What to Do When Your Counselor Makes You Uncomfortable

What to Do When Your Counselor Makes You Uncomfortable

Written by Kelsie Goller, MA, LPC-S, RPT, EMDR Certified

Clinical Director, KPS

Ideally, counseling is a relationship that you step into that makes you feel seen.  Safe.  Heard.  Cared about.  We want you to experience unconditional positive regard, to be encouraged, to have a sense of felt safety.  But the reality is that in the counseling profession, there are some counselors who are just not doing a good job at their job.  I know this because I hear stories from friends or even from strangers who want to share their experiences with me once they learn that I am a counselor or a Clinical Director.  Counselors have Codes of Ethics and they are also answerable legally to the Board of their state, with each state having a set of requirements for professional conduct.  By way of example, you can find the American Counseling Code of Ethics here and the Texas Board Rules for Licensed Professional Counselors here.  There are too many rules and ethics to encompass in one brief blog post, so I wanted to focus on a few of the most common complaints that I hear regarding counselors.  

1.  “My counselor spends our time together talking about themselves.”  One of my friends shared with me a story about how she had built up trust with a therapist over time.  She decided that she was finally as ready as she was going to be to delve into her past relationship with a family member, but the day that she met with her therapist to bravely start that journey, the therapist started by saying “I feel like we know each other well enough that I just want to tell you about what’s been happening in my family right now”- and then proceeded to dump on my friend about what was happening in her OWN family!  After that, my friend felt that the door was slammed shut on discussing her own situation, fearing that it would burden the therapist too much for her to share her own story, as the therapist was going through something very similar.  This was completely inappropriate on the therapist’s part.  Therapists should never be using the client as their own therapist, sharing their own current struggles.  In fact, therapists have an ethical obligation to make sure that ANY self-disclosure is thoughtfully and carefully done, and this would only be done because the therapist believes in good faith that this self-disclosure would benefit the client in some form.  It is ethically better to err on the side of not self-disclosing.  Overuse of self-disclosure or using the client’s time to talk about the counselor’s problems is not a legal issue, but if this is happening, it is probably making you feel uncomfortable and you should seek another counselor.

2. “My counselor wants to be friends outside of counseling.”  I have had several friends report about incidents in which the counselor and client ended therapy so that they could be friends instead, or the counselor told the client that they wanted to be friends after therapy ends.  Again, this is not appropriate.  Counselors do not engage in outside-of-therapy relationships with clients unless an appropriate amount of time has passed.  Unlike #1, this IS a legal issue [see TXBHEC Rulebook for Professional Counseling, 681.38(d) and all the subpoints.] 

3. “My counselor is imposing their own religious beliefs on me.”  One Christian friend told me a story about relating a dream to her counselor.  The counselor said to her, “Well, that is [named a neopagan god] communicating by dream to say…”  It is not appropriate for counselors to use the counseling relationship to impose their own belief system on the client.  There are some important clarifications I need to make here: it IS appropriate (and expected and ethical) for counselors to ask clients about their religious/spiritual beliefs that may impact therapy.  Counselors may ask how the client would like faith incorporated into the therapeutic relationship and many clients want to talk about spiritual problems. Also, many clients seek counselors who are from the same spiritual or religious background as themselves; Christian clients may request a Christian therapist, Jewish clients may request a Jewish therapist, non-religious clients may request a non-religious therapist, etc.   Depending on their therapeutic modality and training, some counselors may offer spiritual direction in response to client’s presenting problems, and this is also ethical IF informed consent has been given (i.e. this is what the client wants and signed up for.)  What is NOT ethical is when a counselor (without knowing the spiritual/religious background of the client or gaining consent for how spirituality will impact the counseling relationship) imposes their own worldview and spirituality on the client.  This is a misuse of the power dynamic inherent within the counseling relationship.  

4. I am so grateful that the following is not a situation that has been personally reported to me, but the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council gives the highest priority to investigating complaints regarding counselors accused of sexual misconduct.  This should be extremely clear: It is completely illegal for a counselor to suggest a sexual relationship, make any type of sexual overtures, or engage in a sexual relationship with a client.  IF five years have passed since the client and counselor had a therapeutic relationship and IF it is determined that no harm will come to the client because the power differential has been removed, then the couple may engage in a sexual relationship.  Those situations are few and far between.  Anytime that a counselor and client engage in a sexual relationship either while engaging in therapy or within five years after the therapy has ended, the relationship is considered exploitive and should be reported to the Texas Board.  

The relationship between counselor and client is the most important variable in counseling success (other than extra-therapeutic factors), not the techniques and interventions used, type of counselor training, years of counselor experience, or therapeutic orientation of the counselor - you can read more about that in my blog article here!  It can take time to build a strong therapeutic relationship, as talking about painful experiences is generally unpleasant and hard, and our brains want to instinctively avoid it, and therefore perhaps also avoid the person asking those hard questions.  While I am not advocating for quickly giving up on a therapist, if you are feeling uncomfortable with your therapist, it is time to get curious about what is happening for you.  Check in with yourself:

~What is this emotion I am feeling?  Discomfort, embarrassment, fear, irritation, sadness, etc?  

~Where is this emotion coming from?  For example: Am I irritated that my counselor is talking about himself/herself again, or am I irritated that my counselor pointed out something about myself that I do not want to face?  The first may be a counselor problem; the second may be an intervention that the counselor is using to help you engage in self-examination.  Or another example: Am I reluctant to talk with the counselor because their nonverbals communicate that they are not listening to me (checking phone in session, coming late to session, not tracking during session), or am I reluctant to talk with the counselor because my brain is avoiding bringing up past trauma, which is a very common trauma response?  Once again, the first may be a reason to switch counselors, while the second may require you to keep pressing forward.  

If you check in and realize that your difficulty with your therapist is based partially on the reason that brought you to therapy, I encourage you to stick with it!  Therapy is hard but rewarding work.  I recommend that you give yourself at least three sessions with a new therapist to see if the relationship is clicking!  But if you check in with yourself and realize that your feelings of discomfort and lack of safety in the therapeutic relationship are based on counselor variables, it may be time to search for a new counselor.