Therapists Reveal The Stories That Quietly Broke Their “No Judgment” Rule

Couples counseling; parents of a baby (4 or 5 months old). We are halfway in our session when I ask them about their baby.
Mom: she is in bed right now.
Me: ah, grandparents babysitting?
Dad: no, she is at home alone. Nothing can happen to her. We bought a special mattress, one where she (baby) cannot suffocate
Me: mouth open... staring at them for a couple of seconds. Then: how long did it take you to get here?
Mom: 15 mins or so.
Me: alright, the session is over. I want you guys to go home immediately and call me when you arrive. Please hurry. And Never ever leave your baby alone!

When I was under age, I got caught with a drink on bourbon street and got a minor in possession.

I was telling my therapist about it, and said that the police caught me with a "hand grenade" in New Orleans. He didn't realize that a hand grenade was a type of drink, and it was funny to watch him try to process that his patient might have just casually told him that he had been caught with a fragmentation grenade. He took a big long pause, and said, "where did you even find a grenade?"

I realized the misunderstanding quickly and corrected him. But for a moment he definitely was thinking "holy s**t how do I deal with this?".

I guess I do judge sometimes. But never the patients who have serious problems. I have the hardest time being a good therapist for those with issues like “I am so upset my husband only lets me have $10k a month for shopping,” or “my kid gets B grades and I’m so upset,” or “I feel so depressed because my favorite tv show is off the air.” I realize that this may actually be the worst thing they’ve experienced, and everyone who asks for help should get it... but yeah, I judge. And that’s not right. So now I work with Veterans as well as s*x offenders so that I can feel useful, and I never feel like I’m judging them. I feel like I’m serving my country and preventing horrific crimes. Now that I typed that out, I see I have some personal work to do on myself!

I work with kiddos who have experienced some kind of abuse/trauma (90% of my clients have been SA'd). I have a lot of holy s**t moments but not from judgment of my clients but from what happened to them.

I’ve had clients whose father made them help him dismember mom’s body after dad m******d her in front of them. I’ve had clients under the age of 8 who have been s*x trafficked. I’ve had clients who have been forced to film t*****e p**n. I have holy s**t moments all the time.

Here's my most recent one:
As the pandemic worsened here in the US and more lock downs are on their way, one of my most extroverted clients and I brainstormed ways to meet her social needs while remaining safe. The following week she canceled her session and told me that she's positive for COVID after attending an o**y, which definitely wasn't one of our ideas. I let out the deepest most defeated sigh after I hung up the phone.

I do acute pediatric inpatient behavioral therapy.

Has never happened with a child, and never will

Parents on the other hand can be real pieces of s**t, and the way they treat/abuse their children then throw them off on us and scream “fix them”. I’m a big burly guy and I’ve cried many nights over this.

Well, I quit my last therapist because I made him cry uncontrollably. He tried not to, but he just couldn't hold it back. I felt guilty and won't see him anymore. I think he may have lost a child before. I described watching my aunt grieve over her son's body. I felt so much pain losing him, but was explaining how watching my aunt was dramatically worse. The details about her is what made him lose it. I could tell he was reliving something inside his own head.

I work with youth and adolescents who have anxiety, trauma, and/or depression. Some of the kids I worked with had some pretty severe attachment issues. Regardless of this, I never thought I'd have to seriously explain:


1. "You can't just buy a straitjacket for your kid."


2. "Feeding your kid ultra Spicy Ramen each night instead of the meal everyone else is eating isn't specifically defined as abuse, but you have to understand the emotional abuse that this causes."


3. "Your kid isn't trying to k**l you because they stand in your doorway at night crying. Thats likely because they're scared of their traumatic nightmares, but feel like you will just yell at them if they wake you up."

Edit: removed a phrase


Edit2:

Thank you all for your questions and support. This case has really helped to shape my approach to therapy, and has highlighted the importance of healthy communication between parents and kids.

My number 1 tip: Don't let someone else tell you how you feel/think. If someone says, "You're angry with me!" Or something to that effect, ask yourself if you really are. If you're not actually angry, then don't spend a second more on it. A lot of kids/family members get hung up on trying to justify their own actions according to someone else's perception.


Edit 3: fixed straitjacket spelling. No its not a jacket for sexual orientations.

Therapist here,

To piggy back on what others have said, it is highly unlikely for me to have moments where I judge my clients. It happens sometimes, but I’m able to shut down those thoughts quickly in my head and return to being present for the people I see. People are so incredibly complex that my judgment wouldn’t have any meaning anyway and it doesn’t have a place in our work together.

I will admit though, something that does get me feeling a little salty is when I have a client’s parent that attempts to sabotage the therapeutic relationship I have with their child, or pulling them out of therapy entirely when some of the things we talk about challenges some potentially unhealthy family dynamics. I don’t feel anger toward the parents, mostly I feel bad for the kid.

Edit: Wow. All I have to say is that I am incredibly humbled by all of you that have shared your stories. Even though these moments are so steeped in pain, what hits me is the incredible amount of strength present in spite of the upbringing and parents many of you have had.

Opposite side, if that's accepted too?

I was assigned to see the lead psychologist of the local hospital as I was severely depressed and had become s******l.

She literally rolled her eyes at me, told me to grow up and said she could be having appointments with people who were actually about to k**l themselves, not me who was already working with the team.

This sent me absolutely spinning, bottling everything up, thinking I didn't deserve help and ended up in hospital 2 years later after an attempt.

When they looked at my records the hospital suddenly became very interested in any psychological experts I'd previously spoken to, informed them of the above incident, they asked if I knew the name and I said I didn't, but they had a strong accent, they immediately looked like they were about to burst out crying, apologised excessively then informed me they had been fired a year ago.

No idea how many people were affected by that therapist.

Two contexts come to mind. I often work with people in a*****e relationships and it is incredibly common for people to go back to their a*****e partners after leaving. Some studies show the average number of times someone goes back before leaving for good is 7 times. I know why people go back and I get that it's often a combination of manipulation, financial control, gaslighting, love, low self-esteem, fear, etc. But, man, it is hard to watch and appear neutral. I can say I am worried about their safety but I can't yell "for f**k's sake, stop going back!! What is it going to take?!" Like I want to.

The other situation isn't really judging the person it's more judging OCD. But OCD is weird. The infinitely weird ways it can show up are so funny and bizarre. Again, I would never judge a person for having the intrusive thoughts they have or doing the compulsions that are somehow linked in their mind to those obsessions, but I absolutely judge OCD and constantly marvel at how creative and weird the human brain can be.

When you as a therapist get to that point, it's time to start thinking of referrals.

Be genuine with your client. And then refer out. You have to have unconditional positive regard or you'll never achieve therapeutic rapport.

I think for me, the one that comes to mind is a frequent caller to the s*****e hotlines. He'd call in and say he's not providing his phone number or name, he would just say that you had 10 seconds to convince him not to k**l himself over the phone, or he'd blow his brains out and it'd be your fault. Then he'd count down from 10 to 1 while you're on the phone talking. At one, he'd hang up.

I'm sure the whole point was to make me feel bad or prove some point, I don't know, I have insufficient information to make an assessment with just that. But I have to admit when I was trying to sleep on days he'd call, especially the first time, I was thinking, "f*****g a*****e better not be dead, f****r...".

I now work in the jail and there are quite a few s*x offenders in my program. I struggle with the ones who honestly believe their victims (as young as 8) were in mutual loving relationships with them. Its super difficult at times not to just say “dude, WTF!”.

During my training I was asked how would you feel if a client were to come to you and admitted they were a p*do that was on the edge of committing seriously horrific acts? Could you see that person as another human being that needed help, or were your personal feelings about the abhorrent behaviour too strong?
This factor lead some people to not continue my course on to the next level, but it really illustrates the level of non judgement needed in this field. We all have our own personal feelings, of course, but these get talked about in supervision.


Edit: Wow thanks for the awards. I’m glad it’s raised an interesting topic for discussion, I’m enjoying reading them all, even if I don’t have the time to reply.

Personally, in this instance I remember the Gandhi quote “hate the sin, not the sinner”.

I’m a psychotherapist on an adult inpatient unit, so things rarely phase me. I purposely do inpatient because the thought of seeing people for years at a time bores me. I’ve been kicked, spit on, seen a lot of n**e people, but I help pull people back from their darkest points. It’s pretty awesome. My theory is everyone has a story of how they got there. Even a pedophile.

That being said, I had a patient that was having consensual s*x with her uncle. Very wealthy, society type people. She went very in-depth about the relationship. That one weirded me out.

Child therapist here.

I had a mother report that her child was having bathroom accidents suddenly, and at home only. He’s a 9 year old boy with no history of bathroom accidents or trauma in the past. Training tells us this could be a variety of things, such as abuse/neglect, anxiety, PTSD, etc.

Until I spoke with his in-home behavioral specialist (a clinician that helps behavioral/mental health issues inside the home to help create healthy family routines to cope). She called me and told me the real story.

The boy was becoming very angry and spiteful with his parents for making him go back to school after full COVID quarantine had been lifted. He went into their bathroom, took his mother’s robe, took a giant dump on it, and *hung it back up.* He also peed inside her dresser drawer.

I’m not going to lie, my jaw was dropped when I hung up the phone. I then laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my desk chair.

I work in mental health and have worked in acute and crisis settings for the majority of my career. The most notable event I experienced was when a young person had presented with significant ongoing s******l ideation who was dealing with a lot of s**t. I spent a lot of time with them mostly deescalation and working out what the plan should be moving forward.

One of their parents came in a little while later and I had the opportunity to speak to them about where their child was and what had been going on, with their consent of course. Midway through me trying to explain some of the psychological constructs and ways the parent could help they said to me, "is this going to take much longer I have a show to go and watch".

All I can say is, I never judge my patients, I have never walked their path or viewed the world through their eyes. But the people around them who perpetuate the suffering of the people I work with through ignorance, malice and selfishness, I judge them.

Edit and a shameless one. I've tried to reply to as much as I could, I've enjoyed some of what I would assume is trolling and talking about some other people's experiences as it's given me a chance to reflect on some of my own stuff. But I must go to bed.

I'd like to ask one thing of anyone who reads this, remember that you can help, even just by asking how someone is or wishing them well. People who you think may be struggling and even people who aren't. This year has been hard on us all, and I appreciate all of you who have said that those in care services have difficult jobs, but we have all struggled this year. Please be as kind as you can to each other and I hope we can all look forward to a good December and even better new year.

Edit 2. My use of the word 'judge' needs some clarification, I do judge in some ways, it's hard not to with what I see, who I work with and the situations they experience or have experienced. What I mean by not judging is that I do not allow my judgements to distort what I am seeing or how I am working. Which will normally be to the benefit of the patient and those around them trying to help them achieve their goals and meet their needs.

Final edit. I didn't think this post would get as big as it has. And I cannot respond to every comment individually by any means. I'm sure the post will be getting less attention moving forward but I just wanted to clarify some things.

This parent, who many people have made multiple assumptions about, was not trying to redirect, deflect or remove themselves from the situation by stating they had a show to watch. The show being something else people have assumed was a TV show. Remember I've made the comment above in the context of a situation that lasted around 5 to 6 hours for me, but took you a few minutes to read.

With everything that's going on right now I wanted to make this post to let people know, those working in mental health have heard a lot, we don't judge you for how or what you're feeling and we want to work with you to help you. I simply wanted to help in some way with a comment on the Internet that I wrote in one go about an experience I have had. I know that the response to this has been overwhelmingly positive but I would also like to say I did not mean to cause any offence or upset to anyone or claim that I am some sort of unachievable goal of non-judgement.

Anyway, I'm going to try and forget about this now.

I joined in a review of a secluded patient and he threw a cup of wee and p*o in my face when we opened the door. I tried to be objective about his experience but I just thought... what a c**t.

I work in inpatient services so it can be hard to challenge myself at times - individuals with diagnosis of personality disorder, for example, can do things that in isolation make you think they’re just being bratty or manipulative, but to think of the experiences that shaped them to react like that in a given situation can help to clear my judgment and find compassion.

...harder when someone bites me or hits me with one of our fabulously detachable anti ligature curtain poles, though.

Not a therapist but a patient. Me and my fiancé (at the time) went in to see if we could figure out how to make things work after he hit me. After our
R history came out and I divulged his infidelity etc the therapist basically said no. There’s no hope. You need to get help for yourself so you can get the courage to leave and end this. I was angry at the time but both therapists new there was no point as he was as screwed up as it gets.

Therapist here.

Honestly, I have never had a moment where I’ve internally criticized someone for their past. Not even the current decisions they are making. Therapy doesn’t work that way and I can’t do my job properly if I’m being full of myself and intentionally project.

That said, I *do* sometimes have reactions to people’s stories. And I suppose there is an argument for “that’s judging.” However, I’d disagree. The way OP phrased their question, I’m inclined to think they meant straight-up “geez, what’s wrong with you” kind of judgement.

But I can’t ignore my reactions to people. The whole “check your emotions at the door” s**t just doesn’t fly in therapy. If you EVER meet a therapist that tells you they can be completely objective, run. That’s just not how people work.

For example, am I supposed to suppress my pity when a girl comes into my office and tells me she isn’t sad when she tells me her mom died? What about when parents of a handicapped child are *relieved* when their kid dies? Am I “judging” them in the critical way? HELL NO! Do I reactively feel pity/sad? HELL YES.

What about when I feel frustrated because a guy I work with is SO CLOSE to understanding that his partner’s anxiety has little to do with him? Am I gonna get pissed at the guy? NO.

But part of RESPONSIBLE and competent therapy is that I acknowledge that part of me that instinctively reacts to others’ stories. If I just push it down, it will come up in other ways, and THEN it could damage the work I do.

As a therapist, I need to be mindful of how I’m reacting to what I’m working with. If necessary, I can consult with colleagues (in an ethical, confidential, de-identifying way, of course). Then, once I process any feelings I may have, I can go back to do what I do.

I love the process of change. And being honest with myself is definitely a challenge. But I would HATE to find myself critical of someone who is doing the best with what they have.