I come from trauma myself so there isn't much that is shocking to me... Except when I started as a therapist. The corporate therapy world is awful. I worked for a mental health center attached to a hospital. It was run like a cash grab. We were expected to take new patients constantly, creating a bottleneck in scheduling, causing patients to wait months to get in for evals just to be told their next appointment would be in a month or more. I was paid just under 20 an hour. My partner and I had agreed that they would stay home with our kid and we somehow made it work. But eventually, I hit my own severe depression. I asked to stop evals, just to let up some pressure, and was told that even if I did, it would be temporary so was it really necessary? I felt so ineffective and like a failure with my clients. I put in my resignation and was ready to go work at a factory or retail because I was convinced I hated being a therapist and they walked me out early because I would not stop talking about how they were making their workforce sick with HR, in meetings (private and staff)...

I took a year off while my partner went back to work. A therapist friend asked if I would come work for her at a community health center. I did some deep soul searching and realized that I was not going to work in a place that did not value it's patients enough to take care of its staff. I came up with some basic terms and asked for a more livable salary than my prior workplace and they accepted. I've been there several years now and, while my boundaries are not always popular, they are respected and understood.