Therapists with Thin Skin

With power comes money. And ideally some responsibility.

There’s a modern phenomenon where therapists have essentially replaced priests as the class of people who are culturally prescribed to mediate us to the divine. This isn’t a new revelation. People have been commenting on this basically since psychology became a recognized science.

Philip Rieff, in The Triumph of the Therapeutic, pointed out that as religious authority declined in the West, psychological authority filled the void. He argued that where once people sought absolution from priests, they now seek validation from therapists.

He also has other incredible quotes like this:

“The faith instinct…simply cannot be killed. That ‘simply cannot’ means that we simply cannot not live—cannot live as if life were meaningless, without purpose; as if life were merely material or mechanical or not spiritual. Such an effort in its deadly futility represents a historical ending time, a time just before the faith instinct will show itself again.”

But that’s for another time.

Similarly, Charles Taylor in A Secular Age noted that the move toward a "buffered self" — one that distances itself from transcendental meaning — has made therapy the new confessional. In a more contemporary critique, Carl Trueman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self explores how expressive individualism has made therapy a central mechanism for self-definition and identity formation. The list goes on and on.

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A Mechanic with a Broken Down Car

Cut to a recent example I saw online of a therapist’s behavior:

Ok, ok fair, Sarah is a “certified holistic health coach” not exactly a therapist. But she tries to fulfill the same niche.

Now from a quick google I wasn’t able to find out the pricing for either her course, or her coaching practice. This sort of hidden pricing is standard in this industry, and relies basically on face to face pressure tactics. I should know, having spent years doing the same thing in sales.

Essentially instead of being up front with how much you’re going to have to pay to “fix your life” or whatever they’re promising, these coaches hop on a call, empathize with you, wow you with their charisma, and then once you’re hooked they say “oh yes, and this is going to cost you $150 per hour, by the way.”

I’m not entirely knocking the industry - I pay a coach about that much myself for help, and it is indeed extremely useful! That being said, if you’re shelling out hundreds of dollars for someone to teach you how to do relationships well, it must be a bit of a slap in the face to realize that their own fifteen year relationship has fallen apart while they’re telling you all these things.

Imagine you are going to a mechanic. The mechanic has great reviews, lots of people like him via word of mouth and online, but even though you spend a lot of money taking your car to him, your car never quite runs right. There’s always something a bit messed up.

Eventually you come to find out (maybe the mechanic even tells you directly!) that the mechanic’s own cars are always messed up! That his car just broke down, despite him putting a ton of work into it! Wouldn’t that make you question his skills just a tad?

Don’t get me wrong, of course human beings are a bit different from cars. Vastly different in fact. Yet there’s something to be said for judging a therapist’s abilities based on their personal life.

Yet if you try to bring this up, therapists go rabid. There are entire methodologies built up in the psychological discourse about how therapists should act as a mirror for their client to project upon, ideally disclosing little to no significant personal information. The therapist must be an isolated system, that you as the client don’t get to peer into.

Frankly I think that line of reasoning is a complete crock. If I am going to spend money and let someone tinker around with my innermost thoughts, you bet your ass I’m going to ask them deep personal questions. I want to know what their deepest struggles were, how they overcame them, and how their life is going now.

I don’t need a perfect person in order to accept working with someone, as of course perfect people by definition don’t exist. However, if a therapist or coach is comfortable sharing their personal life with you, it shows a confidence in their own skin, and in their own life. It also points out areas where they are likely to not have good advice.

Now, going back to Sarah. I don’t blame her for not being honest with her clients while her relationship was falling apart. That’s a hard boat to be in. But if she was sitting there telling a client to their face how to handle a difficult relationship, while herself having her relationship fail, that’s duplicitous in my mind.

Is this a high standard? Absolutely! Remember though, that this woman gets paid a good amount of money, gets lots of attention, and has people hang on her every word. She is privileged in the extreme. Not only that, but she basically dives deep into people’s minds and emotional experiences and touches the rawest parts of them. If anyone is held to a high standard, it should be a coach like her.

If therapists are the modern analogue of priests, they should be held to a high standard, as priests are. (or should be, that’s a whole ‘nother topic…)

The worst part is, whenever anyone tried to criticize her on the post she wrote, she immediately blocked them. I should know, I was one of the people who was blocked.

Social media in this sense creates a false narrative. She posts this confession of what is, in my opinion, basically admitting to immoral behavior. Then when anyone tries to criticize, she blocks them so they can no longer disagree with her. Interesting how that works. So we get the illusion that everyone is supportive, even when in reality many people may actually find her behavior wrong.

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A therapist needs to have thick skin because if they don’t, they will fall into bad patterns of appeasement and won’t actually grow. Worse, they won’t be able to teach others to be strong, resilient, or self-reflective. If someone blocks all criticism, shields themselves from real feedback, and maintains an illusion of authority without accountability, they aren’t a guide, they’re a fraud.

This is especially true when it comes to coaching people on relationships. If your own long-term relationship is crumbling, what exactly are you offering your clients? A therapist or coach doesn’t need to be in a perfect marriage or never experience hardship, but they ought to at least demonstrate that they can apply their own teachings to their own life. Otherwise, they are just another person selling an ideology and a rationalized system, rather than providing real, lived wisdom.

The foundation of a practice of guiding others must stand on personal integrity. That means being willing to acknowledge where you struggle, where you’ve failed, and where you still have work to do. It means openness, not perfection. But when a coach hides their struggles while still positioning themselves as an authority, they get into murky waters.

If you really want to heal, you need actual truth and raw lived experience. You don’t need someone’s carefully curated social media persona as a “life coach” with all the answers telling you what to do while their own life is falling apart. You need someone who is wise, who has honesty and integrity, and is willing to accept the frailty of being human.