Shrink Happens: Why the Most Important Job in America Pays Less Than a Used Honda

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May 21, 2025

Written by Frank Glassner:
CEO, Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants

Chapter I: The Couch Where It All Begins

Somewhere in Marin County, California a woman with two master’s degrees, $132,000 in student debt, and 3,000 unpaid clinical hours under her belt is helping a hedge fund manager figure out why he cries after buying Teslas. She’ll make $75 today—not because she isn’t worth more, but because she’s still under supervised licensure, takes insurance that reimburses less than the cost of a therapy dog’s haircut, and believes in helping people. He’ll tell his assistant to send the payment next week—after confirming whether she takes Amex, Venmo, or freshly baked sourdough.

Welcome to therapy in America.

Why the hell would anyone want to do this job??

In a country where we pay six figures to consultants who teach CEOs how to breathe mindfully before firing 10,000 employees, the people actually keeping us from jumping off fiscal and emotional ledges are making less than shift managers at Panda Express. It’s not just absurd—it’s structural. Deeply embedded. And maybe, just maybe, the biggest collective psychological projection of all time.

Because here’s the thing: You don’t get a stable CEO without a whole chain of emotional infrastructure. There’s the mom who didn’t abandon him at three. The first-grade teacher who taught him that words have meaning. And the therapist who spent 12 years helping him understand that the IPO didn’t fix his intimacy issues. If you think that therapist wasn’t part of that billion-dollar exit, you weren’t paying attention.

And let’s be clear: This isn’t some feel-good “thank you, therapists” puff piece. This is a 10,000-word verbal smackdown of a system that chews up mental health professionals and then tells them they’re lucky to be here. This is data, drama, and a good hard look in the societal mirror.

Yes, there are therapists in Beverly Hills who charge $400 an hour. But most? The average salary for mental health counselors in the U.S. is just over $53,000 a year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s if you’re fully licensed. If you’re in training, you might as well start a GoFundMe to cover your rent. All this while you’re required to log 3,000 supervised hours—often unpaid—or paid so little you’d be better off doing Uber Eats in between sessions.

Let’s dig into this madness. Let’s examine why a therapist in San Francisco, Boulder, Austin, Brooklyn, Portland, or Asheville—someone who might literally talk a client out of suicide on a Tuesday—has to moonlight as a barista, a yoga teacher, or a pet psychic just to afford their copay. Let’s talk about the licensing gauntlet, the emotional labor, the burnout, and the sliding-scale policies that make the IRS look generous.

Let’s talk about how therapy is now a social currency in places like LA, where if you're not in therapy, you're either in denial or in litigation. In Brooklyn, therapy is as common as cold brew. In Boulder, your therapist also guides your plant medicine retreat. In Marin County, she’ll hold space for your existential crisis—right after picking up her kids from Montessori.

Let’s talk about the Veritas Way—because if anyone needs a compensation overhaul, it’s the people holding the emotional scaffolding of this country together with Post-It notes, duct tape, and lavender oil.

And most of all, let’s tell the truth. With humor. With rage. With reverence for the people who do this work not for glory, not for gain, but because if they didn’t, the rest of us would fall apart.

Shrink Happens.

Now take a breath. And let’s begin.

Chapter II: On the Couch — The Price of Empathy

The average therapist’s couch sees more drama than a corporate boardroom during a hostile takeover—and yet nobody rings the opening bell when a breakthrough happens. Nobody shouts "Buy!" when a client finally cries. And nobody offers stock options when a marriage is saved with three Kleenex and a well-timed "How did that make you feel?".

Therapists don’t wear suits. They don’t give earnings calls. But they manage more crises in a single afternoon than most executives do in a fiscal quarter. And unlike executives, they don’t have golden parachutes. They have sliding-scale clients, liability insurance, and an inbox full of canceled sessions that still count against their revenue projections. They’re basically the only professionals who offer refunds on human emotion.

Let’s talk about what it takes to get to the couch in the first place.

In most states, becoming a licensed therapist requires a graduate degree (usually an MA or MS in counseling, psychology, or social work), followed by 2–4 years of post-grad clinical hours—typically 3,000 of them. These hours must be supervised, often unpaid or paid at near-minimum wage. In California, you need 104 weeks of supervised experience. In New York? 3,000 hours and a licensing exam that makes the LSAT look like Wordle.

Some interns take side gigs walking dogs, tutoring rich kids in AP Psych, or serving oat milk lattes to people discussing their therapist—who probably also had to moonlight before getting paneled by Blue Cross.

By the time a therapist is allowed to legally say, “Tell me more about that,” they’ve already sacrificed years of their life and tens of thousands of dollars in tuition—and still face licensing boards that could make Kafka blush. Some therapists have PTSD from their ethics exams. Others still get night sweats when they hear the word "supervision."

And when they finally hang their shingle? Here come the insurance companies. The reimbursement rates are often laughable. A 50-minute session might net $60—less than the cost of one Uber ride to the appointment. And if the therapist bills incorrectly? That $60 becomes a six-month appeals process. Or a rejection. Or worse: a passive-aggressive audit letter that reads like it was written by a bored AI trained on Kafka, Freud, and corporate HR manuals.

Then there’s the matter of emotional labor. Therapists absorb pain. Hour after hour. Trauma, grief, addiction, rage, loneliness, psychosis, existential dread, and the occasional trust fund kid melting down over being called “aggressive” in a Slack thread. Sometimes all in the same morning.

This work isn’t just demanding—it’s consuming. And they’re expected to do it while offering unconditional positive regard, holding boundaries, maintaining composure, and occasionally fetching tissues from a drawer full of unpaid utility bills. They absorb what society ejects. They stitch together what social media tears apart. And at the end of the day, they might go home, pour a glass of Trader Joe’s finest, and wonder if they remembered to schedule their own therapy.

And what about benefits? Most therapists are self-employed or contract workers. That means no health insurance, no retirement contributions, and no paid time off. If they want a vacation, they better hope their clients don’t unravel while they’re gone—or worse, find someone cheaper with better online reviews.

Then there’s the ever-glorious paperwork. Progress notes, treatment plans, billing codes, ethics compliance, HIPAA documentation. Imagine being knee-deep in human trauma and then having to justify that trauma in ICD-10 language for reimbursement.

“Oh, your client had a dissociative episode triggered by childhood neglect? Great, just code that under F44.89 and explain in 150 characters or less.”

And don't forget the joy of chasing payments. Therapists often double as their own collections departments, following up with clients who vanish mid-breakdown and leave their copay in emotional escrow. Try sending a payment reminder to someone who ghosted you because they’re “working on boundaries.”

Despite all this, therapists show up. They sit on the couch. They listen, reflect, guide, challenge, and yes—heal. They walk people through grief, addiction, identity crises, and trauma that could bend steel. And then they go home, maybe cry in the shower, and get up to do it all again tomorrow.

They deserve better. They show up for us every day—without bonuses, without exits, and without an entourage of executive assistants. And still, they stay. Because someone has to keep the couch warm when the rest of the world goes cold.

Chapter III: The Real MVPs — Mom, Teacher, Therapist

Let’s be honest—no one wakes up one day as a Fortune 500 CEO, perfectly balanced, empathetically literate, and free of mommy issues. That kind of personal stability takes years of low-paid, emotionally intensive labor by three key players: Mom, a first-grade teacher, and—eventually—a therapist.

If it takes a village to raise a child, then Mom was the zoning board, the road crew, and the 911 dispatcher. She kept you alive for six years on nothing but peanut butter sandwiches, juice boxes, and the occasional scream into a bathroom towel. She worked two jobs and still found time to make you a diorama of the solar system with her last glue stick and her will to live. You think your “innovative leadership style” wasn’t shaped by the woman who once threatened to pull the car over because you were singing off-key? Think again.

Then came the teacher. Not just any teacher—that teacher. The one who taught you that letters make sounds and words make meaning, and that throwing pencils at Brittany during story time is not a leadership skill. First-grade teachers are miracle workers in cardigans. They manage 24 small humans with the coordination of an air traffic controller and the patience of a Buddhist monk on sedatives. They get sneezed on 43 times a day and still teach fractions with a smile—and for that, they make about as much as the guy who replaces the oil in your leased Lexus.

And then, just when your emotional iceberg finally surfaces in your 30s—bam. In comes the therapist. Quiet, composed, and carrying a notepad with more generational trauma per square inch than your family tree. She nods. She listens. She writes things like “explore father dynamic further” and “possibly delusional?” and then somehow helps you piece your psyche back together using only reflective statements and three metaphors about boundary-setting.

These three—the mom, the teacher, and the therapist—are the uncredited producers of every decent human being in modern society. You want to know why the CEO didn’t end up running a Ponzi scheme out of a van? Mom. You want to know why she can give a TED Talk instead of a deposition? First-grade teacher. You want to know why he stopped gaslighting his staff and started journaling? Therapist.

Let’s also talk about how these MVPs are treated once the Instagram carousel tributes fade. Teachers are told to “teach from the heart” while crowdfunding for classroom supplies. Moms are expected to work, parent, manage households, and look good doing it—while absorbing every tantrum, scrape, and teen meltdown with a smile and a side of guilt. And therapists? They’re labeled “luxuries” by insurance companies that wouldn’t recognize trauma if it walked in holding its childhood teddy bear.

There’s no IPO for raising good humans. No VC firm is cutting checks for maternal resilience or early literacy breakthroughs. But there should be. Because without these three roles, we don’t have a functioning society. We have LinkedIn profiles, TED Talks, and emotional time bombs waiting to go off in conference rooms and holiday dinners.

And yes, after all that, she still had to pay taxes on it.

Chapter IV: From Freud to TikTok — The Evolution of Emotional Economics

Once upon a time, therapy involved a couch, a Viennese man with a magnificent beard, and an unhealthy obsession with your mother. That was Freud: the father of psychoanalysis, the original overthinker, the man who single-handedly turned every dream into a metaphor for repressed sexuality. You’d lie down. You’d talk. He’d nod, stroke his chin, and write down that your fear of birds was clearly tied to your unresolved Oedipal rage.

Fast forward 100 years, and therapy is now a carefully curated carousel of hot takes on Instagram: "Feeling is healing," "Boundaries are hot," and "You attract what you don’t heal." And somewhere in between Freud’s cigar smoke and TikTok's ring lights, the entire mental health profession tried to evolve—and accidentally got wrapped in essential oils and algorithmic enlightenment.

Welcome to the emotional economy, 2025 edition.

In today’s world, the therapist might still have a notepad—but it’s digital now, HIPAA-compliant, and possibly shared on Notion with your life coach. The office? It’s a Zoom square, or a room with salt lamps, a white noise machine, and five plants named after inner child archetypes. The session starts when you Venmo $225 with a tree emoji and ends with a suggestion to “journal through the discomfort.”

In LA, your therapist might also be your astrologer. In San Francisco, she co-owns a trauma-informed kombucha collective. In Austin, he teaches breathwork with a side hustle as a startup advisor. And in Brooklyn, if your therapist doesn’t have at least one NPR feature, three certifications, and a mildly traumatic ayahuasca anecdote—they’re not even trying.

But before we make fun of the modern therapist, let’s not forget how we got here.

The mid-20th century gave us Carl Rogers, who pioneered “unconditional positive regard”—and may have been the last person in America to use the word “regard” non-ironically. Jung introduced archetypes and the collective unconscious—then immediately lost most of us by Chapter 2. B.F. Skinner thought rats could teach us about human behavior, and for a while, they almost did. Meanwhile, insurance companies began quietly plotting their revenge.

By the 1980s, therapy had gone mainstream—but also went Hollywood. We got Dr. Melfi on The Sopranos, Frasier Crane dispensing snobby insights over sherry, and Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, hugging trauma out of Matt Damon with a single line: "It’s not your fault." America wept. Therapists wept. Insurance carriers said, “That’ll be $42, minus your $4,000 deductible.”

Then came the wellness boom.

Suddenly, therapy wasn’t just treatment—it was branding. You didn’t just go to therapy; you were in therapy. It became a status symbol, a flex, a rite of passage. In certain zip codes, not having a therapist made you seem emotionally reckless. Like driving without insurance, or eating gluten.

Enter social media.

Now, everyone’s a self-healing expert. TikTok therapists give 30-second takes on narcissistic abuse while wearing merch that says "Feel Your Feels." Instagram is filled with curated quotes in soft pink fonts: "Your trauma is not your fault, but your healing is your responsibility." Thanks, @innerpeace.mama.goddess—you’ve been incredibly helpful.

We now live in an age where a 23-year-old with a ring light, a yoga certification, and a thousand followers can charge $150/hour for “holding space” while sipping a matcha latte. Meanwhile, the actual therapist—who spent seven years in grad school and three in clinical supervision—is eating Trader Joe’s freezer meals and praying Blue Shield finally processes last October’s invoice.

But there’s beauty in this chaos too.

Because even with all the influencers, jargon, and trauma hashtags, the core of therapy has survived. The human connection. The safe space. The moment when someone finally says, “You’re not broken. You’re just hurt.” And suddenly, the fog lifts.

So yes, the evolution from Freud to TikTok is messy, absurd, and wildly commercialized. But the heart of therapy? Still beating. Still brave. Still mostly unpaid.

And whether it comes with a beard and a couch or a Zoom link and a succulent wall, it still matters.

Now breathe in. Breathe out. And don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe to your emotional stability.

Chapter V: Therapist Stereotypes — The Good, the Bad, and the Dead Inside

Let’s face it—everybody thinks they know what a therapist is. Thanks to decades of movies, sitcoms, and tearful podcast interviews, therapists are either warm, cardigan-clad sages who nod wisely while you cry... or burned-out zombies silently counting the minutes until they can go home and binge true crime shows while doing armchair diagnostics of the serial killer’s attachment style.

But the reality? It’s somehow worse—and funnier—than you think.

The Healer Who’s Also Healing

She got into this field because she believes in people. And also because her parents were emotionally unavailable and her ex-boyfriend was a yoga-teaching DJ named Sage who ghosted her during Mercury retrograde. She lights candles before sessions. She says “I’m holding space for you” like she means it. She’s writing a book about boundaries but hasn’t told her roommate she wants her casserole dish back. She’s in therapy, her therapist is in therapy, and that therapist is doing ketamine-assisted therapy in Topanga Canyon.

The Jungian With a Landline

He’s 75. He’s never sent an email. His office smells like a church basement and lost dreams. He refers to everything as a “complex.” He has a Rolodex. He’s still bitter about being rejected by Anna Freud’s research institute in 1973 and brings it up every session. He wears tweed year-round. He’s never once looked at the clock—and yet you always go over time.

The Wellness Bro

He does therapy, coaching, energy work, cold plunges, and occasionally sells supplements. He calls himself a “conscious masculine integrator” and charges $333 a session. His business model is a Venn diagram of Tony Robbins, CrossFit, and burning sage. Every sentence he says ends with “bro.” You once told him you were sad and he gave you a 14-step breathwork protocol and a Spotify playlist titled Rise Into Alpha.

The Grad Student Who’s Seen Too Much

They’re 26. They work under supervision for $16 an hour at a community clinic and are legally allowed to talk about your trauma but not their student loans. They see twelve clients a day, chart at night, and spend lunch breaks crying in their car. Their therapy style? “Survive until licensure.” They have five roommates, three succulents, and a therapist who reminds them daily that burnout is a construct.

The Checked-Out Veteran

She’s been practicing for 35 years and has the thousand-yard stare of someone who’s heard every story twice. She says “mm-hmm” so reflexively you wonder if she’s alive. She uses a spiral notebook and a Bic pen that’s been chewed within an inch of its life. Her wall art says "Live, Laugh, Listen" and has been slightly crooked since the Bush administration. You told her your darkest secret and she nodded, yawned, and said, "That tracks."

The Instagram Therapist

She’s not just in private practice. She’s a brand. Her feed is full of pastel infographics, sponsored links, and captions like, "When they gaslight you, glow brighter." She does webinars titled “Reclaiming Your Inner Empress Through Somatic Integrity” and has merch. You once paid $49.99 for a PDF worksheet called "Trauma, But Make It Fashion."

Your Mother, Your Father, and Everyone You've Ever Dated

This therapist doesn’t have a physical form. They live in your head—and charge rent in the currency of unresolved childhood narratives. They’re not licensed, but their influence is undeniable. Your mother gave you your abandonment issues. Your father taught you emotional suppression through the silent treatment. Your high school boyfriend introduced the concept of gaslighting before it had a name. And your last situationship? Well, that was basically unpaid shadow work. This category of therapist may not be covered by insurance, but they’re the reason you’re in therapy in the first place. She’s not just in private practice. She’s a brand. Her feed is full of pastel infographics, sponsored links, and captions like, "When they gaslight you, glow brighter." She does webinars titled “Reclaiming Your Inner Empress Through Somatic Integrity” and has merch. You once paid $49.99 for a PDF worksheet called "Trauma, But Make It Fashion."

And yet—each of these absurd, meme-able, overworked, underpaid humans is holding part of society together with little more than licensure and a prayer. No matter how weird or wild their style, they show up. They sit down. They listen to the pain, the chaos, the unrelenting nonsense of our psyches—and somehow, they care.

Even the one who said, "Sorry, I spaced out. Could you repeat that?"

Because despite the stereotypes, the truth is this: therapists are doing the impossible. They’re navigating broken systems, crumbling reimbursements, existential dread, and their own childhood trauma—just to help you figure out why your boss reminds you of your stepdad.

They are the good. They are the bad. And yes, sometimes they are the emotionally exhausted pile of laundry in a cardigan. But they are there.

And that, sports fans, is heroic.

As the old saying goes: neurotics build castles in the sky, psychotics live in them—and therapists? Therapists collect the rent. Sometimes with a clipboard. Sometimes with tears. Always with grace.

Chapter VI: Glamour, Grit, and the Great Lie

Nobody becomes a therapist for the money. If they did, they’d be in real estate, SaaS, or teaching mindfulness to crypto bros at Burning Man for $5,000 a weekend. No, therapists choose this life the way monks choose mountaintops—with conviction, delusion, and an ironclad tolerance for discomfort.

They enter the field with wide eyes and warmer hearts, armed with spiral-bound DSMs and dreams of making a difference. They picture themselves guiding clients through dark tunnels, offering insight, compassion, and the occasional tissue. What they don’t picture? Fighting with insurance companies over whether chronic soul collapse qualifies for reimbursement.

This is the great lie: that being a therapist is a noble, sustainable profession. Noble? Absolutely. Sustainable? Only if you have a trust fund, a sugar partner, or are secretly reselling Etsy affirmation posters on the side. Or if you’ve monetized your burnout into a bestselling self-help book with the word "boundaries" in the title.

Because the glamour is a mirage.

You think of therapists in high-rise offices with floor-to-ceiling views, tasteful lighting, and a soothing Eames chair. In reality, many of them work out of windowless converted closets with secondhand lava lamps, a cracked diffuser, and that one Ikea rug that somehow smells like 2011 and unspoken disappointment. Their schedules are packed with back-to-back trauma dumps and emergency reschedules. Lunch is whatever fits between 12:50 and 12:57—and eaten while answering a tearful email that starts with "Sorry to bother you but I think I'm spiraling again."

And then there’s the grit.

The grit is real. The grit is waking up at 6 a.m. to prep for a client who ghosted at 6:03. It’s telling someone their pain is valid while knowing you haven’t had your own pain validated since graduate school. It’s getting yelled at, trauma-projected on, and occasionally sued—yes, sued—because a client’s cousin read an article on Psychology Today and decided to call the Board.

It’s talking someone off an emotional ledge while knowing your own electricity might get shut off on Monday. It’s reviewing your malpractice insurance renewal while a client cries about a breakup that sounds suspiciously like yours. It’s ending a long day of deep trauma work only to come home to a passive-aggressive group text about the shared laundry schedule.

The grit is charging $150 and still wondering if you’re helping. It’s worrying that your license renewal fee is going to bounce. It’s going to therapy for your therapy about your therapy. It’s thinking, at least once a week, "I could have been a dental hygienist."

But they stay. And that’s what makes them heroic.

They stay through the cancellations, the underpayments, the emotional hemorrhaging, and the Zoom fatigue. They stay through clients who overshare, clients who undershare, clients who ghost after six sessions of serious breakthroughs.

They stay because somewhere, deep down in their cortisol-soaked hearts, they believe. In healing. In people. In the absurd, exquisite messiness of human transformation.

And that belief—that pith, that depth—is what makes people laugh and cry in the same session. Not just the clients. Sometimes, the therapists too.

So the next time someone says, “Ugh, I could never be a therapist,” remember: most therapists have said that. Last week. Out loud. In their cars. While clutching a lukewarm chai and wondering if they have time to pee before their next existential download.

But they’ll still be there at 2 p.m. With their glasses, their questions, and their whole soul at the ready. Because in a world that has monetized attention, outsourced compassion, and optimized every feeling into a brand funnel, therapists are still choosing to sit with pain—with your pain—for 50 minutes at a time.

That’s not just grit. That’s grace. And in this economy? That’s revolutionary.

Chapter VII: If You’re Not in Therapy, Are You Even Relevant?

Once upon a time, going to therapy meant something was wrong with you. Now, not going to therapy means something is wrong with you. In the era of personal brands, curated vulnerability, and trauma-based storytelling, therapy has gone from private salvation to public declaration. And in some places—San Francisco, LA, Brooklyn, Marin—it’s practically a fashion accessory.

Welcome to the age of Performative Wellness™, where a therapist isn’t just a mental health professional. They’re a badge of cultural currency. A vibe manager. A quiet flex. If they’ve got a cactus in the Zoom background and use phrases like "emotional bandwidth" unironically, you’ve hit gold.

In today’s hip metros, not being in therapy is like not composting, or not knowing your enneagram. You’re either in therapy, between therapists, or casually mentioning you’re “on the waitlist for someone who specializes in somatic decolonization and inner child recalibration.” Translation: you cried at a drum circle and now need someone licensed to help sort it out.

First dates now come with disclaimers: “My therapist says I have avoidant tendencies but I’m working on them.” Breakups are explained with diagnostic precision: “He lacked emotional regulation and projected unresolved maternal trauma onto my boundary-setting.”

Even apps are getting in on it. Hinge added a prompt that might as well read, “Swipe right if your therapist also thinks you have potential.” Bumble should just go ahead and ask for your ACE score.

The aesthetics of therapy have entered the chat, too. TikTok therapists deliver bite-sized breakthroughs between sponsored ads for magnesium sprays. Instagram is full of quote carousels that say things like “You don’t need closure—you need a licensed professional and a weighted blanket.” It’s all pastel fonts and bold statements like “You’re allowed to block your parents,” as if that’s a universal cure.

And yet—beneath the polished filters and latte-fueled breakthroughs—there is real pain. There are real people trying to scream into a void shaped like a Blue Cross PPO provider directory.

And let’s be honest—just glancing at a newspaper these days is enough to warrant an emergency session. Tariffs, Ukraine, Trump, Putin, Musk’s Twitter feed, another think piece on AI, or even seeing Nancy Pelosi’s frozen grimace at 7 a.m. can push the average person—let alone a sensitive self-reflective coastal elite—right over the edge. Jack Nicholson in The Shining looked more composed after three days in the Overlook Hotel than most of us feel by breakfast.

Because while therapy may be stylish, accessible therapy is not. Many of the people who need it most can’t afford it, can’t find a provider, or can’t clear the bureaucratic minefield of insurance approvals, intake forms, and waitlists longer than a TSA line at LAX.

In places like Brooklyn and Boulder, therapists are booked out for six months. In rural America, they simply don’t exist. And in both cases, we tell people to "just reach out"—as if access were the problem, not the entire system. Heinz Kohut talked about the need for mirroring. America gives people a mirror and says, “Fix yourself.”

Meanwhile, therapists are expected to hold space for everything: inner children, shadow work, grief processing, career coaching, and preparing you for your mom’s third wedding. We want them to be priests, doctors, lawyers, and yoga instructors with a side hustle in astrology—but we don’t want to pay more than a Pilates class.

We want healing with a punch card. Breakthroughs on a budget. Enlightenment that looks great in natural light and posts well with the hashtag #growth.

So yes, therapy is trending. But no, that doesn’t make it trivial. The truth is, in a world that’s addicted to productivity, allergic to silence, and convinced that emotions are weaknesses unless monetized, the simple act of sitting with someone who actually listens is nothing short of radical.

Because maybe relevance isn’t about having a therapist. Maybe it’s about becoming the kind of person who finally makes the appointment—and shows up.

Even if you’re ten minutes late, carrying iced coffee and a vague sense of dread.

At least you’re trying.

And in this world? That counts for a hell of a lot.

And if Lenny Bruce were alive today, he wouldn’t just be doing stand-up. He’d be in therapy. Twice a week. On a sliding scale. Complaining that his therapist keeps interrupting his rants with breathing exercises.

That’s not irrelevance. That’s progress.

Chapter VIII: Crisis Mode — Burnout, Breakdown, and the Bureaucratic Bloodbath

Cue the Tarantino credits: slow zoom on a therapist’s exhausted face, half-lit by a flickering fluorescent bulb. The soundtrack? A mashup of screaming voicemail transcriptions and lo-fi ambient sobbing. Because this is where the story stops being a satire—and becomes a survival thriller.

Welcome to Crisis Mode: the Quentin Tarantino cut of mental healthcare. Burnout. Paperwork. Crying in parking lots. A plot twist every 15 minutes and a villain in every fax machine.

Let’s start with the basics: therapists are burned out. Like, Napa wildfire meets grease fire meets gas station burrito level burnout. According to the American Psychological Association, nearly 1 in 2 therapists report being overwhelmed to the point of questioning whether they can continue practicing. The other half just scream into their steering wheels and keep going.

Why? Because the demand is higher than ever. Mental health crises have skyrocketed post-pandemic, but the system meant to hold it all? Duct-taped. Unfunded. Managed by interns with clipboards and slow Wi-Fi.

Clients are showing up later, sadder, angrier, and far more fragile than ever before. They come in hot—"My ex texted me back after 19 months of silence, do I answer??"—and then switch gears mid-session to, "Also, I haven’t slept in three weeks and I think my dog is my therapist." And somehow, the therapist has to sit there, nod, validate, strategize, and remember which sliding scale they agreed to two months ago.

Meanwhile, the therapist is fighting a Kafkaesque war against the real antagonist: insurance companies. Submitting a claim is like auditioning for America’s Got Reimbursements. You send your notes. You get a denial. You appeal. You get ghosted. Eventually, a very polite robot sends you $34.17 and a note saying the client’s “existential dread” wasn’t medically necessary.

And then there’s the waitlist monster. In major cities, getting a therapist is like getting a brunch reservation at French Laundry. In small towns, there’s one therapist who sees everyone—from your grandmother to your ex to your dentist. Hope you’re cool with accidental group therapy in the Safeway produce aisle.

Therapists are full. Overfull. But they’re not allowed to say no. Why? Because they got into this to help people. And saying no to someone in crisis feels like choosing who gets the last parachute on a burning plane.

But what about support for therapists? Good question. Please hold for six to eight months while they try to find their own therapist who accepts insurance, doesn’t live 200 miles away, and won’t respond to their trauma with, “Wow, that’s a lot.”

It’s not just burnout—it’s betrayal. A system that tells therapists to heal the world, but won’t even cover their continuing education credits. That romanticizes resilience while weaponizing compassion fatigue. That calls them “essential” and then pays them less than the life coach who sells “confidence crystals” and hosts group scream therapy in Joshua Tree.

Therapists aren’t just tired—they’re cracked. Held together by caffeine, calendar apps, and the occasional three-minute sob between sessions. They cry in stairwells. They dissociate in traffic. They Google “non-therapy careers for people with soft voices and 200k in debt.”

And sometimes, they snap. Not dangerously—but existentially. You show up five minutes late to a $200 session and suddenly your therapist Dan is pacing the office, veins popping, accusing you of 'disrespecting the therapeutic container' and 'sabotaging the sanctity of your own healing process.' You try to apologize. Dan says your lateness is a reflection of your resistance to intimacy. You blink. He charges you the full hour. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you wonder if this is what irony smells like.

And yet—they keep showing up.

Because even when the system fails, the client doesn’t. The story still matters. The healing still happens. Even in 50-minute bursts, in cluttered offices, under fluorescent lights that buzz like an existential alarm clock.

That, sports fans, is what you call a Tarantino twist: the heroes are exhausted. The villain wears a billing department badge. And the climax is quiet—just a therapist saying, “Tell me more,” while the world spins out.

Roll credits. Cue Leonard Cohen. Light another lavender candle.

They’ll be back at it tomorrow. Same couch. Same war. Same hope.

And that? That’s one hell of a plotline.

Chapter IX: Celebrity Culture Meets the Trauma Economy — Where Healing Gets a PR Agent

Welcome to the sacred bonfire of emotional branding, where pain is prepackaged, healing is a hustle, and trauma has been given a ring light and a booking agent. This isn’t therapy—it’s Therapertainment™, and it’s brought to you by the same people who gave us detox tea and post-divorce face peels.

In the Trauma Economy™, your pain is only as valuable as your engagement rate. Everyone from Gwyneth to Goop-adjacent influencers has turned sorrow into synergy—monetizing grief with ethically-sourced candles, curated breakup playlists, and $1,200 “boundaries workshops” conducted entirely via Zoom and vibes.

Gone are the days of the quiet therapist scribbling on a yellow legal pad in a windowless room. Today, they’re background extras in a reality show where healing is a photo op and every panic attack has a built-in sponsorship. “My therapist said I’m finally integrating my abandonment wound,” says the influencer, half-naked in Bali, surrounded by artisanal coconut water and three unpaid interns.

Therapy has been hijacked by the merch machine. Celebrities-turned-shamans now lead retreats in Joshua Tree where you scream into a geode and pay $999 to realign your ancestral trauma with a certified cacao priestess. Justin Bieber now moonlights as a 'Somatic Flow Coach,' Harry Styles just trademarked 'Chakra Chic,' and Madonna’s new memoir is titled Like a Virgin, Wounded. D-list actors are rebranding as “emotional architects” and launching apps with names like Feelr, WoundWise, and Healio+.

EMDR? That’s now a TikTok trend with lo-fi beats and finger wiggling—wellness influencers demonstrating "emotional release" while twerking beside a salt lamp and a ring light. Boundaries are clickbait. Shadow work is a hashtag. Somatic healing? A guided NFT.

Meanwhile, actual therapists—the ones with licenses and insomnia—are still shivering in over-air-conditioned offices, watching their language be Xeroxed by a 24-year-old named Ashlyn who discovered “inner child healing” during a mushroom trip in Topanga and now charges $297 for a PowerPoint.

This is the Hunger Games of vulnerability. Who can cry the prettiest? Who can bleed in 4K? Pain is now postable, grievable, and highly marketable—as long as it pairs well with matte filters and a wellness affiliate link. The real, messy breakdown—the kind where you ugly sob in a Rite Aid parking lot while eating expired trail mix—doesn’t make the cut.

The problem isn’t that celebrities want to heal. It’s that they’ve franchised it. Jeff Bezos just launched a lunar mindfulness retreat on Blue Origin. Mark Zuckerberg built a metaverse grief garden where you can sob with your avatar. Katy Perry’s 'emotional space trip' was enough to put half of America in therapy—what’s next? Katy standing in a New York pothole in a wetsuit and snorkel mask claiming she just navigated the Mariana Trench of her inner child? God help us if she starts selling it as an NFT experience. Even Oprah’s dog has a licensed therapist now. They’ve taken the sacred and turned it into sacred branding. “I was really struggling with intimacy,” says the pop star in her Hulu docuseries, moments before launching her new trauma-informed skincare line: Glow Through It.

Meanwhile, real therapists are being asked to sign NDAs because their clients are preparing to livestream a breakthrough moment and need the crying sequence to sync with a product drop. It’s not therapy—it’s content. It’s not healing—it’s PR.

And the collateral damage? A culture that thinks confession is healing, that vulnerability is a performance, and that a 10-slide carousel with soft-pink quotes and plant emojis is the same as actual growth.

We confuse visibility for vulnerability. Engagement for empathy. Algorithms for intimacy. And we convince ourselves that if we just buy one more journal, join one more retreat, post one more video of ourselves crying into the ocean—we’ll finally feel whole.

But healing doesn’t look like that. Healing isn’t hot. It’s not shoppable. It doesn’t go viral. It looks like sitting in silence. Like confronting yourself in sweatpants. Like trusting someone who isn’t selling anything.

So the next time your favorite celebrity posts about "holding space," remember: when Elon Musk tweets about his 'inner saboteur' during a boardroom meltdown, or when Gwyneth explains the healing power of bee venom facials on her trauma podcast, somewhere, a therapist is actually doing it—for someone who has no followers, no brand, and no curated pain.

No halo light. No hashtags. No cacao.

Just presence. And maybe a squeaky armchair that smells vaguely of Lysol and hope.

Chapter X: What Would Frank Do? — Compensation, Sanity, and the Veritas View

By now, we’ve been on the full ride: from the underpaid martyrdom of entry-level therapy to the commercialized clown show of celebrity healing. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve rage-Googled “how to file a grievance with Blue Cross.” And now, it’s time to ask the only question that really matters: What Would Frank Do?

Because in a world where a podcast therapist with an online astrology certificate can make $400,000 a year—but a trauma-trained clinician struggles to get reimbursed for treating actual PTSD—somebody has to call bulls**t, light a fire, and maybe rewrite the policy manual while we’re at it. That somebody is Frank. He’s been in more boardrooms than Botox and once asked a CFO to define EBITDA while balancing a latte and a bar graph. Frank doesn’t just crunch numbers—he breaks them over his knee like a Hemingway hero with a hangover and a purpose.

Frank—our fearless guide through compensation chaos—knows that when it comes to therapists, the market is broken. Not slightly broken. Not oops-we’ll-fix-it-next-quarter broken. Totally FUBAR. And unlike most executives, Frank doesn’t need to go on a silent retreat in Sedona to realize that when the people holding society’s emotional scaffolding are cracking, it’s time to put down the synergy deck and pick up a wrench.

1. Pay Them Like They Matter - Therapists aren’t “adjunct healthcare providers.” They’re the last line of defense before the ER, the breakup, or the bridge. They don’t need pizza parties or pastel gratitude journals. They need salaries. Benefits. A livable wage. And hazard pay for every client who says, “I’ve never told anyone this before, but…” followed by the emotional equivalent of a sharknado.

2. Ditch the Paperwork Trauma - The only thing more traumatizing than unresolved childhood abandonment is the billing software most therapists use. Frank would blow up the insurance system—or at least force it to use actual sentences instead of CPT codes written by what we can only assume were malfunctioning Roombas. Emotional labor is labor. And labor deserves to be paid in something more than confusion and a lollipop.

3. Respect the Profession, Not Just the Prescription Pad - Health insurance companies have spent decades fine-tuning their dark art: make therapy difficult, slow, and expensive—then casually suggest a bottle of SSRIs as a shortcut. It’s a pharmaceutical sleight of hand that doesn’t heal, it sedates. It numbs the symptom instead of addressing the system. Frank would call it what it is: bureaucratic gaslighting with a co-pay. Medication has its place—but it should never be a cost-cutting substitute for real therapeutic work. If insurers respected therapy as much as they respect their quarterly earnings, we’d all be in a better place—mentally and fiscally.

4. Fund the Future - Frank would push for tuition forgiveness, subsidized training, and early-career grants for therapists who choose to work in community clinics, schools, and under-resourced areas. Want to reduce the national suicide rate, improve family stability, and boost economic productivity? Fund the freaking therapists. Build pipelines, not platitudes. Replace bureaucratic handwringing with actual handshakes and grant checks.

5. License the Right People, Not the Loudest - Frank would also campaign to yank the mic away from charlatans, influencers, and pyramid scheme empaths. The only people who should be guiding trauma work are those who can spell trauma without emojis. Regulation doesn’t have to kill the vibe—but it can definitely save a life. Therapy isn’t Coachella for feelings. You shouldn’t be able to call yourself a mental health guide if your main credential is “once gave a friend good advice during Mercury retrograde.”

6. Give Therapists a Damn Vacation - Not just a weekend at their aunt’s Airbnb. Actual restorative time. Sabbaticals. Retreats. Paid time off. A therapist who hasn’t slept in 3 years isn’t “dedicated”—they’re dangerous. The therapist who saves marriages shouldn’t have to cry in their Hyundai between sessions.

7. Rethink the Apprenticeship Gauntlet - Frank’s not here to cancel mentorship—he knows supervised training is vital. But 3,000 hours of unpaid labor? That’s less apprenticeship and more indentured sainthood. Frank would build a system where training therapists get paid like the professionals they’re becoming—not tipped in Starbucks gift cards and vague praise. Supervision should elevate, not eviscerate. Let’s invest in the next generation without burning them out before they’re even licensed. You wouldn’t make a surgeon do that. Why is it okay to emotionally lacerate someone for free?

8. End Mental Health Lip Service - Stop using “mental health is important” as filler copy in corporate slide decks while denying therapy coverage in the same breath. Frank would demand every boardroom back up their wellness buzzwords with actual dollars—or be forced to hold their next earnings call on a yoga mat in a Costco parking lot.

9. De-influencer the Field - Frank would create licensing categories that ban TikTok therapists from diagnosing strangers based on their zodiac sign and a three-second blink. Social media is not a substitute for supervision. Nor is an Etsy crystal.

10. Offer Trauma Pay - If therapists have to listen to you rehash your worst moments, relive generational wounds, and explain for the fifth time why your situationship ghosted you, they should be compensated like front-line workers. Because that’s what they are—emotional EMTs in cardigans.

11. Make Board Certification Great Again - Frank would bring rigor, prestige, and possibly martinis to the credentialing process. The bar for entering this profession should be high, not based on how many times you've read The Body Keeps the Score and nodded thoughtfully. In short: we need to stop treating therapists like emotional vending machines and start treating them like the high-skill, high-impact professionals they are. They’re not just healers. They’re stabilizers. Unofficial ERs. Soul accountants. Human shock absorbers. And they deserve more than leftover granola bars from the HR snack drawer.

Frank wouldn’t just raise their pay—he’d raise the floor beneath them. Because compensation is more than money. It’s respect. It’s dignity. It’s proof that we actually value what we pretend to tweet about during Mental Health Awareness Month.

Because when therapists are supported, we’re supported. When they have peace of mind, we get peace of mind. And when they’re paid like pros, we all stop pretending our lives are falling apart because we skipped our spirulina smoothie.

So hand this chapter to your benefits manager, your board, your governor—and your mom.

Because if Frank ran the world, your therapist wouldn’t be crying in the break room.

They’d be sipping espresso on a balcony with direct deposit, a 401(k), a real dental plan, and enough sanity left over to help you find yours.

And maybe—just maybe—they’d stop Googling “jobs for people who care too much and cry in stairwells.”

Chapter XI: The Veritas Way — A Saner Future, One Couch at a Time

Here’s the truth: for too long, we’ve treated therapists like emotional janitors—cleaning up society’s messes, mopping up trauma with duct tape and empathy, and getting paid in leftover gratitude and expired granola bars. But the time has come for a revolution. Not the kind with hashtags and wellness summits. A real one. With structure. With policy. With compensation packages that respect the people who hold the emotional line.

Enter: The Veritas Way:

It’s not a theory. It’s not a vision board. It’s a strategic, pay-forward, boots-on-the-ground model for how to rescue the therapy profession from burnout, bureaucracy, and boutique-brand nonsense.

Step One: Elevate the Role
Therapists are not a luxury. They are essential infrastructure—like bridges, teachers, and functioning plumbing. The Veritas Way calls for integrating therapists into public health planning, educational systems, and executive coaching—not just as “support,” but as leaders. Mental health isn’t soft. It’s structural.

Step Two: Build the Pipeline, Fix the Faucet
There’s a shortage of therapists and a flood of suffering. The math doesn’t work. We need to make the profession attractive again: full scholarships, paid residencies, continuing education stipends, and actual pipelines for therapists of color, LGBTQ+ practitioners, and bilingual clinicians. Equity isn’t just ethical—it’s operational.

Step Three: Mandate Minimums, Incentivize Excellence
Therapists shouldn’t have to beg for raises or moonlight on BetterHelp. The Veritas Way proposes mandated baseline compensation standards—indexed to cost of living and trauma acuity. And for excellence? Bonuses. Sabbaticals. Respect. It’s amazing what people will do for humanity when they’re not panicking over rent.

Step Four: Purge the Parasites
Let’s stop pretending that every YouTube crier with a quartz necklace is a clinician. Regulation must catch up with virality. The Veritas Way supports national content standards and professional guardrails for online mental health content. Because bad advice in a pretty font is still bad advice.

Step Five: Fix the System That Pays for It All
The insurance system isn’t just broken—it’s actively hostile. The Veritas Way backs federal and state reforms that force parity between physical and mental healthcare, clean up preauthorization hell, and put an end to the “take the meds or get nothing” model. Healing isn’t a side hustle. And coverage shouldn’t feel like Hunger Games.

Step Six: Make Mental Health America’s Legacy
We put a man on the moon. We built the Internet. We can afford to fund 21st-century mental healthcare that actually serves the people it claims to. The Veritas Way sees a future where therapists are heroes—not memes, not punchlines, not exhausted shadows of their former selves. And if we do this right, our children won’t have to “break cycles.” They’ll just live better ones.

Because in the end, this isn’t just about therapists. It’s about all of us.

We are only as strong as the people holding the weight of others. And if we don’t lift them up—we all fall down.

So yeah. America should be proud—not because we finally figured this out, but because we have the courage, the resources, and the decency to finally do something about it. Proud of a future where we value the invisible work. Where healing isn’t hidden. Where care isn’t a commodity.

Now pay them, praise them, insure them, give them snacks that aren’t older than their trauma clients—and for the love of Freud, stop making them choose between a 50-minute session and a bathroom break. Let them cry into a lavender-scented eye pillow without logging it as a non-billable hour. Give them a raise, a sabbatical, and a punchcard for free massages—because holding everyone else’s pain shouldn’t come with expired trail mix and a deductible.

FBG

Dedicated to Lynne, Marly, and to the thousands of dedicated therapists who have sacrificed their lives for the love of the profession – and for all of us.

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Frank Glassner is the CEO of Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants and a widely respected authority on executive pay and strategic compensation design. Known for his discerning judgment, consummate diplomacy, incisive insights, and unwavering discretion, he is a trusted advisor and confidant to boards, CEOs, and institutional investors worldwide.

P.S.: If this piece made you laugh, nod in agreement, or mutter “he’s talking about me behind my back, isn’t he?”—I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line at fglassner@veritasecc.com. I personally read and reply to every message—no assistants, no AI, just me (usually with a strong espresso in hand). Whether you’re a therapy afficionado, burned-out executive, CEO, CFO, investment banker, activist shareholder, client, board member, consultant, lawyer, accountant, physician, psychiatrist, ex-wife, one of my twin sons, or just a fellow traveler in the great corporate circus, I welcome the conversation.