TRANSCRIPT
A few months back, I made a video on why I quit being a therapist. But a question that has come up many times since I made that video is, “Why did you become a therapist in the first place?” So I’d like to talk about that.
I decided to become a therapist when I was 27 years old. What happened at that time in my life is I’d been out of college for about five years already. I’d spent four years in college studying biology, got a liberal arts education, studied other stuff. Also, I took one semester of psychology, and I really didn’t like it. Yet, I realized I was interested in the psychology field. Yet at the time, when I was 20 and I studied psychology, I think I didn’t like my professor. I didn’t like learning about rats and pigeons, so I didn’t go forward with studying psychology.
But I did go forward with studying myself. And even though I loved biology as a subject, the idea of working in it didn’t call to me. But I didn’t know what else to do. So I traveled. I traveled for quite a few of those five years. I traveled all around the world. I learned a few other languages. I played a lot of music. I loved traveling with my guitar. I love talking to people.
And then eventually, I came to New York City, and I became depressed. I ended up living with my mom for two years—two very, very depressing years—where I just spiraled down. I didn’t know what I was doing. I spent most of those two years writing and playing guitar. I had a few friends, but I was living on savings from some of the work I’d done before I lived with my mom. And I was confused. I was lost. At one point, I even felt like maybe I want to die. Maybe I want to kill myself. I just was so confused about what I was doing.
Now eventually, I moved out from my mom when I was 25. And around a little bit after that, when I was 26, I ended up going to therapy. And I had a terrible experience. I just tried so hard to be honest with the therapist. In fact, I did better than try hard. I was just very honest with him. And I didn’t quite know what it was at the time, but I think I lasted with him three sessions before he actually fired me. I was fired by my therapist, and it was very painful. I didn’t understand why. Eventually, I started putting the pieces together, but it really made me think a lot about therapy.
Now, I had been in therapy one other time when I was 13 years old for fighting in school when I was in seventh grade, and I was forced to go to therapy. And it was a terrible experience. It was a woman, and she just threatened me. Her whole basic approach to therapy was negative reinforcement. “If you do this, you will be punished in this way. If you do this, you will be punished in this way. So don’t do this, or I’m going to do this to you.” And she was a psychologist. And I remember thinking, “I hate her. What a horrible person.” But at some level, some unconscious level, I realized she could have helped me if she’d listened. She could have helped me if she’d cared. I was someone who needed to talk to someone. I was someone who needed to talk to someone about my pain, my traumas, my anger, my frustration with life.
And 13 years later, twice my life later, when I was in therapy when I was 26, it was the same thing. I needed to talk to someone. I was confused. I was in pain. But at that same time, when I was 26, I did find another solution that for a couple of years really helped me. I started going to Al-Anon, the 12-step program for friends and families of alcoholics. I had a mother who had a drinking problem when I was a kid, up until my 20s—drug problem, lots of definitely problems with different substances. And when I got into Al-Anon, it was revelatory for me. I woke up. There was something that happened there, sitting in a room—lots of different rooms. I started going every day. I started going an hour or an hour and a half a day, and it was pay what you want. I pretty much paid a dollar for every meeting. This was in 1998 when I was 26 years old, and it was all peer support. There were no professionals. There was no leader who was a professional. No one was getting paid to be there.
And this was in New York City, which was a great place to be in Al-Anon because there were so many meetings. There was, I don’t know, 20 different meetings, 30 different meetings a day to choose from in the city. So there were hundreds of different meetings every week. So I had a lot of different meetings I could choose from. I went to tons of different meetings, and what I found was that it was very, very helpful for me to talk about my problems—not just about coming from an alcoholic family, but my history of trauma, my confusion with my life, relationship problems, confusion about my work, where I was living, problems with my roommates, whatever I was going through. Also talking about my successes and having people who liked me, who liked listening to me—that was very, very helpful, just to be listened to.
But I discovered that I also loved listening to people. I just could sit there for an hour or an hour and a half and just be absorbed by their stories. And one thing I liked also is because most meetings happened once a week. So I would go to, let’s say, seven or eight different meetings a week, but each week I would see the same people. So every Monday night, I would listen to the same people. Every Tuesday night, it would be the same people. I would go after work, and what I found is that I was engrossed with people’s stories—the stories of their lives. To me, this was psychology in action. This was anthropology in action. It was people of different races, different cultural backgrounds, different ages, different sexual orientations, different interests and things—people who were single, people who were married, people who were old, people who were young. And I just loved listening to them.
Some people had a lot of problems. Some people were very quote/unquote high functioning. People had fancy jobs. Some people were actually even famous. There were actors in there who, like, “I know that person.” And there were people in there who were homeless. There were people in there who were coming right out of jail. And I just found it exciting to listen to everyone. People were so interesting to me. And what I found in Al-Anon, for the first time in my life, was that I found a place where people were incredibly honest. They were just talking about their real stuff. There was no BS. They weren’t faking it. I mean, yeah, there were people who put on a show sometimes, but what I saw is most people really were honest. They weren’t coming there to screw around and be fake. They weren’t coming there to put on a show. It was anonymous also. People were not giving their last names; they were giving their first names. And many people just came and left. They weren’t there to develop lots of friendships. I did develop a lot of friendships in Al-Anon. I felt that was a really important part for me to connect with other people outside of Al-Anon. But the main thing was listening to people.
And I didn’t connect this to therapy at all. I didn’t realize, though, this is a skill that actually, if you really like listening to people and are good at it and are a good active listener, this is a great skill for being a therapist. In fact, it may be the best skill of all. I never thought of it. I never actually thought about being a therapist in any way. But what happened in Al-Anon is two things that really woke me up to therapy. One is a lot of people in Al-Anon, especially in New York City, I think, are in therapy, and they were talking about their therapy experiences. And some talked about it like I did in a very negative way—bad therapists who were lousy, who didn’t listen well, who didn’t really care, who tried to charge too much money, who were fake, who were…
Arrogant. There are a lot of therapists like that out there, no doubt. But I heard a lot of people talk about really positive relationships with therapists. Sometimes therapists who they’d seen for many years, sometimes therapists who they hadn’t seen for all that long. And male therapists, female therapists, older therapists. Most of the people talked about having therapists who were older than them, but sometimes that people had therapists who were their age or younger even, sometimes occasionally.
But what I heard of people who said, “My therapist cares about me. My therapist loves me. My therapist really has a lot of insight into life. My therapist has good ideas. My therapist is really fighting for my best interest.” And I started thinking, wow, this must be really nice to have a therapist who cares. And when all these people talked about it, I started thinking, you know, therapists, some therapists I thought must be good. And it really made me think about therapy in a way that maybe someday I would try therapy again, and maybe I could find one of these therapists who liked me because I just never had found one.
But the other thing that happened in Al-Anon, and this was probably just as helpful, is there were a lot of therapists themselves who went to Al-Anon as Al-Anon members. So they were on equal footing with me. They were on equal footing with the other, all the other Al-Anon members, many of whom were going to therapy. And some of these therapists themselves had therapists, and they talked about their relationship with their therapists. Now, they didn’t talk much about their relationship with their clients, but they would say they were therapists.
So what happened is I became friends with quite a few people in Al-Anon who were therapists, some of whom were quite a bit older than me. I had one friend who was probably like 40 years older than me who was a therapist, but I had some friends who were like 10, 20 years older than me. So I spent a lot of time talking with these people who were therapists, and I spent a lot of time listening to some of the other people who were therapists. And I realized, you know, some of them actually, the ones I became friends with, actually were mostly, I think, pretty good therapists.
But some of these people who I listened to in Al-Anon who made full livings, they supported themselves, they supported their kids, they supported their apartments, they supported vacations, and they were therapists, but they weren’t very good. I realized some of them were not very insightful people. Some of them seemed to have a lot of personal problems. Some of them also just weren’t very good listeners. When I would talk to them one on one, sometimes they were very socially awkward. They were strange. They had weird ideas. They were very formulaic, a lot of them. They followed certain theories like by the book. “I’m a Freudian therapist, and this is the way to do it,” or “I’m a Jungian therapist,” or “I studied Kohut, and Kohut is the right way to be a therapist,” or “Carl Rogers is the only way to be a good therapist. He was the only great one out there,” or they were hypnotherapists, and he did it exactly this way. And a lot of them were pretty rigid people.
And I listened to them, and one day it dawned on me, wait a second, I could do this. And I thought, I can actually be good at it. Well, simultaneously, what had been happening in my life is I had been working a lot. I’d been doing a lot of different jobs. I’d been a children’s musician, and I actually liked that. It wasn’t the most intellectually stimulating job, but it was fun, it was exciting, and I was actually good at it. Real talent for it.
But I was also doing a lot of temping. So I was working at different temp agencies. I was working in a lot of different offices. And what I found with most of the jobs that I made most of my money doing, I wasn’t that satisfied with it. I was even bored sometimes, or I felt there was a learning curve of a lot of the jobs that I had, but the learning curve was really quick, and I could like figure out the job in a matter of hours or sometimes days. I could learn the computer programs that I had to learn. I could learn the systems for the job. I learned how to get along with all the people. I learned what my tasks were.
The other thing was a lot of my jobs didn’t give me a great sense of purpose or meaning. And when I started thinking about being a therapist, I thought, you know, I think I would really enjoy this. I think it would be really complicated and difficult because I listen to people’s problems in Al-Anon. I had friends who were in therapy. They talked a lot about their experiences in therapy, and I knew what the problems they were going to therapy for were. And I thought, you know, this would be really challenging. I think I’d be good at it. I think it would be really interesting. I think it would be exciting. And I thought, I think I really would love this.
But there’s one other thing. When I was really thinking a lot about what to do with my life, you know, when I was 24 or 25, 26, into 27, and it’s a sad thing, but I think it was a lot about my childhood. It was a lot about where I went to high school. It was a lot about where I went to college that I felt I need to prove myself. I felt a need to do something that was societally respected. I felt a need to do something that was high status in a way. I also think I needed, ultimately, I needed to prove to my parents that I was a valid person. I felt kind of like a failure in a lot of ways. Living with my mom for two years really kind of hurt my self-esteem.
And even though I traveled and done a lot of interesting stuff, traveling around the world and speaking in a lot of other languages and doing sort of unusual stuff, a lot of times when I got back home, people didn’t relate to it or they weren’t that interested in it, or either talked about it, but it just didn’t really connect with their lives. And it was like, how did this translate into me doing something useful in the world?
I think also part of it was just being a young man who, even though I had a lot going for me, and actually by the time I was, when I was 27 and I decided to be a therapist, I think part of what gave me the confidence to do it and the confidence to feel like I’d be good at it was that I found something inside myself that was real and honest. I’d really connected with myself. I’d done a lot of self-healing by then. I’d actually worked out quite a few of my traumas.
But the main thing was that I had me. After a lot of years of my childhood, of my teen years especially, of being so confused and so lost in my 20s, I found me again. I grieved. I was crying a lot for the losses that I had, but I also was happier. I started finding myself. I started finding a sense of purpose and meaning and mission. I noticed the words that came out of my mouth were much more honest than they’d ever been. I was much more of a straight shooter in who I was. I was more real about me.
I also started making friends who really liked me for me because I really was me. And I realized as a therapist, what did I have to give my clients? I had to give them honesty. That’s what I had to offer. Real good listening and an honest me. The two therapists that I’d had, they weren’t honest. They were fake. They were liars. And I realized I could do totally better than them. And then I thought, yeah, I’d be good at this, and this is gonna give me some sense of like social standing in society.
Now I realized as I share that, people could listen and say that’s a bad reason to be a therapist, to do it for the status. Well, it’s now almost 20 years later. It’s 19 years later for me. I haven’t been a therapist in eight years. I stopped doing it.
Eight, eight and a half years ago. But what I learned in my 10, 11 years of being a therapist was that after about four or five years, the part of me that did go into therapy for the status—maybe even after three years—it kind of wore off. And I started realizing when it wore off that I would sometimes go to parties with different friends, like dinner parties. At first, I was so proud that I was a therapist. People would ask me, “What do you do for work?” and I’d say, “I’m a psychotherapist.” And I think it was like, yeah, that was the part of me that was an insecure 28-year-old, 29-year-old, 30-year-old who still had something to prove in the world. I needed to be a man. I needed to be an adult.
Now incidentally, I’ve met quite a few therapists who were in their 40s, their 50s, their 60s, and you asked them, “What do you do for work?” and they give that answer, “I’m a psychotherapist,” and they love the status. So it’s not like I was alone in that. I think a lot of people who become therapists love the status. They love the power. They love the ring of saying, “I’m the therapist,” and they know that they get a reaction out of people because a lot of people really do react. They like, “Ooh, what does that mean? You do this mysterious, strange job that people don’t talk about that much.” People don’t get to talk with therapists about what their job is really like. Many people have been in therapy, but they never actually have an honest conversation with their own therapist about what is this job like. And many therapists don’t honestly talk about it.
And now that I kind of have talked to so many therapists, the ones that I like are ones that are much more easily and open to talk about what their job is like. But a lot of them, they still hide behind this veil of sort of distance and arrogance. “Oh, I’m a yummy and psychoanalyst,” and they like that. But what happened to me is after a few years of being a therapist, that feeling wore off. And when I noticed it is when I started going to dinner parties and my friends would invite me. I’d say, “Please don’t tell people I’m the therapist.” Suddenly, I didn’t want people to know. I didn’t want to talk about it. I just wanted to do the work, and I kind of lost interest in the status with it.
I think what happened is not that doing it for at that point two or three or four years totally fulfilled that part of me that needed to feel important. I think what happened more is that I healed more on the inside, and the insecure parts of me that really were my gaping unresolved traumas healed. Because as I was a therapist, I was also doing a lot of self-therapy. Also, the first few years I was a therapist, I was in therapy. Now what’s interesting is I didn’t have therapists who helped me that much. I don’t feel they really liked me. I don’t feel he really cared about me that much. So I’ve been in therapy, I think, five different times now. I don’t think I ever had a therapist who really cared about me. I don’t think I actually ever massively benefited from therapy, but I learned a lot from therapy.
I massively benefited from self-therapy. I massively benefited from Al-Anon, which I eventually left. It didn’t suit me anymore. I just kind of didn’t feel the need to go anymore. But I think I also massively benefited from friendship. But I think what I did learn by being in therapy both several times, hundreds and hundreds of sessions, paying a lot of money for it, was I learned a lot about what not to do. And that really did inform me as a therapist, and it also motivated me to be a better therapist—to be more caring, to be more honest, to listen better, to be straight with my clients, to be fair and square with them.
But mostly, I think my therapists were not that healed themselves as people. They were kind of insecure. They were into the status. They were into the fakery. They were into following the books on how to do it. And I think for me as a therapist, because I had a lot more of myself, and as I went on being a therapist, I got even more of myself as I healed more. I think I was able to give that to my clients, and I heard that from feedback from my clients.
Another thing about why I became a therapist and why I stayed being a therapist for 10 years was it was such a meaningful job to watch people grow, to participate in that process, to be useful in the process of helping people explore their history, explore the dynamics of their past, to discover their own biography, to find their areas of pain, and to learn how to love themselves, to learn how to care about themselves, to learn how to grieve, how to take distance from the unhealthy people in their lives, to study themselves more objectively, to realize the bad things that had happened to them, and how to change, how to become better people. To me, it was incredibly meaningful. It was incredibly valuable. I found it was a job that gave me a sense of doing something useful in the world, of being useful to people. And for me, that’s something that never went away.
I realized I never want to do a job again that I don’t feel useful. I don’t want to sit at a computer all day and temp and type up bank documents. I did a lot of that stuff. I want to do something that actually affects people in a positive way. And yes, being a therapist was a job that came at a lot of self-sacrifice. A lot of what I listened to was very painful. It was not easy to sit and spend a lot of time really actively listening to people’s traumas, to witness these horrible things that happened to them. There was a cost for me. It was stressful. It was painful. But it was meaningful, and I really benefited from that. I loved it. I really loved it.
But what I also found was that being a therapist opened me up to the realization that I wanted to do more than be a therapist. I think that’s part of why I come and make these videos.