Therapist Drinking Water Debate

AKA: Am I ok with my Therapist being Human?

I can’t believe I am fucking writing this post in 2026, but alas, here we are…

Recently, the internet has been abuzz regarding the debate of whether or not therapists should be allowed to drink water or another beverage (i.e., coffee) while in session with their clients.

Need I remind you that this debate is nothing new…

Ten years ago, when I was completing my internship, I remember being explicitly told, along with a group of interns, not to drink water or anything during sessions so as not to “disturb the client’s process.”

Two days later, another clinician said it was fine to drink tea or water during the session and that it might actually “normalize” the client’s experience.

…I look back at this moment and I honestly still can’t believe we as therapists still fail to realize when we are engaging in over-rationalization…as if we have dehumanized ourselves so much that we must give ourselves permission to take care of our basic needs (i.e. hydration) by justifying it as a clinical reason which is therapeutic for the client’s benefit…

In other words…why can’t we - collectively as therapists - let ourselves be fucking human?

And it’s not just drinking fluids…

We are told all sorts of arbitrary rules to follow:

“Don’t hug clients.”

“Don’t hand clients tissues.”

“Don’t tell clients you’re proud of them, it will foster dependency.”

And for every one of these so-called “rules,” there are hundreds of therapists arguing the opposite.

In other words, it is entirely subjective on the part of the therapist whether or not they choose to engage in these behaviors in session.

Yet, while we’re busy fighting over which therapist is “right” or “wrong” in this debate, what we seem to be blind to is how, in our desire to find a way to rationalize the normal human urges and functions we have in session, we have effectively turned ourselves into one-dimensional objects.

In other words, we have become soulless practitioners, focused on putting our clients’ needs above our own at all costs.

This isn’t normal, and this isn’t healthy.

In fact, it is quite damaging to therapists, who are already trained to be so hyper-aware of their own biases and reactions to others. To avoid “empathic failures” at all costs by engaging in bracketing and silencing their own inner emotional landscape.

This form of self-regulation takes a tremendous amount of psychological effort, and as a result, many therapists suffer from chronic unexplained pain or autoimmune conditions.

This stress and unpaid labor take a toll on us.

We carry it home with us after a long day of work, during which we hold space for everyone else, when there is often not the same level of reciprocity within our home and family lives to care for us.

…and yet, we were now questioning if the therapists are even allowed to have a sip of water…

a SIP of water….

I wish I could say this jokingly, but in other periods of history in which large groups of populations of individuals have been denied their ability to take care of their basic human needs, we have called that “inhumane treatment” or even “slavery.”

…so what makes it different for therapists?

I can guarantee you that Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers, Carl Jung, and Yalom did not give a fuck if they drank water in session or not. Because it isn’t about the goddamn water at all.

It’s about whether we believe as a society as a whole that therapists should be allowed to be treated like human beings and not just our emotional dumping grounds.

And this form of dehumanization of ourselves happens so early on in our therapist training. I see it all the time with my students who panic when they are “less than perfect” on an assignment, yet I try to remind them that as a therapist, they are human first and therefore not every session will be perfect.

That it is ok if you “get it wrong” because you are modeling what it is like to be human for the client, and perhaps that feedback might help them to realize how they are engaging in their relationships with other people.

That it’s ok to have an “off day” or a normal human reaction.

That it is okay if you need to take a sip of water, call out sick, or just need a fucking break every once in a while.

Therapists were never meant to be machines, and as I said in a previous post about the rise of AI therapists, we weren’t meant to be echo chambers for clients, either.

The therapeutic relationship was always meant to be reciprocal, but in our insurance-based world, which exploits the unpaid labor of therapists barely paying them enough money to survive, we seem to have forgotten that.

For some reason, instead, we find stupid arguments to judge and shame ourselves and other therapists for being less than “perfect” as if our perfect therapist selves can really “save” clients amidst the looming threat of war, inequality in wealth, and so many other systemic factors the human race is currently up against.

I say this with love and a harsh dosage of truth to myself and my fellow therapists, but we have got to get out of our heads and stop putting ourselves on pedestals.

As I said before, we have a tendency to Madonnaize ourselves as healthcare professionals (teachers and nurses too), and this Madonnaization of ourselves doesn’t make clients or insurance companies respect our work…instead, it just makes it easier for us to be exploited and our needs to be overlooked.

So I say drink the fucking water, and if it upsets your clients, then perhaps use that moment therapeutically to inform them that relationships were always meant to be founded on reciprocity and human-to-human connection.

OX

Your Dark Fairy Godmother