Subtle warning signs of therapy harm when working with a trauma counsellor

Quick Summary: Not all therapy harm is obvious. This guide helps you recognize subtle warning signs of therapy harm—from trauma counsellors who can’t handle vulnerability to those who perform frameworks without embodying them. Based on research and lived experience as both client and counsellor.

Why this matters

Finding the right trauma counsellor can be difficult, and the narrative of “just choose a licensed counsellor” is often misleading and over-simplified. Licensing can help you file a complaint and may support your rights after sexual exploitation but it’s often not sufficient for subtle therapy harm in counselling. Working with trauma requires additional training that is not part of standard licensing. Even trauma-informed care goes beyond the standard code of ethics—some counsellors practice it, others don’t. To add another layer of complexity, therapeutic relationships can be harmful if the counsellor hasn’t done their own work.

As a counselling client who worked through complex and systemic trauma, I have had harmful experiences with therapists. These experiences became important teachers—they made me acutely aware of the dark side of counselling and deepened my understanding of my responsibility as a counsellor to do better. They also taught me to critically reflect on my position of power as a counsellor.

The research on therapy harm

Therapy harm is not just my experience. Research has found that harmful therapy involves unhelpful therapist behaviours like rigidity, over-control, and lack of knowledge, associated with clients feeling disempowered, silenced, or devalued.

This is especially true for culturally diverse clients or people who belong to groups targeted by oppression. Researchers D.W. Sue and D. Sue stated:

“Counselling and psychotherapy have done great harm to culturally diverse groups by invalidating their life experiences.”

Research shows that about 81% of clients experienced racial microaggressions in therapy.

I hope this article gives you some ideas on what to watch out for when working with a trauma counsellor. Therapy harm is a huge topic, so I won’t focus on the most extreme forms but rather on subtle patterns that can be warning signs.

A note on “trauma-informed” vs. basic relational health

You may hear counsellors say things like “trauma survivors need consistency” or “people with developmental trauma need extra transparency.” While trauma-informed care is important, these aren’t special accommodations—they’re basic healthy relationship skills that benefit everyone.

Every client deserves a counsellor with healthy relationship skills. This includes:

• Counsellors who keep their promises (or apologize and communicate when they can’t)
• Honesty when asking direct questions
• Transparency about limitations
• Someone who can navigate conflict
• Repair when harm occurs

The field sometimes frames these as “trauma-specific needs” when they’re actually just competent trauma counselling. Keeping your word isn’t a special consideration for trauma survivors—it’s how healthy relationships work. Being transparent isn’t extra care—it’s basic respect.

When counsellors position basic relational health as accommodation for “difficult” clients, they’re revealing how low the standards have fallen. Your expectations aren’t high because you’ve experienced trauma. They’re appropriate because healing requires healthy therapeutic relationships.

Please note: These needs for healthy therapeutic relationships aren’t a sign that you are broken or due to your trauma. They are basic needs and skills that every client deserves, independent from what has happened to you.

They stay silent when you share something vulnerable

A skilled trauma counsellor knows how to be with vulnerability and can manage their response if you show vulnerability. If a counsellor hasn’t done their own healing work, they often can’t support their clients healthily. If they avoid their own vulnerability, they can’t be open to yours.

Key insight: Relational trauma is often about the exploitation of vulnerability—it’s used against you. So if you have the courage to open up and be vulnerable again, it matters that your counsellor responds healthily.

What unhealthy responses look like:

• Silence or topic changes: If your counsellor goes quiet or changes the subject when you share something difficult, that’s a red flag
• Jumping into “saviour” mode: They respond with pity, trying to save you or put themselves in the “motherly” or “fatherly” role towards you
• Creating hierarchy: If a counsellor assumes a parental role towards you, they put themselves into a position of superiority. Healthy trauma counselling needs to treat you as an adult and empower you. Otherwise, there’s a risk that toxic childhood dynamics repeat themselves in the therapeutic relationship.

The challenge of no witnesses

Counselling happens in isolation. Sessions are usually only you and the counsellor who is in a position of power. There are no witnesses who can validate your experience, so the cycle of subtle toxic dynamics can easily repeat itself. If you have experienced relational trauma, childhood abuse, or other forms of abuse, you may be very familiar with these dynamics, which makes them harder to recognize.

Remember: It’s easy to talk about healthy relationships but it takes accountability to live them.

Recognizing disempowerment

Trauma researcher Judith Herman stated: “Any therapeutic intervention that takes power away from the survivor—even with good intentions—hinders recovery.” This is the essence of trauma healing.

Practicing Herman’s principle is an art that requires deep personal growth by the counsellor. It demands that they examine their own relationship to power and control, tolerate not being the expert, sit with ambiguity, and remain aware of when their own need to help or fix is creeping in. This isn’t learned from textbooks—it comes from ongoing self-examination and personal healing work.

Even counsellors who understand this principle will make mistakes. What matters is whether they take responsibility when they do and respect your boundaries if you choose to speak up. A counsellor’s ability to repair, acknowledge missteps, and adjust their approach when you name something that doesn’t feel right is often more important than getting it perfect from the start.

You might recognize disempowerment if you feel like a victim in the counselling relationship. Some therapeutic approaches, like DBT, actually give the counsellor the authority to evaluate whether your emotional response is “valid.” For someone healing from childhood trauma or systemic trauma, this recreates the original wound. With childhood trauma, you learn to look outside yourself for permission to feel what you feel, rather than learning to trust your own emotional reality. With systemic trauma, you have someone in a position of power—often with privilege over you—deciding whether your emotional response to oppression, marginalization, or discrimination is legitimate. The counsellor becomes the judge of what’s reasonable, which is the opposite of empowerment.

Similarly, approaches like CBT that focus primarily on changing thoughts can inadvertently talk people out of their boundaries. In CBT, the counsellor is positioned as the expert who identifies your “distorted thinking” and teaches you “rational” responses. This expert-client hierarchy is fundamentally at odds with trauma healing, which requires you to reclaim authority over your own experience rather than defer to someone else’s interpretation of your reality.

If you’re experiencing emotional abuse—like a partner giving you the silent treatment—and the counsellor asks you to examine your thoughts about it rather than naming it as a boundary violation, they’re suggesting the problem is in your perception, not in the harmful behaviour. This can create additional wounding for people healing from emotional violence, childhood trauma, complex trauma, or systemic trauma. If boundaries aren’t centered in the work, there’s a high risk of reinforcing the original message that your boundaries don’t matter or that you’re the problem for having them.

What to watch for:

Pay attention to whether your trauma counsellor demonstrates healthy behaviours in the therapeutic relationship:

• Do they respect your boundaries?
• Do they lean into conflict when relevant?
• Do they challenge you with respect?

Trauma counselling isn’t about keeping you comfortable but allowing you to grow safely. Both aggressive behaviours (like blaming you or yelling) and avoidant behaviours (like neglecting boundaries or avoiding conflict) are red flags that suggest the counsellor hasn’t done their own work.

They center their own learning or growth

Your therapy time is for you. If your counsellor regularly asks you to educate them, validate their lack of knowledge, or process their feelings about what you’re sharing, something is fundamentally wrong with the dynamic. This can happen in areas where the counsellor has privilege towards you, like trans clients being unfairly burdened by unaware cis counsellors or Indigenous clients having to educate settler counsellors about colonization.

Subtle warning signs of therapy harm:

• They ask you whether their ignorance about your identity or experience is “okay”—this often applies to clients who are BIPOC, 2SLGBTQ+, or immigrants, or a combination of these
• You need to hold space for their discomfort around your identity
• They hide their lack of awareness behind the mask of “good intentions”
• They make your marginalization about their learning journey
• They expect you to validate their lack of basic knowledge about your community or give you breadcrumbs (e.g., they want your appreciation if they use the correct pronouns for the first time but tell you that you need to have patience with them)
• They never acknowledge the systemic dynamics you are targeted by but just validate your emotions.

This is misuse of power, not healthy care. A counsellor who hasn’t done their homework outside of sessions is asking you to pay (literally and emotionally) to educate them.

What healthy looks like:

Counsellors take responsibility for their own education. They may be honest that they have work to do and acknowledge the difference between your lived experiences. They do their research, attend trainings, consult with colleagues, and read extensively about the communities they serve. They reflect on how this plays out in themselves and change. They don’t use your session time to fill their knowledge gaps.

They claim frameworks without embodying them

This is one of the most dangerous patterns because you, as the client, will have a hard time spotting it. Many counsellors use terms like “trauma-informed,” “anti-oppressive,” or “culturally responsive” without actually practicing them. None of these terms is clearly defined in codes of ethics, and counsellors aren’t held accountable for how they live them.

Research on racial microaggressions in therapy shows counsellors may unconsciously communicate denigrating messages to minority clients, including minimizing the importance of racial-cultural issues, pathologizing cultural values, or dismissing experiences of marginalization or oppression. This happens even when counsellors claim cultural competence.

The reality is: If counsellors don’t challenge their cultural beliefs towards marginalized groups, they unconsciously project them onto their clients.

Attending a training is one thing; really applying and practicing it in the therapeutic relationship takes ongoing self-examination, humility, and a willingness to be uncomfortable.

Subtle warning signs of therapy harm:

• They use the right words but their behaviour doesn’t match
• You end up in a cycle where you educate your counsellor about your experience of oppression
• You speak up and are met with defensiveness, dismissal or conflict avoidance
• If you set boundaries, the counsellor dismisses them
• When you point out something that doesn’t feel aligned, they get defensive, respond with silence or make it about you
• They focus on being “affirming” without examining their own privilege or biases
• They perform allyship (pronouns in bio, pride flags) but can’t engage with dismantling their role in systemic oppression and have little knowledge about your culture
• They claim anti-oppressive practice but never acknowledge their privilege towards you

What healthy looks like:

A counsellor practicing these frameworks can have honest conversations about power, can acknowledge when they miss something, and demonstrates humility about what they don’t know. They understand that affirming care is not the same as anti-oppressive practice—one can exist without examining privilege or engaging with systemic oppression. They can explain to you how they live these frameworks.

They lack emotional maturity in the relationship

Credentials or registration don’t equal relational health. A counsellor might be highly trained but unable to navigate conflict, discomfort, or difference in authentic ways.

Key insight: The challenge in counselling is that, while models have different perspectives on the therapeutic relationship, a counsellor and client are always in a relationship. So, the trauma counsellor’s healthy or unhealthy relationship patterns will affect the relationship they can create with you.

Subtle warning signs of therapy harm:

• They avoid difficult conversations about the therapeutic relationship itself
• They can’t receive feedback without becoming defensive, distant or making it about you
• They find excuses for their behaviour
• They apologize but never change
• They perform care rather than actually being present
• They stay silent when uncomfortable instead of naming it
• They can’t repair when they cause harm
• They may end the relationship if you set a boundary
• They may end the counselling relationship prematurely because they haven’t processed their own trauma well enough to work with you

Registration or licensing doesn’t assess whether you can actually be healthy in relationship. Counsellors can know theory, pass exams, use the right language—and still be unable to sit with discomfort, be honest when struggling, or stay present when things get real.

What healthy looks like:

Mature counsellors can say “I’m noticing I feel uncomfortable hearing this, and I want to stay with you in this.” They can repair when they harm, can name their own limitations without making it your problem, and can stay engaged even when things get messy. They can apologize for mistakes. They can acknowledge if activated parts took over. They treat you as an adult capable of co-creating the therapeutic relationship.

They lack curiosity about your identity or context

If you’ve been seeing a counsellor for months and they’ve never asked about significant aspects of your identity—your immigration experience, your disability, your gender, your culture, your experience of oppression—that’s erasure, not neutrality.

Subtle warning signs of therapy harm:

• They treat you as though you exist outside of social context
• They’ve never shown curiosity about how oppression shows up in your life
• They seem uncomfortable when you bring up systemic issues
• They’ve never acknowledged cultural differences between the two of you
• They assume your experience is universal or similar to their own

That erasure isn’t neutral—it’s a refusal to see a fundamental part of your reality.

What healthy looks like:

Trauma doesn’t happen in a vacuum. A skilled counsellor understands how systems of oppression contribute to trauma and actively asks about your experience within those systems. They recognize that your social location shapes your experience and they’re curious about that, rather than avoiding it.

They perform allyship without doing the work

There’s a vast difference between someone who puts pronouns in their bio, claim to be a “white ally” and someone who’s actually examined their privilege and complicity in systems of harm. Performative allyship is easy. The real work requires ongoing discomfort and self-examination.

Subtle warning signs of therapy harm:

• They focus on what they do “right” rather than staying curious about impact
• They seem more invested in being seen as a good ally than dismantling their role in systemic oppression
• When you name something problematic, they center their intentions over your experience
• They’re proud of their allyship rather than humble about the ongoing work
• They equate “affirming care” with anti-oppressive practice
• They talk about anti-oppressive practice but exclude their privilege from this assessment

Anti-oppressive practice requires examining how white supremacy culture, ableism, transphobia, and other systems of oppression show up in our own behavior and in the therapeutic relationship itself.

What healthy looks like:

People who really practice anti-oppression demonstrate humility and grow continuously. They understand complexity and intersectionality. They do the work because it’s right, they stay humble about what they know, and they prioritize your experience over their comfort. They understand that pride can easily slip into superiority, and they’re vigilant about that fine line.

Trust your gut and your healing

Learn to trust your gut. If something feels off, it probably is. You don’t need to be able to articulate exactly what’s wrong to know that this isn’t the right fit. Your healing journey has given you wisdom about what healthy relationships look like—trust that. If you feel confused, speak to a friend and debrief the dynamic to the degree that you feel safe enough.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Do I feel more drained or disempowered, or more resourced after sessions?
• Do I feel confused after my counselling sessions?
• Do angry parts show up after the sessions?
• Can I be honest about what isn’t working?
• Does this person seem genuinely curious about me, or are they operating from assumptions?
• Do I feel seen for who I actually am, including my social location and experience of oppression?
• Can they sit with discomfort without avoiding or trying to save me?
• Do their actions match their stated values?

The field won’t protect you

Here’s the hard truth: Credentials can’t tell you whether someone has done their own trauma work or examined their privilege. Licensing boards don’t assess for humility, authenticity, or the capacity to navigate power dynamics. They may give you the option to file a complaint if harm has happened. 

This means you have to be discerning. You have to trust your own experience over someone’s credentials. You have to be willing to end therapeutic relationships that aren’t serving you, even if the counsellor is “nice” or “affirming” or has impressive letters after their name.

You deserve better

Finding a counsellor who can actually hold complexity, sit with discomfort, and practice what they preach takes time. Don’t settle for someone who uses the right language but can’t embody the values. Don’t stay with someone who makes you smaller, who can’t handle your truth, or who centers their own comfort over your healing.

Your healing matters. Your time matters. Your experience matters.

You’re not being difficult by having standards—you’re being wise.

Choose someone who shows you through their actions, not just their words, that they’re equipped to walk beside you in your healing journey. And remember: ending a therapeutic relationship that isn’t working is itself an act of reclaiming your power.

Final thoughts on warnings signs of therapy harm

It’s okay to interview counsellors, to ask direct questions about how they practice, to name when something doesn’t feel right, and to leave. You’re not responsible for protecting your counsellor’s feelings or managing their discomfort.

Your healing is what matters.

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