What makes a good therapist?

Day one of grad school. Someone asks why you want to be a therapist. You give the answer almost everyone gives: "I want to help people." It's a true answer - albeit an incomplete one. For a lot of clinicians, it takes years of real work to find out what's missing. This gap is what The Art of Being a Therapist is about. In Episode 1, Colorado therapists Ashley Charbonneau and Morgen Villegas look back at their early career assumptions and ask a question every clinician wrestles with: What makes a good therapist? Their answer has less to do with textbooks than you might expect.

Therapy Doesn't Have a Finish Line

Grad school and internships teach us to treatment plan: Start here, meet a goal, discharge. Morgen describes how long it took her to undo that mindset, "We are constantly growing. We are constantly learning. We're constantly triggered." Clients needs change: Their inner worlds change. A therapist may not walk with someone for life. As Morgen puts it, "I could be a chapter of their life."

Slowing Down Is a Clinical Skill

Early in her career, Ashley jumped straight to problem solving: What are the action steps? How do we move forward? She felt like she had to keep the client moving every single session. Today, she has come almost 180 degrees. She can sit in silence and invite a client to slow down. Attunement and co-regulation are easy to define in a classroom, she says, but it took her years to understand what they really mean.

If you're a newer therapist who gets anxious when a session goes quiet, this part is for you. The stillness isn't wasted time. It may be the work.

The Problem With the Blank Slate Therapist

Morgen was taught to be "a wall." Don't self-disclose. Don't be yourself. Be the professional. She played that role for the first five years of her career. Looking back, she wonders how her clients saw her. Stiff? Cold? Safe enough to share the hard things? As she points out, the research leans the other way. The relationship between therapist and client is often the agent of change, and it predicts outcomes better than many modalities do. She values her training in EMDR and IFS but now also names the "alchemy" a therapist brings as a person, held inside ethics, boundaries, and good consultation.

When the System Shapes the Therapist

Between them, the hosts have worked in community mental health, nonprofits, medical settings, hospitals, jails, and universities. Both have a lot of respect for people who build lasting careers in those places, but neither could fully be themselves there due to systemic issues like high caseloads and session limits. We know, for example, that trauma work does not fit into 20 sessions. Both hosts now have their own practices and are clear that working for yourself is a privilege.

So, What Makes a Good Therapist?

By the end of the episode, Ashley and Morgen land on a few answers:

• Good therapy is reflective.

• Good therapy is about the relationship.

• Each client has their own blueprint for what they need.

• Good therapists seek consultation, so they're not alone, not siloed, and not causing harm.

• Good therapists keep looking at their own identity and privilege, and how both show up in the room.

None of these come from a single modality. They come from years of sitting with real people.

Ashley and Morgen also leave listeners with two questions. If you've been practicing for a while, what did you believe early on that doesn't hold the same weight now? If you're a student or new clinician, can you stay open to learning from your clients, and not just from your training?

Hear the Full Conversation: Listen to Episode 1 of The Art of Being a Therapist