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As a talk therapy client, it can feel like there is an unspoken boundary between you and your therapist as to what questions you can ask about your personal life. Can you ask them whether they are married or single, whether they have children, or whether they believe in politics? Should you?
There is no easy solution to this dilemma and there is definitely a line you don’t want to cross. You don’t want to drive your therapist crazy by intruding into their personal life or forcing them to obtain confidential information – which is admittedly a bit ironic, given the openness that a client-therapist relationship demands of you. But it is possible to negotiate this limit and you have every right to do so.
Having questions about your therapist is normal
You bare your soul to a therapist, so it goes without saying that you should be curious about the ins and outs of who you are – your personal politics, your sexual orientation, believing in God, or any other number of questions. It is also incredibly common to have an excruciating curiosity about the person whose professional mandate will help you overcome personal difficulties.
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Randy Withers, a licensed mental health advisor, did some research and listed the most frequently searched questions that clients have about their therapist. It may not come as a surprise that some of them concern the vocation to therapy and its ethics, but many of them have more to do with people’s fear of what their therapist thinks of them.
“Does my therapist like me?” and “does my therapist take care of me?” were the two most common searches. According to the expert on mental health and relationships for men Justin Lioi, LCSW, this could indicate that the client is projecting certain uncertainties onto his advisor. Lioi tells Lifehacker that based on his own experience, he will answer some personal questions, but he “often prefers it[s] To find out what the customer is imagining, the answer comes first and how the answer could affect our future relationship if I reveal it. “
Aside from uncertainties that may gnaw you, there are many more personal questions to ask your therapist.
“Feel Free To Ask Anything”
“The simple and quick answer is that the client can and should ask the therapist as they please,” says Lioi.
For the most part, he suggests, you should be guided by the general tenor of your relationship with your therapist. When you’re in a simple relationship, asking personal questions seems like any other conversation you would have with a friend or acquaintance. If your interactions are more formal, questioning may feel less natural. The time you’ve worked together is also a factor. You might feel more comfortable asking a personal question in a relationship for a year than a week, Lioi says.
But ultimately, it is the therapist who dictates the parameters of an appropriate and overly curious question.
Lioi explains:
There are many reasons why the customer is asking the question. The good news is that the client doesn’t need to know where to draw the line – that will be done through the relationship with the therapist, who has his own limits.
Lioi believes that the client-therapist relationship should stay within traditional boundaries, that is, the client should never care about the counselor. A therapist exposing his or her own stresses can be difficult for his clients, he says, especially if that client has a tendency to care about other people in their relationships.
Ultimately, Lioi notes, “There are very few strict rules governing all of these issues, and self-disclosure is a constant topic of discussion in therapy circles – what is too much and what is too little.” At its simplest, ask a question to ask your therapist and see where the discussion that follows takes you.