Signs You’re Moving Too Fast or Slow with Therapy Clients

Lisa Marie Bobby:   Something we are all vulnerable to as therapists can be moving too fast with our clients or moving too slow with our clients, which can lead to less than ideal outcomes. This is something that can be difficult to balance. because we want to be as helpful and effective as possible and help our clients move through the work as easily and effortlessly as we can.

And at the same time, we can also sometimes be diving in so deeply in ways that are not always useful for people or that don’t always make sense for them, which can slow the work down and create a different kind of frustration. So on today’s show, today’s episode of love, happiness, and success for therapists, we’re going to be tackling this really common issue in the spirit of, how to be a better therapist.

This is one of the things we all need to have visibility into and self awareness around. so that we can manage the speed, the pace of our work with our clients in order to help it be successful for them and satisfying for us. And that’s what we’re talking about today. So I’m so glad you’re here and welcome to the show.

If this is your first time, I’m Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby. I’m the founder of growing self counseling and coaching. I myself am a licensed marriage and family therapist. I’m also a licensed psychologist, and I’m a clinical supervisor, and I have been running this group, Private Practice Growing Self Counseling and Coaching, for years now, and also for a long time been the host of the Love, Happiness, and Success podcast.

podcast, which is really for, regular people on a path of growth. So we talk about many things over there, I have had such a strong mission and a heart for really serving clinicians for therapists through my practice. And so much of my time is devoted to supporting their growth and wellbeing, professional development, personal development.

Self of therapist stuff. I love it and it occurred to me a while ago, why am I not doing a podcast for therapists? So here I am with you and for you and every single week we are talking about. The unique challenges and growth opportunities, but also the amazing rewards that can be found in our shared profession.

And this podcast is all about supporting you as a therapist. In terms of your emotional well being, personal well being, professional well being, so that you can reclaim your joy and love what you do because you deserve that and you’re doing amazing work in the world. So you deserve support and that’s why we’re here.

And so I really wanted to talk about our topic today around the pace of therapy and how to know if we’re going too slow or too fast with our clients, because this is a really common issue that I frequently see colleagues, in consultation groups or just one on one consultation or certainly in clinical supervision.

This, it’s a thing and what I’ve found over the years is that many times we don’t even realize we’re doing it on either side, but our clients get stuck and We don’t get visibility into why I recorded an episode last time around why clients get stuck and we explore different facets of this But I really wanted to talk about moving too fast or too slow as its own separate thing Because that can also be a really significant Contributor to why the work can sometimes feel harder than it should So whether you’re a seasoned therapist or just starting out in your career, this episode is packed with all kinds of insights and practical advice to help you navigate this delicate balance of pushing enough, challenging enough and supporting growth without going overboard and without becoming so insight oriented, depth oriented.

slow in a way that your client doesn’t want or need that can also be a barrier to doing good work. So let’s dive right in. So as we all know, as therapists our primary goal is to create a supportive and transformative space for our clients. And we want to be catalysts for change, right? I think that therapists, just as a I don’t know.

We don’t want to stereotype all of us in one clump and in my experience seems like just our loving, compassionate, caring people who also have a very strong sense of responsibility, right? We understand that clients are trusting us to support their growth and development and We want to do that. We want to be that for them.

And we are here to guide them through their struggles and help them find their path to healing and growth. And sometimes in our eagerness to help our desire to see them succeed, it can lead us to inadvertently and even unconsciously rushing the process. And that’s to pause and reflect. So the top signs that you could be pushing your clients too fast can be subtle, but they’re really crucial to recognize.

For instance, if you feel pressure to create change, If you, this is self therapist stuff, but if you doubt your abilities as a therapist, if there’s like a certain insecurity there, which is very common, I think an expected developmental stage that we all go through as counselors, right? But if we have those anxieties and also sometimes witnessing our clients.

in pain. Any of these things can be emotional triggers in us that makes us go into fix it mode. We want to fix it. And so we start moving too fast. We start pushing too hard, but it’s really important to remember that real growth is a process. And it takes time. The other thing that can lead us to rush that’s related here is also can be related to our own feelings and our own needs.

And this is getting into deep self of therapist territory, needs to be said out loud that if we are facing our feelings of self worth or self esteem on doing a good job, which many conscientious type A gold star people do, which is often, the cohort coming out of counseling school, we can subconsciously desire our clients to be making progress in a way that validates.

It’s our own self concept, our own self esteem, our own feelings of self worth. This isn’t a bad thing. I think everybody on some level does that. You put so much into this career and wanting affirmation, yes, I am good at this, is. It’s absolutely understandable. So it’s not wrong that those feelings are coming up, but where we all have to be conscious is when we are aware of these tendencies and aware that they are leading us to maybe push or desire change for our client, that is.

It’s not appropriate to where they are in their therapeutic process and just to own that. This is the reason why we need a strong professional support group around us to help us shine a light, and in an emotionally safe and compassionate way, give visibility into whether or not our stuff is coming into this equation so that we can say, yes.

I really like to do a good job and I need to slow down because this isn’t about me, right? Another important self of therapist issue that is very salient here can be related to our own feelings of discomfort. I think as a whole, most counselors that I know are unusually comfortable with dark emotions.

We’re good. We can talk, people cry in front of us and emote and it’s fine. It’s. It’s completely fine. I think it’s also important to be sensitive to and aware of whether or not you are comfortable with other people really being in a lot of pain and being okay to allow them to be in that pain for a while without feeling the need to rush in and try to fix it or change it or make it better.

Some counselors, not me, of course, but some counselors arrived into this, being forged in the fire of family systems where we needed to be helpers and we were in a helping role. We were the emotional support animals for one or both parents, right? And so these roles are familiar to us.

and we’re really good at managing the emotions of other people. We might, inadvertently, be trying to do that with our clients sometimes. And, above and beyond our own stuff, which is worth unpacking, if you haven’t done any of that work already, but I think it’s also a natural human instinct, particularly for empathetic and compassionate people like you, to want to alleviate pain of others.

But, as therapists, we need to resist the urge to rush in and save our clients from their dark moments and from their own feelings. Our job sometimes is to push people in to their dark feelings and dark emotions because that’s really where the action happens. That’s where the catalyst of growth occurs and by just reminding ourselves of that sometimes that it’s.

In these moments of pain or sitting with dark emotions that give birth to true growth and healing. We can intellectually know that, but sometimes, just to be in the presence of someone who’s really hurting, especially somebody that we care about, those old instincts can kick in and we jump into helping.

And, that brings us to the other piece is the importance of patience in the therapeutic process. Real meaningful change always takes time. It is a journey. It is not an event. And especially for clients who have old, deep. stuff, they have experienced neglect or trauma, especially in their early years.

This journey might be measured in years, many years even. And It might involve revisiting, processing, going back into, different developmental stages. There can be a reparenting component. And in these kinds of situations with these kinds of clients, it’s vital to go slow and to maintain a lot of safety and security and really use the relationship.

Self as the vehicle of growth and healing. It’s a reparenting process. And so the other piece is that even in the absence of what, really objectively is going to be a long term client because of what they need and being okay with that. Or, if you’re really not okay with that, and if you don’t want to be that person for someone to, identify that as early on as possible and make an appropriate referral, right?

But otherwise, get comfy and get ready to settle in for a long road. And then additionally, with regards to going too fast sometimes, I think aside from those situations it’s also very vital for us to be assessing our client’s current skills and capacities, but also their readiness for change.

Be sensitive to where they are in this process, be talking about it overtly, but also prepared to slow down and be ready to teach them how to do things. That will help them move forward that they might not know because when we move too fast as therapists, we may have subconscious Expectations that our clients would be able to do the thing Calm down when you’re feeling upset practice self soothing, whatever that is without fully understanding That there are a lot of like micro skills and different components that go into being able to do that in a realistic way.

And so to, especially if you’re like do this and it’s not happening, to slow down and really get a more clear understanding of what your client has and what they don’t have, because that is how we can really help them move forward, but by slowing down. We can’t make assumptions that they already know things that we know or that seem obvious to us and just that, embracing that every client is unique and their journey with us is going to be unique as well.

And that sometimes it just legitimately takes a long time to work through all of this and it’s for it and it’s back and it’s, it’s a twisting road. Signs that you might be moving too fast. So we talked about signs, things coming up in you that could contribute to maybe too fast but other things that you might see in the work, if you have clients that are consistently failing to follow through with like homework assignments or to do’s outside of the therapy room, it’s time to reassess.

It could be a sign that they’re not ready for the pace you set. They are. In a, insight oriented self awareness phase and if you’re pushing them to be, okay now what? And it’s not working, that could work. If they seem to not be making connections or also like sometimes withdrawing from the work itself, these are all opportunities for you to back up, reassess, find out what’s really going on, what your client needs, and then, move more slowly going forward.

Now, of course, there’s also a flip side is that in addition to Going too fast. It can also be easy to fall into patterns where we are moving too slow for our clients, which can be just as detrimental to them as moving too fast. It can lead to frustration, stagnation, this feeling of being stuck, the time, the energy, the expense, and this can be particularly true for high functioning people, high functioning clients who are really eager to come in and make changes and move forward in their lives.

And what sometimes this can be attached to going back to these self of therapist issues. And I have definitely, I think done this. It goes back to these like self awareness pieces, I, I’m a learner, I’m curious, I’m interested in people, I want to know all the details and I want to understand what makes people tick and I want to hear all the stories and I think for me.

Being able to help people connect the dots and gain insight and self awareness into themselves, it feels very gratifying. But I think also there have been points in my career with some clients where because it’s interesting for me and because I value insight oriented work or, Have a fondness for experiential work and throw in some psychodynamic stuff in there.

I could probably spend a lot of time talking about histories and family of origin experiences and old stuff that might not always be that interesting or relevant feeling to my clients. So I need to be aware of that and be really actively checking with my clients around what do they need?

What do they want? And certainly if there is a basis from going deep in and getting more information that can be really important and, certainly giving myself permission to do that, but also realize that, am I. spending too much time and energy on, collecting information and understanding things that is starting to feel like an obstruction to doing the work itself that the client has come here to do with me.

So all on that one. And I don’t know if that feels familiar to you or not. Signs that you might be moving too slowly. If your client is expressing frustration with therapy, saying things like, I don’t know if this is working, I’m not seeing any progress pay attention to that, have those conversations.

Or if you find yourself constantly bringing the conversation back to early life experiences or focusing solely on insight oriented work or like history or assessment gathering, it might be time to reassess your approach and say, Okay. I probably know enough to be helpful to this person in moving forward in a way that’s meaningful to them.

And then I will also say that another reason why this moving too slow thing can happen is if you are a therapist who practices Slow, insight oriented, psychodynamic, experiential, attachment based forms of psychotherapy who generally works with longer term clients who have deeper trauma or abuse or neglect or attachment injury backgrounds.

Like this is long work. This is what you do and you probably like doing it and you’re probably really good at doing it. And so I think sometimes When we have a hammer everything looks like a nail because this is what we know how to do and may miss the fact that you could be working with a client who could benefit from a much more active approach, something like coaching instead of therapy, they are here to identify goals, identify obstacles, make a plan for how to achieve a different outcome and the therapy that you know how to do is different than that is different than what they want and need.

And so that sort of mismatch, like you’re just naturally a tortoise or a turtle and they’re that rabbit. They’re like, okay, let’s do this, just to be able to notice that. And I think have healthy humility of the fact that there are different approaches, just like there are different therapeutic modalities, right?

And sometimes therapy is when. thousand percent the best path forward, but to just have that self awareness of who you are as a therapist and how you operate and understanding that there are different approaches, coaching modalities, and that some clients really want and need that kind of approach, which is fantastic.

That will help create so many positive things for them. Finding the middle ground with all those things we’ve just been talking about. How do we figure out that just right place? I think that it always begins with having open and honest conversations with our clients about first of all, coming into it, their hopes for this, their expectations, what they imagine it will be, what they want to get out of this to identify from the beginning.

Is this a therapy client? Are we going to be doing mental health treatment? Are we doing healing or is this person here to create changes and better outcomes in which case they might be a coaching client? But so if you can define that right off the bat, it’s going to create a lot of clarity for both of you.

But from that point, asking if they have previous experiences and personal growth work, what works for them. And also as things go forward, asking them how they’re experiencing it. How is this going from their perspective, find out what they expect from you, what feels productive to them, and then tailor your approach accordingly.

And also notice, some of the things we were talking about, like those signs, if you’re leaning one way or the other way, because just noticing that can help you course correct, but you have to be aware of it. In order to be able to do that. And I think too, just remembering that the therapy or coaching for that matter, it’s not a one size fits all thing.

Different clients need different things, and it’s crucial to be a versatile practitioner and able to move between different therapeutic modalities or shift into a coaching mode. If that would really be more helpful because this flexibility. Is key to being able to meet the unique needs of each client and helping them on their journey of growth and change.

And I’m not suggesting that we all need to be all things to all people. I think there’s a ton of wisdom and courage and understanding who we are and what our limits are so that we can have those conversations with clients if we need to. But within the scope of our practice, our skill set of what we do, being more than a one trick pony is what I’m trying to say, and having a number of different tools and approaches in your tool belt so that you can shift and be flexible in response to the approach that would really be more helpful for each individual client sitting in front of you.

And speaking of that, growth and change and evolution, I think that what we’re talking about today, gaining this self awareness, fast, slow, understanding the boundaries is just an example of why it’s so important for us as therapists to be embracing our support systems, continued learning and development in our own professional journeys.

A big part of what we were talking about today has to do with self of therapist issues and how those can come up and change what’s happening in the room with our clients. And so if you don’t have a space to talk about those things, get visibility into them. It can be difficult to get the kind of self awareness that you need in order to be able to grow in this profession.

So that’s really important. And I would suggest. seeking that out. If you’re not already in a consultation group or don’t have a consultation partner, these are the things I think we all need in order to flourish and thrive in this profession so that we can continue to grow. And additionally, being open to learning different approaches and modalities that can contribute to your own versatility and flexibility, whether or not it’s, learning different therapeutic orientations so that you have more than one way of being as a therapist, or even looking into coaching certification and credentialing, it can help you.

Again, just have more opportunities to help different people in different ways. And I think too, that these are some of the things that create the kind of experience that we want to have of growth, of love, of happiness and success for ourselves as therapists. When we’re engaging in these kinds of activities with a professional community, with continuing education, this is what.

Part of what keeps us healthy and and zesty and, enjoying what we do. I hope that this discussion is helpful for you and illuminated some things to think about regarding the pace of this work. And if you would like more, I have so much more for you. I have put together a whole bunch of different informational articles and podcast playlists on my website.

It’s growingself. com forward slash therapist. And there you’ll also be able to find an assessment that I put together for you how to flourish and thrive as a therapist. So it’s a bunch of questions. And when you take it. It will give you some visibility into your own growth areas as a therapist so that you have some information and insight and guidance for yourself.

You spend so much time and energy giving that to other people like, Hey, you need some of that too. So it gives you a reflective opportunity to think about what you need, maybe what you already have and what’s worth building into your world and your life and your professional experience so that you can love this.

You deserve to love what you do and I am here to help you and I will be back next week with another episode of love, happiness, and success for therapists. But in the meantime, thank you so much for tuning in. Oh, and if you want to join the conversation, you can jump into the comments at growingself. com in the therapist section, or you can find me, find us on Instagram, Facebook LinkedIn, look for growing underscore.

Self on Instagram, I believe it’s just growing self on Facebook and then certainly on LinkedIn. So join the conversation. Okay. See you next time.