The Therapist’s Therapist-What It’s Like to Be on the Other Side
A gentle invitation into the experience of therapy when you’re usually the one providing it.
Most of us come into this field for a reason. Maybe it was the family dinner table where we learned to track emotions without words. Or a quiet, internal promise to become the person we once needed. Whatever the reason, it often means we know what it's like to hold hard things—and not just professionally.
As a therapist who supports other therapists, I consider it an immense honor to sit with those who sit with others. There’s something uniquely raw and powerful about doing therapy with therapists. The work often moves fast, deep, and wide. It might mean processing the weight of a recent session, untangling personal and professional identity, or healing early wounds that still surface—in the therapy room, in relationships, even in the grocery store line.
What happens in therapy with a therapist-client is much like any other therapeutic relationship: we’re exploring your pain, your stuck points, your hopes. But there’s also a shared language, a reverence for the process, and sometimes a grappling with what it means to truly let go of the role—and let yourself be the one to heal.
We talk about the self of the therapist, but rarely does our self get as much space and compassion as we offer our clients. You may have even experienced shame, or a sense that you shouldn’t talk about how you feel in the therapy room with your client—or about what’s happening to you outside the therapy room that weighs on you while you’re in session—especially around colleagues or supervisors who don’t fully understand the depth of self of the therapist work. In our work together, I invite you to bring that self in fully—all the other parts too. The wise parts, the questioning ones, the exhausted or heartbroken parts. All of it belongs.
And yes—countertransference is a real and living part of this. I used to think countertransference was a failing. A failure to stay compartmentalized, clinical, detached. A failure to have already done my own work. But a wise supervisor once told me: maybe you don't need to be so unbiased. Maybe you need to notice what stirs you—the sadness, the anger, the pride—and trust that it's part of the work.
It took time and the steady presence of my own incredible therapist to help me untangle all the parts of me that clung so tightly to being perfectly buttoned up and responsible for the outcome. Now, I listen closely to what stirs inside. Not as data points to catalog. Not as noise to silence. But as a doorway — an opening — into what’s coming alive between us. It’s some of the most honest work I’ve ever done.
Therapists are humans first. Often incredibly insightful, deeply feeling, beautifully complex humans. And therapy for therapists isn’t a luxury or a liability—it’s sacred work.
It’s where you get to be supported, witnessed, and cared for, just as fiercely as you care for others.
So if you’re a therapist holding heavy things (maybe things you’ve held for years), you’re not alone. And you don’t have to carry it alone either. You deserve a space of your own to feel into what’s next—or simply rest—without pressure, without judgment.
