Like anyone else, therapists are subject to face challenges and emotional burdens that can impact their mental health. The roots of this can relate to matters in their own lives as well as the heavy emotional demands that coincide with their line of work.
While therapists are well-versed in how impactful therapy can be for their mental health care, that doesn't mean they always seek out support when it's needed. Therapists can negatively associate the idea of therapy with being a “wounded healer” — someone perceived too damaged to help others. It's these kinds of labels that can give therapists pause when it comes to seeking therapy services, even when the benefit to their own well-being is clear.
Here, we'll unpack some more of the reasons why the idea of therapy for therapists can sometimes feel taboo, and how to normalize this concept. We'll also cover how a supportive culture can help clinicians address their own challenges with the same care they bring to their clients.
To be a support system to their patients, therapists often feel they need to embody a person that is emotionally resilient, to the point of seeming invincible. Seeking out therapy can feel like they're showing cracks in their mental health, which can lead to concerns over how people perceive them in their professional role. This fear of judgment applies not only to patients, but also to colleagues, supervisors, and other therapists.
Therapists may worry that the decision to seek therapy will be misconstrued as an inability to deal with the emotional demands of their job. There can be a fear that if colleagues and supervisors found out, there could be a negative impact on their reputation in the mental health professional community as well as on potential opportunities for advancement in their career. At the same time, therapists may be concerned about a shift in power dynamics within their professional organizations. The thought is that people in positions of authority will view them as less capable of doing their job, or in need of additional support.
In a 2022 survey from the American Psychological Association (APA), six out of 10 psychologists reported that they no longer have openings for new patients. And 46% of those surveyed said they've been unable to meet treatment demands. That same survey found 45% of psychologists reported feeling burned out. One of the big takeaways from this research is that therapists are operating under demanding schedules. A lack of time can lead therapists to prioritize work responsibilities and put their own struggles on the back burner, leaving little room to process the emotional exhaustion that builds up over a career.
Clinical work asks a lot of the people who do it. Sitting with other people's suffering day after day carries a cost, and it's one the field is naming more directly than it used to. Research on compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma suggests the effects are more common than you may expect: studies estimate that somewhere between 40% and 85% of helping professionals experience some form of compassion fatigue or vicarious trauma over the course of their careers. Left unaddressed, that toll can show up as anxiety, emotional exhaustion, or a creeping sense of detachment from work that once felt meaningful.
None of this means something has gone wrong with a therapist personally. It means the job is heavy, and carrying it alone isn't the key to doing it well.
A therapist's life experiences, including the harder ones, tend to shape how they show up in the room. Working through those personal challenges in their own therapy can offer valuable insights that carry directly into their clinical work. It can help them stay fully present with the people they treat, instead of managing their own unprocessed reactions in real time.
Therapists don't have to face this challenge alone, and most of the field agrees they shouldn't. Regular supervision and guidance from a more experienced clinician give therapists a structured place to navigate ethical dilemmas, get a second set of eyes on a difficult case, and build the kind of self-awareness that's hard to develop solo.
Peer support does something similar from a different angle. Sitting down with other therapists, whether in a formal consultation group or an informal check-in, builds a sense of team even for clinicians running individual practices on their own. It's a reminder that the hard parts of the job are shared, not personal failures.
Providing therapists with both of these, structured supervision and informal peer connection, gives them more than one way to get support depending on what a given week calls for.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, views on mental health in the workplace have shifted considerably. Leslie Hammer, Ph.D., a professor in the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences at Oregon Health and Science University, said it well in an APA article:
“The pandemic forced employers to recognize that they must pay more attention to the mental health of employees, and that the conditions in the work environment can either exacerbate or prevent mental health challenges.”
By establishing a culture of self-care, supervisors at behavioral health facilities can help normalize the idea of seeking support for therapists. When therapists are encouraged to prioritize their own mental health and take proactive steps toward self-improvement, they'll see therapy services as more of something to embrace versus hide away from, and connect that same importance to how they treat their own clients.
One of the most powerful self-care tools is dialogue. Having open communications about mental health, whether in the context of a supervisor check-in or a peer support group, can give therapists a structured space for self-reflection and the comfort to seek assistance. Facilities that build this kind of inclusive space, one that treats a clinician's unique needs with the same understanding they'd extend to a client, tend to see therapists stay longer and burn out less.
Self-care should also be integrated into an organization's policies — and even the office design. While implementing policies that encourage regular breaks during the workday, you could add designated spaces to your facility where therapists can pause and relax. Flexible scheduling options and professional development opportunities further support a workplace where therapists are continually reminded to prioritize their mental health and maintain balance between their career and their own well being. Making these resources genuinely accessible, not just written into a handbook, is what turns a policy into a commitment.
And lastly, and perhaps the most direct way to normalize the idea of therapy for therapists, is to actively promote therapy services to your facility's providers. By establishing partnerships with other mental health providers, you can help therapists feel supported in seeking out therapy services and provide them with a more convenient way to access them.
With these strategies, we can create a more resilient community of helpers and make therapists even bigger role models in the eyes of their patients.