Why Love is Crucial to Good Therapy

A lot of therapists shy away from the concept of love when regarding therapy with clients, but it’s actually a necessary tool to doing good therapy. Let me explain how utilizing love and care for our clients is crucial to doing effective therapy.

Today I’m going to say something that’s going to make people uncomfortable. I’m going to talk about a topic that is critical, crucial, really important, to helping your clients achieve change. But it’s the kind of thing that makes people feel uncomfortable, and it’s an awkward thing to talk about, and a lot of people shy away from it. But today, we’re going to dive into it.

Now, what you need to understand if you’re going to be a psychotherapist, what you need to understand if you’re going to work with people to help them to change, is the true power of love.

For some reason, I think the word love makes people uncomfortable, and they start thinking of a romantic love, an inappropriate love. I’ve even had therapists tell me that it’s inappropriate to talk about love in the context of therapy. I could not disagree with that more.

There are two really important loves you have to have as a part of your work.

Number one, you have to love the work that you’re doing. You have to truly love what it is you’re doing, and showing up in service for other people. If you do not, then it turns into a job. And when it’s a job, and it gets really hard, as the clinical job often is, you quit, and you give up, and you don’t stick through it in the way that it needs to.

The second kind of love that you have to have, is love for your client. And I mean that in the biblical sense when we’re called to love our neighbor. And the reason that’s so important is sometimes people show up for therapy and they’re at a low moment where they don’t see their value and they don’t see their beauty, and they don’t love themselves. But once you start really showing up for them and really caring for them in a way that they experience as lovingly, then they start to love themselves. And once you start loving yourself, you start treating yourself better. I know that firsthand because when I was growing up and I didn’t love myself, I wasn’t making great decisions. But once I decided to love myself, I started to treat myself well, and that completely transformed my life.

So do not shy away from the idea of and the importance of having love in your therapy. And it is just as important as hope, and it is just as important as the techniques themselves.

If you do not come from a loving place, your client will have a much harder time changing.