The Importance of Authenticity

Paved with Good Intentions

When I meet with folks re-entering therapy after a bad experience in treatment, one of the complaints I often hear is of past clinicians that came off as disinterested, overbearing, or overly formal in their manner. In such a relationship, the client can feel the barrier that such a bearing creates, and will hold back accordingly. Effective therapy requires an ability to share one’s internal experience freely, without fear of judgment, rejection, or domination. When power dynamics, moralizing, emotional reactivity, or other relational barriers are present in the therapy room, there is no space for such vulnerability. Without the development of an authentic, respectful, and client-focused relationship, a client will feel shut down, unheard, and eventually become disinterested in treatment and disheartened as a result. In truly traumatic circumstances, a person may come to believe that all therapists are like this!

The complicated truth is that the field of psychotherapy is still working to outgrow its origins as an offshoot of medicine and psychiatry. With that heritage can come a preoccupation with diagnosis, labeling, and categorization. This comes at the expense of something critical: an understanding of the unique, individual, lived experience of the client on the couch as they perceive it. 

While there are myriad therapeutic techniques and methodologies, studies have shown that there is one factor that stands tall among all others, regardless of theoretical framework: The quality of the therapeutic relationship itself. This is the foremost quality which decides the success of a therapeutic encounter. However, establishing such a relationship requires a willingness to compassionately bear witness to the sometimes dark and painful aspects of the human experience.

Toxic Positivity 

“Toxic positivity” is a term that has gained traction in recent years, and it highlights a behavior that seems to drive many people away from the therapy couch. I like to define this superficial kind of positivity as one wherein the uncomfortable or painful aspects of a situation are ignored or argued against. Untrained (or poorly trained) peoples' first instinct is often to try and make the pain of the situation ‘go away,’ or to cover up the difficult emotions. We have a habit as humans of rationalizing our emotional realities, in an attempt to soften them. However, this ultimately does more harm than good. Ignorance of our darker thoughts and feelings does not grant us shelter from them, and it’s often best to give voice to our pain rather than suppress it. This is why it can be so hurtful or aggravating to hear someone say “look on the bright side!” when we are in the midst of a genuinely painful state of being. 

The problem with such an approach to helping someone is that it minimizes and invalidates the lived experience of the person on the couch, and the unique perspective that they live within. When this occurs, serious damage can be done: we may worry that our feelings are somehow ‘wrong,’ and feel guilty for having felt them in the first place. Your right as a patient in a therapeutic relationship is the opposite: to have your personal experience heard, understood, and validated as something human and worthy of attention. A therapist's job is not to “make you feel better,” but rather to create the relationship wherein a willing client may meaningfully heal, learn about themselves, and change for the better with the guidance of a caring, knowledgeable professional.

The Authentic Relationship

So does this mean that wallowing in our pain is the right path? Of course, the answer is more complex than that. Famous psychotherapist Carl Rogers once wrote: “We cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed.” This paradox lies at the heart of my own style of therapy. It presents as a paradox because our first instinct is to move away from what is painful in order to try and establish a less painful state of being. This is why denial, self-deceit, projection, and other defense mechanisms are so tempting: they create distance between us and the reality within us. However, such behaviors ultimately cause problems of their own, without ever resolving the internal pain which prompted them in the first place. It is not through suppression, but rather expression of experience that we find succor.

This radical self-acceptance and honesty must be modeled first by the therapist within the relationship. This authentic stance must be adopted for a few reasons: Firstly, to communicate through both words and actions that the patient’s experience is accepted, valid, and utterly human. Secondly, to embolden the patient to practice a similar attitude of curious non-judgment toward themselves. And most importantly, to create the safety needed for authentic self-expression to spring forth. It is within this authenticity that we find ourselves, and through this authentic connection that we have the chance to bear witness to one another. 

If you’d like to read further on such ideas, please check out some of the literature below!

Yalom, Irvin The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients

Rogers, Carl On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View on Psychotherapy, Humanistic Psychology, and the Path to Personal Growth