Do Therapists Ever Get Bored of Their Job?

Is my story too boring for even a therapist to hear?

I was once asked if I ever get bored at my job. I firmly said: “Of course not. Each person is unique, even if they are dealing with the same problem as the previous person!” Like most wide-eyed young professionals, reality eventually pulled the rug from under my feet and reminded me that we are all human. In Arabic, the word for heart is qalb which is related to the word qaliba, meaning “he flipped.” The heart’s nature is to flip between states. Working with the heart cannot be done without embracing its fickle nature and learning how to respond instead of reacting to it.

Readers that are considering therapy may worry that their therapist would get bored with them and that the boredom would be a sign that they are either not worth being acknowledged or that their therapist is not competent. This is understandably a painful prospect as many of us go to therapy to feel validated in a harsh world.

What makes the counseling profession unique is how we therapists use our inner experience as a tool to help our clients. If you are sensing that your therapist may be bored and this is having a negative effect on you, it is important that you bring this up. What you are experiencing as boredom may mean something else to the therapist, but you will not know unless you ask. All relationships involve difficult conversations and therapy is no different. Like all difficult conversations, there is a possibility of growing closer despite how unpleasant the process may seem. The relationship you have with your therapist can be a mirror reflecting your other relationships. Therefore, having difficult conversations with your therapist could change the way you approach your other relationships.

There are different reasons for why a therapist may get bored. It may be that the therapist:

• Is picking up on how the client is avoiding vulnerability.
• Has stopped staying curious about the client’s experience by assuming that they know enough. This assumption limits creativity in approaching the problem because both the therapist and the client will have stopped considering other possibilities.
• Is having difficulty connecting with the client. On the flip side, the therapist may be picking up on the fact that the client is having difficulty connecting with the therapist.
• Is burning out and needs to take care of themselves in order to continue being helpful.
• Is feeling pressured to “transform” the client or to say something “new.” The pressure may be coming from either the therapist’s or client’s life and from societal expectations of what it means to be a “competent professional.” This expectation cannot be realistically fulfilled and can lead to disappointment and disengagement from both sides. Therapists have different views about what the purpose of therapy is. In my view, therapy is meant to help us reconnect with what we already know deep down: our strengths, values, and hopes that get blurred by the daily grind, traumas, and by limiting societal expectations.

Acknowledging the above instead of avoiding facing the boredom is important for therapy to move forward. None of these is a sign that either you or your therapist is the problem. The above points only show that we all have a beating qalb.