How is therapy different from a friendship? Both are relationships. In both, you choose a partner. You tell the other person your deepest, darkest secrets. You try to get advice. It seems the same, right?
But it is not. Or it shouldn’t be. A therapeutic relationship is a professional relationship. A therapist is trained to listen to your concerns and to help you resolve those concerns through well identified goals and proven treatment methods. Some people come to therapy looking for advice. Giving advice, however, comes with responsibility for the outcome. A competent therapist will not tell you what to do. Rather he or she will ask you questions and help you examine your thoughts, feelings and history to come to a decision regarding your options for problem resolution. It is YOUR life, after all, not your therapist’s.
Similar to a friendship, therapy can provide you with a perspective different from your own. We often create our own suffering simply by the way we think about the events in our lives. There is rarely only one way to see a situation or one solution to a problem. Looking at what is happening in a new way can help you see options that are hidden to you. Unlike a friendship, however, a therapist is not emotionally involved in your life. A therapist is able to view the situation without the emotion that colors the way you, your friends and family see things. Family and friends can have an agenda, positive or negative, that affects the advice they give you. A therapist should have no vested interested in the outcome of your situation. And, part of the therapist’s job may be to offer harsh truths that you don’t want to consider. That is not to say that therapists don’t care and should not be compassionate and caring. After all, most therapists become one out of a genuine desire to help others and ease their life hurts. An effective therapeutic relationship requires that the therapist have the ability to maintain objectivity, a non-judgmental attitude and a positive regard for the people they work with.
There are other differences between a friendship and a therapeutic relationship as well. I don’t know about your friends, but some of mine will give an opinion, even if they don’t know anything about it! An effective therapist stays within his/her scope of practice. He or she will not give you legal advice or encourage you to buy one car or another, for example. Additionally, the therapeutic relationship comes with confidentiality. Your friends or family may let something you have told them slip in a conversation with others, but therapists are bound by ethics to protect your privacy and there can be significant consequences for those who do not.
It is important to pick a therapist you are comfortable with and to understand that there are boundaries in this relationship that are unlike others you engage in. Knowing these things can help you have a positive experience with therapy.
An Untangled Life 
Excellent Blog!!
Thanks for the feedback, Laurie. I think it is important to have a good fit with a therapist when facing the dark times in life.