Therapists do indeed experience “vicarious traumatization”, which is exactly what it sounds like. But this comes more from descriptions of traumatic experience

Therapists do indeed experience “vicarious traumatization”, which is exactly what it sounds like. But this comes more from descriptions of traumatic experience than difficult existential questions. As others have said, existential questions are softballs. The rough stuff is staying present and emotionally open while someone describes a personally horrific experience. I think the unvarnished therapist response to existential questions is something like: that’s fine, those are valid, but they do in fact have no answer; the only way out is to turn our attention to the day to day problems of living. If you keep harping on unsolvable problems, I think they’ll mostly feel annoyed.