Why Won’t Your Psychotherapist Tell You What to Do?

Talk therapists aren’t there to give you answers. Why not?

I was anxious before I started therapy. But I think I had an underlying sense of relief that I was about to fix whatever was wrong with me.

I thought my therapist would do this for me. However, this isn’t how talk therapy works. A psychotherapist won’t just hand you a solution to your problems on a plate.

Why don’t they do this?

Your therapist isn’t an expert in you

I expected my therapist to give me a diagnosis soon after my sessions started. I treated therapy like a medical appointment — I thought they would tell me what was wrong with me and give me a prescription to make things better.

This didn’t happen. I got very frustrated.

My therapist would ask me what I thought or felt about things. I would grumble back at them and tell them that they were the expert in the room. I didn’t know, but they should. They’d had training.

Eventually, my therapist told me that they weren’t an expert in me or my life. This made me stop and think.

They explained that they could collect a room full of people with the same problem. But, every single one of those people would have different experiences and needs.

The causes of their problems would be different. Individual personalities and life experiences would be different. There isn’t a general fix for individual problems.

If a therapist uses person-centred or non-directive techniques, then they guide their clients through the therapy process rather than telling them what to do. They work in partnership with you and provide a safe place for you to talk and explore your feelings and problems.

Yes, they can help you spot patterns of behaviour. Yes, they can help you work out why you act or feel in certain ways. But, they won’t tell you how to feel or how to fix yourself. They help you become the expert in your own life.

Following advice doesn’t always fix problems

You might talk about your problems to people you know. They will want to help and will give you advice on what you should do.

However, this advice might not work. You might not do what people tell you; their advice might not fix underlying problems.

Say you have a history of choosing the wrong romantic partner. You end up in toxic relationships. Every time, your friends and family tell you to dump your partner because the relationship isn’t good for you.

You might take this advice. However, your next relationship is likely to be just as toxic.

You should remember one thing here. If following advice or doing what you were told worked for you — if it fixed your problems — then you wouldn’t be in therapy.

Your therapist won’t tell you what to do or give you advice. They help you understand yourself and your actions. They help you drill down to find out the origin of your problems.

Once you get to this stage, you can start to make changes that stick based on what you learn about yourself.

You have to own what you learn

When you were a child, you learned how to do things through experience. For example, you had to learn how to tie shoelaces for yourself.

Even though your parents told and showed you what to do, you needed some practice. You had to learn through the experience of trying.

Therapy is kind of like this. Your therapist can’t tell you how you feel or what to do. You have to own the process to truly understand yourself. You practice doing this by talking to your therapist.

During your sessions, you gain an insight into why you have problems and how they affect you. You learn to spot patterns of feelings and behaviour that impair your life. You uncover the real reasons why you need therapy.

It’s really important to do this for yourself. We only really own things that we discover, experience and understand on a personal level.

Let’s switch back to our toxic relationship scenario. During therapy, you might realise that you choose the wrong partners because your parents had a toxic relationship. Or, childhood neglect might have affected your self-esteem so much that you unconsciously believe that this is all you deserve.

If you drill down to these levels, you are more likely to accept and own what you learn. Once you do this, you can change. You can stop choosing the wrong partners because you understand why you chose them in the past.

This non-directive approach helps you make healthier and permanent changes to your life. Your therapist is your partner here. As the founder of this type of therapy, Carl Rogers, said:

The more I can keep a relationship free of judgment and evaluation, the more this will permit the other person to reach the point where he recognizes that the locus of evaluation, the center of responsibility, lies within himself.

Carl R. Rogers (On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy).