Providing Therapy Can Be Therapeutic for a Therapist

In this paper, the case is made that providing therapy to a client can he therapeutic for the therapist. Therapist change is not intentionally sought nor professionally delivered, but is from those client interactions experienced as healing. The possible mechanisms of change for the therapist include exposure of much about him- or herself, being “on the line” in therapy, and the therapeutic relationship as a collaborative, two-way system. In the collaborative system, much might affect a therapist, including how the client understands and reacts to the therapist’s disposition, motivation, self-disclosure, and skill and what the client reveals about his or her life that may lead the therapist to a new sense of her or his own life.