Using Therapist Self-Disclosure Wisely in Psychotherapy

My test for self-disclosure comes down to one question I ask myself in the moment: is this for the client, or is this for me? If sharing something personal would shift the session's attention toward my story, my feelings, or my need to be understood, I keep it to myself. If it would normalize what the client is experiencing and give them evidence that change is possible, it may earn a place in the room.

The disclosure I return to most often is that I live with ADHD and struggle with anxiety myself, and that I have sat in the client's chair. I have gone to therapy and done the work of finding coping strategies that actually fit my life. When a client is convinced they are broken or beyond help, hearing that their therapist has walked a version of that road changes something. It is not advice from a textbook anymore. It is proof.

I keep the disclosure brief and concrete. I might mention that biking became one of my most reliable tools for managing my own mental health, or that deep breathing exercises took real practice before they worked for me. Then I pivot immediately back to the client: what might your version of that look like? The disclosure is a doorway, not a destination. The moment it stops pointing back toward the client's growth, it has overstayed its welcome.

What makes it helpful rather than distracting is the framing. I am not sharing to vent or to bond over shared struggle. I am sharing to demonstrate that managing mental health is doable, even when it feels impossible. Clients who are struggling often assume the people helping them have it all figured out. Letting them see that I built my coping skills the same way I am asking them to build theirs, through trial, error, and persistence, makes the work feel human and within reach.

One caution I would offer newer clinicians: if you notice you feel relieved after disclosing, that is worth examining. Relief usually means the disclosure met your need. When it lands right, the client barely lingers on your story at all. They are already applying it to their own.

With decades leading trauma-informed care at Grace Recovery Services and integrating biblical principles with clinical work, I focus self-disclosure only on moments that directly support a client's attachment healing or root wound exploration.
I ask whether the detail moves us toward removing toxic beliefs or replacing them with truth about identity and restoration. If it pulls attention away from their story, it stays unsaid.
One line that helped a client break through was sharing how I once viewed my own relational patterns as fixed until grace reframed them as healable. It let them name a similar wound without shame and move into unpacking it.

I use self-disclosure when it's clinically relevant or when it can offer some insight to the client. You'll know you've self-disclosed incorrectly when your client starts feeling sorry for you, so tread carefully. In the past, I've found that sharing parts of my own career change into therapy has brought comfort to my clients who feel lost about their career or next steps in life.

There's one question that decides every self-disclosure, and it takes half a second to ask: whose need does this serve. If sharing something of mine genuinely helps the client feel less alone, normalizes what they're carrying, or hands them a usable model, it can be powerful. If it's really relieving my discomfort in a hard moment, or quietly moving the spotlight onto me, it doesn't belong in the room, no matter how relevant it feels in the instant. Self-disclosure that secretly serves the therapist lands, for the client, as if they suddenly have to take care of you, which is the exact reversal you're being paid to prevent.
An example that proved helpful: a client who was convinced she was "too much" for everyone in her life once caught me lose my train of thought mid-session. Instead of covering it, I just named it plainly, that I'd lost the thread and needed her to say the last part again. Weeks later she told me that thirty-second moment did more than any reassurance I'd offered, because it showed her the room could hold an imperfect person without anyone getting punished for it. I disclosed nothing about my life. I just let her watch me be human on purpose, and that was the point.

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