People often reveal themselves indirectly, through the things that have stirred them. Long before they ever walk into a therapist’s office, many people have already spent countless hours trying to understand themselves through podcasts, interviews, Reddit threads, Instagram posts, and YouTube channels.

One client recently mentioned a podcast about burnout more than once. It captured something he hadn’t yet been able to fully articulate but touched the core of his being.

One of the privileges of this work is that people introduce me to aspects of themselves they have never shared elsewhere.

It isn’t humanly possible to check out every recommendation, of course.

But when a client references the same podcast, book, or movie several times, it is clearly important to them. Repetition usually tells me that something in it has come closer to their experience than words have.

When someone says, “This movie hit home for me,” they’re rarely recommending entertainment.

They’re pointing toward an experience.

They’re saying, “This gets close to something that is true for me.“

It tells me something about what resonates, what feels painfully accurate, or what offers hope.

It also reveals that they trust me enough to allow themselves to be vulnerable with me, something I continue to hold with a kind of reverence, regardless of how often it happens.

Sometimes they do it because art captures complexity that ordinary conversation can’t. It conveys something that might otherwise take hours to explain.

Every person has a desire to be understood.

To be known.

Sometimes the clearest way someone can express themselves is by saying,

“Listen to this.”

or

“Watch this.”

or

“Read this.”

This work exposes me to ideas and interpretations I may not have otherwise encountered, different ways people make sense of their experiences, their suffering, and the moments in which they feel surprisingly understood.

When a person is genuinely engaged in the work of therapy, I do my best to meet that effort with my own. Exploring the references they bring in often strengthens my understanding, even when the depth of their experience is still difficult to name.

Sometimes the first language available to us belongs to someone else. Therapy is one place where, little by little, people begin finding their own.