The Right Way to Tell Clients What To Do

We hear a lot about client autonomy. It’s important to protect clients’ freedom to choose their life. Because clients can doubt their own choices or even themselves, they can easily come to rely on the direction of the therapist to determine their life. This is bad.

We hear less about client dependency. While we don’t want to create client dependency, it exists all the same. Clients come in stuck, broken, traumatized, and impaired. The therapist represents the client’s last/only/significant hope. Because they cannot solve their problem on their own, they are dependent on the therapist to guide them to healing and freedom.

Balancing dependency and autonomy can be tricky. How do you balance between client dependency and client autonomy?

While we don’t tell clients what to do, we can tell them how to do it. “What do you want?” I ask. Their answer is their expression of autonomy.

“I want to heal my marriage” “I want to know how to respond to my borderline mother?” “I don’t want to live in anxiety any more.” These statements are expressions of both autonomy and dependence. They are choosing what they want to do, but have no idea how to do it and are dependent on us to guide them in the process.

Telling a client how to do something isn’t telling them what to do but rather helping them build the skillsets necessary for them to pursue their autonomy.

“Here’s how you do that,” we say. It is a relief, a challenge, and a hope for our clients.

How we sustain clients in the pain of difficulty attends to their need for dependence. How we equip them for change attends to their need for autonomy.