Nobody raised your therapist to actually be one.

TL;DR - Fifty-one people answered a simple social media prompt with real stories of therapist malpractice, and the common thread was never bad schooling, it was a total absence of the self-reflection and accountability nobody bothered to build in them. Credentials get taught. Character gets raised, and most training programs still confuse the two.

Hi everyone,

There's a moment in this conversation where we talk about the difference between a dreamer and a refiner, but the line that actually stopped me was smaller, tucked into a story about a client who scored "too high" on an intake assessment. The therapist didn't know what to do with them. Didn't refer them anywhere. Just left them hanging. That story was one of fifty-one that came pouring in after a single social media post asking for funny therapist stories. Almost none of them were funny. A therapist logged off mid-session on a girl with abandonment issues, mid-sentence, while she was telling her she planned to switch providers. A therapist told a struggling college student they probably didn't belong there. A therapist told a sexual assault survivor they should have considered not being at that party.

We sat with all fifty-one and asked the obvious question: ignorance, bad character, or a broken system? The answer we landed on wasn't about coursework. Every one of these therapists passed their exams. What they didn't get was raised.

There's a line we use about kids that applies just as well here: there's no such thing as a bad kid, only a bad parent. Extend that to this field and it holds up. There's no such thing as a bad therapist, only a therapist nobody raised. Somebody taught them the diagnostic manual and the treatment modalities and how to bill a session. Nobody sat with them long enough to build the self-reflection to notice when they're about to recreate a client's exact wound, or the humility to say "I'm not equipped for this" instead of pretending they are. Nobody made sure they had the basic decency to remember a person's history before rearranging the furniture in the room.

Here's the part that should worry anyone running a practice: this cascades. Supervisors who were only taught and never raised produce clinicians who look exactly like them, stacking up generations of people who can recite theory and still can't sit with someone's pain without making it about their own discomfort. You don't fix that with another continuing education credit, you fix it by building supervision and hiring practices that actually raise people the way you'd want a kid raised, with accountability and with someone willing to have the hard conversation before the client has to.

That's the whole logic behind refusing to admit clients who need a higher level of care just to hit a number, and hiring for loyalty and integrity over a resume line. Credentials can't make someone trustworthy. Only a culture patient enough to raise them into it can.

So here's what's worth sitting with, whichever side of the therapy room you've been on: what were you taught, and separately, what were you actually raised to do when nobody was grading you for it?

-Rachel

Come hear the full conversation. New episodes drop every week.

My Reads of the Week

Supervision doesn't work the way the field assumes it does. The first meta-analysis to actually quantify what clinical supervision does for therapists and their clients found the evidence is thin and wildly inconsistent, and after decades of requiring it, researchers still can't say which specific ingredient makes it work. That's the exact gap we kept circling in this conversation. We assume supervision means formation, and the data says the field still doesn't know what it's doing when it calls something supervision.

Novice therapists are drowning in self-doubt, and that's not a curriculum problem. A 2025 study following seven early-career CBT therapists found their hardest struggle wasn't technique, it was learning to trust their own judgment and stop treating self-doubt as proof they didn't belong in the room. That's formation work, not coursework, and it's exactly the piece that gets skipped.

The therapist behaviors that hurt clients are more common than the field admits. A 2026 review found that therapist rigidity, cultural blind spots, and outright misconduct affect a real share of clients, and that catching it has historically depended on a senior clinician watching closely, a practice the review says has largely disappeared. Fifty-one comments on a social post said the same thing in plainer language.

Wisdom Nugget

Sometimes the family that raised you is the last group of people who should be shaping your recovery, and the people who actually show up for you, consistently and without an agenda, become your real family whether or not you're related to them. That's the case a recent piece from Awkward Recovery makes about chosen family: real support holds you accountable, while blood relations can just as easily enable the exact thing you're trying to survive. The people who actually raise you into a better version of yourself are rarely the ones who were supposed to by default. They're the ones who stuck around and did the work.

Read more.

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The essence of our mission at Atomic Souls transcends the realms of recovery and stability; it's about igniting the flame of purpose and passion within each soul we encounter. Join us.

Thanks for reading,

Rachel

p.s. If this is our first introduction, hi, I’m Rachel, founder and CEO of Atomic Souls Counseling. I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor (LPC-S) and a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC). After years in the trenches as a clinician, I discovered that my real passion isn’t just helping clients heal; it’s helping therapists thrive.

I’ve built Atomic Souls into more than a counseling practice; it’s a place where healing and business intelligence meet. I work with therapists, counselors, and practice owners to help them build sustainable, ethical, and profitable practices. Together, we focus on strategy, systems, and the economics of growth the behind-the-scenes work that allows you to keep showing up fully for your clients without burning out.

My approach blends clinical wisdom with business strategy. I coach on everything from pricing models and team structure to marketing, leadership, and scaling, all while maintaining your integrity and purpose. I believe you can be both a gifted clinician and a confident entrepreneur; those two identities don’t have to compete.

Through Atomic Souls, I’ve built a community where mental health professionals support one another, share resources, and turn purpose into sustainable success. Whether you’re just starting out or ready to expand, I’m here to help you build a practice that aligns with your values and fuels your life, not drains it.

If you’re a therapist ready to step into the next chapter of your career with clarity and confidence, let’s connect.

I write about the business of healing: strategy, systems, and soul for therapists who want to build thriving, values-driven practices on my blog.

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