A truly talented psychologist should know things about you before you say them. They should be able to get information from multiple sources rather than just what you say and put this together into a picture that helps you heal. They should look at your body language, posture, and listen to your voice. They should ask you a lot of questions in the beginning to get to know you better. This can help them gain an understanding of who you are and why you need psychological assistance. They should talk to family or friends if you think this would be useful. Your mind is an important part of this picture and understanding your mind is part of what psychologists do.
People who study to be psychologists have many reasons why they want to help others. Some psychologists have experienced hard times themselves or feel a pull towards a profession that seeks to help others. Due to these factors many psychologists have skills in understanding others prior to commencing their training. These skills are then further honed through psychology training and ongoing supervision and professional development.
If you have seen a psychologist, it may sometimes feel like they are reading your mind. A good psychologist should be able to see your humanity regardless of the things that have happened in your life. You may have done things you feel guilty or shameful about or you may have had traumatic things happen to you. A psychologist’s job is to see you as trying to do your best under difficult circumstances. When you see a psychologist, they should at times know things about you even before you know them about yourself. They should help guide you to new understandings about yourself and provide you with a road map to improved mental health.
Alan Schore’s ground breaking book The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy argues therapy changes not only the brain of the client but also over time the brain of the psychologist. He states, “in monitoring somatic countertransferential responses, the empathic clinician’s psychobiologically attuned right brain tracks at a preconscious level, not only the arousal rhythms and flows of the patient’s affective states but also her own somatic counter transferential interoceptive, bodily based affective responses to the patient’s implicit facial, prosodic, and gestural communications”. What this passage is saying is therapy involves the psychologist using the unconscious right side of their brain to understand your mental state. Let’s break this quote down further. A psychologist should be watching and listening carefully to their clients. Their focus however should not just be on what you are saying but more importantly how you are saying it and what you are saying with your gestures and tone. This can provide your psychologist with an understanding of how important or traumatic an event was for you.
There are a number of things your psychologist should pay attention to which can help them understand what you are saying at a deeper level. Sometimes you have things you are not ready to disclose or unconscious patterns of which you are unaware. Psychologists are trained to look for cues which are called nonverbal communication. You communicate a lot to your psychologist through your posture, movements, facial expression, eye contact, voice pitch and volume, and the emphasis you put on particular words. We identify emotional expressions on the face through muscle movement and blood flow. In fact, the average person is so good at identifying emotions through blood flow they recognize the correct human emotion 90 percent of the time just by looking at the blood flow colour. This idea should not make you more self-conscious around your psychologist but should show that they are really paying attention to what you are saying on many levels. Rather than reading your mind they are reading your movements, sounds and other forms of communication to get a better understanding of what is going on in your mind.
Dr Dan Siegel encourages everyone to learn “Mindsight” which he describes as our human capacity to perceive the mind of the self and others. This is the idea that by really understanding our own minds at a deeper level we become better at understanding and connecting with other people. This is part of Dr Siegel’s broader theory of Interpersonal Neurobiology that examines the impact of our relationships on our brains and bodies. There is a growing body of research that shows our relationships impact our brains, bodies, and physiology. One way we can impact on another person is through empathy. Have you ever seen someone on TV in a distressed state and felt that you know exactly how they are feeling? As humans we have evolved to be very attuned to each other’s emotional states. Even catching a glimpse of someone out of the corner of our eyes can tell us how they are feeling.
Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings of another or see the world from someone else’s perspective. Scientists have discovered we have mirror neurons in our brains which show activity when others perform certain actions. To explain this further these neurons fire in our own brains when we watch someone perform an action as if we are actually performing the action ourselves. These neurons are also proposed to play a part in empathy and may help us to understand the emotions of others. Once we understand the world from another’s perspective we can then feel empathy and better understand their situation and experiences. Mirror neurons go further than just seeing the world from another’s perspective. These neurons in our own brain fire as if we are having the experience ourselves. This idea of understanding another person from the inside of our own brain is similar to being able to read their mind. From this we can understand their goals and intentions. There are no studies looking at whether psychologists have more developed or attuned mirror neurons. In-fact all of the mirror neuron research thus far has been conducted on monkey’s. However, your psychologist should be able to use this concept to understand you better.
Many psychologists use the ideas of transference and counter-transference when they treat their patients. This concept assists a psychologist to use the therapeutic relationship to better understand you. Your psychologist needs to constantly assess how you make them feel during sessions and whether patterns in relationships emerge. Part of psychology training is to learn to become aware of these feelings and patterns. Once your psychologist is aware of these they can then gently share them with you. This can help you better understand your own mind and the patterns of behaviour it produces.
Psychologists also understand frameworks of human behaviour. This makes them more able to predict why a person may be acting in a certain way. Take PTSD for example which is a diagnosis given when someone remains hypervigilant and unable to sleep etc. after a traumatic event. So, some people have a hard time after bad things happen to them or they see lots of bad things. But people will often come to a psychologist reporting a problem with sleep or a relationship. A client may tell their psychologist about their Father who hit them regularly throughout their childhood and about the sad experiences they have had in their job as an ambulance officer. But they will not relate these things to their current symptoms or presenting problems. A psychologist will use the PTSD framework to understand these common reactions after scary and sad experiences. In terms of depression research has shown that there are language patterns that occur more often in people who experience depression. These include words that are absolutist or put forward only one way of thinking about a problem and include works such as always, everyone, and completely. 
Cozolino in his book The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain states “because our brains are social organs interwoven with the brains of those around us, relationships have a direct impact on the biology of our brains”. This means your psychologist can use their own mind to help you shape your brain to function better. It is important to remember that the most important factor for psychotherapy is the relationship you have with your psychologist. Research has described this relationship, as the main curative component. It does not appear to matter which style or type of therapy is used the alliance between the psychologist and the client is the biggest predictor of a positive clinical outcome. When looking for a psychologist there are some characteristics which have been identified as contributing positively to the therapeutic relationship. These include being flexible, honest, respectful, trustworthy, confident, warm, interested, and open. When you are looking for a psychologist these are some characteristics you may want to consider as part of your decision.
So, while your psychologist can’t read your mind, they are trained to be aware of many small cues. These cues give them insight into a person’s mental state. They can see and understand more than the average person. Most importantly what a psychologist really needs is for you to be open and honest about your problems. Correct them if they get it wrong which happens even to the best psychologists. You are an expert on yourself and they need you to work with them in order to provide you the best possible service. The relationship you have with your psychologist is the most important component of the therapy. This relationship has the ability to help your psychologist understand you better, to help heal your hurts and to make positive changes in your life.
