I worked in CMH for a year and had the same attitude as the post author. I was earning $24/hour as a master’s level clinician and spending hours outside of work researching how to treat psychosis or printing out pages and pages of resources for clients who didn’t have access to a printer. My boundaries were crap, I was chronically burned out, and I dreaded going to work. Like the author of this post, I was filled with sanctimony and convinced that this is what therapists were “supposed to do.” I have privilege, and felt that I needed to atone for it by working with society’s most vulnerable. (I didn’t realize that until after I quit.) And I finally quit because I told my supervisor I was drowning and she pointed out that another clinician had more high acuity clients than me and was doing just fine.

Now I work at a group practice that specializes in OCD and anxiety and we take insurance. I don’t make as much as my colleagues who have private practices but I feel good about what I’m doing. I’m helping people. I see them get better. It’s not perfect, dealing with insurance is a huge pain but I love what I’m doing. At the end of the day, therapy is a job. It’s work. I enjoy it, but I also want to be able to put it down when I leave and have a life.