I Refuse To Become "Professional" When it Costs Me Authenticity

Recently, on ye ol’ Instagram, I shared a Story with a picture of me with tears in my eyes. I talked about my confusion about the contradictions of being a person. About the very real emotion that is simply present inside my human body and mind.

I got some messages in my inbox questioning the ethics of me sharing in that way considering that I am in the process of becoming a licensed therapist.

Let me first speak to the obvious elephant in the room, which is that this is something about which I have historically felt insecure, and therefore defensive. I have told myself countless stories about how this is just another part of me being too much, too big, too emotional. I’ve told myself I’m a fraud for wanting to become a psychotherapist; only people who have figured it all out can do this work and have it count, right?

NO. NOPE. No. Not right.

I need you to listen to me for a second: the field of psychotherapy is one that was developed by white men. The same white men that constructed systems of patriarchal and colonial oppression. The same white men that continue to tell us to sit down and keep quiet or they’ll rape us or grab our pussies. The same white men who raise other white men to be toxically  unemotional and self-serving.

Me experiencing being a full, emotional, confused, confident, unsure, completely sure, ragged, docile, volatile, apologetic, righteous womxn — TERRIFIES these men, and therefore also terrifies those who worship them.

If a board of so-called emotional health professionals decides someday that I don’t deserve a license because I share too much of my human experience with other humans?

That’s just fine.

I refuse to become palatable and “professional” when it costs me true authenticity.

I simply cannot live inside of the insidious illusion that some of us get what’s acceptable and some of us don’t and that the ones who question the validity of these made up rules created for the comfort of some are strange or untrustworthy or unprofessional or not okay in some other falsely constructed way.

That is all.