How Our Title Can Affect Our Therapy Before it Starts

https://youtu.be/FNHEGNDpJxQ

I know in our websites and Psychology Today profiles we like to place words like “Educator” and the like to show our potential clients that we can help them through therapy, but what if that title is actually telling them something else? Let’s talk about how the words we use to describe ourselves can sometimes take the power away from future clients.

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So I’m right in the middle of doing what’s going to be the last big event that I’m hosting here in 2024. It’s an amazing event. We’re teaching about Solution Focused Brief Therapy, and some of the innovations and things that we’ve developed in this current year. This has been a big year for the Solution Focused approach. It’s been a big year for my organization. It’s been a big year for me personally.

So we’re capsulating all of the things that happened in this year and teaching it in one big lesson. It’s been pretty amazing. One of the questions that somebody asked me today, they started the question off with, “I’m a grief educator, so how do I do Solution Focused Brief Therapy in that context?” And in answering that question, I realized, “That’s probably a big thing that other people need to hear.”

So that’s why I decided to make this video, to help people with this idea.

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First of all, as a psychotherapist, and particularly a Solution Focused Brief Therapist, we have to stop using words like ‘educator’. In order to be an ‘educator’, I have to view my client through the lens of deficit. So in essence, there’s a skill they don’t have and I need to educate them to teach them that skill.

Psychotherapists are not educators. We are healers.

At the end of the day, words matter. And if you start describing yourself as an educator, that’s going to inform how you view people. And it is not appropriate for psychotherapists to view their clients through the lens of a deficit. Now, we don’t realize this is happening. But think about this. If I am a fifth grade math teacher, I make the assumption that the fifth graders I’m teaching don’t know what they’re going to need in the sixth grade, thus I need to teach it to them.

I don’t think it’s wrong to be an ‘educator’, but I do think it’s out of place for psychotherapists to refer themselves as an ‘educator’. And lots of psychotherapists do this. It informs how you view people, and every now and then it gets in the way of you doing this work.

We have to really lean in to understand that our job is healing. Our clients don’t need to be taught, they need help to heal.

Clients tell me all the time things like, “I don’t know how to cope with the grief I’m feeling.” But the truth is, they do know. They’re coping right now. They just don’t know that they know, and that’s part of the process of this healing journey.

So be very, very careful of what words you use to describe your role and who you are professionally, because it’s going to inform how you attract clients, how you interact with those clients that you attract, and how they engage with you in the therapy.

People ask me all the time, “Elliott, what do I do in [this scenario or that scenario]?” Or, “Elliot, how do you engage the clients the way that you do?” And my answer is, “It’s in how I view them.” That’s how I do this work. Sometimes people ask me these kind of questions, and I literally can’t answer them because they’ll say, “Elliot, what do I do in [this scenario]?”, and then this scenario they described to me, I would never be in because I don’t view my clients in that way.

So I don’t think the word ‘educator’ is appropriate to do what we do for the reasons I just said. Be very, very careful of how you describe your role in the therapy. And realize that we are healers, and our job is to help clients on the healing journey.

Hope you enjoy.