Therapy for helping professionals
Therapy for Therapists and Helping Professionals
You spend your days attuned to other people. This is therapy for the person who is usually the one holding it - therapists, physicians, nurses, social workers, and other helping professionals.
You know how this works. You could probably map your own patterns as clearly as you map anyone's - the over-functioning, the perfectionism, the way you keep going because people are counting on you.
And still, at the end of a day of holding other people, there may not be much left. You might notice you're more depleted than you let on, quicker to numbness or irritation than you used to be, or quietly asking whether you can keep doing this work the way you've been doing it.
There may also be a quieter current of self-doubt underneath the competence: replaying sessions and decisions, wondering whether you actually helped, whether you missed something, whether you're as good at this as people assume. You can hold real skill and real doubt at the same time - many of the most conscientious clinicians do.
And the work can be lonely in a way that's hard to explain to people outside it. You spend all day in intimate contact with other people's inner lives - and can't talk about any of it. Colleagues see your waiting room, not your work. If you're in private practice, whole days can pass in deep connection with clients and no real contact for you. Being surrounded by people all day and still feeling alone with what you carry is one of this work's strangest costs.
Being able to explain all of that is not the same as it changing. You may know that better than anyone.
When caring for others is your work
Many people in caring work have done real work of their own before - therapy, reflection, their own hard-won learning. Being a client isn't necessarily new. What can be different is seeking care when giving it is your job:
- You're used to being on the other side. Giving the care, holding the frame, being the steady one - that's the familiar seat. Being the one who's held can feel less natural, and that's worth going gently with.
- You may know a lot going in. Especially if you work in mental health, the language and the tools are already familiar - so what's most useful usually isn't more information or coping tips, but a space to work with what's actually happening underneath.
- The work carries a particular weight. The depletion, the moral distress, the things you absorb and can't talk about - none of that needs explaining from the ground up here.
- A fit you choose on purpose. Wanting someone outside your own professional circles is completely reasonable, and worth being deliberate about.
Whatever your history with therapy - extensive, occasional, or none - the aim is simply a fit that goes deep enough to be worth your time. The very things you bring to your work - your attunement, your care, your standards - are what let it go somewhere real.
The costs of holding it all are real
The demands of caring work are well documented: emotional exhaustion, compassion fatigue, the residue of absorbing other people's pain, moral distress when systems don't let you care the way you want to, and the isolation of work you're bound to keep confidential. Under that, often, are the same patterns you help others with - self-criticism, self-doubt, over-functioning, difficulty resting, difficulty asking.
Many helping professionals cope by knowing more: another training, another framework, another way to understand themselves. Understanding helps. But you likely know, better than most, that understanding a pattern and changing it aren't the same thing.
What working with me is like
My approach is experiential and depth-oriented - AEDP, attachment-focused, and somatic work, alongside practical tools when they're useful. The aim isn't to hand you more coping strategies - in your line of work you may know those better than most - but to slow down and work with what is actually happening emotionally, as it happens, so the patterns underneath the depletion can shift rather than just be managed.
With helping professionals, that often means:
- having a place where you don't have to be the composed one - where the attunement finally points toward you;
- working with the feelings underneath the competence - the ones you can describe clearly but not quite reach;
- meeting the parts of you that learned to earn your place by holding everyone else;
- bringing the self-doubt into the open - the replayed sessions, the "am I actually helping" - instead of carrying it privately;
- working with self-criticism and perfectionism experientially, not just conceptually;
- not being alone with the work anymore - having one place where what you carry can be spoken;
- rebuilding access to the aliveness that drew you to this work in the first place.
I won't handle you with kid gloves, and I won't pretend you don't know what I'm doing. The work is collaborative and honest about the fact that you're a sophisticated participant in it.
Who this is for
I work online with adults in Ontario, Alberta, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, including:
- therapists, psychologists, counsellors, and social workers;
- physicians, nurses, and other healthcare providers;
- teachers, clergy, first responders, and others in caring roles;
- anyone whose work - or place in their family - made them the designated holder of other people's feelings.
Is this a good fit?
This is likely a good fit if you want therapy that goes deeper than coping strategies you already know, you're willing to be a client rather than a colleague in the room, and you want to work with someone experienced over time.
It may not be the right fit if you're looking for supervision or consultation rather than therapy, if you need crisis support or a coordinated treatment team, or if we have a professional relationship that can't ethically coexist with a therapy one - something we would sort out honestly in the consultation.
If you are in immediate danger, call 911. If you are in crisis or thinking about suicide, you can call or text 988, the Suicide Crisis Helpline, anytime, anywhere in Canada.
A first step
A free consultation is a low-stakes way to ask the questions that matter to you - fit, confidentiality, professional overlap, fees, availability - and to get a feel for whether working together makes sense. No commitment, and no need to have it figured out first.
You may also find it helpful to read: Why Insight Alone Doesn't Always Change Anxiety or Self-Criticism.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you work with therapists as clients?
Yes. A meaningful part of my practice is therapists, psychologists, counsellors, physicians, nurses, and other helping professionals. If we have a real-world professional overlap - shared workplaces, close referral relationships, supervision ties - we would talk about that openly in the consultation and decide together whether it makes sense to work together.
I already know a lot about this - will it just be tools I've heard before?
If you work in mental health, being walked through a worksheet you assign your own clients can feel hollow - and even if you don't, you may have heard the usual advice many times over. My work is experiential: rather than handing over more information, we work with what's actually happening emotionally as it happens, which tends to be exactly the part that's hard to do alone, however much you already know.
Is it strange to be the one getting help?
It can feel that way at first - especially if you're clinical yourself, watching the process or wondering how you come across as a client. That's normal, and it's workable. Often it becomes part of the work itself: noticing what it's like to be on the receiving end of care, and what makes it hard to stay there.
Is online therapy confidential enough for a professional in a small community?
Confidentiality applies fully, and online sessions can actually offer more privacy - no shared waiting rooms, no local office. If you have specific concerns about records, insurance claims, or professional overlap, bring them to the consultation; those questions deserve direct answers before you commit to anything.