Self-disclosure

The degree to which a counsellor includes any self-disclosure, i.e., details about themselves, their lives, or their personal experiences and even extending to whether they should have any personal items in the counselling room remain contentious issues. The traditional notion, steeped in the origins of psychoanalysis, is of the therapist as a separate and clinical entity, present to identify problems diagnostically and not to present themselves in any way personally. In the case of therapists deciding they will present something of themselves within the counselling relationship, the decision should be done with thought and care- it is perhaps an advanced counselling skill to be able to confidently reveal appropriate congruence to help with the counselling process. In this article we will jointly consider self-disclosure and congruence in the sense of talking with the client about what we, as counsellors are experiencing during the session/in relation our overall relationship with the client.

One concept from therapy is the notion that the question: ‘in what way will this be useful to my client?’ should preface any such self-disclosure or revelation of our own thoughts/feelings. Yet, when therapists do self-disclose, clients may well see their therapist as more human and the relationship as more real when there is the inclusion of some self-revelation. Indeed, some research clarifies that a ‘real relationship’ between therapist and client predicts successful outcomes (Fuertes et al, 2019). We should consider, with some examples the pros and cons of remaining opaque/disclosing to clients and if we do self-disclose the degree to which we should reveal and offer our thoughts, essentially focussing on when and how this is most likely to be useful therapeutically.

A core argument over self-disclosure could be that we shift focus from the most important person in the room (the client) onto the therapist and this is, obviously, not the purpose of counselling/therapy. Also, when using self-disclosure or revelation of our own feelings, we should do so sparingly and of course appropriately. Let’s say the client is experiencing intense feelings of shame over departing from a relationship gone wrong and the therapist has experienced their own separation, perhaps even their own shame, the revelation of this could open the way for the client to explore and reveal their own feelings more effectively in therapy. Then key word here, however, is sparingly. Therapy and counselling are of course focussed on the client and self-disclosure may be appropriate depending on the experience (say a client who has had lots of counselling versus one who has had none) or assuming that your separation is the same as the client’s. Sparingly is a useful word as a little connection between life circumstances may favour development of rapport, but a client who accesses your service to offload and make sense of their own feelings is unlikely to thank you for banging on ad infinitum about your own divorce! Some work suggests self-disclosure increases client’s experience of the counsellor as warm, authentic, and trustworthy (Hill & Knox, 2001) – and this, in turn, may lower their anxiety (McCarthy Veach, 2011).

A client, of course, may elicit your self-disclosure when they ask questions of their own, such as: ‘have you ever been in my situation?’ and so on. We, in turn, need to be aware of how we will respond to such natural and even reasonable requests, we may/may not be wearing a wedding ring and may/may not reasonably be considered to be of an age to have reared children etc. When the question comes we will need to have thought through the degree to which we intend on self-disclosing. A colleague seemed often to use the technique of responding to these questions thus:

‘I am happy to answer that, if you don’t mind answering a question for me first, a) what will it mean to you when I answer? And b) (for example) what if I said I have also been divorced?’ This seems to work well and before the counsellor gives an answer, they will gain understating of the clients though processes (e.g., ‘I want to know if you know what this feels like…’ etc).

According to research by Monticelli, et al, (2022) over 90% of counsellors use self-disclosure during therapy, yet the efficacy of such self-disclosure is still uncertain. Again, a key issue/question for the therapist is ‘in what way will this revelation be useful to my client?’

The nature of this personal information could, of course, be shared experience such as the counsellor having suffered a loss which, in some aspect(s) relates to the loss of the client or else revelation of family status (having children etc) in order to convey something of themselves as a real person rather than a blank clinical slate. On this note we should consider the use of the Rogerian principle of congruence and examine the relationship between client and counsellor as a corollary to therapeutic work; noting that often the problems the client experiences in their relationships in the outside world can, and often do, emerge on the counselling room.

The use of congruence and the client-counsellor relationship

Whereas psychodynamic therapists traditionally represent themselves as a ‘blank screen’ Carl Rogers suggested congruence as ‘genuineness’ that, in effect, the counsellor represents themselves as they really are not with a false façade but in a way that fosters a real relationship between client and counsellor. The terms: client and counsellor were coined by Rogers and used as opposed to patient doctor etc. this is because Rogers saw client and counsellor as true equals and not involved in some power differential, note that person centred counselling really does accept the client as expert on themselves and if the counsellor is expert, then these expertise are in listening and congruence  on being their ‘authentic self’, whilst accepting the client as they are (not necessarily agreeing with all that the client does in their behaviours) .

There is an argument that the relationship between the client and the counsellor is crucial in understanding the relationships the client has with the outside world. We, of course, often enter into therapy to discuss (nearly always) either some aspect of interpersonal or professional relationships which are going wrong or else an internal dilemma/difficulty we have with ourselves. When we present and discuss the other people involved in our lives, we are again of course, inherently biased. The offenders in our lives are often accused of self-obsession, narcissism, callousness and so on. Whilst it is important not to deny the presence or truth of these factors our interpretation is, naturally biased and when the client presents interactions they have with others, this may be only partially useful to the therapist who arguably is better off noticing the relationship they have with the client for the purpose of helping gain insight, behavioural change etc.

To sum up: both self-disclosure and congruence can be useful elements of therapy but need to be measured and considered rather than just random thoughts/revelations (which, of course, might occur in natural conversations outside of therapy) and to whatever degree counsellors use self-disclosure or express congruence by sharing thoughts about their relationship with the client, this should be done with care and practice (i.e. we should assess the effects on the client by noting their responses to any self-disclosure carefully). The central philosophy of expressing congruence or self-revelation is one which essentially considers the question: ‘is what I am about to say in any way useful to this client?’
 
References

  1. Aldahadha, B. (2023). Self-disclosure, mindfulness, and their relationships with happiness and well-being. Middle East Current Psychiatry, 30(1), 7.
  2. Fuertes, J. N., Moore, M., & Ganley, J. (2019). Therapists’ and clients’ ratings of real relationship, attachment, therapist self-disclosure, and treatment progress. Psychotherapy Research, 29(5), 594-606.
  3. Hill, C. E., & Knox, S. (2001). Self-disclosure. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 38(4), 413–417
  4. MacCarthy Veach, P. (2011). Reflections on the meaning of clinician self-reference: Are we speaking the same language? Psychotherapy, 48, 349–358. https://doi.org/10.1037/a002590
  5. Monticelli F, Tombolini L, Guerra F et al (2022) Using motivational monitoring to evaluate the efficacy of self-disclosure and self-involving interventions. J Contemp Psychother 52:217–225.