I’m a future therapist who has realized that I’m really not a “people person,” and honestly, my graduate experience has forced me to confront that.

Between my practicum experience and being in counseling programs, I’ve realized that no matter how hard I try, I struggle with workplace relationships. Even when I do manage to get along with people, eventually there seems to be some type of rupture, misunderstanding, or interpersonal issue, and I have a very difficult time maintaining those relationships.
The thing is I know I have a big heart. I know I’m empathetic. I care deeply about people, and I know I have the ability to sit with someone’s pain because I’ve experienced a lot of pain myself. I understand trauma. I understand isolation. I understand heartache. I understand what it feels like to not feel understood.
But I’m burnt out from constantly feeling like I have to perform this version of myself, that is not me.
My experience in the counseling program at my university and my practicum site has led me to become extremely distrustful of the work culture in general.
I realized how Both professors who are LPC’s and site supervisor seem to understand how to make me feel comfortable enough to open up, while simultaneously talking bad about me. I’ve had experiences where both my professors and site supervisor and site staff made me feel comfortable enough to share something vulnerable, only for them to take what I shared and used it against me to cast unfair judgement about me.
I also know for certain that I don’t want to work in community mental health. And I want to be clear that this has very little to do with the clients. The clients are actually the part of the job that I can tolerate the most. They can frustrate me too, obviously, but it’s a different kind of frustration. I can sit with a difficult client and understand, “Okay, this is part of the work.”
What drains me is the workplace culture.
The workload, the expectations, the constant pressure to conform, the politics, the performance, the feeling that you have to present yourself a certain way around your coworkers, and as a black woman this is the overly bubbly over exaggerated affect to make others comfortable in this case other staff. To have genuine support along this experience seems rare for me.
I hate feeling like I have to fake a smile. I hate feeling like I have to use a certain tone of voice. I hate feeling like I have to perform “therapist” 24/7 in order to be perceived as being worthy to be a therapist.
I’ve literally gotten angry and frustrated because I feel like I’m constantly being evaluated not just on whether I can do the actual work, but on whether I’m performing the correct version of a therapist making sure my affect doesn’t offend other coworkers (I’ve never gotten a complaint from a client)
And what makes it worse is the contradiction.
You’ll hear, “Everyone is welcome here. You can be yourself. We value authenticity.”
But then you realize there are still very specific expectations about how you’re supposed to communicate, behave, interact, and present yourself especially as a black woman. And if you don’t naturally fit that mold, suddenly you’re the problem.
My practicum experience really made this clear to me. I ultimately had to leave my site because I couldn’t consistently show up in the exact way they expected me to. And one of the biggest things I struggled with was the lack of genuine support as an intern. In an intense environment, I don’t think showing someone something once, twice, or three times and then expecting them to immediately function independently is the same thing as actually mentoring them.
Sometimes I wanted someone to just sit down with me and communicate with me like a human being behind the intern role. Not just an intern doing free labor.
And I think that’s where I differ from a lot of the people I’ve encountered. Other people seem much better at masking how they feel. I’m not.
If I’m frustrated, you can probably tell. If I’m uncomfortable, you can probably tell. If something doesn’t sit right with me, I have a hard time pretending that it does.
I’m extremely reserve and very introverted, sometimes to my own detriment.
And this program has honestly taught me that being authentic isn’t always rewarded in professional environments. Sometimes it feels like the lesson is actually: learn how to mask better. But try not over complicate it with a persona that I know I can’t keep up with.
That has been a really uncomfortable realization.
Because I came into counseling school wanting a regular job. I wanted to help people, make a decent living, and have a career. I never even came into this program dreaming about private practice.
But the closer I get to the end, the more appealing having my own practice sounds. Just so I don’t have to work with other people.
I want more control over my environment. I want to do individual therapy. I want the paperwork to be manageable. I want to focus on the actual therapeutic relationship instead of navigating a huge organizational culture and politics. I want to be able to do my job without constantly feeling like I HAVE TO perform for the people around me
And honestly, I’m terrified because I’m so close to the end. And I feel like I want to quit.
I’ve already invested so much time, money, energy, and emotion into becoming a counselor that quitting now would put me in a ridiculous amount of debt with nothing to show for it. And I know I have the ability to be a phenomenal therapist. That part is not really what I question.
I question whether I can tolerate the professional environment surrounding the profession. I’ve always struggled with people. PEOPLE are just not my thing when it comes to interpersonal connection. Therapist to client is more manageable it’s a clear cut boundary and clear expectations.
I just don’t enjoy **working with people. I don’t enjoy being around people for long periods of time. It feels exhausting and just thinking about it makes me want to cry. I get moody and irritable and over stimulated when my environment is too chaotic. When there’s so much to do but little time to do it. **
I can sit across from a client, hear their story, empathize with them, help them process trauma, and genuinely care about their progress.
What makes me want to crawl out of my skin is sitting in a room full of therapists and feeling like everyone is performing, masking, navigating politics, smiling while secretly judging one another, and pretending everything is fine.
Sometimes the whole thing feels like a fucking Truman Show.
And maybe the answer isn’t that I chose the wrong profession.
Maybe I just chose the wrong work environment. But GOD IS IT HARD TRYING TO GET INTO A PRIVATE PRACTICE SETTING.
When I think of my career as a therapist I see my self meant to sit in a quiet office, see one client at a time, do good therapy, complete simple manageable paperwork, go home, and mind my damn business.