Is your T genuine?

I feel like my current T is pretty genuine. Even though I pay her to listen to me I still feel like she is genuine.

How would you know whether the personality the person shows as a therapist is theirs or their therapist persona? I don't see that it matters, but I don't think people are as good as knowing as some seem to think.
Genuine in what way? They certainly work to be perceived a certain way, like most other professionals or even people in their non professional lives, but I don't think it is easy to tell and I give them credit for being very wily at clients. I hear descriptions of therapists who I know in real life from their clients- and the client usually is fairly off base in the situations I know about. Both in the way Jaybird described and just in how the therapist friends have described their job as a form of acting.

I agree that people CAN act very different in their professional versus personal lives, but that is real work to make yourself seem a different person depending on who you are portraying yourself to. Maybe that makes it seem a bigger deal than it is, but I am a preschool teacher and clearly 2 year olds see a very soft, gentle person who only raises her voice when it is necessary. Obviously they don't see me as a person who swears like it is a second job, or has massive road rage, or cuts herself...etc...I guess someone could see that as me being two different people, but really, my job brings out the best in me in some ways. I am "forced" to be kind and gentle because these are little, tiny things, but I am not acting non-genuine either.

There is no way I could be a preschool teacher without actually caring about toddlers. For T's who truly care about their job and are "genuine" in the room, they probably portray the best of themselves as I do, but that doesn't also mean it is false. We see a very specific side of them, but I think that is ok. Though I will say my T easily points out her faults. I just sent her an e-mail last week because I was scared she thought I was a terrible teacher because last week I just had HAD IT with the kids in the afternoon, and "yelled" at them to go to the carpet, and had to have a serious talk about not shouting and banging trucks around. I told my T that i didn't yell so much as raise my voice against the din and used my "firm" voice at the children.

She wrote back that it was totally normal, and I should hear how she yells at her kids. That made me feel better, because I constantly am striving to be a calm, zen teacher around 13 two-year olds, and it is HARD sometimes.

Sorry, a bit off tangent!

I know I NEEDED to believe my T cared, I needed to believe she was a genuine person. I thought I couldn't be hurt if she cared, I thought that I wanted my story to be heard, really heard by someone who would soothe som e of the wounds with caring about how I felt. When I read posts on here that suggested otherwise I would feel very panicked because to trust my T and relax that I was safe I had to believe.

Well she hurt me anyway, very badly, and so now I know that caring and being genuine doesn't protect you BUT I also think it was worth trying it and that one day I may even risk trusting again. I also don't worry if new T is genuine as long as I can count on her to be a T then I'm ok.

I really don't mean to scare anyone. I look at it this way--in life, there are always people who will be false in their presentation. They know how to act or behave in order to get what they need out of life, and they know how to hide or put on a persona that is "acceptable". People like that are in all walks of life, in all professions. Psychotherapists are no different than others--there are good, genuine, caring and compassionate therapists and there are false ones. Sometimes we know which is which, and sometimes not.

I figure that if my therapist is good at her job, if she's compassionate and caring and if she doesn't make snide, judgmental remarks to my face, then I can use her skills to help myself deal with my life more effectively. What I don't need or want to do is tie myself up in knots trying to read her mind or interpret every word, inflection or expression she uses in an attempt to determine whether or not she's being truthful and genuine. That would drive me over the emotional cliff! What counts for me is how she behaves when she's with me. People who aren't genuine usually give themselves away over time . . .or at least they do in my experience. I have no problem walking away from someone--therapist or friend--who proves that the trust I put in them was misplaced.

That was a great post, Velcro. It reminds me of an incident with one of my colleagues. I really really respected her and early in my career, I learned a lot from her on how to work effectively with children with severe emotional and behavioral problems. She was just so darn calm, compassionate and gentle with the kids. She had great boundaries, but the kids just loved hanging out in her office because she was so respectful of them. I remember telling her once how much I respected her and she laughed and said, "You should have seen me running up the stairs after my daughter (teenager) last night yelling and telling her she was grounded. You wouldn't have been so impressed with me then!" What that taught me is that she could have that tenderness and compassion in the professional setting, and she had it in her personal life, but sometimes, in real life, she wasn't able to hang onto that persona--in other words, she was human. I think it is easier to step into a clinical setting, put on one's therapeutic persona and be the caring, empathetic and non-judgmental person the client expects and needs for their session time.

When I say genuine, I don't mean doing or saying anything that comes to mind at that instant. You can be polite and professional and still be genuine.

I think it's really important to be genuine. I don't like acting. I want to know the person I am with, and I want them to know me. It's that simple. Acting gets in the way. We don't have to say everything, but what we say should be true.

I realize that some people are used to acting all the time.

I actually prefer it that the ones I see are acting. They are not real to me and I am not to them - they are in a role to me as I am to them. For me, it is the thing that allows it to happen at all.
I don't consider acting a bad thing in a professional. I am not saying they are all awful people as therapists or in real life and acting does not imply they are. Their job is to play a part - that is all I mean.

JaneTennison1, That's exactly what I need. I really need someone to hear me, and care about me in some way. I understand my therapist can't give me everything I need, but if she is really personally there for me in a professional capacity, it's huge.

This is what I was thinking as I read through the thread. I know a couple of therapists as acquaintances who are in a couple of groups I'm in. Neither of them act with much integrity. I know someone who sees one of them as a T and loves her. I question in my head how that can be true, because I know the woman and she's not very kind or genuine! I also think about my professional self. My colleagues and others who know me see me as a successful, master teacher who coaches new teachers and has high impact in the classroom. They have no idea that the past six months I can barely put one foot in front of the next and half the time wish I was dead. Our Ts could be putting on their professional facade when in the office and we really might not know anything but that part of who they are.

The therapist I know outside her practice has a real act--bragging about her compassion and caring like an actress playing a role. Yet she is narcissistic, juvenilely grandiose and viciously competitive. I cringe at the thought of this arrested development specimen with vulnerable clients, for I doubt she has a genuinely empathic bone in her body. (Ironically, she goes out of her way to seek me out and antagonize me).

I'm trying to formulate a reply to this thread - it is a topic that has had a lot of impact on me over the last few years: not my T's genuineness, but my own... I'm thinking that genuine is a concept that is hard to nail down, and I don't think that honesty and genuineness are necessarily that closely related...
A lot is being said here about acting, but without genuine emotion you can't act. The character an actor is playing may not be real, but the emotion is - that's what makes a great actor; the ability to understand and portray emotion...
Is my T genuine? Am I genuine? In my. In my very first session with him (it was a couples' session with the stbx), he told me I was not being genuine and I started to cry. I didn't understand what he meant. As far as I understood at the time I was being completely honest. I suppose, in hindsight I was not being true to myself, I was hiding from myself. I was desperately trying to believe an awful situation was something it was not. But in hindsight I also know I had no choice at the time. I was surviving the only way I could. I was genuinely doing my best.
So what is genuine anyway. Be true to yourself I suppose. Do the best you can for yourself. I choose to believe my T is his genuine self. I truly think he is, but that is my judgement. He has helped me greatly. Saved my life in a way. He has his own issues I know - I see chinks in the armor here and there, but I don't trouble myself with that. He is only human, kinda like me.

I simply see genuinity as someone else mentioned - a consistency and congruence in how a person behaves, whatever the situation - someone who is true and sincere in their approach to people. When I encounter individuals who say one thing, but do the other, their sincerity and the genuinity of their belief and philosophy and character comes into question for me.

I've been fortunate to work with three very genuine therapists. I saw their consistency and the genuine behavior, reflective of their beliefs about life. That in no way means they attested to being perfect nor were they, but they had a strong sense of ethics and morality that came across not just in their interaction with me, but those around them, their coworkers, their families, etc. These were therapists who reached beyond those 50 minutes and the confines of their office walls to help and support not just me, but to work in service to others, to their family, their church, their community. I was in a position to see them in other environments and venues enough to get a strong sense that they were people who weren't just putting on an act for their clients; they really were who they appeared to be, even on "the outside" of those sessions. Their personalities were pretty consistent no matter where they were or who they were interacting with -- not perfect, just true to themselves.

I encountered several therapists along the way who did not feel genuine at all. They reeked of insincere empathy, showy pity, seemed almost immediately to need to prove they related to me, etc. It was pretty clear they were working practically off a script from some therapy technique class that had trained them very poorly on how to act genuine and act empathetic, but it felt strongly stilted and very much like a facade for the hour. I've seen similar behavior from other helping "professionals" who were just going through the motions: doctors, nurses, teachers, ministers. I think years of seeing the difference between that and those truly genuine individuals has helped me be very attuned to people who are merely going through the motions as opposed to those who are being real, being straight, being genuine. I saw too many of the former in the hospitals and schools and churches I been in where I, or my parents, had to run interference in advocacy for the people those "helpers" were insincerely "treating" which led to me being impatient with anything but the real deal.

The OP's original question was "Is YOUR T genuine?" and to that many of us feel very confident in answering "yes" because we have experience a consistency and sincerity in our own therapists words and actions. Other people are less certain about their own therapists. I don't believe anyone can answer that original question, though, for anyone but themselves in their own experience with their own therapist. Not all therapists are genuine; that would seem to be a given. By that same token, I personally don't believe all are not genuine as my own personal experience is to have seen therapists on both sides of the coin.

I would like to point out - as was just mentioned - that I was giving the response I have to the ones I see. I said nothing at all about your therapist or anyone else's in the response that you quoted.

It took me YEARS to be convinced that my t cared about me. I tested her in so many ways, over and over. I set her up for failure again and again just so that I could prove that she didn't actually care about me. We had a few ruptures but I eventually realized that she had no ulterior motive and actually did mean what she said. I never was afraid of what she secretly thought of me. I was more concerned as to whether she was just doing her job or if she really cared about me and my well-being.

Thank you!
I agree with all of this, but especially the bolded part.

I have also been on the "inside" of the professional therapeutic community and witnessed this type of behavior and humor as well. It was interesting how genuine a therapist could appear to a patient/client and how they would say disparaging things behind their back. So i would feel very arrogant assuming that i know someone else is genuine because no one can really know what another person is thinking. It probably doesn't really matter if the client feels helped by the therapist and really believes they are being genuine, but it is unsettling to me.

I also wonder if people just get better at hiding their true selves over time. They become better actors as time goes on. Who knows really.

I experience my T as genuine. She seems able to acknowledge her own blocks and misunderstandings to a human extent.

I know lots of Ts personally because of the work I do (I'm a counsellor). Most of those I would say are genuine, boundaried types, and I know one who is a total arse.

I apologize, SD. I thought you used "they" to mean all Ts. I realize after rereading your post that you were referring to your two Ts only. I also meant demeaning to my T, not to me, because I know she believes she is genuine, and so do I think she is.

I trust my T and I believe she's not faking.