Therapists Are Anonymously Sharing Confessions From Their Jobs, And They’re Incredibly Insightful

A while ago, I asked the BuzzFeed Community to anonymously share a secret from their job. Hundreds of people submitted confessions from all different professions, but I noticed mental health and therapy workers had interesting, insightful, and heartbreaking contributions:

1.“As a therapist, my job is to reflect the meanings you already have in your life. We act as mirrors. I’ll show you what you already see, just in a different way. I hope you succeed. I want to hear about your struggles, and I expect you to fail sometimes. Our main goal is to create a safe space for you. Please never be afraid to tell me the dark/kinky/weird stuff. We have heard SO MUCH. I’m here to support and challenge you, not judge you.”

2.“Therapist here! Therapy is a process. You can’t have 2-3 sessions and think that everything you wanted to work on will be magically better. Some people are in therapy for three months, some for as many as years. Trust the process!”

3.“I’m a home health therapist, and the companies now limit the amount of therapy despite what the therapist wants for the client. When the company tells us they will only approve ‘X’ number of visits and we fight for more, we will be pushed out or receive fewer Evals/Patients. The key is to have your provider specify how many visits per week and for how long. The home health agency has to comply.”

4.“I’m a mental health therapist. I’ve had clients from all walks of life, and I’ve witnessed firsthand how no one has a life anywhere near perfect. That family or couple on social media that causes intense feelings of envy in you? They have infidelity and hopelessness in their closet. That high school peer who now has it all? He’s secretly struggling with addiction. That neighbor who’s always so happy and perfectly put together? She suffers from depression. Do not compare yourself to others because you’re only comparing yourself to the false image others portray to the world.”

5.“Licensed professional therapist. Your stories impact us deeply. We can sit there calm with a gentle smile on our face, walk you out, schedule your next appointment, close the door, and dissolve into a puddle of tears. Then we pick ourselves up, drink some water, and do it again. And we know when you are lying. Remember, we are basically human lie detectors. Oh, and every crime that hits the news? There is a therapist going, ‘Lord, don’t let it be one of mine!'”

6.“Therapist here. Most of the time, you will not be told your primary diagnosis, especially if it’s a personality disorder, like borderline or antisocial. This allows us to treat you more effectively by focusing on your problematic symptoms or behaviors, rather than spending session after session arguing with you about why we, the trained professionals, are wrong. Many times, clients who are unhappy with their diagnosis will ‘shrink shop’ until they find a clinician who will just give them the diagnosis they want. When this happens, the new clinician will receive our clinical notes, which are written in such a way that only a trained professional knows how to read between the lines to understand the true diagnosis, red flag behaviors (such as manipulation), pathological lying, or boundary crossing.”

7.“I used to work as a physical therapist in the Philippines. We spend a lot of time with patients, treating them. Often, patients get too cozy and tell you secrets like their affairs, infidelity, and other very personal stuff. I just shut up and listen. I don’t talk about it with other people. If I need to use it as an example in class, I just hide their real name, age, address, and other identifying info.”

8.“I’m a mental health therapist. I’m human, so I might judge you in my head, but I do everything I can (supervision, consultation, working on myself and my own implicit biases) so that I won’t. And even if I am judging you, I’ll never voice it, because it’s unhelpful and what I want most is to help you.”

9.“I am a therapist. Many people do not understand that if you don’t show up or cancel your appointment before we can fill your time slot, we do not get paid. At all. This goes for many other careers, such as RMTs, chiropractors, beauty services, and basically anyone in a small business. We aren’t salaried. We invoice for a portion of your session fee, with the rest going towards our office rental, licence fees, website fees, etc. So if you need to cancel an appointment, please try to give 3-5 days’ notice so we can fill the spot and still get paid!”

10.“TikTok and armchair psychiatry aren’t the same as real therapy. It takes many sessions to have sustained results. Substance abuse is treated as a whole, separate specialty. There are providers with zero experience working with special populations. Specialists are expensive for good reason, most of the time. I can completely not know something about a population and can refuse to see them. Most of my feedback is holding up a mirror and changing perspective. Or we can talk about your interests in iguanas. Therapy is for the stressed, not just the sick.”

11.“I’m a therapist who works with kids. 80% of the time, it’s the parents who would benefit from therapy. Also, your kids pick up everything: even if you think you’re doing a good job hiding something, they can figure it out.”

12.“As a therapist, people expect to come in and I give them the answers. That is not how therapy works. We help you come to your own realizations, and we give you tools to help get you there. I am not going to just tell you what to do. I’ve done that before, and no one listens anyway!”

13.“School psychologist here – States/schools that use the discrepancy model to determine special education eligibility literally just require a ‘significant difference’ between scores, and this difference can vary between school districts. It’s based on some statistical formula, but it’s totally not the best practice. Push your local schools to use RTI (Response to Intervention) instead!”

14.“I work for a provincial government in Canada as a social worker. Some very strong misconceptions I come across include things such as meeting a ‘quota’ for the number of kids placed in foster care, or that the social worker gets a bonus for apprehending a child. This is 100% untrue. We bust our asses to keep families together. I don’t want to put kids in foster care. It is an emotionally draining and upsetting thing when I have to do it. And I only do it when I HAVE to, and that decision is never made by me on my own. Supervisors and supervisor’s supervisors weigh in. It is legitimately the last resort.”

15.“I work for my local mental health crisis/suicide hotline. People will call expecting us to be able to help with everything under the sun, and get mad if we can’t. We do not have services to help people with housing, finances, legal issues, utilities, etc, so we will refer them elsewhere that does provide those services. People also get mad if they have to wait longer than a couple of minutes for someone to take their call. While we know that people are often in emergency/crisis situations when they call, they don’t know that there are often only 1–2 people working at a time. We are all overworked, underpaid, and often take calls back to back to back without a break, so we are tired and hungry. If it is an imminent emergency, you’re better off calling 911 as they can respond more immediately.”

16.“There can be a lot of fraud, abuse, and lack of oversight in the mental health field. After I quit a demanding and high-stress job with very vulnerable and chronically ill clients, I heard someone got fired for forging notes and not giving the clients their meds and money when she lied and said she did. This is called fraud, and she should’ve lost her license and been put in jail. Other clinics have pulled scams, basically stealing Medicaid and Medicare money (which is funded by taxes) by deliberately overcharging and billing for unnecessary services. There are some shady agencies out there, and it’s hard to know who to trust.”

17.“If your child has an IEP (Individual Education Plan) or a 504 because of a learning disability or mental health issue, it is physically impossible for all teachers at all times, every day, to comply with the legal IEP. On average, teachers have up to 14 students with 14 individualized education plans to contend with. As your child rises through grade levels (and has more teachers), it is most likely that the teacher has never seen the IEP or 504 plan. Think about your high school-aged student with an IEP attending their core classes in which they have support (math, English, science, social studies): 14 students per class, five classes per teaching load, literally impossible to give each of those students the support they need. When a general education teacher has an in-class support teacher, they rely heavily on that special education teacher to ensure the IEPs are complied with as much as humanly possible.”

“You are much more likely to get your child the supports they need if you foster a relationship with the in-class support teacher than the general education teacher. Most parents do not know this, and the general education teacher (if s/he has time) really just forwards your email to the special ed teacher if s/he remembers to do so.”

18.Finally, “High school counselor here. First off, your kids tell me everything about you: Alcoholism, drug dealer, a**hole, abusive, and every other secret you would want kept. Second, if you’re rude, condescending and treat me like sh*t, your child is less likely to get the class they want or the nicer teacher. Niceness goes a LONG way, and we always remember how you’ve treated us. School counselors are master leveled professionals; please respect the time and amount of schooling we have had to endure for our careers. We deal with 200+ students each year, believe we know what’s best for your child, and trust our experience. Lastly, when we tell you your child needs mental health counseling, PLEASE get them help!!!”

Do you want to share a secret from your job? Tell us in the comments or completely anonymously in this Google form.

Dial 988 in the United States to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The 988 Lifeline is available 24/7/365. Your conversations are free and confidential. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org. The Trevor Project, which provides help and suicide-prevention resources for LGBTQ youth, is 1-866-488-7386