AS A RELATIONSHIP COACH, I’M THE OPPOSITE OF A BLANK SLATE

“Is it okay that I’m familiar with your work?”

Not every email I get from a potential client includes some version of this question, but a good amount of them do. Reading the various iterations always makes me smile. Of course it’s okay, I reply. That’s sort of the whole point of what I do and how I do it.

When I first started my master’s program in psychology, I intended to get licensed. But as I learned more about the process, I realized I don’t fit the therapist mold. It wouldn’t be appropriate to treat randomly assigned clients during my training who could then look me up on the internet and find years worth of intimate details. This kind of access goes against what people think of a traditional therapist, a figure who, while not completely unknown, maintains an air of mystery. When you sign up for therapy, you don’t know every mistake your new therapist has ever made. There is a professional distance that serves an important purpose for many. Once it became clear I couldn’t have that professional distance without scrubbing the internet or legally changing my name, I had to figure out my own path. I chose one that heavily relies on the fact that my clients know so much about me.