You may think that, as the patient, you’re the only one who might break down in tears during a therapy session, but traumatic stories and empathy can take its toll on the emotional wellness of your therapist too. This is according to a new study, carried out by Amy Blume-Marcovici, a clinical psychologist at Alliant University in San Diego, who discovered that as many as three-quarters of therapists may have wiped away a tear when listening to their patients.
Blume-Marcovici began the study after she found herself with tears in her eyes during a therapy session with a female patient. She noted, ‘I worried mostly that I had harmed her, or that she would feel “can this person handle what I’m talking about?” And then I also worried that I’d been unprofessional.’ However, many of those in her profession have been known to well up; 30% of those who admitted to crying had done so in the last four weeks.
Blume-Marcovici explained that your therapist won’t be sobbing in the corner: ‘Most often this was people describing themselves as “tearing up”… for the large majority the tears were beyond their control. Most of the time they did not regret their tears and they said that their client was not aware of their tears.’ And, before you go there, men cried just as often as women.
However, ex-therapy patient Matilda (not her real name) is horrified at the thought of therapists crying. ;If my therapist had cried I’d have never returned,’ she stated. ‘I needed a therapist who was in control of their emotions… at the start I needed to feel that my therapist was a superhuman who could fix me, so seeing any wavering would have demolished my confidence in them. I was terrified of my own emotions and I think I would have felt enormous guilt that I had made them sad.’
Simon Wessely, a professor of psychological medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, likewise disagrees with the idea of therapists crying in sessions: ‘You’re supposed to be a professional. It’s perfectly okay to empathise with people when they’re in distress. But there’s a big difference between that and then bursting into tears…I don’t like the idea that at some point the patient might push the box of tissues back to you.’
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