8 Insights About Therapists From Therapy Memes

I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist, author, business owner, and public speaker, however I’m probably more widely recognized among fellow mental health professionals for my work creating funny therapy memes. 

My Instagram page Psychotherapy Memes is a global community with over 150,000 followers. The page contains snark and puns and other entertaining musings about our field. 

Why do mental health memes make so many people smile, chuckle, or laugh? 

Incongruity theory proposes that we find jokes funny when they capture the inconsistency between expectation and reality. 

I aim to capture these nuanced incongruities, and I believe that’s helped my therapy memes page to become so successful.

From my work creating and curating funny mental health memes here are eight of the insights I’ve learned.

1. Most therapists feel insecure in our work 

Back when we initially made the decision to pursue licensure in the mental health field, many of us expected our work to feel polished and professional. 

However, as therapy memes often highlight, in the real day-to-day life of doing work as a mental health professional, many of us feel self-conscious and unsure of ourselves.

Like most experienced therapists, I have sat in enough supervision and consultation groups to know that we often second-guess ourselves. 

But, I’ve only recently learned how much shame and uncertainty permeate our field. 

Collectively speaking, therapists feel insecure. 

We often don’t think we’re doing enough work. We doubt our credibility and interventions and ability to impact clients. We painfully worry about being exposed as frauds. It can be difficult to sit with ambiguity and even more challenging to acknowledge we can never come anywhere close to being perfect. 

As we guide clients into feeling more confident and empowered, we’re often working on these same lessons ourselves. 

2. Therapy memes reveal therapists often feel misunderstood 

A stranger asks what you do for a living. Do you tell the truth? 

If you don’t, I don’t blame you. 

When you tell someone you’re a therapist, you’re bound to receive cliched responses such as: “I don’t believe in therapy,” or “I’m practically a therapist myself—I listen to people all day long!” or “Can I ask you about my sister’s child’s best friend’s eating habits?”

The media, of course, often isn’t any better. 

Turn on any TV show or movie, and 90% of the time, you will see the therapist cross multiple professional boundaries. If they aren’t having wild sex with their clients, they’re making house calls, breaking confidentiality, or acting as some 24/7 on-call interventionist. 

And so, while we’re eager to help, we’re often at the crossroads of numerous misconceptions.

These misconceptions are ripe for the humor of therapy memes.

3. Many clinicians also don’t feel supported enough

“Good morning to everyone except supervisors who shouldn’t be supervisors.”

Did you chuckle at that line? 

If so, you’re not alone. 

Over 20,000 therapists liked, saved, or shared that therapy meme when I first posted it on Twitter/X. 

And while it may be funny, it also paints a painful picture of how many of us feel alone while navigating this difficult work.

We emphasize the benefits of connection to our clients, but we’re hungry for it ourselves. 

We understand the virtues of community, yet we often feel isolated in the solitary work we provide. 

What’s the takeaway here? 

High-quality supervision and consultation must be accessible and prioritized, because, even while running a therapy practice is often a solo profession, the process of learning to be an effective therapist requires an excellent support team. 

4. Therapy memes highlight the need for more conversations about burnout 

Burnout isn’t an annoying phase. 

It’s an insidious chronic state where despair meets emotional exhaustion. 

Burnout hurts everyone—ourselves, our clients, and our loved ones. 

And yet, we still prescribe short-term strategies like bubble baths and yoga stretches as a viable remedy. 

In the past few years, a series of life-changing events, including the global COVID-19 pandemic, rising sociopolitical tension, climate anxiety, looming financial uncertainty, have made burnout more of a rule than an exception. 

I’ve noticed that graduate students—before they ever set foot in their first practice therapy session–are beginning to voice questions about whether they actually want to pursue work in this field. 

Yes, burnout is scary, but we should not be too afraid to talk about it. 

When we don’t talk about burnout, we push it down, suppress it, and try to pretend it doesn’t exist.

At the same time, apathy grows and shame persists. 

To not talk about burnout is to not talk about the gritty rawness of our vulnerable work. 

5. Therapists are really nervous about messing it all up 

Mental health professionals often assume that their logistical fears of “getting into trouble” will disappear once they cross the magical line of licensure. 

In my experience, this isn’t true. 

In fact, I’d argue that fear never leaves us entirely. And that isn’t a bad thing.

The absence of fear paves a dangerous path for cockiness. Fear teaches and humbles us into staying accountable.

Therapy is raw, sensitive, intimate work. 

Our clients absolutely deserve our best practices. They deserve that we hold our professional relationships to the highest standard. 

So, let’s normalize and acknowledge this fear without letting it derail us. 

Let’s honor that we worry about messing it up because we care deeply about the work we provide. 

6. We are vocal about systemic change 

Has the archetype of the blank-slate therapist vanished?

I’m not completely sure, but I do know that the newest wave of therapists certainly isn’t quiet. 

They are protesting in the streets. They are dismantling oppression and advocating for equality and attacking our painfully-flawed healthcare system. 

They are dancing on TikTok. 

They’re sharing and engaging with therapy memes!

Today’s therapists strive to make an impact and create positive change.

More than ever, we’re merging our professional and personal values. And with that, our roles are becoming more fluid—not just as therapists, but as fierce social justice advocates and educators. 

And even if we’ve been trained to intervene at the micro-level, we’re finally starting to teach others that single-person healing only goes so far when an entire system is broken. 

7. Our clients want to understand the therapeutic process

Although my therapy memes page is explicitly intended for mental health professionals, many therapy seekers and clients also follow it and engage with me.

I often receive Instagram messages along the lines of: “How do I talk to my therapist about ____?” or “Should I ask my therapist if _______?” or “Will my therapist think ____?”

At times, we take our education and experience for granted. We may assume niche knowledge of how to set boundaries or self-care or mental illness is mainstream.

We might believe clients inherently know our intentions when it comes to informed consent, termination, or charging a no-show or late cancellation fee.

My therapy memes page has taught me this isn’t the case.

Clients feel fascinated by the therapeutic process. It’s ethereal and mystifying. And sometimes they are hesitant to talk to their therapists about their confusion.

We can’t read their minds, and they can’t read ours. We have to stay sensitive to that. 

8. Clinicians are unique, yet we share many similarities

Cognitive behavioral therapy vs. psychodynamic therapy. Insurance panels vs. cash-pay. Self-disclosure vs. blank slate. 

It can be easy to argue over our differences, and sometimes it’s also easy to assume our beliefs are superior. 

If you don’t believe me, lurk on any contentious thread in a therapist Facebook group. You can see members mercilessly attacking one another over a simple question. 

And yet, there are so many beautiful commonalities weaving us all together. 

We can’t lose sight of our shared universal experience–of sitting with pain and anguish, of holding space and validating feelings, of being that safe person in a world that often feels so unsafe. 

That’s the irreplaceable and undeniable stuff therapists are made of. 

That’s what makes our work matter. 

And it’s what unites us–along with our undying love for cardigans, white noise machines, and buying new books. 

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