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What Does it Actually Take to be a Good Therapist?

Emotional Badass Life

1,224 views

Being highly sensitive and deeply empathetic feels like it should qualify you to help others heal, but wanting to help people as a therapist takes more than good intentions. It takes emotional maturity, boundaries, and backbone. I unpack what real empathy actually requires beyond performative empathy, and why compassion without backbone quietly turns into something else. You cannot teach someone their worth while proving you have not yet learned your own.

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00:00 🧠 What it's really like being a therapist
01:20 🚫 Why empathy alone doesn't make good therapists
08:00 ❤️ Real empathy versus performative empathy in therapy
11:55 ⚠️ Problems with trauma informed therapy training today
15:30 🪞 Why therapists need their own therapy work
18:15 🤫 How silence builds strong therapeutic backbone skills
25:00 🛡️ Handling client accusations without taking it personally
28:00 ⚡ How therapists get triggered by their clients
32:35 💎 Why a therapist's worth isn't about outcomes
39:15 🔥 Setting real boundaries to prevent therapist burnout

2 Comments

@teresahopemiller1008 2 weeks ago

I am a student of Psychology. I am a person with Major Depression and Anxiety. OCD, and a visual impairment. I agree that to listen, and to reflect, be in thought. I have had good therapists and rotten ones. I had a therapist in the services for the Blind. They tend to talk doen to you. I made my therapist mad enough to quit. She was catty. I know that even at the age I am I still have a lot to learn. I feel the whole person needs the healing, I am a advocate to persons like me. I grew up with a dysfunctional family system. I need to work on issues as you agree. It starts witnin, self-care. I dont need to bring my baggage to my clients. I agree about boundaries. I find that some therapists are catty like the one I had. I exposed her on Facebook because she didn't see the value of the need of my needing greif counseling. She only worked on greif for sight loss not death of a parent.they didnt get me into her office immediately. i am a HSP as well. I think I am targeted by society for beng too effing nice. I like your title.

@esmeraldagamgeetook2454 2 weeks ago (edited)

I really appreciate this, thank you.
I've been dedicated to my own healing & fostering a sense of peace/groundedness within for almost 10 years. But just in the last few months, I've started feeling called towards this profession. It wasn't something on my radar before at all. And I think probably for the best, I don't feel I would have had the security within myself to play this role for someone else until the last year or two.
After some encouragement from my therapist, I've enrolled in a counselling course. This video also gives me some assurance about my place on this path