5 Therapist Mistakes

There are many factors that influence the development and outcomes of psychotherapy, including the errors of therapists. There is a widespread idea: the functioning of a therapy depends on the person seeking help.

However, taking it literally can be a big mistake, as many variables over which the customer has little or no control are also relevant.

The factors that explain the therapeutic change are the person’s social support and the strength of the self – that is, the extra-therapeutic change -, the specific techniques used in the therapy, the placebo effect or expectations and the therapeutic relationship – where errors of therapists can have a big impact.

Along with extra-therapeutic change, the existing therapeutic relationship between psychologist and client is a very important factor in achieving change.

Thus, it becomes important to expose certain errors of therapists that can threaten the therapeutic alliance, a factor that weighs about 40% in the change that the patient experiences in psychotherapy (Corbella and Botella, 2004).

The main mistakes of therapists

This list is based on an Introduction to Psychotherapy chapter by Pipes and Davenport (2004). In this chapter some of the therapist’s most common mistakes are presented. Some of them are as follows.

Resolve the problem before it is understood

This is one of the most common mistakes therapists make. Although certain types of therapy, such as psychoanalytic, seek a very extensive understanding of the client’s problems and invest time and effort in understanding this narrative, the truth is that this is not the case with all therapies.

Many of them are inserted in contexts where the minimum achievement of sessions is synonymous with quality. The fewer sessions it takes to complete a therapy, the better the therapist.

Therefore, some psychologists may sin by conforming to superficial information, reducing problems and intervening without evaluating other areas that do not seem relevant.

When a client is in a bad mood due to their low grades, for example, we do an assessment and plan an intervention – assessing their perfectionism, meaning of irrational thoughts related to failing, emotional management techniques for when that happens – and we can leave important factors behind without considering.

It may be that the client suffers from an eating disorder that we did not assess, as the eating issue never seemed to be problematic. It could also be that when he told us that his eating patterns changed after the poor results, we assumed the phenomenon was a consequence of low grades.

An intervention that is not preceded by a good assessment is likely to fail. It is important to invest the time necessary to assess and not get carried away by the anxiety of starting with a quick intervention.

Inappropriate behaviors in the role of therapist

Despite what many people think, the verbal and non-verbal interventions of the therapist in session must have some functional value. Therefore, although humor, conversation, satire, jokes, etc. are useful, as they can create a deeper therapeutic alliance, caution must be exercised.

This type of intervention should be considered with some objective, whether to confront, calm the client’s anxiety, ridicule or expose their ideas to gain insights , etc.

The therapist’s laughter also needs to be controlled, reinforcing a type of client intervention. It is necessary to examine the content of the joke, as the aim of the joke is usually to ridicule some specific aspect.

The therapist must assess what this aspect is, how it relates to the client’s problem, and, above all, whether he wants to reinforce that the client makes this joke about that problem.

If you talk to someone who is unable to take something seriously, with anger management issues, and at one point they make an angry joke and the therapist laughs, you are reinforcing the idea that these tantrums are unimportant.

This can also be extrapolated to control the therapist’s laughter when the therapist wants to reduce anxiety.

If the therapist is not confident, if the client is someone difficult… The therapist laughs to calm down, but conveys the message that what was said was funny. This can confuse the client and make them not feel completely secure in the therapeutic alliance.

Push the customer to failure

Spectacular and quickly achieved changes are far from the norm in therapy. However, the therapist’s enthusiasm and haste can precipitate therapy in this direction. Whether trying to increase your social network, living new experiences, performing actions that are beneficial at first…

Forgetting or superficially treating aspects that may seem simple – when they are not so simple for our clients – is one of the most common mistakes of therapists.

Perhaps getting a customer to increase their network of friendships by talking to people around them may be something they are not prepared for. These encounters can go wrong, the client may not have the skills to carry on a conversation, or be unable to control anxiety in certain environments.

The lack of results, on many occasions, is not the client’s responsibility, but the therapist’s. In therapy, the procedure must be intelligent and timed, ensuring that all the tasks and recommendations we propose are built according to the client’s needs and pace.

Trying to be the customer’s friend

The therapist has not invested years in psychotherapy training to become someone who listens and gives advice. Therefore, many doctors agree that they should not be the client’s friends.

This is not suitable for the therapeutic relationship, it makes confrontations difficult, tasks in therapy are understood as optional, the client may be irritated by the expectations he has of the therapist as a friend… This would be one of the most difficult errors for therapists to correct.

Therefore, it is advisable to avoid actions that lead the client to think that the therapist is trying to be more than a professional: do not comment on appearance unless it is a therapeutic issue, never lend money, do not advise on what should be done and the that it doesn’t and, of course, never find the client outside of the session.

Deficient approaches to interventions

There are several types of interventions that can make clients withdraw, distort messages or feel useless. If clients feel that way and this is maintained for the remainder of therapy, the best thing that can happen is that therapy is ineffective.

We must not forget the iatrogenic effects of the therapy on the client. This means that the therapist does not criticize or blame. This is something your circle may have done before, and we are not interested in being a member of this broad group.

While it is normal for a clinician not to criticize directly, the client may feel judged when we are impatient, when we say we are not interested in changing, or when we say that their behavior has been deficient.

There will be times when we will stand up with difficult people. Does not matter. It’s risky and counterproductive to be so explicit. Embracing and trying to understand what the client is saying and delving into their emotions is much more beneficial than letting them know it wasn’t right.

Finally, it is also advisable to avoid certain phrases that make the customer defensive: “Complaining won’t change things”, “You are a person who gets defensive” or “You feel sorry for yourself”.

Focusing on the client’s difficulties, rather than on correcting their values, will make therapy less arduous. Taking care of the therapeutic alliance is an important objective in this framework, so that emotions such as enthusiasm, ignorance or ego do not cause the client to withdraw.