Professional psychology still widely teaches that the therapist should remain neutral, emotionally non-participatory, and minimally self-revealing.

This model argues that distance protects the clinical frame and maintains “clean” transference dynamics.

Last weekend, I made a different choice.

I attended a men’s retreat together with three of my own clients.

Most traditional therapists would never do that — or would actively forbid it.

Yet for us, this shared experience wasn’t a disruption.

It deepened trust.

Healing is not only created through interpretation or cognitive insight.

Men often heal most through embodied presence, resonance, shared struggle, shared breath, and unarmoured humanity.

Inside that circle, I wasn’t the detached analytic observer.

I was a man doing his own work — wrestling, opening, grieving, releasing, learning.

My clients saw that.

They saw me in process, not above it.

This is not boundary collapse.

This is boundary re-imagination.

Less therapist as blank wall.

More therapist as fellow human — walking alongside.

That subtle shift changes the emotional texture of the relationship:

more real contact, more truth, more dignity, more permission, more safety to reveal.

Not because the therapist stays perfect — but because the therapist stays human.

Some paradigms call this “contamination.”

I call it relational courage.

And in our case — it worked.

It brought depth that no couch could have generated by itself, it brought brotherhood.

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Photo: Andras Turi / All Male Area