Can You Have a 'Real' Relationship With Your Therapist?
"Shrinking" offers a misleading stereotype of therapeutic relationships.
Posted June 5, 2025 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk
The television series "Shrinking" touches on a central question for many people in psychotherapy : whether their relationship with their therapists is real or whether the therapist only cares about them because they are being paid to do so.
The therapeutic relationship is an unusual one because it is designed to be a space in which people can make it “all about me,” and not have to worry whether the other person is also getting their needs met. Paying the fee gives people permission to relax into the role of being a patient. Although people sometimes talk longingly about receiving this kind of attention , it can be challenging to allow yourself to be cared for by someone else. Just think about the last time you were sick. What was it like to let someone else take care of you?
The creators of "Shrinking" suggest that a therapeutic relationship becomes more authentic to the extent that the therapist is willing to disclose personal information about herself. The protagonist is a therapist named Jimmy, who is going through a horribly difficult time in his life following the tragic death of his wife. He can barely manage his own life, much less care for his teenage daughter. Jimmy’s work with his patients is erratic and distracted at best. He decides that the way to reinvigorate his work as a therapist is to be more real with his patients, more authentically himself. Unfortunately, like many therapists who are not well-trained or in ongoing consultation, Jimmy decides that the best way to do this is to indiscriminately self-disclose to his patients. Jimmy begins revealing intimately personal aspects of his life to his patients and telling them exactly what he thinks they should do in their lives, often with disastrous results. When one of these recommendations backfires, causing a patient to lose his place to live, Jimmy decides that the answer is for the patient to move in with him.
Jimmy’s colleagues caution him repeatedly, challenging whether his new approach is for his patients' benefit or to soothe his own anxieties about being adequate and likable. Ignoring his colleagues, Jimmy pushes forward with his new approach. Unfortunately, the show endorses Jimmy’s unprofessional behavior by suggesting that his patients benefit from his lack of boundaries and glossing over the consequences of his bad judgment. For example, the patient that Jimmy took into his home is eventually forced to change therapists because his relationship with Jimmy was too compromised for him to get the help he needed.
What would a real relationship with your therapist look like?
While there is significant research supporting the idea that a more personal, even intimate relationship between patient and therapist is beneficial for psychotherapy, an authentic therapeutic relationship is not as simple as the therapist being more self-disclosing. It is helpful to differentiate between historical and relational self-disclosure by the therapist. Historical self-disclosure is when the therapist discloses information from his life outside the therapeutic relationship. For example, if a patient talks about concerns about abuse of alcohol , a therapist might disclose, “I am in recovery myself and work a 12-step program.” The implication is that because the therapist shares these external life experiences, she is more likely to understand the patient’s internal experience. The problem is that different people frequently go through similar situations but have radically different internal experiences. You do not need to have lived through the same kinds of experiences as someone else to understand how they feel, and having been through a similar experience may actually get in the way of your understanding what it was like for someone else.
Experiential psychotherapists believe that historical self-disclosure by the therapist is an avoidance of the core relational work of psychotherapy. They pioneered the development of relational self-disclosure, what they called “the therapist’s use of self,” in which the therapist discloses her in-the-moment experience of the relationship with the patient. For example, I worked with a young woman whose therapy was primarily focused on the question of when her boyfriend would propose to her. She came back after Christmas, beaming, showing me her engagement ring. She noticed that I was not very responsive and asked me what was wrong. I confessed that I felt embarrassed about not sharing her enthusiasm. She burst into tears and said, sobbing, “I’m pretty sure he’s not the right guy.”
How do you know if your relationship with your therapist is real?
Excerpted, in part, from Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men's Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships. Lasting Impact Press.
To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory .
Felder, R. & Weiss, A.G. (1991). Experiential Psychotherapy: A Symphony of Selves. University Press of America.
Heyward, C. (1995). When Boundaries Betray Us: Beyond Illusions of What Is Ethical in Therapy and Life. Harper San Francisco.
Weiss, A.G. (2011). Change Happens: When to Try Harder and When to Stop Trying So Hard. Rowman & Littlefield.
Weiss, A.G. (2022). Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men’s Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships. Lasting Impact Press.
Whitaker, C. & Malone, T. (1981). The Roots of Psychotherapy. Taylor & Francis Group.
Winnicott, D.W. (1994) Hate in the Counter-Transference. J Psychother Pract Res. 3(4):348–356.
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Avrum Weiss, Ph.D. , is a psychotherapist and speaker who writes about the internal lives of men and their intimate relationships.
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