“YOU’RE FIRED!” When to Fire Yourself as Someone’s Therapist

There comes a time when it’s time to admit that maybe you’re not the therapist a client needs, especially when you struggle with having belief in their ability to change. Here’s how to have the honest talk with yourself when it’s time to let a client find the help they need outside of you.

I think there’s something that every single therapist needs to know, but we don’t focus on, and that’s how to know when to fire yourself from working with a client.

I spend a lot of time in Los Angeles, and I have a friend that’s a comedian. His name is Comedian CP, super funny. I actually think he’s the next big comic that you are going to hear about. And one day he posted a video on Instagram of him hosting this comic thing, and the comic that went up before him bombed really bad. And as the host, his job is to transition to the next comic. And he said, you know, you need to never do this again. You need to fire yourself today. And it was just this really funny thing.

And it got me to thinking. There are times when I think the therapist needs to fire themselves. And people ask me questions all of the time about what do you do with a client who doesn’t want to change? Or what to do with a client who likes their problem. Or what to do with a client who is just a bad person. Or things like that.

Listen. The questions you ask about people are clear indicators on what you think about that person. So if you don’t have the belief that that person can change and achieve the outcomes that they are seeing you for, then you need to fire yourself and not see that client.

If you find yourself having a bias against a client, and maybe it’s a bias because of something that’s happened in your past, maybe it’s a bias because you’ve been taught people with a certain problem tend to not do certain things. But if you have a bias against your client, then you have to address that bias, and overcome it, and go into every single session with optimism and belief. If you cannot do that, you do not have the right to see that client.

There’s a lot of research in the field of change, in the psychotherapy field, that indicates how you view the person that you’re talking to, will impact their level of performance. So if you view someone as “I don’t think they can change.” And then you start emailing me saying, “What do you do with clients who don’t want to change?” You are not going to be an effective clinician to them.

You have to find optimism. You have to find hope. You have to find belief. Belief is the single most powerful thing you’re going to bring into every session. So if you don’t have that, then that client deserves the right to see a therapist that believes in them. If you don’t have that, it is time for you to fire yourself from working with that client, and send them to go see someone else.