Can I Ask the Therapist Personal Questions?
As a client in conversation therapy, you may feel that there is an unspoken line between you and your therapist as to what questions you are allowed to ask about their personal life. Can you ask them if they are married or single, have children, or their political beliefs? You should?
There is no easy solution to this dilemma, and there is definitely a line that cannot be crossed. You don’t want to do strange things to your therapist by interfering with his personal life or demanding confidential information from him – which is admittedly a bit ironic given the candor that the client / therapist relationship demands of you. But you can bypass this border, and you have every right to do so.
Questions about a therapist are okay
You open your soul to the therapist, so it’s natural that you might be curious about who they are – their personal politics, their sexual orientation, whether they believe in God, or any other set of questions. It’s also incredibly common to have an obsessive curiosity about someone whose professional credentials help you overcome personal hardships.
Randy Withers, a licensed mental health consultant, has done a little research on this by compiling a list of the most frequently asked questions from clients about their therapists. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of these relate to the therapy’s vocation and ethics, but many of them have more to do with people’s anxiety about what their therapist thinks of them.
“Do my therapist like me?” and “does my therapist take care of me?” were the two main searches. According to male mental health and relationship expert Justin Lioey, LCSW, this could indicate that the client is projecting a certain amount of insecurity onto their counselor. Lioi tells Lifehacker that in his own experience he will answer some personal questions, but he often “prefers [s] to research what the client thinks will be the first answer, and how that answer might affect our relationship in the future if I I’ll open it. ” “
Aside from the insecurities that can gnaw at you, there are many more personal questions you should ask your therapist about yourself.
“Feel free to ask about anything”
“The simple and quick answer is that the client can and should be free to ask the therapist about anything,” says Lioy.
For the most part, he believes you should be guided by the general direction of your relationship with the therapist. If you have an easy rapport, asking personal questions may seem like a normal conversation with a friend or acquaintance. If your communication is more formal, the questions may seem less natural. The time you have worked together is also a factor; You may find it more convenient to ask a personal question after a year of the relationship, rather than a week, says Lioy.
But in the end, it is the therapist who dictates the parameters of what is an appropriate and all too curious question.
Leo explains:
The client asks a question for a variety of reasons. The good news is that the client does not need to know where to draw the line — this will happen through a relationship with a therapist who will have her own boundaries.
Lioy believes that the client-therapist relationship should remain within traditional boundaries, that is, the client should never care about the counselor. According to him, a therapist clarifying their own burden can be difficult for their clients, especially if that client tends to care for other people in their relationship.
Ultimately, Lioy notes, “There are very few hard and fast rules for all of these questions, and there is a constant discussion of self-disclosure in therapeutic circles – what is too much and what is too little.” Simply put, if there is a question that you feel compelled to ask your therapist, you should ask it and see where the discussion that follows takes you.