Notes for New Therapists is a regular series published on Sundays.

Sometimes certainty feels better

You have a client who seems dissatisfied.

Perhaps they have questioned something you said. Perhaps they have become quieter. Perhaps you know you made a mistake and are not sure whether the repair worked.

You start wondering whether they are going to leave.

And then a peculiar thought arrives:

Just fire me.

Not because you want to lose the client. Not because you do not care.

Because waiting to find out whether someone still wants to work with you can be uncomfortable.

If they leave, at least you will know.

Make disagreement possible

Clients need to know they are allowed to disagree with you.

That sounds obvious. It may not feel obvious from their chair.

You are the therapist. You have credentials. You may know things they do not know. You are also a person they may care about, depend upon, want approval from, or fear disappointing.

So make room for disagreement before you desperately need them to disagree.

Ask occasionally how the therapy is going. Ask whether there is anything you are doing that is not helpful. Talk about how to tell whether therapy is helping.

And then pay attention to what happens inside you when they answer.

If you ask for feedback while silently hoping for reassurance, the client may notice.

Do not rush to make it better

Suppose the client tells you something you do not particularly want to hear.

They felt dismissed.

They think you misunderstood them.

They are not sure your approach is helping.

Your first impulse may be to explain.

Resist it for a moment.

You may eventually have information that matters. There may be context the client does not know. Their interpretation may not be the only reasonable interpretation of what happened.

But first, understand what they are telling you. Perhaps the following questions can help.

“What was that like for you?”

“What did you think was happening?”

“What would you have needed from me instead?”

Curiosity buys both of you some room.

You do not have to agree with the client

Virginia Satir’s model places considerable importance on congruence: being able to remain connected to yourself, the other person, and the situation rather than sacrificing one of those to preserve another.

That matters when a client is unhappy with you.

You do not have to decide that the client is right about everything in order to take their experience seriously. You also do not need to defend your own reality so vigorously that theirs disappears.

Perhaps you made a mistake.

Perhaps the client misunderstood you.

Perhaps you each experienced the same interaction very differently.

Perhaps you both inadvertently stepped into old roles without realizing it.

All are survivable.

Congruence does not require agreement. It asks you to remain present enough to encounter what is actually happening between you.

They are allowed to leave

Sometimes a rupture can be repaired.

Sometimes the client decides the therapy is no longer useful, or you are no longer the therapist they want.

They are allowed to decide that.

They are also allowed to explore. A client can talk with another therapist, try another approach, or take some time to decide what fits without needing to declare your work together a failure first. When appropriate, you can leave the door open. Exploring another option does not have to burn the bridge behind them.

Would you be open to working again with a client who fired you?

You may want another session to understand what happened. You may believe the work could continue productively. You can say so.

But termination is not something the client has to earn your permission to do.

If they want to leave, help them leave as cleanly as circumstances allow. Discuss other care if appropriate. Provide referrals when needed. Attend to safety and continuity.

And notice what you need to do with your own feelings afterward.

Being fired solves something

There is an uncomfortable benefit to having a client terminate.

The uncertainty ends.

You no longer have to wonder whether you can repair the relationship. You no longer have to sit with the possibility that the client sees a limitation in you that you would rather not see.

For a moment, that can actually be easier.

The danger is deciding that the solution is to become so skilled, careful, insightful, or agreeable that no client ever wants to leave again.

You cannot.

Your limitations are coming with you

You can learn from a termination.

Perhaps you moved too quickly. Perhaps you became defensive. Perhaps you missed something important. Perhaps consultation or therapy will help you see what happened.

Learn it.

And then remember that becoming a better therapist will not make you a therapist without limitations.

You will have different blind spots five years from now. Clients will encounter parts of you that you cannot yet see. Sometimes they will understand something about their experience with you before you do.

This is one reason humility matters more than invulnerability.

The goal is not to become impossible to fire.

It is to become increasingly able to hear difficult information, consider it seriously, repair what can be repaired, and let a client leave when leaving is what they choose.

Sometimes they will stay.

Sometimes they will go.

Either way, you remain responsible for what you can learn.

About the Author

Anne Lindyberg, LMHC (Iowa), LCPC (Illinois), integrates the experiential therapy of Virginia Satir with Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) and the Alexander Technique. She specializes in helping adults with complex and developmental trauma create lasting emotional change through therapy.

This article is intended to support professional reflection and learning. It does not constitute clinical supervision, formal training, or individualized professional guidance. Clinicians remain responsible for practicing within their competence, scope of practice, and applicable professional and licensing requirements.

This article and other informational content on this website are provided for educational purposes only. They are not a substitute for individualized professional care, do not constitute advice specific to your circumstances, and do not establish a therapist-client relationship.

This work is created on the traditional and unceded lands of Indigenous peoples; a fuller acknowledgment of the land, its history, and its peoples is available on this website.

These blog posts are drafted with the support of ChatGPT. All posts are reviewed and edited by the author for accuracy, and consistency with the values of the author and this practice.

References

Banmen, J., Gerber, J., & Gomori, M. The Satir Model: Family Therapy and Beyond. Science and Behavior Books. https://bit.ly/SatirModel1stEd

American Counseling Association. 2014 ACA Code of Ethics. https://www.counseling.org/resources/ethics

Lindyberg, A. (2026, October 17). How do I know whether therapy is helping? Midwest Center for Transformational Change PLC. https://mwcftc.com/how-do-i-know-whether-therapy-is-helping

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