It was a gray winter afternoon early in my career when my client—let’s call him Dan—stormed into my office, visibly angry.

“I lost my f—ing job again because I told my boss the project sucked,” he said.

Dan was relatively new to therapy and known for reacting impulsively in social and work settings, often to his own detriment. My instinct kicked in: help him see what he could have done differently.

“Could you have used another word instead of sucked?” I asked.

He shot back, “I didn’t come here for you to tell me what I should have done.”

That moment has stayed with me for years.

My intentions were good. I wanted to help. But what Dan really wanted was for me to listen—without jumping in, without steering. He was asking for what therapists call a non-directive approach: one where the client leads and the therapist listens deeply, offering empathy, reflection, and a sense of safety.

The challenge? I was trained—and naturally inclined—to take a more directive stance: guiding, interpreting, teaching skills, and confronting issues head-on. This is different from a non-directive stance where the therapist is listening, reflecting, patient, and trusting the client’s innate inner healing process to arrive at the right conclusions.

So the question that still echoes in my mind is this: How directive or non-directive should a therapist be?

Therapy began as largely non-directive.

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