Why do we place a person on a pedestal and get angry when we see them look down upon us?

By Alan Oates

As an existential psychotherapist, I have long been interested in the idea that counselling is described as a relationship between equals.

Neither above nor below, but rather, as Yalom would say, fellow travellers. I understand the intention behind that statement, but I am not convinced it is ever completely true. Realising this has led me to be more intentional in acknowledging the power dynamics present in my sessions and to invite open discussion with clients about how this might shape our work together. This awareness now informs my efforts to foster greater transparency, collaboration and genuine partnership in the room.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE THERAPY ROOM

The moment a client enters my room, a structure already exists.

  • I know the therapeutic language.
  • I understand the contract.
  • I know what questions I might ask and why.
  • I know the space.

The client may be distressed, uncertain or vulnerable, while I occupy the professional role. Research on power in counselling makes this uncomfortable reality clear, clients frequently enter therapy after an experience of powerlessness and uncertainty, yet conversely the therapist possesses knowledge, perceived status and a level of authority (we provide the contracts, the “rules of therapy”, etc.) within the therapeutic process. Also, very importantly, I, much like every therapist I have ever met, refer to where we meet the client as “my room”. It may be a co-created relationship and a shared space, but no therapist would deny the room’s singular perceived ownership.

I often think to myself, we are the same, I am only shining a light for this person sitting opposite me. And while this may genuinely be what I believe; I know that, just because we want something to be true does not mean it is.

THE PEDESTAL

This occurred to me one day working with a client. He was speaking about his father and describing to me how critical his father had been about his life. The client told me that his father never thought he was good enough. The client continued to explain that he could not live up to what his father wanted from him. And then he asked me a question searching for an answer “Why does he do this to me when he knows how much I look up to him?”

As these words fell on my ears, I instantly saw an image of his father on a pedestal, with my client far below. Screaming to be seen. To be noticed and to be acknowledged.

I wanted to share this insight with my client but as an existential therapist, I know that there are risks in showing our internal workings to another and in the art of deciphering what is mine and what is theirs. Some thoughts raced across my mind:

  • Should I share this now?
  • Is it the right time?
  • What if this is my projection?
  • What if this is my interpretation, not his?

With these thoughts, plus many more, running through my head, I held to my resolve, trusted my instincts, and as I presented this image to my client I asked him if he understood.

A deep sadness crept across his face. I did not know whether what I was witnessing was realisation, acceptance, pain, or some complicated mixture of them all. This is the client’s moment, I thought to myself. It was not for me to force an epiphany, to fill the silence, or to demand that whatever was happening within him be put into words. My task was simply to remain with him and wait.

So I waited. Eventually, he spoke. What he said next caught me completely off guard and, although I did not realise it at the time, he offered me one of the most important gifts I have received as a therapist.

“I do, Alan.”

“I put him on a pedestal. I hate that I know I can’t live up to the person I want to be for him.”

There was a short silence before he spoke again. “But it’s the same as you!”

I had that moment in therapy when I couldn’t hide my surprise. I didn’t see any possibility that I was on a pedestal, above him, or placing demands on him. He spoke slowly and said, “You expect so much of me. Some days when I go to the gym or show up to the meet-up groups, it’s because I want to be able to report to you how great I am doing. But it is never good enough; there is always something else”

This was the moment that changed my therapeutic practice forever.

LISTENING WITHOUT DEFENDING

We spent the rest of the session sitting with what he had said and exploring it together. But before I could truly hear him, I had to consciously decide not to defend myself. My instinct could easily have been to explain: That isn’t what I meant. I wasn’t judging you. I only wanted the best for you. Perhaps all of that was true. But then he would have let me escape something much more uncomfortable.

In moments like these, I have learned the value of pausing for reflection rather than responding out of habit or anxiety. Sometimes, after sessions that stir discomfort or defensiveness in me, I take a few minutes to jot down my emotional reactions and what was triggered in me. Other times, I bring the experience to supervision, describing not just what was said but how it landed for me and what impulses arose. Both practices help me notice how my own needs and judgments can quietly shape my responses, and allow me to return to the therapeutic relationship with renewed humility and openness.

With the humility and reflection I can now say that he was right.

I had placed expectations upon him. Not necessarily through my words, but through countless smaller moments: a glance, a change in expression, the warmth of my approval when things were going well, or its subtle withdrawal when they were not. I may have believed these signals were almost imperceptible, but what feels like a whisper to the therapist may sound like a pounding drum to the client.

THE THERAPIST IS A HUMAN TOO

I cannot pretend that I am free from judgement simply because I am a therapist. When I am honest with myself, I know that I have reactions to my clients. I feel hopeful, proud and moved, but I can also feel frustrated, worried, anxious, let down and, perhaps most uncomfortably, disappointed. Sometimes that disappointment is about the client, but sometimes it is about me: the fear that I am not being effective, that therapy is not working, or that I am somehow failing because the person sitting opposite me is not “getting better.”

These are difficult emotions to admit because they do not fit comfortably with the image many of us would like to hold of ourselves as therapists. It is easy to accept the compassionate parts of ourselves: the warmth, patience, empathy and care. It is much harder to acknowledge the shadow that accompanies them.

Yet if I refuse to recognise those less flattering parts of myself, they do not simply disappear. They risk entering the therapeutic relationship without my awareness, communicated through my face, my voice, my silences, the questions I choose to ask and perhaps even the questions I choose not to ask.

Terence famously wrote, “I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.” For me, that idea is profoundly important in psychotherapy. Being a therapist does not remove me from the ordinary contradictions of being human. I do not stop judging simply because I have been trained not to judge. The ethical task is not to imagine myself purified of these reactions, but to become sufficiently aware of them that I can take responsibility for what I do with them.

And when I finally allowed myself to look honestly at what was happening between us, I saw something I did not particularly like. A part of me believed he could do better. That he could try harder. That if he really wanted to, he could make more of his life.

I am not proud of those thoughts. In fact, my first impulse was to distance myself from them because they did not fit with the therapist I believed myself to be. But denying them would not make them less true. Worse, it would make them harder to recognise in the room the next time they appear.

Reflecting, I began to see a pattern. Whenever he achieved something, I rarely let us stay with it for long. There was always another task, another possibility for change, another area of his life that I thought we might improve. What I experienced as encouragement may have felt like a constantly moving finish line to him. Each time he reached the place I had encouraged him towards, I had already begun pointing towards somewhere else.

And suddenly the pedestal he had described now looked very different to me.

I had imagined that my role was to help him climb down from beneath his father’s expectations. I had not noticed that, in subtle ways, I had begun standing on another pedestal myself.

MAKING POWER VISIBLE

For me, ethical practice therefore begins not by pretending that power does not exist, but by noticing what I am doing with it. In practical terms, this means paying close attention to the subtle ways authority or influence may show up in the session:

  • Am I directing the conversation more than usual?
  • Am I offering guidance when the client may need space to reflect?
  • Am I noticing power shifts in the room?

And sometimes, I may simply ask my client, “How are things between us right now?” or “How does it feel when I make suggestions or offer interpretations?”

Bringing these questions into the room can help make the dynamics of power visible, offering both myself and my client a chance to observe them together.

This is where power becomes subtle. Ethical material used in counselling training warns that the therapist can easily become the “expert” and may be tempted to influence clients towards the therapist’s or society’s values. Power does not always appear as domination. Sometimes it sounds remarkably like helpful guidance.

WHOSE IDEA OF A GOOD LIFE?

Philosophy offers another way to examine the same problem. Kant argued that human beings should never be treated merely as a means to somebody else’s end. In the therapy room, I hear this as a warning. The person sitting opposite me cannot become my project. Their progress cannot be measured by how closely they begin to resemble my idea of a healthy, successful or meaningful life. The moment I begin steering them towards the person I think they ought to become, even with the kindest intentions, I risk turning therapy into something that serves my values rather than theirs.

Aristotle offers a different, but equally important, question: what does it mean for this particular person to flourish? Eudaimonia is often translated as happiness, but flourishing is perhaps closer to its meaning. It points towards living well, rather than simply feeling good. Yet even here I have to be careful. Who gets to decide what living well looks like? If I decide in advance what flourishing should mean for my client, I have simply returned to the pedestal by another route.

This is where the uncomfortable lesson from my client still stays with me. I had believed I was encouraging him. I thought I was helping him move towards a fuller life. But from where he was sitting, my encouragement had become another standard to meet. The gym, the groups, the next challenge. Things I could understand as progress had also become evidence he could bring back to me, hoping to earn approval. Without intending to, I had become another person he could disappoint.

RESPONSIBILITY RATHER THAN SUPERIORITY

This is why I no longer think the answer is to pretend that power can be removed from therapy. The structure is there. I have training, language, responsibility and a professional role. I ask questions that can redirect attention. I choose when to speak and when to remain silent. Even my warmth, concern or disappointment can carry more weight than I realise. To deny this because I want the relationship to be equal would, for me, be another way of avoiding responsibility.

Perhaps the more ethical task is to make power visible: to notice it, question it and, when necessary, name it. Knowledge should create responsibility rather than superiority. My experience may help me illuminate possibilities, but it does not give me ownership of another person’s life. I can offer a light, but I must remain aware that I am also choosing where I point it.

Dostoevsky’s characters echo in my ear as Alyosha Karamazov states in The Brothers Karamazov: “We are all responsible for everyone, but I am more responsible than all the others.”

This changes the meaning of the idea that therapist and client are “fellow travellers”. Fellow travellers do not have to pretend they carry identical maps or stand in identical positions. What matters is that one traveller does not quietly take possession of the other’s destination. I may know something about the terrain, but the life being lived is not mine.

And perhaps this is where the pedestal matters most. We often speak about clients idealising therapists, placing us above them and giving our words an authority we may not deserve. But no one person builds a pedestal alone. Therapists can help construct it whenever we become too certain, too invested in being right, or too attached to evidence that therapy is working. We can also help dismantle it by being willing to hear, as I had to hear, that our help does not always feel helpful.

COLLABORATION AND AUTONOMY

I believe therapy can be a profoundly collaborative relationship. I simply no longer believe collaboration requires me to deny the power differences that enter the room with us. If anything, genuine collaboration asks me to become more conscious of the power differences. It asks me to tolerate the possibility that my client may reject my understanding, choose differently than I would, or tell me that something I am doing is not helping. Their disagreement is not necessarily resistance. Sometimes it is autonomy beginning to speak.

When a client disagrees with me or asserts their own view, I try to pause and listen carefully, acknowledging their perspective without rushing to explain or justify myself. I might say:

  • “Thank you for letting me know how that feels for you,”
  • “I see this is important to you, and I want to understand more about your experience.”

I have found that meeting disagreement with openness, rather than defensiveness, creates space for genuine dialogue and helps my clients trust that their voice will be respected in the room.

A QUESTION WORTH RETURNING TO

So perhaps the question I need to keep returning to is not, “How can I change this person?” or “How can I help this person become better?” Because those questions contain too much of me. My judgement, my direction, my idea of what better should look like.

The real question I want to carry instead is simpler, yet much harder:

“Am I creating enough space for this person to realise who they want to become?”

If I can keep asking that question honestly, then perhaps power does not have to disappear from the therapy room. Perhaps it can be acknowledged, held carefully and used in the service of something more important than my own idea of progress. It can be used in service of the client’s freedom to author their own life.

Between the needs and desires of the therapist, we must temper our impulses with a moment of humility; in those moments lie our clients choices, and in their choices lies their freedom and their future.