Therapists in Therapy?

Is being in therapy a mark of personal defect? Or is it an indicator of strength? Dr. Steven Reidbord, a California psychiatrist, explores this question in a recent blog post on Psychologytoday.com. Reidbord describes a patient who asked him whether he had been in therapy himself. Behind that question was the patient’s feeling that if his doctor had been in therapy it would mark him as deficient, since the patient himself felt deficient because he was in therapy with Reidbord.

Many people share this feeling. They believe that they must be defective if they are in treatment and can’t just deal with their problems on their own. If they are coming to therapy twice a week, instead of once, well then they must be twice as defective. I think about it the opposite way. Why struggle alone with something when you can get help with it and possibly master it? Dr. Reidbord writes that chefs go to restaurants where meals are cooked by other chefs. Lawyers often have their own lawyers. What is the problem with shrinks having their own shrinks?

I myself often compare the person who believes it’s better to solve a problem on his or her own to an injured runner who feels a sharp pain in his ankle but believes that no sports medicine specialist can help him. He continues to run or devises his own cure for the injury, figuring out a way to work around the problem. Often, though, he’ll end up re-injuring himself. And when he finally does go to the doctor, the problem is worse. I feel the same way about psychological pain that I do about a sports injury: Rather than suffer alone, I think it’s better to seek help in reducing pain and suffering. And it makes sense to me that a psychotherapist who feels that therapy helps his patients would recognize its value in his own life.

I found Dr. Reidbord’s words refreshing as he tries to destigmatize therapy and mental illness. Does acknowledging that there is a behavior or emotion that is troubling you and that you need help managing mean you’re defective? Hardly. It means you’re human.