Why Don’t I "Offer A Non-judgemental Space"?
If you’re reading this article then you’ve probably gone online to shop for therapists before and seen that many of us offer a “non-judgemental space” for you to talk about… whatever you want to talk about.
I don’t claim to offer that, and I think I should explain why. If you're curious to see what I mean, I have profiles on on Counselling Directory and Psychology Today.
Perhaps it's no surprise that I've been a client as well as a therapist, so I've sat where you've sat. The term "non-judgemental" tends to evoke for me a certain sense of coldness or distance; a polite folding of a therapist's hands her lap with a subtext of, "I'll withold from judging you by not having an opinion in the first place, and for that I have to feel uninvolved in your story". But I've experienced both that (which, to be fair, achieves the goal of being non-judgemental) and an altogether different flavour of non-judgementalness of a therapist who responded to my... ramblings? Confessions? with an enthusiastic "Oh, that experience! Tell me all about it! What was it like for you?"
See the difference? While a therapist's job is to not judge, the second therapist of those two helped bring me out of myself far more effectively than the first.
The second therapist's entire vibe was of emotional safety, but she'd clearly had experience of similar issues to me, so how could she not have had judgements of her own? At other times, when I described experiences to her that she wasn't familiar with, she'd say, "I've never been through that, but it sounds intense/painful/[insert general descriptive word here]. What was it like?" And just like that it felt like she was going to take my words in, discover for herself how they felt to her, how she would feel if she found herself in the same situation, what her opinions would be, and yes, her judgements on the whole situation.
That sense of open engagement is what I aim to create with my clients: a therapeutic alliance born of curiosity. But I don't think saying "I offer a non-judgemental space" does a good job of encapsulating that sentiment, so I decided to write this article about it. I hope it's illustrated what I wanted to say.
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