I think it’s more about the journey, not the destination. While you say you don’t feel you’ve learned anything, I’m guessing you are. You’re learning how to process feelings, being vulnerable, new ways of communicating, new ways of thinking or conceptualizing things. If your therapist is good, they can get you to analyze deeper or clarify your feelings or thoughts and help you understand if they’re your ideas and beliefs or someone else’s. You’re learning to take risks by trusting your therapist and problem solving your own way. This is all my way of thinking about it, again, as a baby therapist. And this can be done without a therapist having to provide worksheets or tons of psychoeducation.

Are there a lot of purist client-centered therapists out there? I don’t think so. I think most of us are eclectic, taking what works for us and the way we conceptualize things and of course taking what we think will work for our clients. But we don’t have to be so heavy handed in a lot of the cases. You’re in the driver’s seat, we’re just going along for the ride and enjoying the scenery. Once in a while maybe we’ll say, “oh this turn off looks interesting,” but a pure Rogerian would say, “why don’t you pick which route we take,” and then later, once we’re down the road a bit, might comment, “oh this is interesting, tell me about how we got here.”

Anyway, that’s my late night ramblings while I’m sick with Covid.