I was just talking about this very topic to a friend: the counseling version of “Truth or Dare.”

He said to me, “Sometimes I’m not always that straight forward with my therapist … Some days I just don’t have it in me to be completely, totally honest.”

I knew exactly what he meant.

Even after twelve years of therapy, I get butterflies in my stomach an hour before my session. I look forward to counseling ALMOST as much as I do my yearly pap. (“Now relax and look at beach poster on the ceiling” ….) And yet, if I do the grueling work–and spill the entire can of beans–I leave her office feeling 30 pounds lighter. Well, 28 after I eat the five tootsie rolls she had in her bowl of candy.

Just as our other relationships require full honesty to be real and organic, so does the therapist-patient relationship. In his post, “Why Would you Lie to Your Therapist?” John Grohol explains why. To get to his post, click here. Following is an excerpt.

You pay a therapist for the time you spend with them. Their one and only job is to help you find a way to feel better, help you stop repeating unhealthy behaviors or patterns of behavior that are no longer working for you, help you live a better life. 

If you lie to your therapist, especially about something important in your life or directly related to your problems, then you’re wasting your and your therapist’s time. If you tell your therapist all about your depression, but leave out the fact that your mom just passed away last month, that’s an important, valuable piece of information that would be helpful for the therapist to know in order to help you better. If you tell your therapist you have low self-esteem or always feel insecure about yourself, yet leave out the fact that you purge after eating almost every meal, again, you’re only impeding your own recovery and treatment.

These are plain and simple lies, called lies of omission. And they prevent a person from moving forward in treatment. 

I believe the reason many people leave out this kind of information is the same reason we have trouble mentioning embarrassing things to our family doc — we’re embarrassed by what we need to say, and feel the doctor might pass some sort of judgment on us. 

Whether it’s a rational fear or not doesn’t really matter, does it? One of the reasons many people seek out psychotherapy in the first place is to help combat irrational thoughts and fears, so in that context, it makes sense many of share this fear of being judged or embarrassed.

And yet, if you do nothing else in therapy, you should find some kind of way to share this sort of pertinent information with your therapist. It doesn’t have to be in the first session. But it does have to happen at some point.

Your therapist won’t judge you, and they won’t be embarrassed by what you tell them. They won’t criticize you for not sharing this information with them sooner. All they will do is use it to find a way to better help you and help you move forward.

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