We’ve previously written about how you don’t have to be in crisis to benefit from psychotherapy, proposing instead that regular and consistent psychotherapy can function as a kind of self-care or protective factor for maintaining your mental health. People often wonder what to talk about in therapy if there’s nothing outwardly “wrong” or “not working” in your life. In this post, we’re exploring the deeply private, complex, and “taboo” topics that people often feel embarrassed, ashamed, or hesitant to bring up in therapy—even when their life is otherwise stable. There’s a sense of “don’t rock the boat,” or “if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it” that can prevent us from engaging in the deeper, often foundational, issues that lay underneath.
Therapy is a judgment-free zone, meant to be a place where we can honestly and vulnerably share the fullness of ourselves and our experience. However, we still sometimes censor our darkest, most embarrassing, or unconventional thoughts, only sharing what feels “acceptable” or tidy, while keeping the rawest parts of our humanity hidden. One of the greatest benefits of regular and consistent psychotherapy is having the emotional bandwidth to safely unpack the taboo desires, intrusive thoughts, and hidden resentments you hide from the rest of the world. Therapists have heard it all. The things that bring you the most shame are exactly what psychotherapy is designed to hold.
Here are 6 ‘taboo topics’ that you can bring to your therapist when you’re not in crisis:
Money Shame, Envy & Financial Anxiety
We live in a capitalistic culture that is driven by money. In fact, when talking about money, we’re rarely talking about it as a tool for commerce. Instead, our society has conflated net-worth with self worth, weaponizing money as a benchmark for personal value, intelligence, and ability. By talking about our shame, envy and anxieties around money, we get to the deep psychological roots of our beliefs about wealth, scarcity, and social comparison. This could look like:
- Admitting to intense envy or resentment toward friends or family who make more money.
- Exploring hidden financial behaviors (e.g., secret shopping, financial infidelity, or irrational hoarding).
- Unpacking the shame of wanting wealth or, conversely, feeling like a failure for not hitting specific financial milestones.
Money is rarely just about money. Being able to talk about what money means to us can help break some of the envy and anxiety we are carrying about it.
Intricacies of Sex, Desire, and Intimacy
From a very early age we learn a rigid false binary about sex: there is “normal” and there is “weird, bad or perverted.” There are cultural messages about what it means to be a woman or a man or something in between. This creates a lot of shame, fear and secrecy that can keep us bound in an armor of silence. In therapy we can unpack the early messages we’ve learned about our desires, explore our sexual identity, shifting libidos, and hidden desires without fear of judgment. Things like:
- Navigating a mismatched libido with a partner or feeling a complete lack of sexual desire.
- Exploring unconventional fantasies, kinks, or curiosity about non-monogamy/polyamory.
- Processing shame around sexual performance, body image during intimacy, or masturbation habits.
Sexual health is an important part of mental health because it is so closely connected to how we are in the world. Naming your desires out loud helps to erode shame and lessen the fear or anxieties tied to them.
Intrusive Thoughts and “Dark” Mental Loops
Therapy can be a place that normalizes our feelings and strips away the shame of our surprising, frightening, or highly inappropriate thoughts that cross our minds but don’t define our character. Edgar Allan Poe referred to these as “the imp of the perverse”—the sudden, irrational urge to do something you shouldn’t do, something destructive, dangerous, or deeply inappropriate, completely against your own best interests. Psychologists call these intrusive thoughts. They can be:
- Unwanted thoughts of doing something harmful or shocking (e.g., veering off the road, dropping something fragile).
- Irrational flashes of rage or violent thoughts toward loved ones that you would never act on.
- Discussing the exhausting mental energy spent trying to suppress these thoughts.
Having a thought is not the same as having the intention to act on them; talking about these intrusive thoughts can make them less terrifying and helps us get to what is underneath these thoughts to the hidden or unprocessed parts of ourselves that are longing for expression.
Taboo Family Dynamics (Resentment, Regret, and Estrangement)
Families are complicated. They are our first models for relationships, teaching us how to be in the world and shaping our future relationships, for good or bad. Sometimes we hold resentment or regrets about our past and present relationships with our families, and yet loyalty to our family prevents us from talking about our experiences or our emotions connected to our families. And this is not just our family-of-origin, but also the families we are creating in the present. Bringing these complex feelings to therapy can look like:
- Admitting to parental regret or the taboo feeling of not instantly bonding with your child.
- Processing intense resentment toward aging parents you are expected to care for.
- Discussing the desire for—or guilt surrounding—cutting off contact with a toxic family member.
You can love your family and still acknowledge the painful ways they impact you.
Ambition, Selfishness, and the “Ugly” Emotions
Give voice to the emotions we are taught to suppress: jealousy, spite, arrogance, and pure self-interest. Where are they showing up in your life and with whom? Some examples could be:
- Admitting you want to step away from a caregiver role or a relationship simply because you want your freedom back.
- Unpacking secret professional rivalries or feeling happy when a competitor fails.
- Exploring the desire for power, status, or attention without dressing it up as “altruism.”
Shedding a light on your shadow emotions prevents them from leaking out sideways as passive-aggression to your friends and loved ones.
Disappointment with the Therapeutic Relationship
This is breaking the ultimate therapy taboo–admitting you are annoyed by, bored with, or attracted to your therapist. In psychodynamic therapy, the relationship between you and the therapist is one of the most impactful tools for change (which is why choosing your therapist is so important). What is happening between you in the here-and-now of therapy actually reveals a lot about your lifelong relational patterns. [For a quick read on how the how the therapeutic relationship is a central part of therapy, check out Psychologist Jonathan Shedler’s essay The Relationship Is The Treatment]. What does it look like to address the therapeutic relationship? It could be:
- Confronting your therapist about a specific exercise or comment they made felt unhelpful or offensive.
- Navigating complex feelings of attachment, transference, or romantic attraction toward the therapist.
- Discussing the urge to quit therapy because it feels too slow or uncomfortable.
Dive Deep in Your Next Session
The greatest irony of therapy is that we often pay for a completely judgment-free zone, only to walk into the room and immediately censor ourselves. We deploy our most sophisticated ego defenses, intellectualize our pain, rationalize our impulses, and present a polished, socially acceptable version of our struggles. Yet, keeping your hidden anxieties, intrusive thoughts, or raw resentments locked away only ensures they remain active in your unconscious mind, silently driving your behavior. Your therapist is not there to judge your morality; they are there to help you map your humanity. When you have the courage to bring your absolute rawest, most “unacceptable” truths into the light, you stop performing your life and finally start healing it.
Don’t wait for these hidden thoughts to boil over into a crisis before you finally speak them out loud. Use the safety and containment of your next session to experiment with radical honesty. If you don’t know how to start, try one of these to open the door:
- “I’m realizing I carry a lot of secret shame around [Money / Sex / My Family], and I want to start digging into why.”
- “There is something I’ve been hiding because it feels embarrassing that I’d like to talk about it today.”
- “I want to explore a thought pattern I have that scares me.”
The psychological freedom you are looking for lives on the other side of that uncomfortable conversation where you’re willing to look into the deeper parts of yourself.
At Ampersand Counseling Collective, we work with individuals across Washington State who are navigating deep places of shame, examining their desire and navigating the complex emotions of their internal world. We offer individual therapy on Bainbridge Island and in Issaquah, as well as online therapy throughout Washington.
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