Changing Our Mindsets as Therapists

Therapist burnout is real. It might be because we are trained to value overworking. Read about what we need to do to break the therapist paradigm and create better values.

What does it mean to be a therapist? Does it mean helping people? Does it mean specialities in human behavior and mental health? Does it mean going above and beyond for your clients? Does it mean putting your own needs aside to help others?

I think it’s an important question to ask yourself. You may be licensed for several years or just barely starting out. But no matter where you are in your journey, it’s a good place to reflect.

I don’t know about you, but my journey to become a therapist was tough. I went to school for 3 years (part-time), worked for free, busted my butt in community mental health completing 3,000 clinical contact hours, studied for a test I failed twice, but finally passed. Sweat, tears, years of hard work, and thousands of dollars of student loan debt later, I finally could call myself a Licensed and Marriage Family Therapist.

Studying while working in community mental health led to burn out, and when I finally passed my exam, I moved into a group practice, which felt like a good fit, until my pay was cut, and then the pandemic hit. So I started my own business. But I still struggle with burnout.

I don’t know if it’s my own personal experience in community mental health, but I feel like there were a lot of things ingrained in me about what it means to be a therapist.

I learned that to be a therapist, you have to work yourself to the bone, take anyone to fill your caseload, never take off work, see as many clients as possible to make as much income as possible. And well that might work for some people, or maybe they may not have any other choice but to do so, it doesn’t work for me.

I don’t think I am alone in this.

Why do so many therapists suffer from burnout? There are so many reasons, coming out of a pandemic where mental health is at its worst, but there is also another reason.

I have a theory that we all share some of these similar concepts of what it means to be a therapist. And I think this needs to change.

I learned a lot being in private practice that was definitely a lot different than working in community mental health. I learned that I have choices, can have boundaries, can choose my own clients, that I don’t have to feel guilty for taking time off or being sick, and that I can actually say no.

One thing that you constantly hear as a therapist is that you can’t be there for your clients if you aren’t taking care of yourself. You hear that it is unethical to see a client if you are not fully present in session, and you are actually doing your client a disservice. I feel that we are told one thing, but workplace culture fosters another. In grad school they promote self-care which is a nice concept, but because overworking is valued more, it truly can be a foreign concept to most. We promote self-care to clients, yet we fail to care for ourselves as clinicians.

I think we should foster values of self-care not only from the get go, but continue to foster them throughout our careers. We should truly practice what we preach.

We are allowed to put our self-care and well-being before our work and our clients. Through modeling for our clients, through modeling to newer therapists, through supervising the next generation of therapists, I believe we should be able to shift our values from overworking to taking care of ourselves. Only then can we be really there for our clients.