If I Were Studying to be a Therapist Today I'd do it Differently

Studying to be a therapist is hard work! I’ve been reflecting lately on how hard it is to become a therapist. And it only seems to be getting harder!

Sometimes I like doing a thought experiment. I like to think about if I were studying to be a therapist today what I would do differently than what I did back when I trained to become a therapist.

In this article, I thought I would share some of those thoughts with you. Of course, anything that I ever share with you is just my opinion. And, this in particular is me reflecting on my own personal, very specific situation. Please don’t hear whatever I share as advice for what you should do.

As I look back, most of the things that I would change if I was studying to be a therapist today go against the grain of whatever I was advised to do at the time. So, I just want to put this narrative out there so that you’re aware you have options when it comes to training as a therapist.

Prefer to watch instead? Check out the video version of this article below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQoZreS8xtM

If I Were Studying to be a Therapist Today I'd do it Differently (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQoZreS8xtM)

2 common themes in my story

I think that as we look back you’ll notice that some of the things that I’d go back and tweak about my career path are related to how young I was when I started embarking on this path. I also took advice from others more blindly.

Also, as I’m attempting to channel younger Marie, I realize that I did have some wherewithal that whatever I was thinking was the right career path for me at age 18 had the potential to change over the trajectory of my career. So, one general approach I remember taking at the time was to try to keep as many career options available to myself as possible.

I think that as we run through these things that I would change you’re going to see those two themes pop up. One being that I was just trying to keep as many career doors open as possible. As well as giving other people’s advice too much weight in my decision making.

4 changes I would make if becoming a therapist today

1) Not always listening to mentor’s advice

Unfortunately, I had multiple professors try to steer me away from becoming a therapist. I remember one professor, who I worked with pretty extensively, when learning of my goal of wanting to be a therapist said “Wait, you want to be a therapist? But, you’re so smart Marie! You could be a researcher! Why would you throw your life away like that?”

Looking back, my current version of myself would have walked away from working with this professor. But, back then, I was probably about 20 and I thought he knew better.

2) Choosing a different degree

One of the ways I tried to keep multiple career path doors open was to keep the research path as wide open as I possibly could. Even though, as far as I could tell, I had no interest in becoming a researcher.

As an undergrad the psych majors at my school had the option to pursue either a bachelor of arts degree or a bachelor of science degree in psychology. I decided to get the bachelors of science degree because I thought that was going to give me a leg up in keeping the door open for potentially becoming a researcher.

And as it turns out, the BS degree was FAR more rigorous than the BA degree for psychology. Suffice to say, if I could go back, I would have gotten a bachelors of arts degree instead.

3) Getting a master’s instead of a doctorate

Another way that I tried to keep all the doors open when studying to be a therapist, was I planned to get a doctorate degree.

I felt like the Psy D was the right fit for me because it would have very rigorous clinical training. It would also keep the door open for research, assessment, and many other paths that might close if I had gone the masters degree route.

Most significantly, I knew I wanted to teach someday. Because the school I went to for undergrad did not hire professors with anything less than a doctorate to teach, I assumed that was true everywhere. (It’s not!)

A quick note to say that I was not educated about this as an undergrad, but if you are thinking about pursuing a doctorate you should definitely educate yourself about the fact that if you get a PhD in psychology versus a Psy D in psychology there is a VAST difference in the average debt between those two degrees. That’s a variable you might like to consider.

If I’d done some more research, outside of talking to my undergrad professors, I might have been able to figure this out and save myself an incredible amount of time and money.

If I could go back, I would have gotten a master’s-level degree instead of a doctorate. I’d have less clinical training overall, but still more than sufficient training to offer effective therapy. And I could always get supplemental training if I wanted while working a regular paying job rather than paying for expensive tuition.

I don’t necessarily think a master’s-level degree is better than a doctorate, it’s just that I think it makes sense to get the degree that fits the career path that you want to take. A master’s-level degree is more than sufficient to do everything that I am doing now in my career.

4) Going to grad school part-time

The next thing I would have done differently is I would have done my grad program part time.

For me, there’s two reasons I would have made this choice. One, is that I think I would have been able to really absorb the material in a much more effective way. I also could’ve actually had some time in my schedule to do my own personal reflections that my professors always told me to do. Imagine that!

This choice would have trickled down to every level. For example, I would have been more emotionally available for my therapy clients.

Secondly, If I did grad school part time, it would open up more time to work. As it was, I was already working 10-30 hours per week earning minimum wage at various side jobs just to *barely* make ends meet. If I did school part time, it might have been reasonable to sustain a part-time or even a full-time job to minimize the expense of grad school.

My change in outlook

At the beginning of this article I mentioned that the general approach that I took was to keep as many doors open as possible and to follow the advice of my professors.

Now, my general approach would emphasize maintaining as much sanity as possible while I study and train to be a therapist. And I would do anything I could to make things a little bit financially and emotionally smoother.

Part of that switch comes from changing how I looked at graduate school. I now see it as a necessary hoop to jump through in order to access as many trainings as I need to to be a proficient, qualified therapist. Rather than seeing graduate school as the end-all-be-all place to get all my graduate level training.

I now know that graduate school is way more expensive than any other path to get training. Although training is really expensive…it’s still cheaper than graduate school!

So, you may want to consider if there’s any way to shrink the cost of or how long you’re in graduate school. And just be open to pushing some of the training until after graduate school.

Personally, I think that approach would make a lot more sense, if I were doing this today.

My hope for you

I hope you found it helpful to hear my reflections on changes I would make now if I were studying to be a therapist. To me, it can almost feel surprising how drastically different my approach would be now, almost 20 years later.

I want you to know that there’s lots of potential ways to approach becoming a therapist. And, I think that the most important thing is to think about what your needs and end goals are and which available path makes the most sense for you.