a rant about therapists

18 Mar, 2026

i have worked in mental health for almost five years now and if there's one thing i've learned, it's that most therapists are honestly really awful at self-regulating their own emotions. i have had at least two therapists suddenly have beef with me out of nowhere because they think my 'tone' over email isn't nice enough.¹ once again, if i was a man saying the exact same things, these people would not bat an eye. but alas.

anyway, my boss has implemented these one-on-one 'therapy' leadership meetings for us. we speak with this woman, who's a therapist (supposedly), once a month about workplace stressors or things we want to work on. most recently, i spoke about a situation in which a contractor suddenly took issue with me on a phone call because i told her we had been going around in circles and weren't getting anywhere. this immediately set her off and she started tone policing me, saying i 'needed to bring it waaaay down' and laughing.

now if there's one thing i won't tolerate in my adult life, it's being fucking tone policed. i'm a grown ass woman and i've spent much of my life being tone policed just for existing. i stand up for my boundaries!

i tell her, clearly and calmly, 'i'm not raising my voice at you, i am speaking calmly, but i'm not going to sit here and be tone policed by you, so if that continues then i'm done with this conversation.' a) boundary set b) expectation set if boundary crossing continues.

she of course immediately laughs more and says again, 'you need to bring it waaaay down, maya. i'm just trying to talk to you.' so naturally, as a woman who actually does what she says she will, i tell her i'm done with this conversation, thank you very much and i end the call.

guess who's the one who ends up getting in trouble! hence my frustration with the entire situation. i tell this therapist all of this and she immediately tells me something to the effect of, 'well this is your childhood trauma defense mechanism and maybe it served you when you were young but not anymore and do you think you could have approached that conversation with more curiosity?'

ma'am, do you think you could use some more curiosity? and way to so completely miss the point, as well as completely misdiagnose my childhood trauma defense mechanism lmao. here's what i actually would do as a child: i would experience a big emotion, those weren't allowed, i was hit or yelled at to stop, i learned to hide all my emotions from my mother, i became highly sensitive and hyper vigilant to all her emotions, and i walked on egg shells around her at all times so as not to set her off more than she already would be. my defense mechanism was to specifically NOT have any boundaries, to let people treat or speak to me however they deemed fit, and i never felt like i could stand up for myself, speak my own mind, or even have my emotions.²

as someone who has done a lot of work on herself, i find it straight up offensive that a so-called licensed therapist would sit there and miss the mark so egregiously. it's like, she met a healed person and couldn't fathom it! it meant something had to be wrong with me! maybe she was projecting, who knows. maybe i'm being over-dramatic, but i don't care! i earned the right to be!

i refuse to be tone policed. i refuse to sit by and be disrespected over and over again and just take it with a smile. and i refuse to sit there and have my boundaries be so entirely miscast that somehow i'm still the one who's wrong because once again, a grown adult some two decades older than me cannot handle that i stood up for myself. maybe you should work on yourself, babes!!