5 Myths Therapists Believe About Themselves

There are some things we know as therapists. We know people struggle, emotions are messy and nobody has it all figured out. We know asking for help is a strength, perfectionism is exhausting and boundaries matter. We know all of this. And yet, somehow, we can be very good at making exceptions for ourselves.

There can be an unspoken expectation that because we are therapists, we should somehow be better at being human: more self-aware, more emotionally regulated, better at boundaries, more confident, and definitely better at dealing with our own stuff. But being a therapist doesn’t make you immune to being human. So let’s look at five myths therapists can believe about themselves.

1. “ I shouldn’t have issues of my own.”

This is probably the big one. There can be a strange expectation that once you’ve trained, done your own therapy and spent years learning about people, you should be fairly sorted, as though your qualification comes with a certificate saying, "Congratulations. You are now officially healed."

Sadly, it doesn’t. You can understand anxiety and still experience it, know all about boundaries and still struggle with your own and understand attachment and still get triggered in your relationships. You can be incredibly self-aware and still repeat an old pattern or have done years of personal work and still have things that hurt. That doesn’t mean the therapy didn’t work; it means you’re human. Life doesn’t stop happening because you became a therapist. You will still have relationships, losses, disappointments, difficult days and insecurities. Your own struggles don’t make you a bad therapist. They make you a person who has your own stuff too.

2. “I should be able to work this out myself.”

We’re very good at helping other people work things out. We sit with uncertainty, help people untangle complicated thoughts and feelings, ask useful questions, offer perspective, and help people see things differently. But when it’s our own stuff, suddenly we can become very committed to figuring it out alone. We think about it, think about it some more, read a book, listen to a podcast, do some journaling, analyse our childhood, analyse our analysis of our childhood, and then, obviously, decide we probably need another training course because surely, as therapists, we should be able to sort ourselves out.

But you don’t have to. You can be self-aware and still need support. You can have supervision and still need somewhere to be the person rather than the practitioner. You can understand exactly what’s happening and still need someone to help you work through it. Sometimes you don’t need another insight. You need someone to support you to resolve the issues that you are experiencing.

3. “If I’m struggling, maybe I’m not a good enough therapist.”

This one can really get under the skin because when you’re a therapist, it’s very easy to turn your own struggles into evidence that something is wrong with you. Shouldn’t I know how to deal with this? Shouldn’t I be more regulated? What does it say about me if I’m anxious, or if I’m not coping as well as I should? Underneath it all can be the fear that maybe I’m not actually a very good therapist and just an imposter.

But your personal struggles are not a professional competency assessment. Having a difficult time doesn’t mean you’re incompetent, feeling overwhelmed doesn’t mean you can’t support your clients, and having self-doubt doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing. As therapists, I think we put ourselves under a ridiculous amount of pressure to be the one group of people who never need or ask for help. We don’t expect doctors never to get ill, so why do therapists sometimes expect themselves to be permanently sorted? You can be a good therapist and still struggle as a human being.

4. “I need to know more before I can feel confident.”

This one can be particularly sneaky. You feel uncertain about something in your practice, so you think that you probably need another course. You do the course and feel better for a little while, but then something else comes along, and you think that actually, you probably need to learn about that too. Before you know it, you have enough certificates to wallpaper the spare room, but you’re still waiting to feel like a proper therapist.

Sometimes the problem isn’t that you don’t know enough; sometimes you just don’t trust yourself enough. There will always be something else to learn: another modality, another book, another training, another therapist who seems to know something you don’t. But confidence doesn’t necessarily come from knowing more. Sometimes it comes from trusting what you already know, from doing the work, making decisions, getting things wrong, learning, trying again, and gradually realising that actually, you know what you’re doing. You don’t need to know everything to be a good therapist. You never will. At some point, you have to stop collecting evidence that you’re qualified and start trusting that you are.

5. “I have to hold it together all the time.”

Being able to hold it together professionally doesn’t mean you have to be endlessly capable personally. You can be calm and grounded with your clients and then go home and realise you’ve got absolutely nothing left in the tank. You can do a perfectly good day’s work and still be struggling with something in your own life, or support someone through an incredibly difficult experience and then need support yourself afterwards. That’s not hypocrisy. That’s not incompetence. That’s being a human being doing emotionally demanding work. You can be the person who holds it together for your clients and still need somewhere to work through your own stuff.

You don’t need to have everything figured out just because you spend your working life helping other people figure things out. I work with therapists who are struggling with their own stuff. Maybe it’s confidence, perfectionism, boundaries, or feeling overwhelmed. Maybe you’re questioning yourself, maybe something from your own life is getting stirred up, or maybe you just know you’re not feeling quite like yourself.

It’s the quiet relief when you stop carrying it all in isolation and finally take off the professional armour. Give yourself the care that you so freely hand to others and let us take that first step together.

Book a free consultation and let’s start there.