen.
You remember.
You notice.
You sit with them when something hurts.
And slowly, sometimes without either of you noticing, you can begin to occupy a very meaningful space in their emotional world.
That is where the work becomes both deeply human and deeply complex.
Because the empathy, care, consistency and emotional presence we offer in a therapy room can sometimes be experienced by a client as something much larger than what we intended.
A client may begin to feel, “Finally, someone is here for me.”
And sometimes, without meaning to, the therapist becomes the person who seems to fill a gap the client has been carrying for years.
That gap may have been created by an unavailable parent, an inconsistent partner, a childhood where emotions were dismissed, a relationship where they felt unseen, or simply years of not having anyone who could sit with their pain without judging them.
Then something happens.
You are not available.
You don't respond immediately.
The session ends.
You maintain a boundary.
You take a holiday.
You cannot give the reassurance they are seeking outside the therapeutic space.
And suddenly, the emotional experience can change.
The same client who once felt deeply understood may say:
“I thought you were different.”
“You are becoming too professional.”
“You don't seem as empathetic as you used to be.”
“Earlier, I felt that you really cared. Now I don't.”
Those words can land heavily.
Especially when you know how much care you have actually been holding for this person.
And if we are honest with ourselves, sometimes those words trigger something in us too.
We may feel misunderstood.
Rejected.
Angry.
Guilty.
Defensive.
We may start wondering, “What did I do wrong?”
Or even, “After everything I have done for this client, how can they say I don't care?”
Pause there.
That pause matters.
Because this is often the moment when the therapist needs to look inward—not to blame themselves, and not to blame the client, but to become curious about what is happening between the two of them.
When empathy becomes part of the client’s expectation
Empathy is essential to therapeutic work.
But empathy does not mean becoming everything the client has been missing.
Care does not mean being available on demand.
Support does not mean removing every uncomfortable feeling.
And being emotionally present does not mean becoming emotionally indispensable.
Sometimes, particularly in the beginning stages of therapy, transference can become part of the therapeutic relationship. A client's previous experiences, relationships, expectations and unresolved emotional patterns may begin to find expression in how they experience the therapist.
There can also be moments of genuine connection that feel powerful for both therapist and client.
A revelation can happen.
The client finally says something they have never been able to articulate.
The therapist connects something important to the client's pain.
The client feels deeply seen.
And that moment can be therapeutic.
But sometimes, that very experience of being deeply seen can unintentionally become part of the client's expectation of the therapist.
“You understood me then. Why don't you understand me now?”
And this is where we have to be careful.
The therapist may have unintentionally become associated with the emotional experience the client has been longing for.
The therapist did not necessarily create the wound.
But the therapy relationship may have become the place where that wound is being experienced again.
And then the therapist gets triggered too
This is the part we don't talk about enough.
We spend so much time understanding what the client is feeling that we can forget to ask ourselves:
What am I feeling right now?
When a client says, “You're not empathetic anymore,” what happens inside you?
Do you feel the need to prove that you care?
Do you feel accused?
Do you want to explain yourself?
Do you suddenly become extra accommodating?
Do you feel rejected?
Do you feel angry?
Do you feel responsible for their emotional state?
Or perhaps something more personal has been touched.
Maybe you recognize the feeling of being misunderstood.
Maybe you step unconsciously into a rescuer role.
Maybe you become the therapist who wants to finally give this client what nobody else gave them.
And this is where our own history, vulnerabilities and defences deserve attention too.
Not because being affected makes us bad therapists.
Quite the opposite.
Being affected is human. Not examining what affects us is where the difficulty can begin.
So when something feels unusually charged in a session, pause.
Ask yourself:
What am I feeling?
What changed in the room?
What am I wanting to do right now?
Am I trying to rescue, reassure, defend, withdraw or prove something?
And then look at the therapeutic relationship from both sides.
What might the client be experiencing?
What defences might be operating?
Could projection be involved?
Could there be projective identification?
Is an old relational pattern being recreated in the therapy room?
What might the client be communicating beneath the words?
And equally importantly:
What might I, as the therapist, be bringing into this interaction?
This is not about finding someone to blame.
It is about observing the relationship.
Sometimes the therapist needs another pair of eyes
There are cases we can understand beautifully on paper and still struggle to understand when we are emotionally inside them.
That is why peer conversations, reflection and supervision matter.
Sometimes another therapist asks one simple question and suddenly something becomes visible.
“Why do you think you felt responsible for fixing that?”
“What happened in you when the client said you were not empathetic?”
“What do you think the client was asking for beneath that statement?”
“What changed after that particular session?”
A different perspective can create space between what happened and what we felt happened.
Supervision is not an admission that we don't know what we are doing.
Sometimes it is precisely the opposite.
It is a commitment to looking at our work honestly.
Because therapists need a place where they can say:
“I don't know what is happening here.”
“This client is affecting me more than I expected.”
“I think something is happening between us, but I can't quite see it.”
“I felt defensive today.”
“I think I may be getting pulled into something.”
Those are not signs of failure.
They are invitations to think.
The therapist's role is important—but it has boundaries
A therapist can be a significant person in a client's life without becoming the centre of it.
We can offer warmth without creating dependency.
We can offer consistency without promising constant availability.
We can create safety without becoming the client's only safe place.
We can care deeply without taking ownership of the client's life.
And sometimes, maintaining a therapeutic boundary may feel less caring in the moment—but may actually protect the therapeutic relationship and the client's autonomy in the long run.
The goal is not for the client to need us more.
The hope is that, through the work, they become increasingly able to understand themselves, regulate themselves, make choices, build relationships and live their lives with greater independence.
That distinction is easy to understand intellectually.
Living it inside a real therapeutic relationship is much harder.
And that is why we need each other.
Dear therapist, don't carry every session alone.
There will be clients who touch something in you.
There will be sessions you keep thinking about after you leave.
There will be moments when a client's words provoke you, unsettle you, frustrate you or make you question yourself.
Don't rush to react.
Pause.
Observe.
Think.
Ask what belongs to the client.
Ask what belongs to you.
Ask what is happening between you.
And when you cannot see it clearly, talk to another professional.
Sometimes the most responsible thing a therapist can do is step outside the therapy room—not away from the client, but toward another therapist who can help them see the room differently.
This is one of the spaces we are trying to create through Socials at SEVEE
A space to pause, reflect, discuss therapeutic experiences, explore different perspectives and continue growing as a professional.
Because therapists deserve a space where they too can feel heard, think openly, question themselves, learn from one another and remember that they do not have to hold every difficult therapeutic moment alone.
The client deserves a therapist who keeps learning. And the therapist deserves a professional space in which they can keep learning too.
— SEVEE CARE
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