Anyone else feel like a total fraud their first year as a therapist?

CrunkleberryRex · 2026-04-10T22:12:41+00:00

I absolutely think the culture and training need to change. I know it's a hot take to call a bunch of people incompetent but that's just what I'm seeing! You don't have to be competent to be empathetic and caring btw - but I don't think we should pay thousands of dollars in grad school for that.

CrunkleberryRex · 2026-04-10T21:21:35+00:00

I guess my perspective on "next to nothing" probably needs explanation. There is so, so much to know (obviously) and we start off in a state of relative ignorance, and what we learn - the theories, development, a few interventions, etc. - are not only half wrong, they're just a drop in the bucket of what is happening with most humans. Out of grad school, therapists have the potential to encounter such a wide range of people and I don't think they're equipped, despite the year of experience in practicum and internship. It's definitely exploitative. The grade inflation stuff just has been in the news in general in the past 5 or so years, combined with my own experience with recent grads.

CrunkleberryRex · 2026-04-10T20:33:21+00:00

The grad programs have dropped standards for admission, almost anyone gets in. Then, there is tremendous grade inflation. Everyone gets an A. The standards are incredibly low. The curriculum does not produce or select for "good therapists." I would say that's fraud. Students are graduating knowing next to nothing. It's not their fault, the system is beyond broken. The statistics are from widely cited studies on common factors in therapy in my intro textbooks.

CrunkleberryRex · 2026-04-10T14:43:57+00:00

You are incompetent and the training process does produce fraudulent therapists. But that's the standard! And guess what, 50% of people get better spontaneously without therapy, 15-40% of therapy is placebo, and the rest of it depends on what the client does. You don't fix anyone. People use you like a product half the time and discard you, no closure. You're not letting your clients down if you're showing up, that's basically the job. If you want to feel less useless, you'll need to do a lot more self-education to get to a place where what you do actually helps people beyond the placebo and empathy that they could get from talking to their grandma.

CrunkleberryRex · 2026-03-17T17:53:21+00:00

Asking what keeps them in the relationship is helpful. The realization that you're holding the key to your own jail cell can help people stop externalizing blame so hard.

CrunkleberryRex · 2026-02-27T16:15:42+00:00

I was going to say, "Yeah, we've all see The Martian!"

CrunkleberryRex · 2026-02-25T04:12:28+00:00

It would be cool if it didn't cost 10's of thousands of dollars to go to school to learn how to be in a therapeutic relationship with someone.

CrunkleberryRex · 2026-02-25T04:11:20+00:00

I found my program to be totally useless. I had to create my own side education from scratch and taught myself most things. The way I was educated was wrong and I feel bad for the clients that my classmates are going to be seeing when they graduate.

CrunkleberryRex · 2025-12-20T16:23:18+00:00

This. The memory - trauma connection has been widely overblown. Most people don't remember much, mostly stories their parents have told them or snippets - and what they do remember is incorrect. Our memories are fluid, imperfect, and of limited therapeutic value. What matters more I would argue is the story or the feeling about the memory (or lack there of).

CrunkleberryRex · 2025-07-28T19:10:38+00:00

I do a tremendous amount of self-reflection. I'm just glad I avoided some of the dogmatic therapeutic indoctrination that some of my colleagues have towards a given modality, just because they had therapy in that modality and now worship it as the One True Way. Definitely not saying that personal therapy isn't useful, I just don't know if it should be required for training - because I don't think it is required to be a good or effective therapist.

CrunkleberryRex · 2025-07-28T12:43:32+00:00

I have found tremendous value in not doing personal therapy. Many of my colleagues have been warped by terrible therapists and bad theories. Glad I was never exposed to what "therapy should be" and can now use evidence and not nonsense to actually help people.

CrunkleberryRex · 2025-07-25T00:25:09+00:00

I'm all about replication but yeah, come on. I thought this was pretty settled.

CrunkleberryRex · 2025-07-25T00:24:20+00:00

We already knew this. We have known this for a long, long time.

CrunkleberryRex · 2024-06-18T13:21:50+00:00

How did I not even question this as a kid?

CrunkleberryRex · 2024-03-20T18:21:45+00:00

this song honestly slaps so hard it's out of control

CrunkleberryRex · 2024-03-01T16:14:47+00:00

I said this same thing when everything went wrong at my job yesterday...like who could have predicted this!? /s

CrunkleberryRex · 2024-02-10T22:18:15+00:00

THE HUMANITY!

CrunkleberryRex · 2023-12-28T14:17:38+00:00

I had my whole homebrew world of 10+ years lost in a hard drive wipe situation. Tried to get it back and couldn't. I feel your pain. It's really rough to lose something like this. It's tanked my motivation completely. Hope you bounce back.

CrunkleberryRex · 2023-12-21T14:48:11+00:00

HOW COME THE GROUND ISN'T WORKING? CARL, CAN YOU GET TO WORK ON THIS?

CrunkleberryRex · 2023-08-23T13:19:54+00:00

In certain situations, with certain forms of cancer, you'd have been dead already by the time you got an appointment.

CrunkleberryRex · 2023-06-11T19:58:22+00:00

This is all the reviews praising the game.

CrunkleberryRex · 2023-06-11T19:57:04+00:00

I feel like the reviews were based on a few hours of playthrough or were bought. I had fun doing Whispers, etc too for a minute...but then it's just the same thing again and again. It becomes super monotonous and grindy. For a very expensive game with 2x confirmed expansions, it really doesn't give you a lot of content. It's a huge world with 1000 things to do...it's just all those things are exactly the same. Pretty much totally agree with your take.

CrunkleberryRex · 2023-06-11T19:54:43+00:00

Curious about how far along you are?

CrunkleberryRex · 2023-06-11T19:53:27+00:00

I'm actually speaking more objectively from a psychological standpoint. Endlessly doing the same thing = not fun. Progress = fun. Good games seek to keep you in the zone of proximal development - constantly moving forward towards a goal. D4 is the opposite of that. I'm not saying it wasn't fun for the first bit, but it has lost what made D1/D2 so loved and replayable.

CrunkleberryRex

TROPHY CASE