The uncomfortable truth about therapy
It is difficult to talk about bad therapists without sounding as if you are attacking therapy itself, and that is not what I am trying to do here. I believe in therapy. I have seen what good therapy can do when it is held with care, humility and respect. At its best, therapy can help a person hear themselves properly, maybe for the first time. It can give language to pain that has been sitting quietly in the background for years. It can help someone stop blaming themselves for things they were never responsible for, and it can help a person begin to trust their own inner life again.
But because therapy can reach such deep places, it can also do harm when it is handled badly. A therapist is not just someone having a conversation. They are being invited into a person’s private world, often at a time when that person is already vulnerable, confused, ashamed, frightened, grieving, angry, lonely, or unsure of their own judgement. The client may be saying things they have never said out loud before. They may be placing trust in someone at a point in life when trust is already fragile. That gives the therapist power, and power is never something to be casual about.
Power is always in the room
Power is not automatically bad. Some power comes with the role. The therapist has training, experience, influence and professional responsibility. In good therapy, that power is held carefully and used in service of the client’s freedom, not the therapist’s importance. The problem begins when the therapist does not recognise the power they have, or recognises it but does not question it, or enjoys it more than they are willing to admit.
This is where some therapists go wrong. Not always because they are cruel. Not always because they set out to harm anyone. Some may, but many harmful therapists are more ordinary than that. They may be tired, defended, needy, too certain of themselves, too attached to being seen as helpful, or too protected by their professional identity. This is what makes the subject uncomfortable. A therapist can mean well and still do harm. A therapist can be qualified and still be unsafe. A therapist can sound kind and still leave a client feeling smaller, silenced, dependent or confused.
When the therapist starts needing something
Most therapists probably enter the work with some wish to help. They may know something about suffering themselves, and that can be part of what gives them depth. A therapist who has faced their own pain may be more patient, more human, and more respectful of how complicated people really are. But the same work can also attract other needs. Therapy can make a person feel important, wise, needed, special, insightful, or unusually good at understanding others. If the therapist is not honest with themselves, they can start to feed from that role.
The client then becomes less of a person and more of a mirror. A mirror that reflects back the therapist’s goodness, intelligence, sensitivity or importance. That is dangerous because the client is not there to admire the therapist, reassure them, make them feel valuable, or become proof that they are gifted, caring or right. The client is there for their own life. That sounds obvious, but therapy can blur things when the therapist has not done enough of their own inner work.
A therapist may have wounds. That is not the problem. The problem is when those wounds are still quietly running the room. A therapist who has not faced enough of themselves may start using the client without meaning to. They may over-identify with the client’s story, need the client to improve so they can feel successful, or need the client to stay dependent so they can feel needed. They may become hurt, cold, defensive or subtly punishing when the client disagrees, leaves, questions them, or does not respond in the way they hoped. The therapy may still look caring on the surface, and it may even feel intense and meaningful, but underneath the focus has shifted. Something in the therapist has entered the room and started asking to be fed. That should never be the client’s job.
Qualifications are not the same as safety
Qualifications can make harmful therapy harder to see. Of course training matters. Ethics matter. Supervision matters. Experience matters. I would never suggest otherwise. But qualifications are not proof of humility. They are not proof of emotional maturity. They are not proof that someone can hold power safely. A certificate can show that someone completed a course. It cannot show how they respond when a client says, “This does not feel right.”
That is often where the truth appears. When a client questions the work, does the therapist listen, become curious, and wonder whether they may have missed something? Or do they defend themselves, blame the client, explain it away, or hide behind theory? Some therapists know the language of therapy very well. They can talk about trauma, attachment, resistance, boundaries, rupture, repair and all the right things, but knowing the words is not the same as living the responsibility. A therapist can sound reflective and still refuse to reflect. They can talk about safety and still make the room unsafe. They can speak about empowerment while quietly taking the client’s power away.
Ego, certainty and the loss of curiosity
The therapist’s relationship with their own ego is important because ego in therapy does not always arrive loudly. It may look like confidence, certainty, expertise or insight. Sometimes a therapist may notice something useful before the client can see it. That can be part of good therapy. But there is a line. A therapist can offer an idea, but they should not take ownership of the client’s truth. If a therapist needs to be right, the client is in trouble, because therapy can then become a trap. If the client agrees, the therapist is right. If the client disagrees, the therapist may call it resistance, avoidance, denial or lack of insight. The client then has no way to be heard.
Some therapists become harmful not because they are full of ego, but because they burn out. This is not an excuse, but it is part of the truth. Therapy can be emotionally heavy work. A therapist may sit with grief, trauma, shame, violence, fear, abandonment, addiction and despair, week after week, year after year. If they do not have enough support, rest, supervision, reflection and honesty, something in them can begin to close.
They may still turn up and they may still say the right things, but something in the work has gone flat. The therapist is there in body, but not really meeting the person in front of them. When that happens, curiosity often fades first. The client slowly becomes another appointment, another story, another problem to manage, and once curiosity has gone, certainty often moves into its place. The therapist starts assuming they have seen this before. They fit the client into a favourite theory, a familiar pattern, a diagnosis, or a neat explanation, and the client’s actual experience gets pushed aside by the therapist’s version of events. This can be very subtle because the therapist may still sound calm, clever, or even compassionate, but if they have stopped listening, the work has become unsafe in a quieter way. Therapy is not about the therapist sounding insightful. It is about the client being met.
When boundaries stop protecting the client
Boundaries are another place where things can go wrong. Some therapists have boundaries that are too loose. They share too much, become over-involved, contact the client in ways that feel special or confusing, or blur the line between therapy and friendship. The client may begin to feel chosen, needed, or unusually close to them. At first, that can feel flattering. It can also be deeply confusing, especially for someone who has rarely felt understood or emotionally held.
Other therapists go the other way. They use boundaries like a wall. They hide behind policy and call it professionalism. They may be technically correct but emotionally careless. They may be cold, rigid, punitive, or so protected by their own rules that they stop seeing the person in front of them. Neither version is good enough. Healthy boundaries are not about distance for the sake of distance. They are about safety. They allow warmth without confusion, care without dependency, and structure without control. A therapist should be able to hold a boundary and still remain human.
When repair does not happen
One of the deepest harms in therapy happens when something goes wrong and the therapist refuses to repair it. And things will go wrong. A therapist may misunderstand, say something clumsy, miss the point, push too quickly, or make an assumption that hurts. That does not automatically make them a bad therapist. The real question is what happens next. If the client says, “That hurt me,” or “I felt judged,” or “I don’t think you understood me,” does the therapist take the impact seriously, reflect on their part, and apologise if needed? Or do they explain, defend, blame, change the subject, or use therapeutic language to make the client doubt their own reaction?
This is where harm can go very deep, because many clients already come into therapy doubting themselves. They may already have a history of being dismissed, blamed, shamed, controlled, or made responsible for other people’s feelings. If the therapist repeats that pattern, the wound is not small. It can feel like being hurt by the person who was meant to help. It can leave the client not only questioning the therapist, but questioning themselves for having trusted them in the first place.
The slow slide into harm
There is also the slow problem of ethical drift. This is where the line does not get crossed all at once. It moves quietly, a little here and a little there. The therapist shares too much, then a bit more. They contact the client outside sessions. They make the client feel special. They become emotionally dependent, flirtatious, rescuing, possessive or unusually intense. The client may feel uncomfortable and attached at the same time, which is part of what makes it so difficult. Bad therapy is not always cold. Sometimes it is warm. Sometimes it is flattering. Sometimes it feels like deep connection before it becomes harmful.
The client may think, “Something is wrong here,” while another part of them thinks, “But they understand me.” That conflict can be powerful, especially when the client has been lonely, unseen, or emotionally neglected. The therapist may become the person who seems to finally notice them, and that can make it harder to question what is happening. This is why the therapist has to hold the line. The client should not have to protect the therapy from the therapist.
The Cognisant therapist
From a Cognisance perspective, the therapist must never forget the power in the room. They may have training and experience, but they are not above the client. They are not the owner of the client’s story. They are not the rescuer. They are not the final authority on another person’s inner life. They are a companion in the work, but a responsible one. A careful one. A human one.
The therapist has to stay awake to themselves, not just during training, not just when things are easy, but throughout the work. They need humility, supervision, feedback, honesty, and the capacity to apologise. They need to know the difference between being needed and being useful. That is not a small difference. A therapist who needs to be needed may keep a client close. A therapist who wants to be useful will support the client’s freedom, even when that means the client eventually leaves.
A final thought
Some therapists are bad because they misuse power. Some become harmful because they burn out, stop reflecting, become too certain, or allow their own unmet needs to enter the work. Some mean well and still cause harm. It is uncomfortable, but it needs saying. A client should not leave therapy feeling smaller, silenced, blamed, trapped, dependent, or afraid to question the person who is meant to be helping them.
If therapy does that, something has gone wrong. It may be repairable, or it may not be. But the client is allowed to notice. They are allowed to ask questions. They are allowed to trust the part of themselves that says, “This does not feel right.” And they are allowed to leave. A good therapist will understand that freedom is not a threat to therapy. It is part of what makes therapy safe.
