As counselors, we have committed ourselves to helping others, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have
and emotional issues.
Many of us got into counseling because of our experiences with therapy, and we want to give back to others the good we found in it. But, we are not perfect people and we have our own problems. Going through therapy helps work out issues we may, and a continue to develop, while making sure we aren’t imposing any of our own struggles with our clients.
For example, maybe you are a therapist who grew up with an alcoholic parent. You may have seem to have dealt with the issues around that parent, but then you get a client who is alcoholic and has a child? Can you effectively work with that client without some of your experiences interfering with the therapeutic relationship? Counseling can help you work on your emotions without running the risk of countertransference.
Therapy can also help work through any implicit biases that we may hold. We do not want to harm our clients at all, and we must be open to seeing clients from varying backgrounds, but we also all hold biases. Counseling can help you identify those biases and work through them to ensure you are not harming clients.
Counseling is also a good self-care tool for therapists and helps them work out issues they may have with clients.
So to be a better therapist, find your own therapist.