A love Letter for the New Therapist

Dear New Therapist,

You’ve worked for years to be here. The degrees, the supervision hours, the sleepless nights wondering if you said the right thing in session.

And now, here you are — sitting across from someone who has entrusted you with their story, hoping you’ll know what to do. You feel the weight of that trust in your chest. You hope it’s enough.

It is.

Becoming a therapist is not about getting it all right. It’s about learning how to stay — in the room, in your body, in the truth of what’s unfolding.

There will be sessions where you stumble. Where silence feels too long. Where you second-guess your words the moment they leave your mouth.

You’ll wonder if you should have said more, done more, been more.

But healing rarely happens in what we say. It happens in our willingness to be there when another human aches — without flinching, without fixing, without needing to be the hero.

You are not the expert on someone else’s life. You are a companion, a witness, a steady nervous system in a world that rarely offers one.

Presence is the most sophisticated intervention you’ll ever offer.

Your nervous system is part of the therapy. The pace of your breath, the steadiness in your tone, the groundedness in your posture — these are the tools that help another body find safety.

And yes, sometimes your body will tremble, too. Sometimes a client’s pain will echo something in you that’s still healing. That doesn’t make you unfit for this work — it makes you real.

The goal isn’t to be unaffected. It’s to know how to come home to yourself when you’ve been touched by someone else’s story.

You don’t need to build thicker walls. You need deeper roots.

Early in your career, you might think rest is indulgent — that if you just read more, train more, see more clients, you’ll finally feel confident.

But this work is relational, and relationships require presence, not exhaustion.

Rest isn’t avoidance; it’s integration. It’s the moment your body makes sense of what it’s held. It’s how you sustain empathy without burning it out.

You don’t have to earn a pause. You just have to notice when you need one.

Over time, you’ll start to trust the pauses. You’ll realize that silence isn’t empty — it’s full of everything unspoken. You’ll stop needing to have the perfect response, and you’ll start hearing what lives beneath the words.

You’ll find that your intuition grows louder when you’re rested. That your confidence isn’t bravado — it’s the quiet knowing that presence is enough.

And one day, you’ll look back and realize you became the kind of therapist you once hoped to be. Not by knowing everything, but by staying human.

To the new therapist finding their way — you are doing sacred work. You will falter, learn, repair, and grow. And that is the work — not perfection, but becoming.

You belong here. Take your time. The world needs you whole.

With so much appreciation for all that you are, and all that you are becoming,

Jen