I'm So Annoying: Why I Turn People Away From Counseling

I’ll admit something that most therapists won’t say out loud: I annoy myself.

I annoy myself because I turn people away from counseling far more often than the average clinician and usually for the same reason. They don’t actually need counseling.

They’re not experiencing clinical levels of distress. They’re not impaired. They’re not drowning in symptoms. They want someone to “talk things through” with, to process, to mull, to have a sounding board.

But here’s my problem: that isn’t therapy. And sitting with someone for 50 minutes to “process feelings” they’re fully capable of processing themselves doesn’t strengthen their autonomy, it weakens it. It treats them as though their inner apparatus is insufficient, as though thinking, reflecting, and making decisions independently is beyond them. And in my mind, that crosses a line.

Decades ago, psychologist Edward Deci (Self-Determination Theory) argued that one of the most powerful things a helper can do is preserve and strengthen autonomy, not take it. When we step in too much, when we manage someone’s emotions for them or take over their psychological work, we accidentally undermine the very capacity we claim to build. Processing for someone is a soft form of control. It says: “You can’t hold this alone. “You can’t navigate this without me. “You need me to make meaning for you.” I reject that model, personally and professionally.

Counseling is not a place where you outsource reflection. It’s where you develop the cognitive and emotional strength to do your own thinking, your own naming, your own meaning-making. Therapy is for people who are clinically distressed, dysregulated, or stuck, where intervention actually changes the trajectory of functioning.

But when someone is functioning well, simply overwhelmed by the normal friction of living, therapy can become something else. A crutch. A dependency. A place where resilience quietly erodes under the weight of weekly emotional outsourcing.

That is not what I do. And it’s not what clients deserve.

And let me be clear: I don’t just send people away empty-handed. I’m not dismissive, cold, or gatekeeping mental health care. I give them resources. I give them direction. I give them books, tools, and free downloads from my own website. I literally just got off the phone with a woman and said, “It would be wrong for me to take your money for this. You are absolutely capable of processing what’s happening, you’re just in a painful moment, and it sucks. But this isn’t a clinical need.”

I refuse to pretend that a moment of human discomfort equals a diagnosis. I refuse to monetize normal emotional turbulence. I refuse to encourage dependence where competence already exists. That’s not ethics. That’s not autonomy. And it’s not counseling. And let me say this plainly: I need billable hours just like any other therapist. I have bills, responsibilities, and financial stress like everyone else. There are days I look at my calendar or my bank account and wonder if I’m shooting myself in the foot by turning people away. I’ve said to my husband more than once, “Why can’t I just mail it in?” Life would be easier if I could tolerate that version of this profession.

But I can’t.

Not because I’m noble, but because I’m unwilling to violate my own standards. Even with my own financial pains, I cannot take money where I see competence, capacity, and autonomy already fully intact. My conscience won’t let me.

Do I have clients right now who no longer need weekly counseling? Absolutely. And here’s the difference: they forged their way to that place through the hard work already done. Years ago, many of them walked in with real impairment: trauma, panic, severe rumination, chronic avoidance, grief that wouldn’t move. We did the work. The real work. The kind of work that disrupts patterns, rewires responses, and changes lives. Now they come in monthly or quarterly for check-ins. They’re not dependent; they’re accountable. There’s a huge difference.

Just the other day, a long-term client made a comment that honestly caught us both off guard. I had come in late because of a two-hour emergency call; an actual crisis, the kind of clinical distress where intervention matters. And she looked genuinely surprised when I apologized due to the emergency and said, “Really? I thought they were all like me.”

She had forgotten the difficult work she once had to do. She had forgotten the panic cycles. She had forgotten the tangled web of old beliefs we spent over a year undoing. She was so far from where she started that she assumed her weekly work back then was equivalent to her light-touch maintenance now.

That is the outcome of real therapy. Not dependence. Not endless emotional processing. But growth so significant you forget how far you’ve come.

It’s ironic. The very clients who needed therapy the most eventually become the ones who barely need me at all. That’s the point. That’s the outcome that Self-Determination Theory predicted decades ago: when people are supported, not controlled, they rise.

Meanwhile, the people who don’t need therapy at all are sometimes the most eager to start. They want a companion for their thoughts. A witness. A co-processor. But if their autonomy is already intact, my job is to honor it, not absorb it. Therapists should not be paid to hold what someone is completely capable of holding themselves. And clients shouldn’t be trained to collapse normal life friction into pathology.

Discomfort vs Disorder: The Line No One Teaches Clients to See

One of the biggest failures in modern mental health care is that we’ve stopped teaching people the difference between discomfort and disorder. The two are not the same: not clinically, not functionally, not neurologically.

Discomfort is part of life. Disorder is an impairment of life.

Discomfort says: “I’m overwhelmed, embarrassed, uncertain, frustrated, discouraged.”

Disorder says, “I cannot function. My thoughts won’t slow. My nervous system won’t regulate. My behavior is collapsing under the weight of symptoms.”

Most people intuitively know the difference, but the culture of therapy has blurred it. Why? Because if everything is pathology, everything becomes billable. This is where I get irritated, both with the industry and with myself. The field has done such a poor job of delineating clinical need that people genuinely believe any spike of emotion requires clinical intervention. They interpret normal human struggle as a red flag. They think processing is a medical necessity, not a skill of adulthood.

When someone comes to me anxious because of a human event: an argument, a career decision, a relationship strain, they’re not broken. They’re alive. They have a pulse. They’re thinking, feeling, interpreting, and navigating uncertainty. That’s not a disorder. That’s literacy in the human condition.

When we treat discomfort as though it were pathology, we rob people of the developmental milestones that foster resilience. We stunt the very muscles they need to handle life without professional scaffolding. And worse, we inadvertently teach them that self-reflection without a therapist is dangerous. That is categorically false.

The truth is simple: Discomfort is a signal. Disorder is a dysfunction. Therapy is designed for the latter, not every ripple of the former. When I turn someone away, it’s not because their feelings are illegitimate. It’s because their functioning is intact. They are capable, competent, and fully equipped to navigate what’s in front of them once they stop confusing discomfort for a clinical emergency. And the most ethical thing I can do is reinforce that capacity, not replace it.

The Industry Has Abandoned Therapeutic Triage

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the counseling field no longer teaches or expects clinicians to use therapeutic triage. We treat everyone who asks. We treat anyone who expresses discomfort. We treat people who are fully functional but overwhelmed by normal human life. We treat people who are lonely, bored, or simply need a place to vent. And the message the industry pushes, loudly, is that this is not only acceptable, but noble.

You’ve probably seen the refrain: “You can’t tell a client when they’re done healing.”

What a ridiculous argument.

It contradicts every evidence-based model in existence. It defies what CBT, ACT, DBT, EMDR, CPT, and every structured modality are built on: assessment, intervention, measurement, progress, and RESOLUTION.

No surgeon says, “You can’t tell a patient the tumor is gone.” No physical therapist says, “You can’t tell a patient they’ve regained function.” No endocrinologist says, “You can’t tell a patient their labs have normalized.” (Well, maybe some do, and what are their reputations?)

Only in therapy do we see professionals claim that discharge is an ethical violation, as if releasing someone from treatment is an act of harm instead of an act of respect. And what’s worse? Those who shout this the loudest tend to be the very clinicians who never triage. They treat anyone who calls. They fill their calendars without hesitation. They conflate emotional comfort with clinical necessity because they themselves cannot see the difference.

That is not therapy. It is the rental of emotional companionship under the guise of clinical care. This is not what counseling is for. In medicine, triage is the first step. In counseling, triage has become taboo. And because of that, the field has quietly drifted into a consumer model, one where the metric of success isn’t resolution, but retention. The absence of data on therapeutic turn-aways is not accidental; the system doesn’t measure what it doesn’t value.

If the industry truly believed in clinical thresholds, we would track:

• How many people seek therapy without a clinical need

• How many are turned away due to intact functioning

• How many receive referrals to coaching, self-help, or community support

• How many are discharged because goals were met

• How many are encouraged toward autonomy, not dependence
  

But none of this is measured. None of it is incentivized. And very few clinicians talk about it because it exposes the profession’s blind spot. Modern therapy tells clinicians: “Take everyone. Keep them indefinitely. Never question whether treatment is warranted.”

And clinicians who resist this pressure, clinicians who say, “You don’t need me," are treated as outliers or, worse, as people who “lack empathy.” No. It is the opposite.

Refusing to pathologize normal human emotion is one of the most respectful forms of empathy we have left.

The truth is that therapy is not a blanket solution for life. It is not meant to replace the natural processes of thinking, grieving, evaluating, or deciding. It is not meant to be a paid substitute for internal autonomy.

Therapy is a targeted intervention, and an intervention only becomes ethical when the problem it’s addressing actually requires intervention. Otherwise it becomes dependency, not health. Control, not care. Comfort, not change.

This is why I turn people away. Not because they don’t matter, but because they already possess the competence the industry has taught them to doubt.

How to Know When Therapy Is the Right Choice

Let me flip this perspective, because it’s important: I’m not anti-therapy. I’m anti-misuse-of-therapy. There is a difference.

Therapy is the right choice when:

1. Your symptoms are impairing your daily functioning. You’re not sleeping. You can’t focus. Your reactions are outsized. Your body is in constant fight-or-flight. You’re stuck in loops you cannot interrupt.

2. Your patterns repeat despite your insight.

You know what’s happening, but knowledge isn’t translating into change. You’re living the same cycle with no traction or resolution.

3. You’re experiencing trauma symptoms, not just stress. Flashbacks, dissociation, avoidance, hypervigilance, emotional numbing, not mere overwhelm, but actual survival-pattern activation.

4. Your emotions are disproportionate, intrusive, or uncontrollable. Not sadness, but collapse. Not worried, but spiraling. Not stressed, but dysregulation.

5. You’ve hit the ceiling of what your current skill set can handle. This is the point at which counseling becomes a clinical intervention instead of a conversational outlet.

6. You need structured strategies, not just space to talk.

Therapy is not a place to emotionally lean. It’s a place to work. It’s a place to learn skills, run cognitive frameworks, build regulation capacity, and take action on the parts of your life that require more than insight.

And here’s the most important one:

7. You’re ready to do the work.

Not just show up and vent. Not to just be comforted. Not to hand in your autonomy to a clinician. But actually work; think, challenge assumptions, take data, change behaviors, and tolerate the discomfort that transformation requires.

That’s when therapy is appropriate. That’s when therapy helps. That’s when therapy becomes powerful. Everything else? You don’t need to outsource to me, or to anyone.

Still Unsure If You Need Therapy? Start Here.

If you’re trying to decide whether therapy is the right next step, or even how to evaluate whether a therapist is a good fit, I’ve created a guide to help you sort through that decision clearly and objectively. You can read it here: https://www.untangledmind.net/how-to-choose-the-right-therapist