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As our field buzzes with anxiety about AI chatbots luring clients into a black hole of never-ending digital validation, this issue—The Very Human Therapist—seems particularly salient. I don’t think most therapists are lying awake at night, worried about being replaced by an algorithm, but I’m certain many feel a new urgency to articulate the kinds of human experiences that shape us into being uniquely effective clinicians. Here’s one that’s been on my mind lately:
No chatbot will ever work hard (really, really hard) to make sure their own stuff doesn’t seep into the therapy room, only to discover all that stuff—the painful childhood, the still-tender scars, even the wry sense of humor born of more recent disappointments—might actually be their greatest clinical asset.
I’m not advocating for a tsunami of self-disclosure to flood the therapy room. I’m talking about Self of the Therapist (SOTT) work—which, despite its unfortunate acronym, is not an approach you get trained and certified in. Rather, it’s a framework you believe in. Or as renowned family therapist Ken Hardy explains in this issue, it’s a worldview that holds that who we are—the totality of our identities, joys, losses, relationships, challenges, wounds—forms the prism through which we see our clients. And whether that prism illuminates or distorts the therapy process depends on the personal work we do on ourselves. The implications are simple and profound:
Because your issues make you who you are, you don’t need to “get over them” to be an effective therapist, but you do need to be “in relationship with them.”
As clear-headed as this idea may seem, most of us weren’t trained to see our use of self as a clinical tool. Instead, we learned to follow maps—theoretical methodologies and evidence-based protocols—that have nothing to do with who we are. Those maps are essential; that’s not in dispute. But there comes a point in many of our careers when something—perhaps witnessing master therapists being exactly who they are in a session and being utterly brilliant at it—inspires us to step out in front of our therapeutic techniques and show up more fully as real people.
Feeling our own presence so powerfully can be liberating, invigorating, elucidating. But as clinical psychologist and trainer Steve Shapiro warns us, consciously interweaving technique and what we call the Person of the Therapist (POTT) is actually a hard-won achievement. Steve’s piece in this issue is a grounded, practical take on the moment-to-moment balancing act of bringing ourselves into the room—and I’m convinced it’s essential reading, regardless of where you are in your career.
Also essential reading is trauma expert Arielle Schwartz’s touching personal story of how she moved from being a wounded healer—an identity so many of us inhabit—to being an integrated therapist, and what that journey requires. Elsewhere in the issue, RLT therapist Desirae Ysasi shares how her identity as a Mexican-American woman living in Trump-era South Texas deepened her clinical practice, but only after some hard personal work. We’ve also included the thoughts of Salvador Minuchin, “the father of family therapy,” who championed the self as the therapist’s most important tool long before SOTT was a formalized concept.
In an interesting twist, famed mindfulness therapist Ron Siegel writes about how the Buddhist idea of non-self can help clients loosen their grip on the “me” that’s causing their pain. And we revisit a still-salient piece from trauma therapy legend Babette Rothschild about experiencing ourselves through our bodies and how somatic resonance can reshape the therapeutic relationship.
There are many more articles to peruse in this issue, too: all personal, all practical, and all about how the humbling, never-ending work of knowing ourselves—as healers and as humans—affects our clinical practice.
Although the articles are finite, the work itself is not. The more honest we’re willing to be as we engage with it, the more we discover there is to uncover. So I predict there will be more stories on this topic coming your way. I only hope that by then, someone will have come up with better acronyms than SOTT and POTT for the beautiful ideas explored here—because I think they deserve a little better than to sound like two bumbling children’s book characters making mischief in a therapy room.
Livia Kent
Livia Kent, MFA, is the editor in chief of Psychotherapy Networker. She worked for 10 years with Rich Simon as managing editor of Psychotherapy Networker, and has collaborated with some of the most influential names in the mental health field on stories that have become widely read articles and bestselling books. She taught writing at American University as well as for various programs around the country. As a bibliotherapist, she’s facilitated therapy groups in Washington, DC-area schools and in the DC prison system. In 2020, she was named one of Folio Magazine’s Top Women in Media “Change-Makers.” She’s the recipient of Roux Magazine‘s Editor’s Choice Award, The Ledge Magazine‘s National Fiction Award, and American University’s Myra Sklarew Award for Original Novel.
