Thinking about starting therapy but not sure what to expect?
Leslie and Jamal from WT Talk have you covered!
Check out this episode of WT Talk to learn about what the role of a therapist is from special guests Justina Lambert, LPC and Michelle Moore, LCSW.
Hi, my name is Lesley and I’m Jamal and welcome to WT Talk. I want to introduce today two licensed therapists. Hello, I’m Justina Lambert and I’m an LPC here at Western Tidewater.
Hi, I’m Michelle Moore, I’m an LCSW here at Western Tidewater. And today we’ll be talking about finding the right therapist for you. Okay, so what would you say the role of a therapist is? Because sometimes it may seem confusing to people who may think I’m coming in here, I’m going to tell the therapist my problems and they’re going to fix it for me.
Are you fixers or like what would you classify your role as? That’s a good question. I would just stick with we are counselors. The client is the one who is the author of their life, they are the expert on their life.
We really come in and just kind of try to like clear away some of the fog because sometimes what it is is so much noise before the client can say, oh, I see the path. So we just are helping to kind of like clear away the noise. I don’t know what else with that.
Yeah, no, that makes sense because sometimes when you’re in it, like you don’t see what’s going on and some of the obstacles you may be creating for yourself as well. So I’ll piggyback off of Justina. So if you went to my psychology today, it says that I come alongside you on your journey, right? And so my job is not to fix it, but to come alongside you and to help you just to kind of work through some of the fog and to help you meet your goals and whatever that looks like for you, right? Because my job is not to take over for you, but to kind of help you sort through some of the things, peel back some layers and to help you on recovery and whatever that looks like.
Why is it important to have that boundary where you’re not the one kind of fixing it or telling them what to do? Sustainability, right? So like I can’t fix the problem because when I’m gone, then it’s not going to last, right? So it has to be something that the individual creates, something that they want to work on because the overall goal is for them to not be in therapy forever, right? And so when someone is invested in their treatment, then they’re going to continue to work on it. I love that you said that. Therapy is not forever.
I think there is a, you know, an idea for people that they need to be in therapy for the rest of their life.