The Side of Being a Licensed Therapist No One Warned You About

When I first earned the title Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), I expected pride, excitement, and a feeling of readiness. And I DID feel those things, but right alongside them came something more surprising:

Weight. Pressure. Intensity.

The word professional suddenly felt enormous. Not because anyone explicitly told me it should, but because somewhere inside I now believed I was supposed to know. I had a degree. I passed the exam. I had the letters after my name.

And with that, I internalized a quiet (but powerful) message:

• Professionals don’t make mistakes.
• Professionals know the answers.
• Professionals stay composed, steady, wise, and grounded…all the time.

Of course, no one said this aloud. But in my body, it felt true.

The moment I stepped into my first professional job (no longer “the intern”), I felt a subtle shift…as if being human suddenly was no longer fully allowed anymore. As though the credential meant that uncertainty, doubt, overwhelm, or vulnerability were no longer mine to have.

That word — professional — felt heavier than I expected.

Maybe You’ve Felt This Too

If you're in the helping professions, you might know this feeling — the quiet fear that lives somewhere between your sternum and your stomach:

What if I get it wrong?
What if I don’t know?
What if the messy parts of being human are still here, inside of me, when they’re not supposed to be anymore?

Maybe you’ve had the thought, silently to yourself, or whispered in supervision to your trusted mentor, "Am I allowed to feel this? Am I allowed to not know?"

We enter this work with big hearts, deep intuition, and a desire to support others through the hardest parts of being alive. But sometimes we forget that we didn’t lose our humanity just because we earned a license.

And when we hide our humanity by bracing, pushing through, or trying to appear perfectly put-together, our nervous system feels the strain long before anyone else sees it.

Recognizing that strain became a turning point in my own professional (and personal) journey.

The Turning Point: Meeting Myself With Self-Compassion

I was in a low place: feeling drained, unsure, and uncertain about how things were going in my life and work. Something in me knew that something needed to shift, but I didn’t know where to start.

I had been reading a book on self-compassion and felt drawn to it because it sounded so warm and welcoming. I wondered what it might feel like to meet my challenges with openness instead of harsh self-criticism. At the same time, I worried that self-compassion might make me lose my “edge,” that I’d somehow let go of the excellence I valued so deeply.

Even with those doubts, curiosity won out… and I’m so glad it did.

I joined an eight-week Mindful Self-Compassion group, where I learned and practiced the core concepts week by week. That experience became a real turning point for me.

As I began to truly understand what self-compassion meant, I realized it wasn’t about lowering expectations, but rather it was about meeting myself, and my work, with humanity.

I came to see that self-compassion doesn’t weaken professionalism; it strengthens it.

It gave me tools to stay grounded through the hard moments instead of pushing through them with self-criticism. It helped me see that acknowledging my internal experience—the fatigue, doubt, or overwhelm—wasn’t a sign of failure. It was a way to stay honest. And honesty brought me back to connection.

Now, instead of believing I need to be hard on myself to improve, I’ve learned that self-compassion creates the conditions for real growth. It makes room for acceptance instead of rumination, and for self-comfort instead of shame.

The more I practiced it, the steadier and more present I became, both with myself and with my clients.

Self-compassion taught me that we don’t become better practitioners by shutting down our humanity, but we grow by honouring it.

And that realization changed everything about how I approach my work.

Why This Matters for You and Your Clients

Client work is not linear or predictable. Human emotion doesn’t fit inside clean lines or perfect treatment plans. We can be deeply skilled and still be surprised, humbled, challenged, or unsure.

When we try to out-perform our humanity, we become rigid.
When we allow space for imperfection, we become grounded.

Self-compassion creates breathing room in moments like:

• when a session feels messy
• when an intervention misses
• when a client's pain touches yours
• when you leave a session thinking, "I wish I handled that differently"

Instead of spiralling into self-criticism and shame, self-compassion invites us to learn, adjust, and repair from a regulated place instead of a shame-activated one.

And our clients feel the difference.

A self-critical clinician is tight, braced, performing presence rather than being present.
A self-compassionate clinician is rooted, attuned and open. This is not because they don’t struggle, but because they know how to stay with themselves through the struggle.

A Reflection for Your Own Practice

So as you reflect on your own practice, I invite you to pause and ask yourself...

What might shift if you stopped demanding that you “always get it right,”
and instead allowed space for your full humanness?

What if professionalism didn’t mean perfection,
but steady, compassionate presence, toward clients and yourself?

Let your nervous system feel into that possibility for a moment.

And if you’re wondering how to begin bringing this kind of compassion into your daily rhythm, I want to share one practice that helped me the most.

The Role of EFT in Cultivating Self-Compassion

EFT became one of the most powerful ways I practiced self-compassion in real time.

Because EFT doesn’t ask us to bypass or “fix” our emotional experience, rather it asks us to meet ourselves inside it. We name what’s true, we stay with it, and we pair it with acceptance:

Even though I’m feeling pressure right now…
I can offer myself kindness here.

Even though this session felt hard…
I can honour my efforts and my humanity.

This is the essence of self-compassion: bringing acceptance to ourselves while we’re still learning, still feeling, still human.

If You’re Ready to Feel Steadier in This Work

There are two ways to go deeper into this work together:

🌿 The Groundwork — foundational nervous system and inner support practices to help you feel steadier, more resourced, and more rooted in your body.
🌿 The Grounded Clinician — a deeper container to expand your capacity, reduce burnout, and stay connected to yourself so you can sustain this work long-term.

And if you want to begin building self-compassion through tapping and embodied support, check out my EFT Tapping videos on YouTube — my Self-Compassion + Inner Support playlist is ready and waiting for you.

Because you are allowed to be human here.
And you don’t have to earn your worthiness by getting everything right.

You are doing the brave work of holding others and you deserve to be held, too.

Aways,
Betsy