Can a Therapist Benefit from Therapy?

How would you feel when you know that the professionals helping you process your mental and emotional issues during therapy sessions also spend a lot of time on the other side of the couch- as the patients themselves? 

"Anyone who wishes to practice analysis should first submit to be analyzed himself by a competent person." This is what Sigmund Freud believed when it comes to what is an essential practice for mental health professionals. 

In fact, in the US and in Europe, it is required for therapists under graduate programs and therapists to comply with many hours of personal therapy  before they are allowed to get their license and graduate from the course, respectively.

Why do mental health professionals like therapists need therapy? 

There are several reasons, actually. All of them are aimed at making the therapist more equipped with the right skills and empowered with the right attitudes in order to help clients. 

• Therapy as part of training. Therapists are under the supervision of a more senior supervisor and therapist. One of the areas of learning essential for therapists is to learn to be objective while connecting with their clients. 

Countertransference is when a therapist transfers their own emotions (from past traumas, personal experiences, own biases, etc) towards their clients and develop blind spots in caring for their client. 

Through undergoing therapy themselves, therapists become aware of their own past and emotions about these areas, so they can use the tools they know to remain objective while helping clients. 

Another goal of therapy is helping therapists get to know themselves including their own biases, so that they can untangle their biases from clients’ own issues. 

• Therapy as part of personal treatment. Therapists are people who also have their own share of trauma, so they need and undergo therapy in order to resolve personal issues like grief and loss, pain, and help with setting boundaries.

• Therapy to avoid burnout in the job. Therapists, at the end of the day, have a profession that makes them at risk for overwhelming stress. When unmanaged, it can lead to burnout and compassion fatigue. 

Studies have supported the idea that helping professionals like therapists are prone to burnout as personal problems, client concerns, feelings of helplessness, and worry accumulate. 

• Therapy is a place for therapists to work out these feelings of burnout and helps them to not feel stuck. It is a place for them to be vulnerable with their own struggles and to be guided towards healing. 

Often, talk therapy would advocate for self-compassion. But this is a challenge to do when one is in the midst of heavy emotions and feeling like no one is there to help. In therapy, therapists get to do what they advise others- be kind and compassionate to themselves when they are undergoing struggles. 

Mental health professionals like therapists are people who make the world a better place because of all the skills and tools they use to bring clients to a better place in life, mentally and emotionally. 

But we have to remind ourselves that they are people too. They need to do all they can to be healthy, well-balanced, sensitive, and compassionate human beings and one way they can do that is to see their own therapist.

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