When You Work for The Man

(The next blog will be about surviving while in private practice)

Let’s be real for a second. The mental health system? It’s… kind of a hot mess. You love your clients, you believe in the work, but the system itself feels designed to wring you dry. Sometimes it’s like you’re in a parasitic relationship with your employer—they’re not evil, but the setup is soul-sucking.

Marina used to cry on the way to work. Joel gained weight. Erica went to work in corporate.

Why It’s Okay (and Sometimes Smart) to Work for Someone Else for a Few Years. Not ten years. A few

Private practice is the dream, right? You set your hours, pick your clients, and finally stop begging HR for another half-day off. But let’s pause for a second, because there are some real perks to working for someone else early in your career. And honestly? Sometimes it’s the smartest move you can make.

1. Get Supervision on Someone Else’s Dime
Licensure doesn’t fall from the sky—you need hours and supervision, and supervision can be expensive. When you’re employed, supervision is usually baked in. Translation: your employer is basically subsidizing your professional growth. That’s gold, especially when you’re fresh out of grad school and still eating ramen.

Tip: take every training that your employer allows you to. If they will give you the time off but you have to pay for it, it’s not ideal but it’s still better than taking the time from your own private practice AND paying for it. So do All the trainings.

2. State Rules Are State Rules
Some states flat-out forbid you from opening a private practice until you’re licensed. Period. No workaround, no clever loopholes. Working for an agency or group practice isn’t a detour—it’s the pathway to the career you want.

3. Trial by Fire (With a Safety Net)
Agency or group work exposes you to a wide range of clients, diagnoses, and crisis situations. You’ll see more in two years than you might in five years of private practice—and you’ll do it with a team around you. That experience builds your clinical muscles so you’re not white-knuckling it alone later.

4. Benefits, Baby
Health insurance, PTO, retirement matching—boring but oh-so-practical. These are things you’ll have to pay for yourself in private practice. Enjoy them while you can.

5. Breathing Room to Plan Your Exit
Working for someone else gives you a paycheck, structure, and the space to plan your future private practice with less financial pressure. Think of it as “paid training” for your dream career.

So if you’re still employed, don’t beat yourself up. Sometimes staying put is the most strategic move you can make.

Here’s how to protect your sanity and keep your spark while you’re still in the trenches.

Work. To. Rule.

Stop raising your hand for extra projects, volunteering for committees, or saying “sure, I’ll take just one more client.” Unless you’re being paid overtime (ha), you’re donating your time. And trust me, no one’s giving you a medal for that.

Gen X killed themselves trying to impress their employers enough that they might eventually get a raise, and they stayed in crap jobs for decades. Gen X is an employer’s dream - give more than needed and demand nothing, be compliant, don’t leave. Sounds like a one-way relationship, right?

Gen Z is right on this. If it’s not in your job description, it’s not your job. You’re paid for a specific number of hours, and not more. Oh, an if you can get the minimum done in fewer, even better. It’s not poor work ethic. It’s having good boundaries.

Use Your Sick Days (Yes, Even If You’re “Not Sick”)

Mental health days count. If you’ve got PTO, take it. Don’t drag yourself in half-dead because you “should.” Oh, and please stop shoulding on yourself.

If you wake up and feel like you can’t face the day, it’s good for you to call in sick. You are sick. Your brain is sick of overworking. It’s sick of that annoying client that always trauma dumps. It’s sick of your boss micromanaging your notes. It’s sick of your co-worker who farts in the elevator. So give your brain and your soul a break.

And if you wake up a lot of the days feeling like you can’t face the day, it’s likely time to make a change. Our program is designed to help you make the change. Here you go, if interested.

Have an Exit Plan

Even if it’s a year or two out, knowing you have a path forward keeps you from feeling trapped. And feeling trapped is The Literal Worst (OK, maybe I’m being a little dramatic, but it’s awful).

Maybe your plan is private practice. Maybe it’s another advanced degree. Maybe it’s “win the lottery and move to Italy.” Whatever it is, give yourself light at the end of the tunnel. (And when you’re ready, check out our blog on how to know when you’re ready for private practice.)

Find Your People

You need colleagues who get it. That means other therapists in private practice, mentors who cheer you on, or just a friend who will remind you you’re not stuck forever. Burnout thrives in isolation.

Avoid making friends with that person in your office that is constantly complaining. That person is like emotional cancer, and you don’t want it. Stick with people who can vent a little, then move on to either problem solving, encouraging, noticing the positive, or are using effective strategies to cope with a dysfunctional system.

And NO, drinking heavily is not an effective coping strategy. If you’re constantly going out with your co-workings to drink and complain about work, what you’re building is not resilience. It’s a trauma bond.

Ask for the Raise

Your yearly raise? Not set in stone. Ask for more. You might not get it, but you definitely won’t if you don’t ask.

Statistically, women suck at this more than men, plus they deal with generally lower wages for the same work. Most employers don’t want people talking about their wages, but free speech (am I right?). Women should 100% be talking about wages with each other. And asking for more. Every Single Time.

Don’t Carry All the Acute Clients

You’re not a martyr. If your caseload is overflowing with high-acuity cases, talk to your supervisor and ask for relief. (And if they guilt-trip you? That’s crappy but unsurprising.)

Once while working in juvenile corrections (she calls it the “sweaty crotch of American mental health”), Marina saw two clients waiting to be assigned a room. Shortly after that, they would be assigned a therapist. She could just tell one of them was going to infuriate her and trigger all those sticky issues that no amount of therapy or ax throwing can erase. So she immediately went into her boss’s office and said, “Hey I just met the two new guys. I think I could really help X.” Of course, X wasn’t the one that gave her the ick.

You’ve got to have your own back. Advocate for yourself. No one else is going to.

Create a Ritual to Leave Work at Work

Commute playlist, gym stop, candle lighting. Whatever flips your brain from work mode to home mode. Your nervous system needs to know when work is over.

Some of our favorites: the “click” of the lock on your office door or the sound of it latching closed, stopping outside the front door of your home and reminding yourself no clients are in there, and washing your hands as soon as you get in your door.

The Big Picture

What most of us feel working in agencies isn’t just burnout. It’s moral injury. Agencies are often underfunded, overbooked, and structured in a way that treats clinicians like endlessly renewable resources. Spoiler: we’re not.

Burnout says, “I’m tired.”
Moral injury says, “This system forces me to work in ways that go against my values.”

That’s a different beast.

Moral injury shows up when you’re pressured to see more clients than you can ethically handle, when you’re told to cut corners on care because of insurance, or when you know what a client really needs but can’t provide it under the system’s rules. It’s the sick feeling in your stomach that whispers, “This isn’t why I became a therapist.”

And it’s not your fault. You’re not broken. You didn’t choose the wrong career. You’re working inside a system that makes it almost impossible to practice the way you were trained to—with time, compassion, and integrity.

So what do you do until you can get out? You survive. You protect your values where you can. You set boundaries that keep you tethered to your integrity. You lean on colleagues who remind you that you’re not crazy for being frustrated.

Most importantly, remember: this isn’t forever. Your current job is a chapter, not the whole book. You will get to build a practice that aligns with your ethics and your energy. And until then, your job is simple: keep the flame alive, even in a system that tries to snuff it out.

And hey, if you need daily encouragement (and a few laughs), come hang out with us on Instagram: @thetherapistconsultants.

The Complete Private Practice Bundle gives you everything you need to build a profitable, sustainable, and genuinely fulfilling practice (without having to white-knuckle your way through it alone, hoping you don’t muck it up).

We’re talking:

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You don’t need to hustle harder or be someone you’re not. You just need the how. And that’s what we give you.

👉 Click here to join us and let’s build the private practice (and life) you’ve been dreaming of.