“I Just Want Someone to Listen”: Does Every Client Need a Goal in Counselling?

Ask a client what they hope to get from counselling and sometimes the answer is: “I just want someone to listen.”

For a new counsellor, this can create an unexpected problem. We have been taught to ask about goals, establish what the client wants from counselling and regularly review whether therapy is helping. “I just want someone to listen” can feel too vague. Where is the therapeutic goal? What are we working towards? Are we supposed to help the client identify something more substantial?

Sometimes, in supervision, the more interesting question is what makes us uncomfortable about the answer the client has already given us.

Whose need for a goal are we responding to?

Goals have an important place in counselling. Research consistently supports collaboration between therapist and client about the purpose and direction of therapy. Tryon et al. (2018), in a meta-analysis of 54 studies, found that agreement about therapeutic goals was positively associated with treatment outcome. Collaboration about how those goals would be pursued was also associated with better outcomes.

This gives us good reason to talk with clients about what they want from counselling. It does not necessarily follow that every client needs to arrive with a specific and clearly articulated problem to solve.

A client who tells us that they need someone to listen has, in fact, told us something important about what they want from therapy. Our temptation to translate this immediately into a more conventional therapeutic goal may tell us as much about our own expectations as it does about the client's needs.

For early-career counsellors, having a defined goal can provide some reassurance. It gives us something to work on and some way of knowing what to do next. Without that structure, there can be an uncomfortable question sitting in the room: If I am mostly listening, am I actually doing enough?

That is a very useful question to take to supervision!

What does “I just want someone to listen” actually mean?

There are many reasons someone might want to talk to a counsellor without initially wanting advice, strategies or a solution. A person may have spent years in relationships where conversations become about somebody else's needs. They may have friends who offer advice when they want understanding, or family members who become frightened, defensive or overwhelmed when difficult subjects arise. Some clients are carrying experiences they have never spoken about aloud to another person. And others have plenty of people around them but nobody with whom they can speak freely.

There is also something distinctive about the counselling relationship. A counsellor can care about what happens to a client without having the same personal stake in the client's decisions as a partner, parent, colleague or friend. The client does not have to manage the counsellor's life after the session or sit across from them at Christmas lunch.

For other clients, the difficulty is that they just do not know what they need yet. People frequently come to counselling because they are overwhelmed, confused or aware that something is wrong without being able to explain exactly what it is. Asking them to identify a specific therapeutic destination may require a clarity they do not yet have.

Being heard properly can be part of how developing that clarity.

Listening is part of the therapy

Counsellors can become understandably concerned about “just listening”, particularly when sessions have continued for some time. The phrase itself can undersell what skilled therapeutic listening involves.

A counsellor is listening for meaning as well as information. We remember what has been said previously and notice when something appears again, we hear changes in how clients describe themselves and other people, we reflect emotions that may not yet have been clearly named. We can notice when the story becomes difficult to tell, how the client moves rapidly away from something, or how their interpretation of an event seems to carry a familiar assumption about themselves.

Accurate empathy also has a substantial research base. Elliott et al. (2018) examined 82 independent samples involving 6,138 clients and found therapist empathy to be a moderately strong predictor of psychotherapy outcome. Importantly, empathy was associated with outcome across different therapeutic orientations and client presentations.

The broader therapeutic relationship has similarly strong evidence behind it. Flückiger et al. (2018), drawing on 295 independent studies involving more than 30,000 clients, found a robust association between therapeutic alliance and treatment outcome across different approaches, client characteristics and countries.

This does not mean that empathy alone is sufficient treatment for every presentation. It does mean we should be careful about treating listening and relationship as the preliminary work we do before the “real” intervention begins.

For some clients, having their experience accurately understood is already doing important therapeutic work.

Some goals become visible through the therapy

One of the difficulties with establishing goals at the beginning of counselling is that neither the counsellor nor the client necessarily knows what will become important.

I have often found myself remembering something a client said in one of our earliest sessions many months later. An issue that initially appeared to be one part of their story has gradually revealed itself as a theme running through many parts of their life.

Perhaps they talked in the first session about feeling responsible for keeping everybody happy. Over time, we see the same pattern in their family relationships, at work and in the way they respond to conflict. This may even show up in sessions in the therapeutic relationship. A year later, we may return to that first conversation with a much richer understanding of what it meant.

The client could not necessarily have articulated that as a goal at the beginning because they did not yet recognise the pattern.

Therapy can help people develop an understanding of themselves that was not available to them when they first walked through the door. As that understanding changes, the possibilities for change can become clearer too.

There is some evidence that client preferences matter here. Swift et al. (2018), in a meta-analysis involving more than 16,000 clients, found that accommodating clients' preferences was associated with lower treatment dropout and better outcomes. Client-centred practice requires some willingness to begin where the client actually is, rather than where we think therapy ought to begin.

What has changed if we have mostly been talking?

Suppose the client continues attending for a year. They still describe what happens during sessions as “having someone to talk to”. Does that mean nothing has changed?

Look more closely and the picture may be quite different. The client who once became overwhelmed for several days after conflict may now recognise what is happening and recover more quickly while someone who repeatedly agreed to things they did not want may have begun noticing resentment earlier and making different decisions. Another client may understand why particular interactions affect them so strongly and no longer interpret every intense emotional response as evidence that something is wrong with them.

They may have developed ways of regulating themselves that emerged organically through counselling rather than through a formal skills program. They may be less ashamed, less confused or better able to tolerate difficult feelings. Their external circumstances may remain complicated while their capacity to respond to them has changed considerably.

None of those outcomes requires us to pretend that the client secretly wanted something different when they originally said, “I just need someone to listen.”

Perhaps being listened to was part of how those changes became possible.

Goals can evolve

Rather than treating goal-setting as something we complete near the beginning of counselling, it can be more useful to think about goals as part of an ongoing conversation.

A client might initially want somewhere to talk. Several months later, they may want to understand why they repeatedly find themselves in a particular kind of relationship. Later still, they may decide they want to practise doing something differently.

The counsellor can remain interested in direction without forcing direction.

This also allows us to revisit earlier conversations. We can ask clients what feels different now, whether counselling is giving them what they hoped for, what they have noticed about themselves, or whether there is something they would like more or less of in sessions.

Goal consensus is relational. It involves continually checking that counsellor and client still understand what they are doing together (Tryon et al., 2018).

Listening still needs to be therapeutic

There is an important caution here: respecting a client's wish to talk does not mean we should assume indefinitely that counselling is helpful simply because the client keeps coming.

Sometimes therapy can become comfortable but stagnant. Sessions can develop into a weekly recounting of events with little reflection, emotional processing or new understanding. A client may appreciate the counsellor enormously while both people have stopped asking whether the work is helping.

This is not always obvious from the amount of talking happening in the room!

A counsellor can listen closely for a year while substantial therapeutic work occurs while another counselling relationship can become repetitive within a few sessions. This is where supervision becomes useful because we can examine what is happening in the process rather than judging therapy according to how many interventions the counsellor performed.

We can also ask the client.

“How are these sessions working for you?” is a perfectly reasonable therapeutic question. So is, “When you think about what was happening when you first came to counselling, what feels different now?”

If the answer is “nothing”, this needs further exploration. If the client says that this is the only place where they can think clearly, hear themselves speak, understand their reactions and work out what they want to do, that deserves to be taken seriously too.

What happens in us when the client doesn't want more?

There is a useful piece of reflective work here for counsellors.

Notice what happens when a client says they only want someone to listen. Do you immediately start searching for a goal? Do you worry that you are not providing enough value? Do you feel pressure to introduce an intervention? Do you become bored or frustrated when the client does not seem interested in change?

There may also be organisational pressure behind this. Counsellors working in EAPs, brief-intervention services and other outcome-focused environments may be expected to document measurable goals and demonstrate progress within a limited number of sessions. Those requirements affect the therapeutic relationship and are worth discussing in supervision.

For newer counsellors, though, there can be another layer. We spend years learning counselling theories, interventions and techniques, and naturally we want to use them. Sitting with somebody who is confused and does not yet know what they want may make us feel unskilled.

Sometimes the clinical task is to tolerate that uncertainty long enough to understand the person in front of us.

Perhaps “a listening ear” is a reasonable place to begin

We should keep asking clients what they want from counselling. Goals can give therapy direction, help counsellor and client recognise change and alert us when the work has become stuck. The evidence supports collaboration around goals and the therapeutic tasks used to pursue them.

But collaboration requires us to listen to the answer.

When a client says, “I just want someone to listen,” we do not have to rush past it in search of a more impressive therapeutic goal. We can become curious about what being listened to means for this particular person and what becomes possible when they have that experience consistently.

Other goals may become clearer later. And months from now, when we return to something they told us in that first session, both of us may finally understand why it mattered.

Early career counsellor? Check out our new closed supervision group, starting October 27.

References

Elliott, R., Bohart, A. C., Watson, J. C., & Murphy, D. (2018). Therapist empathy and client outcome: An updated meta-analysis. Psychotherapy, 55(4), 399–410. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000175

Flückiger, C., Del Re, A. C., Wampold, B. E., & Horvath, A. O. (2018). The alliance in adult psychotherapy: A meta-analytic synthesis. Psychotherapy, 55(4), 316–340. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000172

Swift, J. K., Callahan, J. L., Cooper, M., & Parkin, S. R. (2018). The impact of accommodating client preference in psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74(11), 1924–1937. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22680

Tryon, G. S., Birch, S. E., & Verkuilen, J. (2018). Meta-analyses of the relation of goal consensus and collaboration to psychotherapy outcome. Psychotherapy, 55(4), 372–383. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000170