The Sterilization

"Everything is a version of something else."

She told us that we are a mirror for our clients.

We were not allowed to discuss our own families, interests, or even personal insights, because doing so would take away from the therapeutic experience. The idea, she explained, is that when you sit down with a therapist, you are sitting with someone almost sterile, someone who exists solely for the work. Therapists are not seen as well-rounded humans with relationships, children, or past trauma. Instead, they are positioned as the wall between the conversation and the process.

“When you have something to say, silence is a lie.” - Jordan B. Peterson

But counseling and therapy are not newly accepted forms of support. This deeply human, meaningful practice has existed in one form or another throughout history. The act of seeking counsel is not just part of the human need for connection; it is a profound form of communication, one that allows individuals to be challenged, heard, and understood. At its core, it is the baseline of how we move through the world together.

During my ethics class, I learned that the only time it is appropriate to reveal personal information is if a client asks a direct question regarding LGBTQIA issues. For example, if I am seeing a transgender couple and they would like to feel more comfortable with me they are allowed to ask me my pronouns and if I am married or am familiar with the LGBTQIA culture. It was explained to me that this line of questioning is important to address if a client asks, particularly because of fears and concerns surrounding the community. To be completely honest, I agree with this. However, this approach is not applied to other types of questions—those are often dismissed as not meeting the appropriate criteria. Why? Because they are assumed to be driven by the therapist’s personal agenda.

If a client is seeking to work with someone who has experienced sexual trauma, war, grief, or other physical, emotional, and mental health challenges, it is often because they are looking for more than clinical knowledge. They are looking for someone who can truly understand not just intellectually, but experientially. There is a difference between being trained to respond and having lived through something that reshapes the way you see, feel, and relate to the world.

More than anything, clients are searching for connection, for safety, and for a sense that the person sitting across from them can hold the weight of what they are carrying. They want to feel seen in a way that goes beyond theory. Lived experience, when held with care and professionalism, can offer a kind of depth that cannot be taught in textbooks.

Many, if not most addiction counselors are in recovery themselves. Individuals struggling with addiction who are seeking sobriety often look for someone with both professional expertise and lived experience someone who understands recovery not just in theory, but in practice. However, one of the issues with many modern therapy programs, models, and trainings is that the field has, in some ways, become a more pedestrian career path one that risks prioritizing structure and detachment over genuine human connection. Anyone can get a degree in social services, the bar is low these days, very low at times.

The classes, clinical hours, and professional standards are surgical in nature, precise, controlled, and cold, it is corporate. While this level of structure is intended to protect both the client and the integrity of the “work,” it also creates distance, reinforcing the idea that the therapist must remain removed rather than fully present. In striving for professionalism, there is a risk of losing the very element that makes therapy effective: the human connection. When everything is reduced to technique, criteria, and boundaries without flexibility, the experience can begin to feel less like a relationship and more like a procedure.

One of my favorite movie moments is from Good Will Hunting, when Robin Williams’s character breaks the ice with Will by telling him that his wife used to fart in her sleep. It’s such a small, private, and intimate detail something that would normally exist only within the four walls of his home. He shares it because, in that moment, it was needed. It wasn’t pulled from a textbook, a clinical procedure, or a practiced technique. It was human. And that’s exactly why it worked. No manual or structured approach can fully override the power of genuine human experience and connection.

Irvin D. Yalom, my spiritual animal and a true genius in psychotherapy, consistently wrote and spoke about the importance of appropriate personal disclosure by therapists and counselors. He emphasizes that when used thoughtfully and intentionally, self-disclosure is not a disruption of the therapeutic process, but rather a tool that can deepen trust, strengthen resilience, and increase the connection within the therapeutic relationship.

In his view, therapy is not meant to be a sterile or detached exchange, but a human encounter between two people. When a therapist shares something of themselves in the right moment and for the right reason, it can reduce the sense of isolation a client may feel and reinforce the idea that suffering and struggle are part of the shared human experience. This is how I do my work, this is how I have found helps expand the human experience with my own clients.

I remain convinced that a therapist’s judicious self-disclosure facilitates the course of therapy. - Dr. Irving Yalom

Another supervisor told us that if a client questions our methods, we should remind them that we are the experts and that if doing things their own way had worked, they wouldn’t be seeking help. I hated that narrative with my entire being, I never used it, it’s ugly. It feels demeaning, passive-aggressive, and fundamentally at odds with what therapy is supposed to be. It assumes authority instead of earning trust, and it frames the client’s vulnerability as evidence of failure.

To me, that mindset risks turning therapy into a power dynamic instead of a collaborative process. It dismisses the client’s autonomy, their lived experience, and their capacity for insight. Worse, it can deepen the very shame or self-doubt that often brings people into therapy in the first place. I don’t believe people come to therapy because they are incapable, I believe they come because they are searching, questioning, and trying, often in ways that already show resilience.

My very first therapist was a PhD student. Her office was decorated with cozy, almost cliché quotes about family, resilience, and self-care. The couch where clients sat and where I sat for a few sessions was covered in decorative pillows stamped with words like “power,” “healing,” and “courage.” It all felt curated, intentional, and somehow impersonal, it was empty. The only thing in her office that didn’t feel synthetic was her framed Master’s degree in Behavioral Science hanging on the wall behind her desk. There wasn’t a single personal photo, not one small object or chachka that hinted at who she was outside of her mask. I couldn’t get a read on her as a person, and over time, that made it harder to connect. It felt like I was sitting across from a role rather than a human being. There was no friction, no texture nothing to hold onto. And without that sense of presence or authenticity, the space that was supposed to feel safe and relational ended up feeling distant, almost performative.

“How can one have a genuine encounter with another person while remaining so opaque?” - Dr. Irving Yalom

I remember having a consultation with my OBGYN when I got pregnant with my daughter in my mid-30s suddenly labeled a “high-risk pregnancy,” as the medical world tends to do when it can market and justify more services. His office was the opposite of what I had experienced elsewhere. He had pictures of his family, a space that felt lived-in, even a little playful authentic in a way that immediately put me at ease. And he was direct. Not cold, not clinical for the sake of distance just clear, grounded, and real.

He is still my favorite doctor. We shared a once-in-a-lifetime experience he helped bring my daughter into this world. That’s not small, and it never will be. In a moment that vulnerable, that life-altering, I didn’t just want credentials on a wall I wanted to know who he was. I needed to feel a sense of the person behind the profession so I could make that choice with confidence. For me, that mattered. It still does. Because when the stakes are that high, trust doesn’t come from titles alone it comes from presence, honesty, and the quiet sense that the person across from you is fully there, not just performing a role.

My favorite therapist the one who truly held my hand through one of the hardest times of my life was a spunky, seasoned presence. She provided trauma therapy and taught yoga, and somehow that combination showed up in everything about her. Her office was authentic and deeply welcoming. There were beautiful paintings, pieces of cultural memorabilia, things that felt collected rather than curated. To me, she felt lived-in like someone who had seen a few things, survived a few things, and didn’t need to hide behind a polished surface.

When I finally felt comfortable enough to share my deepest wound with her, I watched her eyes fill with tears. She held them back with this quiet discipline, almost a kind of stoicism, as if the moment mattered that much. It wasn’t performative. It felt like restraint in the presence of something sacred. And in her eyes, I saw something I hadn’t been able to see in myself yet a healed version of me.

She didn’t default to empty validation or soften the moment with vague questions like, “How does that make you feel?” Which, honestly, is the most frustrating and disconnecting question. Instead, she met me exactly where I was and said, simply, “That is devastating.” And it was devastating. Naming it that directly, without flinching or diluting it, was exactly what I needed. Not a script, not a technique just truth, witnessed and spoken out loud. She didn’t “sit with me” in my trauma, she asked me what this story looks like as a survivor. What a brilliant spin on the victim dress. This is the therapeutic process not coddling and validating irrational emotions and feelings, or regurgitating the self, the child self, and double meanings. The work is curious, intentional and challenging. It is an archaeological investigation of the mind’s eye.

I am a therapist.

I am a therapist who uses a coaching approach (therapy before it became an emotional support animal) in part because of the moral and ethical games insurance companies and lawyers often play games that take something deeply intimate and life-altering and harden it, strip it down, and, at times, hollow it out. Therapy and counseling have no business being reduced to a corporate transaction. At its core, this work is a human experience one that deserves respect, presence, and authenticity.

I’m not claiming that all supervisors are terrible, even though many of mine were. And I’m not suggesting that therapy or counseling is a form of friendship it isn’t. It is so much more than that. It is a relationship, but a very specific kind one built on trust, responsibility, and intention. A space where honesty matters more than performance, and where the connection itself becomes part of the healing.

Today, the majority of therapists, social workers, counselors, and mental health professionals seem to follow a model more aligned with institutions like Bank of America, McDonald’s, and the IRS. They bend to no one. The same rigid, structured systems are expected to fit every client, regardless of nuance, background, or need and the longer the process, the sweeter the pot.

Because of that, the focus of the therapeutic experience has shifted. What was once rooted in accountability, resilience, and genuine enlightenment now often drifts into emotional pandering, inflated self-focus, and surface-level affirmations. Instead of challenging clients in meaningful, growth-oriented ways, the work can become about maintaining comfort, preserving engagement, and sustaining the system itself. That shift doesn’t just dilute the work it changes its purpose. And when the structure takes priority over the human experience, something essential gets lost.

“It is easier, far easier, to obey another than to command oneself.” - Dr. Irving Yalom

Therapy, when it’s done as a true meeting of the minds, is absolutely profound. You leave a little of yourself with your therapist, and you take a little of them with you. The exchange is soulful and an ongoing imprint and it stays with you, rewarding you in quiet ways for years to come. It isn’t about surface-level validation or rehearsed language; it’s about something deeper, more honest, and more human.

My 2 Cents.

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