Therapist understands a client better than the client does?

My current therapist understands me pretty well, usually. Sometimes he'll say something that's completely off the mark but I have lost my dread of telling him he's wrong in those cases, and he has no problems with me doing that. Sometimes, on the other hand, he makes a remark that is completely spot on and makes me understand myself better. He never makes pronouncements about me as if they were true, though, rather he asks questions and makes suggestions. I think that he probably understands some aspects of me better than I can do myself, because I am too close to my own issues. When I was deep in depression a couple of years ago, a good friend of mine - the only person other than T who knew I was depressed - said that he saw me as being in the centre of a mirror ball: I saw my own reflection but it was distorted on all sides. (Then, of course, we started discussing how such a reflection would work in reality.) I think there is something in that description though - I might see myself, but the inevitable distortion means that the image I get of myself is not always true.

My T once said that his job is to try to see the world the way I see it. From what I can tell he makes every effort to do so. And after three years, he does understand me better than any other person ever has. Still not as well as I understand myself, though, not as a whole.

We are lucky to have you keep asking such thought provoking questions.

I put other.

I think we have blindspots and my T has worked with me long enough that he picks up on them. Then he points them out and I'm like GAH! It's like when I was saying something to my H and he was like, "You're doing that to avoid X" and I was like, "Uh. Wait. Yeah. Dang it."

I don't think it's possible to understand someone better than they understand themselves because I don't think most people have that much info. That's why relationships of different sorts are a thing. We know some stuff. Someone else knows some stuff. We meet up and we swap notes.

my T often says that she knows me quite well .and knows how I think . I don't think she does at all and we will carry on about that at times . like about babies being born basically miserable

My t understands me very well, sometimes better than I know myself.

I voted sometimes. Meant to check "yes it's positive" too. There are many times where my T notices patterns before I do. She also tends to be more objective and sees me more clearly than I view myself because she doesn't view me through the lens of my history. She is able to see who I am beyond the anxiety, depression, distorted thinking, hypomania, and general self-loathing I still struggle with. She doesn't always get the view exactly right - sometimes she's off, and I'll tell her so. But, more often than not, she's seeing things in me before I see them myself.

YES - my t understands me soooo much more than i understand myself.

No they can't no their clients better. Yes they can observe us from a distance and notice things we don't but nobody knows somebody else, or what they really think about or desire.