When the Therapist Needs Healing Too: Decolonizing the Myth of the Untouchable Clinician

The myth of the untouchable clinician has cost us all.

In Episode 16 of Beyond the Spot, Tracy Gantlin-Monroy unpacks how therapists’ unhealed wounds—when left unattended—leak into sessions, burden clients, and reproduce systemic harm.

Tracing the history of self-neglect in the helping professions, Tracy explores how clinicians were taught to fix others while denying themselves. For BIPOC clinicians, this has meant carrying double—the burden of community trauma and the pressure to prove legitimacy. For white clinicians, neutrality has too often served as a shield against naming race and power.

With invitational reflections woven throughout, this episode challenges clinicians to unlearn silence, tend their nervous systems, and recognize that healing isn’t indulgence—it’s integrity.

Because when the therapist heals, the space heals. And when the space heals, the client heals, too.