Who Gets To Shape The Story In Therapy?: Insight, Authority and Power in the Therapy Room
Therapy is not only a space of healing—it is also a relationship shaped by power, language, and the meanings we create together. This piece reflects on the importance of reflexivity in therapeutic work, inviting us to examine how interpretations, authority, and context influence the therapy room. When power is acknowledged rather than denied, therapy becomes a more collaborative space where curiosity, dialogue, and shared meaning can flourish.
Therapy, like any relationship, functions as a system shaped by roles, expectations, and unspoken rules.
Therapists hold institutional authority and psychological language—the power to name, interpret, and frame meaning. This imbalance doesn’t disappear just because the relationship feels warm or collaborative.
Interpretations are never neutral.
Naming something as avoidance, resistance, or a defence carries weight.
Sometimes it helps clients feel seen. Other times, it narrows the story; closing off explanations rooted in context, culture, or lived reality.
Without reflexivity, this cycle reinforces itself, creating distance where connection was intended.
Reflexivity asks us to notice not only what we’re doing, but why.
To shift from
“What does this mean?” to “What is happening between us right now?”
Therapy becomes safer not when power is denied, but when it is made visible. When interpretations are offered as invitations rather than truths. When clients are allowed to disagree, reshape, or reject meanings without fear of being seen as resistant or uncooperative.
We must create room to sit with these tensions, to look at therapy not only as a practice of care, but as a system that needs ongoing reflection. Because when therapists are willing to examine their own positions in the room, something shifts. The work becomes less about getting it right, and more about staying in the relationship—even when it’s uncomfortable.