A therapist’s job is to listen—but not all words are music to their ears. Some indicate that clients aren’t taking the process seriously; others reveal misunderstandings that need to be clarified or deep-rooted beliefs that need to be corrected.
We asked a handful of therapists which phrases drive them up a wall—and why.
“I don’t want to take up too much time.”
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When someone spends 15 minutes apologizing for being in Lauren Auer’s office, they’re burning through the exact time they’re worried about wasting. “They made the appointment,” says Auer, a therapist in Peoria, Ill. “They know how long it is, so it’s nothing worth apologizing for. It’s literally my job.” Yet she ends up needing to devote part of the session to convincing her client they deserve to be there.
There may be underlying beliefs about worthiness at play: “A lot of times, it’s rooted in what they’ve learned about taking up space or being too much,” Auer says. If she and the client haven’t established a therapeutic rapport yet, she responds gently: “Let’s talk about that. What I’m hearing from you is…” But if they already know each other well, she might laughingly remind them: “It’s your appointment. You know you don’t need to apologize.”
“This is probably stupid.”
Auer’s clients “constantly” warn that whatever they’re about to say is “probably stupid”—before then going on to share something important. She calls this type of qualifier a “progress-killer.”
“I want to be, like, ‘Stop!’” she says. “‘You’re sharing something crucial, and even if it feels small or stupid, you’re bringing it up for a reason, so it’s not.’” She refers to the habit as “self-gaslighting,” and over the years, she’s developed a go-to strategy to nip it in the bud. “I pretend to spray them with an invisible spray bottle, like a cat scratching the furniture,” she says. “I have to educate them and explain, ‘You’re invalidating yourself.’ And usually, with clients I’ve been seeing for a while, I don’t even have to say anything—I just pick up the imaginary spray bottle, and they’re like, ‘OK, I know.’”
“Sorry for crying.”
Uttering these words “is like apologizing for breathing in my office,” Auer says, yet she hears them daily. She typically reminds clients that “crying is actually really healthy, and it means they’re feeling safe enough to let their guard down, which is a good sign of healing.”
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When someone clearly feels bad about all the waterworks, Auer smiles and says, “Hey, no crying allowed in therapy,” in a way that makes it clear she’s joking. “It usually gets a laugh, and that can break the shame spiral,” she says. “It helps them realize how ridiculous it sounds to apologize for crying in therapy.”
“I should be over this by now.”
When people assume they should be over whatever they’re going through, “they’re shaming themselves for being human and having a very normal healing timeline,” Auer says. “People often think therapy healing should look like healing a broken bone: It should be linear, upward progress, and then you’re fixed and done. But healing doesn’t look that way.”
When this happens, Auer tries to point out positive shifts in her clients’ behavior. Someone might be upset about a situation that triggered them, for example, and complain that they resorted to an unhealthy coping mechanism. She responds: “Well, this time you recognized it was unhealthy more quickly than last time, and then you stopped.” Or: “Right now you’re telling me about it, which is way better than holding it inside and telling no one. That is progress.”
“I don’t know.”
Nicole Herway is used to hearing three different variations of “I don’t know.” The first sticks closely to the literal meaning: “You’ve thought about it, and you’ve tried to figure it out, but you have absolutely no idea, and you’re stuck and need help,” says Herway, a therapist in Murray, Utah. She’d rather clients say that directly, “because we want to see that you’ve tried to solve your own problem rather than coming to us saying, ‘I haven’t thought about it,’” she says.
Herway’s clients employ the second version of “I don’t know” when they want to shut the conversation down because it’s uncomfortable. She’d prefer they verbalize their feelings: “I’m not ready to talk about that yet.”
The third variation, she says, comes from people who would rather not push themselves to self-reflect. “It’s because they don’t trust that they have the capacity to figure it out,” she says. “That’s more of a self-esteem, self-confidence issue.”
When clients tell her they “don’t know,” she trains them to rephrase it. “‘You can’t just throw out ‘I don’t know’ and think I’m going to come in to rescue you from not knowing,” she says. “We have to figure out why you don’t know something—what’s behind it.”
“What should I do?”
Only your grandma can truly answer this query, Herway says, because she probably has plenty of opinions. Therapists, on the other hand, “have absolutely no idea—and we’re not supposed to know what you should do,” she says. “We’re here to empower you to make decisions for yourself, to try things and fail, and to learn and to grow.”
A better way of phrasing things, Herway adds, is to ask your therapist: “Can you help me consider some options?” They’ll be happy to oblige.
“Nothing ever changes.”
There are a few reasons why these words are so irksome. “First of all, I would say, ‘Hold up: Is that actually true?’” Herway says. “Most things change in small increments—and often, when people are saying nothing ever changes, they’re trying to self-sabotage growth, because it’s not happening on their timetable.”
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Instead, try asking your therapist this: “I feel hopeless and helpless. Can we dig into why?”
“That’s where we explore expectations,” Herway says. “What did you think was going to happen? Because if you’re saying nothing ever changes, that’s because you had some expectation for what was supposed to happen.”
“Therapy has never worked for me.”
Clients often ask Lisa Shows to make promises or guarantees about therapeutic outcomes. They might add that therapy has never worked for them in the past—so why would it this time? “They’re trying to hook me into saying, ‘Well, this therapy will work for you,’” says Shows, a licensed professional counselor in Flagstaff, Ariz. “I absolutely want it to work, and I also want to instill hope that it can work. But at the same time, I can’t promise that it’s going to be the thing that’s suddenly helpful.”
Therapist is a collaborative relationship, she adds, that requires engagement and work on both parties’ part in order to be successful.
“I’m just going to take this call real quick.”
You might be surprised how often clients check their phone throughout therapy sessions, texting or taking non-emergency phone calls. “They’ll be a little preoccupied with it, and getting notification after notification, and even if they have it on the chair, I can hear it buzzing,” Shows says.
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So what’s the proper etiquette around phone usage during therapy? Ideally, clients will silence their device and drop it into their bag, Shows says, so that it’s there if they need it (or want to reference a specific text, which can be helpful for her to see verbatim). That way, they’re not distracted—and are able to give themselves the space “to do something a little different than we do the rest of our lives,” she says.
Wondering what to say in a tricky social situation? Email timetotalk@time.com