Therapists Share The Things They Wish They Could Tell Their Patients

A therapist’s job is to help empower their patient to manage their problems. To do this, a therapist observes and analyzes their patient, but they usually don’t just come right out and say what they think of them. That’s not really the point. A therapist is supposed to help you reach conclusions on your own, not just spoon feed them to you.

Still, that doesn’t mean therapists don’t make judgments about their patients. Therapists are human beings and being judgmental is human nature! The trick is to not let your biases and opinions affect the treatment.

And that’s why the format of anonymous public confession is so handy. A therapist might not be able to tell a patient she thinks he’s a jerk, but she can tell the entire Internet, consequence-free. In a recent Reddit thread, Redditor u/Sandb4gger69 asked psychologists to share something they’d like to say to their patients but never could. And Reddit’s psychologists had a lot to say, posting over 3,000 replies.

Many of their replies were clearly written to vent about a difficult patient. But in some cases, you can tell a therapist feels like a patient’s problem is beyond the scope of therapy. Therapy is good for everyone, but it has its limitations just like everything else.