Therapy for Therapists: Why Doing Your Own Work Matters
As therapists, we hold space for others every day—guiding clients through pain, trauma, grief, and healing. But even the most skilled and seasoned among us are not immune to the emotional residue of this work. The truth is: we need therapy too.
In fact, doing your own trauma work isn’t just beneficial—it’s foundational to being an ethical, effective, and grounded therapist.
We All Have a Personal History
No matter how long you’ve been practicing, your nervous system and emotional landscape are shaped by your own experiences. Childhood dynamics, relationship wounds, systemic stressors, and accumulated vicarious trauma from your work can all linger beneath the surface.
Left unaddressed, these experiences can quietly influence how you show up with clients. Therapy allows you to process your own story in a way that fosters greater self-awareness, emotional flexibility, and compassion for yourself and others.
Many Therapists Were Once the Family “Fixers”
I work with many therapists and helping professionals in my practice, and a pattern I often see is this: therapists are frequently drawn to the profession because, long before they ever sat in a graduate classroom, they were the ones holding it all together.
Maybe you were the fixer in your family, the listener, the one who was always emotionally attuned—often out of necessity. You may have had to meet the emotional needs of a parent or maintain peace in a household that felt unstable or overwhelming.
As children, this kind of emotional caretaking isn't a conscious choice—it’s a survival strategy. When we are completely dependent on our caregivers, our nervous system learns: if they’re okay, maybe I’ll be okay too. Attuning to others becomes a way to secure safety, connection, or even basic needs. But over time, that pattern of prioritizing others’ emotional wellbeing at the expense of your own can become deeply ingrained.
It can leave you vulnerable to burnout, over-responsibility, and a persistent sense that no matter how much you do, it’s never quite enough.
Therapy offers a way to interrupt that pattern. To begin recognizing and honoring your own needs—not just as a clinician, but as a person who also deserves care, rest, and support.
Trauma Work Helps You Stay Regulated
The work of therapy often calls for us to co-regulate with clients who are dysregulated, activated, or dissociated. If your own nervous system is stuck in a chronic stress response—whether from burnout, unprocessed trauma, or over-responsibility—it becomes much harder to offer true presence and attunement.
Therapy provides a space to reconnect with your own internal sense of safety and steadiness. It supports you in re-inhabiting your body—not just as a professional tool, but as your own place of security, truth, and intuition.
Countertransference Is Inevitable
As therapists, we all have our blind spots. Doing your own work helps illuminate the subtle ways countertransference can show up—whether through rescuing tendencies, emotional over-involvement, avoidance, or finding yourself emotionally entangled in a client’s story.
A skilled therapist of your own can help you explore these dynamics with curiosity instead of shame, giving you tools to understand what’s yours and what’s not.
Insight Alone Isn’t Enough
Therapists are often highly self-aware. We’re trained to spot patterns, to name defense mechanisms, to understand attachment dynamics. And yet, many therapists still find themselves stuck in patterns of emotional response or behavior they can’t fully make sense of—responses that persist despite everything they “know.”
This can feel embarrassing, even disorienting. But insight doesn’t always lead to integration.
That’s where trauma-informed therapies like EMDR come in. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and other somatic approaches go beyond cognitive insight to target the root causes of stuck patterns—unresolved trauma, nervous system dysregulation, or unprocessed memories. These therapies help shift the internal experience that keeps old responses in place, allowing for meaningful and lasting change.
In other words, therapy can help you move from understanding why you’re stuck to actually feeling different on the inside.
Therapy Makes You a Better Therapist
Doing your own therapy sharpens your clinical intuition and deepens your therapeutic presence. You become more attuned to nuance—less reactive, more grounded, and more flexible in the room.
You’re better able to tolerate uncertainty, to sit with discomfort, and to support clients without projecting your own unresolved experiences onto them. You learn to work from a place of embodiment instead of urgency, connection instead of control.
And perhaps most importantly: we can only take our clients as far as we’ve gone ourselves. When you’ve done your own healing work, you bring a level of authenticity and depth that no training alone can offer. You become a more resonant, regulated, and trustworthy guide for the people you serve.
Supervision and Consultation Aren’t Enough
Clinical consultation is vital, but it’s not the same as therapy. You deserve a space that’s just for you—not your caseload. A space where every part of you can feel heard. A space where you don’t have to be the helper or the expert.
Therapy allows you to be supported in the same way you support others.
It Models What We Ask of Clients
If we invite our clients to explore discomfort, to build capacity for emotional pain, to show up authentically—then we must be willing to do the same. Engaging in your own therapeutic process models integrity, vulnerability, and a deep respect for the work.
It's not about perfection. It's about congruence.
Therapy for Therapists: A Brave, Essential Investment
Whether you’re a new therapist feeling the weight of imposter syndrome, or a seasoned clinician navigating burnout, grief, or a life transition—therapy can support you in reconnecting with your why, expanding your resilience, and deepening your capacity to serve.
I specialize in working with therapists and helping professionals who want to do their own personal work. My approach is trauma-informed, grounded in EMDR and somatic modalities, and deeply attuned to the unique stressors and rewards of this field.
You’re allowed to take up space. You’re allowed to be supported. You’re allowed to heal, too.
Ready to begin your own healing process?
I provide therapy to therapists online in several states including Arizona, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Washington.
