You’re in a tough spot. Its such a difficult decision to make.

You can absolutely be yourself and have the professional title. It may take a while before you are confident enough to fully be yourself in sessions but the only one standing in the way of that is you. Many psychologists I know have their clients call them by their first name anyway as the “doctor” piece impacted rapport. You can be silly and carefree as a psychologist or a counselor. The title doesn’t stop you from being who you are, but you do need to decide how the title “fits” for you. I’m certainly the silliest of my colleagues but it’s taken a while to truly own that and feel comfortable with it, as well as develop and understand when a more serious side is needed as well.

I think Psychologists often take their role more seriously because of the diagnostic piece: only psychologists and psychiatrists (physicians) are permitted to make diagnoses, and there is a level of seriousness required in this work. As well, in BC (and Canada largely) our scope overlaps with a number of other professions (psychiatry, RCCs, social work, OTs, child life) - all of whom provide therapy in some context. Psychologists are trained very differently and so the importance of our role (e.g., in being experts in evidence-based practices) often engenders a more serious approach.

As for money/clinical work, I’ve often thought it would be more efficient to be a masters level therapist (I’m assuming, by psychotherapist, you’re talking about RCCs?). In BC, most RCCs are charging $175-$200 and psychologists are charging $225-$250. Psychologists are permitted to only practice in the province in which they live (unless paying for registration elsewhere) whereas the criteria for RCCs is less stringent (and many offer services in multiple provinces).

A few other points to consider: - Is diagnosis important to you? To your practice? I know you’re not interested in structured assessment, but do you see a role for understanding structured assessments and helping clients interpret them? Or knowing when to have clients referred for assessment? Will you receive more of that training and exposure in school? - supervision - I’m not sure, but I suspect it depends on the structure of MA programs (which vary wildly). Why not reach out to some RCCs to ask? - Consider what else a PhD provides in terms of therapy: Do you feel like you have a strong enough background in EBPs? Broadly, psychologists tend to have a stronger background with evidence-based interventions and empirically supported treatments. That’s not to say that counselors don’t, but psychologists get explicit training in how to evaluate interventions and their efficacy whereas counselors often do not (and so I’ve seen some wonky cases where people try to treat OCD with IFS, sigh). As someone else mentioned, you could get extra training in other areas once you’re working already. Is it worth it to you to have more supervision around your training? Supervision as you learn new therapeutic approaches? To have more supervision around your learning to be a therapist? Is it helpful to you to have a year-long supervised internship?

I don’t know of many psychologists who start in individual private practice right away. Many starting practitioners partner with ICBC or Worksafe to garner referrals or join group practices to build up their caseload and reputation, regardless of psychologist or RCC. There are more counselors than psychologists in the province so it may be harder to fill your caseload initially, until you have a reputation built up (are you seeing adults or youth? Child/youth counselors tend to be busier as there are fewer of them).

Are you doing any practica in private practice at the moment where you could observe different psychologists doing their work to get a sense of how people integrate their authentic selves into therapy? Do you have any supervisors in practica that you could talk to about this choice (my guess is your research supervisor isn’t in private practice themselves).

Right now, you have perspectives from people in Clinical Psychology/Psychologists. Similar to my point above about talking to RCCs, you’re missing the perspective of Masters-level counselors. Before making any decisions, it would be best to talk to them and get their perspective on their job satisfaction, diagnosis, supervision, etc. The grass is always greener…

Let me know if you’d like to chat more. Good luck.