Wanting to be the perfect client

Hi everyone!

I am fairly new to therapy (only about six months in). This is the first time I've experienced it and I've never gone to any kind of counseling or therapy before, so I am still learning about the ins and outs of the therapeutic relationship. I've initially found it strange having someone just completely focused on you for an hour. It made it difficult to open up at first and I kept reciprocating with questions and comments - as you would in a normal, every day relationship. My T would patiently point this out to me whenever I do it.

I am noticing however that I tend to try and act like what I perceive to be the "perfect client". I am never late, I am always polite, I listen, I push myself to talk about what needs to be talked about, I try to answer questions directly, I keep my composure, I try to be objective when I tell stories - and tend not to lay blame on others, I pay on time, I always make sure I leave sessions on time, I only e-mail when there's a scheduling concern.

But that's probably not always good and I am not being as genuine as I should be and I just tend to bury my insecurities instead of working through them. Do you notice this in your therapeutic relationship?

When I first started therapy, this was absolutely me. I would do anything and everything to be perfect/try to make T like me. As time went on though, I realized this wasn’t serving me well and started becoming more and more genuine/true to my feelings. Sometimes it’s really embarrassing to tell the T what your thoughts actually are, especially if you fully realize they are unhealthy or “weird.” But the only way that a T can truly help you heal is through full honesty, in my opinion and experience.

Best of luck to you in your therapy endeavors! Starting out is the hardest step!

No - I never did that. I pay them to sit there. Whatever else I do or what they think of me is just not a big deal to me.

But I don't think it unusual. Here is a blog post by a therapist blogger I despise - but some seem to like him:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...therapy-client

I drove myself cray trying to be the perfect client, including getting my psychologist personal friend to write me a list of what makes the best client. I read about 100 psych books etc too. I wanted an A+ in therapy. Posts here by BudFox and StopDog helped a lot with being more of a critical thinker, but I am still kind of frightened by the relationship, and mystified by it too. I a at one year and a half, and I still struggle and struggle to understand what the heck is going on in the room.

I think a number of the things you mentioned are behaviors everyone should demonstrate as best they can - being on time, paying promptly, leaving on time, not emailing between sessions. The reason I say this is imagine if every client did the opposite! The only thing that seems like it might need more improvement is expressing your emotions. And by this, I do not mean expressing them through your behavior in a messy, passive-aggressive way. I certainly wouldn't look to the people who frequent this subforum for advice on how to change your therapeutic relationship (and yes, I'm totally being a hypocrite here).

So this isn't messily passive aggressive toward the people of this PC subform, but more just neat & cleanly directly aggressive?

I did a double take when I read this—did I write this in my sleep last night? I identify so much, I could have 100% written this myself!

I do think there’s some value to examining maybe a deeper need here, perhaps it’s a need to overly please others. Me personally, I have a strong work ethic, so I started and continue to do therapy knowing there’s a great deal of work involved and that I enjoy doing this work. I will say the desire to please incrementally went away over time, although I’m only 7 months into weekly sessions with my therapist (this is also my first stint in therapy.) Part of dropping this need to please was getting more comfortable with my therapist—I’m slow to trust in general + having a bad experience with a brief lived former T= me taking months and months to let my therapist see the “true me.” I’m also an overly polite person, and while I don’t think this is a bad trait, it sometimes leads to a lot of perhaps unnecessary concerns that I’m boring my therapist. I find I’m at the point just within the last month or so where I’ve finally stopped being insanely nervous for appointments, and found myself being much more relaxed and less concerned with pleasing my therapist.

My two cents overall is to give it more time, you may find yourself increasingly more comfortable as time goes on. Best of luck to you, my fellow ideal therapy client.

Yes, although to be fair, it's also self-aggressive.

Edit: And I did say I was being a hypocrite.

I don't think there's anything wrong with emailing between sessions when support is needed, and I wouldn't compare it to being late or not paying bills. My T doesn't even consider it ethical not to offer out of session contact and he is always prompt in replying to email. [ETA: He does keep his replies brief, which I'm sure is how he keeps client emails manageable. That's up to them to manage though.]

However the emotions come forward, I think it carries information with it. My insecurities about whether my T liked me or enjoyed working with me came out in a scathing tirade against therapy, but the strength of my emotions surely helped him understand how strongly affected I was by these worries. The panic attack I had immediately following no doubt gave him some good information as well. And I also gained an enormous amount of trust in him because he handled that difficult and messy session with complete calmness and no defensiveness of his own. After I had recovered, I felt elated to think I had such an excellent T. Sometimes the messy sessions can be among the most helpful ones we have.

What are you afraid will happen if you are not the perfect client?

I've read a few articles written by him and I do not like him either. He kind of comes across as condescending.

This particular article does make sense though.

Thank you for the link!

So true. I can relate to getting an A+ in therapy so much. No idea why I do it

I'll have to think about that. I'm not really sure, to be honest.

I guess it has something to do with feeling like I failed. I came into therapy treating it like a job I need to get done by a certain deadline, or a class I am taking where I need to meet the teacher's expectations so I can get a decent grade.

I started off wanting to please my T but never really knowing what the "rules" were. Gradually (so gradually!) I started to take risks around showing her my true self. It helped (??) when she eventually made a small mistake and I got really angry and then a bunch of helpful, good stuff came out of it as we processed what happened and repaired the relationship. That was when I realized that what she really, truly wants is for me to be myself and really engage with therapy, even when that gets messy.

My T thinks that me reaching out when I need help is a good thing, so she encourages contact between sessions when I feel the need. I also don't need to take care of her by keeping time or being objective. I swear a lot. Sometimes I tell her that I think she's wrong. I try to respect her (and I do pay promptly), but I let her do her job and be the therapist. I think she likes when I show her the complicated stuff. If she didn't want to deal with real feelings and difficult topics, then she would have picked another line of work.

I often think of being the perfect client. I do have a fear of being abandoned by him, and I guess I figure that if I'm "perfect" he won't do that. But then inevitably he will say something that totally pisses me off, and the the desire to be perfect goes out the window and the desire to prove myself right and him wrong takes over.

Having to be perfect starts in childhood.