Does It Matter If the Therapist Likes You?
It’s natural to wonder if your therapist likes you, but according to Sean Grover , a Manhattan-based writer and psychotherapist who spoke with Lifehacker, “making you love a therapist should never be the goal.” “The goal is to form a genuine, honest working relationship.”
Grover hints at the prevailing wisdom on this topic, which is that it doesn’t really matter if the therapist likes you, because in the end what matters most is whether they can help you. As therapist Amy Morin wrote for Business Insider last year, “Your therapist is looking at you through a professional lens, which means he is more focused on helping you become better, rather than thinking about how much they like you.” …
In addition, too much affection for the client can complicate the therapeutic relationship. “Too much sympathy for the patient can hide the patient’s pathology from the therapist,” says Grover. “The therapist’s job is to find humanity in the patient, to provide a relationship that is conducive to development, and to maintain professional boundaries.”
What is JAVIS and are therapists really preferred?
There is an established idea – if not a holdover from the less conscious era of psychotherapy – that counselors prefer young, attractive, verbal, intelligent, and successful clients. This paradigm is abbreviated as JAVIS and encompasses the people that mental health professionals seem to prefer to work with. But while Grover notes that working with “highly motivated and smart” clients is always welcome , YAVIS’s structure is ultimately “irrelevant.”
What to focus on, not whether the therapist likes you
Your relationship with the therapist is not the same as with other people in your life. While it is logical (and yes, sometimes even helpful) to ask if the people you work with like you, your goal with the therapist is to prioritize the end result of treatment.
According to Grover, if you’re constantly wondering if the therapist likes you, it’s probably a good thing that you are in therapy. The psychologist says, “If someone is trying their best to please their therapist, it shows how they show approval in the relationship, and indicates low self-esteem, social insecurity, and weak sense of self.”
As curious as you are, the key is to understand that there are professional boundaries on your therapeutic path – and a professional goal, and this goal should not be achieved, whether they like you or not.
“If you hire a lawyer, you want him to be effective,” says Grover. “If you hire them in the hope that they like you, is it really necessary? You want them to be effective whether they like you or not. “