Who Is Sitting Across from the Client?

The Therapist, Personal Beliefs, and What We Bring Into the Room

Before reading further, I invite you to participate in a brief exercise.

Take a piece of paper and write down all the roles you have played throughout your life. For example: mother, sister, daughter, granddaughter, volunteer, wife, girlfriend, teacher, student, survivor of a crime. The list goes on.

Now consider why identifying these roles might be important to your work as a therapist.

Each of these roles represents a part of your life experience. They have contributed to who you are, how you understand the world, and what you believe about yourself and others. Some have shaped you in ways you recognize, while others may influence you without your conscious awareness.

Any one of these experiences may find its way into the room when you are sitting across from a client.

Who Is Really in the Room?

I recall a supervision experience involving a female social work student who had previously worked in law enforcement, experienced a difficult divorce, and learned that she would not be able to have children.

During a case consultation involving a hypothetical female client who was considering an abortion, the student became visibly angry. She stated that she would tell the client that “abortion is murder” and encourage her to “do the right thing.”

I listened as she passionately expressed her position. When she finished, I asked a simple question:

The question did not produce the pause I had anticipated. Instead, she became increasingly frustrated, arguing that the situation should not require her to become someone she was not. After all, she had rights, too.

Again, I asked who was sitting across from the client?

And again, she responded with anger, interpreting my question as a suggestion that she should abandon her beliefs or relinquish a deeply held belief of her own.

But that was not what I was asking.

I was inviting her to consider which parts of herself had entered the therapeutic relationship.

Was it the former law enforcement officer? The woman who had experienced the loss of her ability to conceive? The woman whose personal beliefs about abortion were deeply held?

Or was it the developing therapist whose professional responsibility was to be present to the client’s experience, maintain appropriate boundaries, and provide ethical clinical care?

Perhaps all these parts were present.

And that was precisely the point.

How Our Experiences Become Our Truths

The roles we occupy throughout our lives, no matter how small they seem, influence not only who we become but also what we come to believe.

Consciously and unconsciously, we look to our experiences and the world around us for confirmation of those beliefs. Over time, they become increasingly familiar and may eventually form the foundation of what we consider to be our truth.

Although it may not be a popular statement in some circles, much of what we consider our personal “truth” is shaped by subjective experience.

We each develop beliefs that help us make sense of our lives. Yet my interpretation of an experience is not necessarily the same as yours.

Consider something as simple as a dandelion.

I may believe a dandelion is a weed and therefore seek to eradicate this offending flower from my yard. My belief is reinforced by a neighbor who complains about the irresponsible people in our neighborhood who allow their dandelions to go to seed, spreading them into the yards of those of us who consider ourselves responsible homeowners.

Armed with righteous indignation, I travel to the local hardware store, where I discover an entire aisle dedicated to the destruction of dandelions. Every weed killer seems to display a bright yellow flower on its label, some with dramatic red X’s drawn through them.

There it is. Confirmation of what I believe to be true.

Dandelions are weeds.

But then a friend shares a different perspective. She grew up on a farm where her father allowed dandelions to grow because their deep taproots help bring nutrients from lower layers of soil toward the surface, supporting the surrounding plant life.

Suddenly, the offending weed has become something useful.

So, which perspective is correct?

The dandelion itself has not changed. What has changed is the meaning we assign to it.

My perspective was reinforced by my neighbor and the messages surrounding me. My friend’s perspective was informed by her family’s agricultural experience.

Both of us developed an understanding of the same plant through very different experiences.

Of course, personal interpretations do not change objective facts, and some beliefs can be tested against evidence. But the example illustrates how easily our experiences, relationships, and cultural messages influence the conclusions we draw.

When Personal Truth Enters the Therapeutic Relationship

I do not offer the dandelion example to minimize the complexity of reproductive decisions or other deeply held moral beliefs. Rather, it illustrates how our experiences can shape the lens through which we interpret the world.

And that lens accompanies us into the therapeutic relationship.

As therapists, we do not suddenly become disconnected from our personal histories when we enter our offices. We remain the individuals shaped by our families, relationships, losses, successes, cultural experiences, and beliefs.

The challenge is not that we possess these experiences.

The challenge arises when we fail to recognize how they may influence our understanding of the person sitting across from us.

Returning to the supervision example, the student’s personal beliefs were not the only issue. More concerning was her inability, in that moment, to distinguish between her personal convictions and her professional responsibilities.

The therapeutic responsibility is not to convince clients to adopt our personal beliefs. It is to provide a professional relationship in which they can explore their experiences, emotions, values, and decisions and feel safe doing so.

This requires us to recognize when something within our own experience has been activated.

Perhaps a client’s decision reminds us of a loss we have experienced. Perhaps their behavior challenges a belief we hold. Perhaps their relationship resembles one we have struggled to navigate in our own lives.

These reactions do not automatically make us ineffective therapists.

But they do require our attention.

The Importance of Knowing Who We Bring Into the Room

This is where I believe the work of self-awareness becomes particularly important to our professional development.

We cannot examine what we do not recognize or know.

If we are unaware of the experiences and beliefs influencing our reactions, we may begin responding to clients through the lens of our own histories rather than remaining curious about theirs.

We may become overly directive, defensive, judgmental, protective, or emotionally distant without fully understanding why.

The work is not to remove every personal belief, experience, or emotional response from the therapeutic relationship. That would be neither realistic nor possible.

Instead, it is to develop the capacity to recognize when those parts of ourselves are present and determine whether they are informing our clinical understanding or interfering with it.

This is one of the reasons I believe ongoing supervision, consultation, and personal reflection are so important, regardless of how many years we have practiced.

Our personal experiences cut both ways. They can provide us with empathy, insight, and a deeper understanding of the human condition. Yet those same experiences can create barriers to understanding others and blind spots we may not even recognize.

The difference often lies in our willingness to examine what we bring into the room.

Perhaps the question we should ask ourselves is not simply, Who am I as a therapist?

But rather:

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