Will a therapist be disappointed if a client skips homework?
Your therapist is not your high school chemistry teacher. If her response to your not doing your assigned homework is “disappointment,” you’ve got a confused therapist.
Our job is not to get you to do something we’ve decided is good for you. No, we are in the business of practicing a high art, tuning and tailoring everything we do to you in a way that is healing, transformative, life changing, and on your terms, not ours. That takes serious skill, and talent doesn’t hurt.
Homework is fine if it’s something you’ve come up with together and that you are ready for and into, something that is clearly and obviously related to what you are doing in therapy.
If you don’t do your homework in a situation like that, it’s for a reason. A good therapist will be curious and intrigued and assess various ways of handling it in a way that furthers the therapy. A good therapist will not be “disappointed.”
There are plenty more stories and insights on how therapy works in Get the Most From Your Therapy, a friendly, practical guide to the experience.
