Are Therapists Human?

Is a therapist a whole human? As I moved through my education to become a mental health counselor, we were often warned about self disclosure. As mental health counselors in the West, we are working within a lineage that has deep roots in the idealization of the therapist as a kind of “white wall”. Implicit and explicit in a lot of our training was this push to make ourselves disappear so we could hold space for others. For many of us, this came at a cost to our own mental health.