Is my therapist my friend?
Cover image of topic - Is my therapist my friend?
Having friends and a strong support network is incredibly helpful for our mental health, especially when we we having a tough time. It makes sense that we might confuse the two. After all, there are several similarities between friend and therapist. Both care about you and your mental health, both relationships also involve trust and feelings of safety.
However, your therapist is not your friend. Therapists serve a different function for our mental health.
Here are 5 ways your therapist is different than your friend:
Therapists are trained to recognise and manage distress. When we share our struggles with our friends, it is not uncommon to feel like our thoughts are too dark or too much for them. We might worry if they have other things on their plate that they are struggling with as well. In interactions with friends, they are also not trained to sort through the complexity of what we are going through. There is no need to worry about all these scenarios with a therapist. Managing our feelings and thoughts on what comes up during session is our job to manage. It is part of our training and we have systems like clinical supervision, peer supervision, and even our own therapy to manage this. This also means you can expect us to be able to respond to you appropriately when you do share something from a dark and scary place.
Confidentiality is promised in therapy. What you say stays in session, unless it falls under exceptions to confidentiality. We often have friends from shared experiences or shared settings like school or work. Inevitably, we might fear that they share things you have spoken about in confidence. Confidentiality in therapy is promised with the exception of three situations:
Risk of harm to self or others
Legal order - (e.g., court subpoena or police request)
Supervision to ensure quality clinical care
The therapeutic space is dedicated for you and no one else. In a friendship there is an expectation that you would reciprocate their support. Not in therapy. The therapeutic space is one of the rare interactions where there is no expectation of reciprocation or success. It is purely dedicated to your personal exploration of your inner experiences.
Your therapist is independent from your life. This has two important implications. First, friends might have a vested interest in seeing you behave in ways that are similar or aligned with your shared values. In therapy, your therapist is invested in you exploring your own values. Second, it might also feel awkward to share your difficult experiences in shared settings like work or school if your confidante is your co-worker or fellow classmates. Your therapist is removed from this and you get to share freely to an independent third party.
Our relationship is professional. That means we don’t go out for meals or chat socially out of sessions. There is also no need to acknowledge us on the streets if you don’t want to as well. Despite that, nothing changes our relationship inside the therapy room.
Summary of the 5 differences between therapist and friend