14 Characteristics of Ordinary Therapists

In the first article, in this series, entitled, Becoming a Supertherapist, we talked about the importance and benefits of becoming a Supertherapist. We talked about how this is within reach for all clinicians, and how there are secrets we will reveal to help you to reach this noble goal.

In our second article, entitled, 7 Revelations to Becoming A Supertherapist, we revealed to you 7 important insights to have as part of becoming a Supertherapist.

From these revelations, you may have already gathered that the patient-related factors that we thought would make a difference actually do not. Here are five patient-related factors that we used to overvalue, that have now been shown to be far less important than they actually were thought to be:

1. Age
2. Gender
3. Diagnosis[1]
4. Level of Functional Impairment
5. Prior treatment history

What about clinician-related factors? The same finding applies here. The factors we thought would make a difference actually do not. Here are seven of them below:

1. Clinician’s age
2. Clinician’s gender
3. Clinician’s training[2]
4. Clinician’s professional discipline[3]
5. Type of licensure
6. Years of experience[4]
7. Theoretical orientation

What are we then left with?

Simple.

You. You are the medicine. You are the placebo. You are the catalyst. You make the difference. With that in mind, you are free to choose to either be a Supertherapist or an ordinary therapist. This, in turn, will be determined by whether you want super outcomes for your patients or simply average and ordinary ones. Your pick.

For now, let us elaborate on this by looking at the 14 characteristics of ordinary therapists:

Ordinary Therapists:

1. Often believe that they are performing adequately
2. Truly believe they are on par with Supertherapists
3. Tend to assume that what they do is best and rarely follow up to really find out
4. Rarely ask for feedback and when they do, tend to only hear what they want to hear
5. Tend to have an increased sense of confidence in their clinical work as years go by despite little or no improvement in actual patients’ outcomes
6. Rarely keep outcome records on their clinical work
7. May not be incompetent, but are rarely proficient
8. Tend to make themselves believe that if a mistake is not easily noticeable, then it is not a mistake
9. Tend to trick themselves into believing that mistakes that are not easily noticeable are not worth paying attention to, correct, or improve upon
10. Tend to believe that if they are using a modality, or method, or technique that is known to work, then that is enough to indicate a positive outcome. In other words, they want “A sticker for trying!”
11. Tend to believe that if they are empathetic, compassionate, and validating, then that is enough to measure their patients’ outcome. Another “Sticker for being nice!”
12. Fail to understand or ignore the fact that success rates vary based on who the clinician is, much more than what the modality is
13. Rarely pay attention to their baseline outcomes
14. Believe that standardization of care is enough to increase their patient’s outcomes

Now, unto you.

1. What do you hear?
2. Which of these 14 characteristics of ordinary therapists do you identify with the most?
3. Would you like to do anything about that?
4. What would you like to do?
5. When would you like to do it?
6. What is the next step?

Stay tuned for the subsequent articles in this series to learn about the characteristics of the Supertherapists, their secrets, and how to implement them in your own practice. Meanwhile, here’s what you can do:

1. Be one of the first 100 clinicians to send your thoughts on what you think we can do, and you may earn a free 6-month one-on-one coaching session with SWEET. Email us at contact@sweetinstitute.com, Subject Line: 6 Month One-one-One Coaching.
2. Click here to register for one or both of our upcoming Certificate Courses
3. Trauma Treatment Protocol Certificate Course: Click here to join us
4. Loneliness Certificate Course: Click to join us

[1] Tasma, Magda, et al. “Do routine outcome monitoring results translate to clinical practice? A cross-sectional study in patients with a psychotic disorder.” BMC psychiatry 16.1 (2016): 1-7.

[2] Boswell, James F., Louis G. Castonguay, and Rachel H. Wasserman. “Effects of psychotherapy training and intervention use on session outcome.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 78.5 (2010): 717.

[3] Boswell, James F., et al. “Implementing routine outcome monitoring in clinical practice: Benefits, challenges, and solutions.” Psychotherapy research 25.1 (2015): 6-19.

[4] Anderson, Timothy, et al. “Therapist effects: Facilitative interpersonal skills as a predictor of therapist success.” Journal of clinical psychology 65.7 (2009): 755-768.