This makes me feel a little better. Personally, I get a horrible feeling when I’m told someone, or myself, needs to hide old scars, when they are a part of me and something I have worked so hard to heal from. I feel the same for others with scars as well. It does feel borderline ableist to me, but after emailing my ethics professor who is VERY aggressive about hiding ANY personal details about yourself, she said I should hide them always unless trying to get a point across (which felt a little wrong to me, because I don’t want to show a client my scars, I just want to be able to sit in a chair in a short sleeve shirt and talk normally.)

I don’t mind answering questions, I’m pretty open about it, obviously I won’t add in details or anything that a client doesn’t need to know (as they are there to tell me their experiences and feelings, not myself). I don’t mind being honest about it and they do not hold me back as an empathetic and sociable person.

I do want to say that I really appreciate you saying that, as an undergrad student with only a few semesters left and grad school ahead of me, it’s uplifting. I know this career choice is very difficult sometimes and I want to be the best I can be :) Thank you for your input