Clients always tell the truth, right? Wrong! In this series of posts, I will discuss why clients sometimes have hidden agendas and how you should respond.
Why Are Hidden Agendas Important?
Clients may lie or mislead therapists for many reasons. Consider the wife who promised her husband she would get sex therapy because of her low sexual desire. But she’s not really motivated to change sexually; her real motivation is to keep her husband happy because he’s the breadwinner. She’ll tell you she wants to work on her low desire but then won’t do any of the homework you assign. As another example, consider the husband who is dragged into marriage counseling by the wife because he isn’t emotionally expressive. He may say he’s motivated to change, but doesn’t say much more than a word or two despite your best efforts to ask open-ended questions. In reality, he’s really in therapy because his wife threatened divorce unless he went and he doesn’t want to be alone. In both these examples, the client has a hidden agenda.
And then there are the individual clients who don’t tell the truth about their thoughts, feelings or behaviors because they are ashamed. These are harder to detect because their partner isn’t present to give an alternative perspective.
It’s not that these cases are hopeless, it’s that we need to be aware of hidden agendas if we are going to be effective. (Otherwise we are basing treatment decisions on incorrect data.) If a behavior doesn’t make sense, if stories are inconsistent, or you are finding it difficult to engage the client then there may be a hidden agenda.
In my next post, I will give specific suggestions on handling hidden agendas in therapy.
Yours in the Joy of Knowledge,
Dr. Barb LoFrisco
