Is my therapist upset when I don’t do my homework?
2022 update
Today, 10 years on from originally writing this, I’d say that I only get frustrated when clients consistently don’t carry anything from our sessions into their everyday lives. I don’t care if they don’t do the specific homework we planned. But if they didn’t practice anything from session in the week(s) following, I know our progress will be slow and frustrating to us both. I always initially assume that if nothing from therapy was practiced in the following week, that I did a bad job of targeting interventions and making therapy relevant to the client. There are cases, however, where a client has an implicit expectation that I can “cure” them with weekly or biweekly sessions and in those cases, I find it frustrating when homework isn't done week after week.
The takeaway I hope you get from this blog is that integrating therapy into your everyday life is the only way for it to facilitate change! Nothing is going to change with one hour a week if the learning doesn’t go forward into the rest of the hours.
The original article
Sometimes therapists do get frustrated with clients for not finishing homework. Since counseling requires participation from both parties to work, and arguably, MORE participation from the client, sometimes we think "awww geeze we can't reach our goals with only one hour of work a week..."
Usually though, frustration is NOT our first reaction. It is curiosity! There are many reasons clients do not finish homework and many of these reasons are actually very informative to therapy.
Assignments we give often invoke unpleasant feelings of sadness, anxiety, or confusion and it is perfectly normal to not want to experience those. Sometimes we suggest homework that sparks these feelings without adequately preparing the client ahead of time.
We misgauge how long an assignment will take and don't tailor it appropriately to the client's life.
Sometimes, we don't explain the purpose of the assignment to the client in a way that helps them see its usefulness in the overall course of therapy.
Each client has their own learning and communication style and we do not always know what that is until we try and fail a few times at homework.
These are just a few of the many reasons that clients may not complete homework that don't leave us frustrated at all. That said, we strive to understand what "went wrong" with the assignment and clients may sometimes interpret this as the therapist being upset or critical. Once in awhile, your therapist may actually feel frustrated when you don't do your homework, but based on my own experiences and the therapists I know, they probably just want to know where THEY went wrong in finding ways for you to practice outside of session.