The problem I see with therapists manipulating therapy and applying tools, this one "here", that one "there," is that I'm not a "thing"? When I walk into the room, believe me, you don't know what you are going to get so how can a therapist, spontaneously think, "Oh! Must apply humor here!"?

Many of us have known beginning or student therapists who appear "wooden" because, instead of listening and going with their own personality and guts, they're trying to do what they think they are being "taught", they're trying to apply tools like we're a complicated piece of machinery, and that just feels fake, to anyone on the receiving end. If you can't "tell", if something "works" (you feel better, less anxious and tense, from laughing), why care about how it comes to be?