Ethical Bracketing: What Your Therapist Should Do With Their Opinions
You Have the Right to Make Your Own Decisions
One of the foundational principles in professional counseling is the recognition that clients — not counselors — are the rightful authors of their own lives. This principle, known as autonomy, holds that individuals possess the inherent right to make choices about their own values, relationships, lifestyle, and future, provided those choices do not harm others. It is not simply a philosophical ideal; it is an ethical obligation that shapes how counselors are trained and how they are expected to conduct themselves in every session. The profession’s tool for protecting that right is called ethical bracketing.
This matters for you as a client because it means that your therapist is not in the room to redirect you toward a particular way of living, to evaluate your choices against their own moral framework, or to subtly steer you toward conclusions that reflect their personal beliefs rather than your own. The therapeutic relationship, properly understood, is not a space in which the counselor’s values take precedence over yours. It is a space in which your values, your goals, and your capacity to determine what is right for your own life are centered and supported.
Understanding this principle helps clients engage more fully and honestly in therapy — and it provides a basis for recognizing when something may feel off in the therapeutic relationship.
Ethical Bracketing: What It Is and Why It Matters
Counselors are human beings, and human beings hold values. A therapist may have deeply held convictions about religion, relationships, gender, sexuality, parenting, or any number of other domains that are likely to arise in clinical work. The existence of those values is not, in itself, a problem. The problem arises when a counselor allows those values to intrude upon the therapeutic relationship in ways that compromise the client’s autonomy.
To address this, the counseling profession has developed the concept of ethical bracketing — defined by Kocet and Herlihy (2014) as “the intentional setting aside of the counselor’s personal values in order to provide ethically appropriate counseling to all clients.” Bracketing does not require a counselor to abandon their values or pretend they do not exist. Rather, it requires that the counselor make a deliberate and ongoing commitment to prevent those values from driving the clinical work.
This is a skill that is taught in graduate counseling programs and reinforced through supervision and continuing education throughout a counselor’s career. It reflects the profession’s recognition that the client’s welfare — not the counselor’s comfort — must be the primary consideration in every clinical decision. When a counselor brackets effectively, clients are more likely to feel safe enough to bring their full selves into the therapeutic space, including the parts they may fear will be judged.
The Difference Between Clinical Guidance and Value Imposition
One of the most common questions clients have — often unspoken — is whether what they are experiencing in therapy reflects genuine clinical support or an attempt to shape their beliefs. The distinction matters, and it is worth making explicit.
Clinical guidance is grounded in the client’s own stated goals and concerns. Value imposition occurs when a counselor, consciously or not, introduces their personal perspective on how a client should live. Knapp and VandeCreek (2007) describe this risk as particularly significant in areas where counselors hold strong personal convictions, noting that the power differential inherent in the therapeutic relationship can make a client especially susceptible to a counselor’s influence.
The table below illustrates some of the ways these two approaches differ in practice:
Situation | Clinical Guidance | Value Imposition |
Client considering leaving a marriage | Exploring the client’s feelings, values, and needs around the relationship | Expressing or implying that leaving (or staying) is the right choice |
Client questioning religious identity | Supporting the client’s process of discernment and self-discovery | Steering toward or away from religious affiliation |
Client making reproductive decisions | Helping the client clarify their own values and assess their options | Communicating a personal position on what the client should do |
Client describing a lifestyle the counselor finds unfamiliar | Maintaining curiosity and openness; following the client’s lead | Expressing judgment, surprise, or discomfort in ways that communicate disapproval |
The line between these two approaches is not always obvious in the moment, which is precisely why ethical training and ongoing supervision are essential components of professional practice.
Culture, Values, and the Limits of the Counselor’s Frame
Values do not exist in a vacuum. They are shaped by culture, family, religion, community, and lived experience — and they differ, sometimes substantially, across individuals and groups. This presents a particular challenge for counselors, who may hold cultural assumptions they are not fully aware of and who may work with clients whose worldviews differ meaningfully from their own.
Levitt, Farry, and Mazzarella (2015) examined how counselors navigate value conflicts that arise in cross-cultural contexts, finding that effective practitioners develop what they describe as a reflective capacity — an ongoing willingness to examine their own assumptions and to recognize when those assumptions may be shaping their clinical responses in ways that do not serve the client. This kind of self-awareness is not a one-time achievement; it is a practice that requires continued attention throughout a counselor’s career.
For clients, this means that a therapist who is operating at a high ethical standard will not treat their own cultural framework as the default or the norm. They will not assume, for instance, that Western models of individualism apply universally, or that conventional approaches to family structure, gender roles, or spiritual practice represent the standard against which a client’s choices should be measured. Instead, they will work to understand the client’s experience on its own terms.
When Autonomy Must Be Weighed Against Other Obligations
Respecting client autonomy is a central ethical commitment, but it is not an absolute one. There are circumstances in which a counselor’s ethical obligations require them to act in ways that limit or override a client’s immediate preferences. These circumstances are specific, well-defined, and grounded in the counselor’s duty to protect safety — not to impose values.
The clearest examples involve situations of imminent risk: when a client discloses an intention to harm themselves or another person, ethical and legal standards require the counselor to take action, which may include contacting emergency services, notifying a potential victim, or facilitating hospitalization. These are not expressions of the counselor’s personal values; they are professional obligations that exist independently of any particular counselor’s beliefs.
McWhorter (2019) draws an important distinction between value-based limits on client autonomy — which are ethically impermissible — and safety-based limits, which are both permissible and, in some cases, required. Understanding this distinction helps clarify what clients can and cannot expect from their counselors: a counselor may be required to act when safety is at risk, but they are not permitted to act as a moral authority on how a client chooses to live their life.
What You Can Expect From Ethical Counseling
If you are considering therapy, or if you are already working with a counselor and find yourself wondering about these dynamics, it may help to know what ethical practice looks like from the inside.
An ethical counselor will work to understand your values before they offer any clinical perspective on them. They will ask questions rather than make assumptions. They will follow your lead when it comes to your relationships, your identity, your spirituality, and your choices. They will not express — verbally or through tone, expression, or the direction of their questions — that your way of living is in need of correction. And when they do offer clinical input, it will be grounded in your own stated goals and in evidence-based practice, not in a personal agenda.
If you ever feel that your therapist’s values are steering the work in a direction that doesn’t feel right to you, you have every right to name that in session. A well-trained counselor will welcome that conversation. If the dynamic does not shift, or if you do not feel safe raising it, that is important information — and seeking a different provider is always a reasonable and legitimate option.
At Curious Mind Counseling, we take these commitments seriously. If you are looking for a practice where your autonomy is respected and your values are met with genuine curiosity rather than judgment, we invite you to reach out.
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Alexis Cancemi, PhD, LMHC-QS, LPC, ICADC, NBCCH, MCAP
Therapist & Counselor Educator
📞 971-365-3642
About the Author
Alexis is a licensed telehealth therapist at Curious Mind Counseling, serving Oregon and Florida. Her work focuses on trauma, substance use, and the places they overlap. This piece looks at what ethical counseling asks of a therapist when their own values and a client’s differ, and what clients can expect when it is done well.
References
Kocet, M. M., & Herlihy, B. J. (2014). Addressing value-based conflicts within the counseling relationship: A decision-making model. Journal of Counseling & Development, 92(2), 180–186. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.2014.00146.x
Knapp, S., & VandeCreek, L. (2007). When values of different cultures conflict: Ethical decision making in a multicultural context. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 44(4), 397–404. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-3204.44.4.397
Levitt, D. H., Farry, T. J., & Mazzarella, J. R. (2015). Counselor ethical reasoning: Decision-making practice versus theory. Counseling and Values, 60(1), 84–99. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-007X.2015.00062.x
McWhorter, M. R. (2019). What does it mean to impose values? A systematic review of practitioner imposition of values in the therapeutic relationship. Counseling and Values, 64(1), 10–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0024363919856810