What is Very Bad Therapy?

During our training as psychotherapists, we were taught that the client is the most important thing about therapy. We read the common factors research that suggests that no way of doing therapy was superior to any other and realized that all the therapist “tricks” (like branded approaches and orientation-specific interventions) were largely equally effective. We read the feedback-informed treatment literature that demonstrates that what matters is what the client thinks, and that therapy can be successful when it actively incorporates the client’s reported experience.

So we became suspicious of the examples of therapy from which we were expected to learn—generally ancient video of masters in the field working their magic in a conveniently edited clip, or role-plays where the clients are played by therapists. In almost every case, these were examples of good therapy as defined by the therapists involved.

We became concerned by the conspicuous absence of client voices from our training. We wondered what was going on in the sessions no one was talking about, the stories that usually begin with, “you would not believe what happened with my therapist.”

As soon as we started asking around, we found a lot of them. And we found them more instructive by far than the grainy videos we watched in graduate school.

We started this podcast to explore real-life stories of very bad therapy experiences and talk to experts in the field who can help shed light on how things could have gone better. We want to empower clients to get the therapy that works for them and we want to stand with the therapists who are dedicated to becoming the best clinicians they can be. Supported by scientific research and a mission to bring out the the best in psychotherapy through discussion of its worst moments, we hope Very Bad Therapy is a corrective emotional experience for clinicians and clients alike.