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Therapists are human and make mistakes, and some behaviours are unacceptable.

Others may go unnoticed by the therapist.

Clients can take the opportunity to say what might be going wrong.

I routinely offer a brief phone chat with prospective clients—I explain our approach, hear about the concern that has led them to consider therapy, and build positive expectations about potential outcomes. But I had never received such a grilling as I did from Afra.

It turned out that she had been badly let down by a previous therapist, who had quite suddenly blanked her—not returning her emails and calls to make a next appointment. She could see online that the therapist was still practising, and the therapist had given no indication, Afra claimed, that she didn’t think it a good idea to continue working with Afra.

This seemed quite shocking to me, a behaviour which surely went against the code of ethics of whatever regulatory body that therapist was governed by. Any possibility that Afra might have been unusually demanding or difficult to work with was quickly dispelled by our own sessions together.

I have also had new clients tell me of previous therapy where the therapist sometimes talked about their........

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