Why MFT is a Great Option for Career Switchers
Becoming a therapist was never part of my plan. But in my mid-30s, I realized the career goals I’d been single-mindedly pursuing for most of my life were not quite what they were cracked up to be. I happened to be working through this existential crisis in therapy, and my incredible therapist gave me the gift of a space to consider who I might become without defining myself by a career that no longer fit.
It was a life-altering revelation, and at the end of some soul-searching, I had come to a surprising conclusion: I wanted my therapist’s job!!
I think this happens to a lot of us who find ourselves in careers lacking in fulfillment or purpose, or for those of us who seek a lifestyle with a little more personal control over one’s work. I’m here to tell you IT’S NOT WEIRD TO WANT YOUR THERAPIST’S JOB! It’s a great job, it turns out! And it’s one that you’re probably well-suited for, no matter what your journey has looked like up to this point.
WHAT MAKES PIVOTING TO THERAPY A GREAT CHOICE?
In California, you can become a marriage and family therapist with only a master’s degree. If you can attend school on a full-time schedule, you can graduate in as little as just over two years. If you have to do part-time, it can take more like 4-6 years, but that’s still better than becoming a psychologist (which requires a doctorate)!
Typically, most MFT programs haven’t required the GRE, so you don’t need to prep for a standardized exam in order to apply. That has been changing recently—the disruption that accompanied the pandemic so greatly increased the number of applicants to MFT programs that some programs started requiring the GRE just to make their application pool more manageable. Still, it’s not like having to take the LSAT or MCAT.
You can also specialize in certain niches of psychotherapy, which can be particularly helpful if you’ve had past experiences (or professional networks) that might set you up for success in these niches. For example, if you’ve been a teacher, you’re going to have an extra level of expertise when it comes to child and adolescent therapy that could give you a competitive advantage in the workforce.
Finally, this is a career with tons of options for practice. If you want a steady full-time job, you can work in an agency setting where you just show up to work every day and see clients. If you want something more flexible, you can go into private practice or develop a consulting practice around a mental health specialty. It’s also the kind of thing that could start as a part-time thing you do while you’re wrapping up your current career or raising a family, then you can grow it into a more full-time focus as you have the bandwidth.
However, I’ve worked with many clients who’ve decided to pivot to therapy but are really concerned about their prospects for graduate school because this may be a relatively new interest. The good news is that everything you’ve done in your life up to now has prepared you for this moment—in a good way!
THERAPY SCHOOL ISN’T LAW SCHOOL
If you want to go to law school or medical school, the common wisdom is that you need to have identified this goal as a young person and set yourself up for success ever since, by choosing the right electives, securing a competitive GPA in your undergraduate career, and building a resume that suggests you’ve been working your way up the ladder. Many of my coaching clients assume they’re at a disadvantage when applying for MFT programs because they have not had such focus in pursuing a psychotherapy career.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
A master’s program in psychotherapy is designed for “frontline” mental health practitioners—it is intended to prepare clinicians who will be working directly with clients. Therefore, what’s most important isn’t your bachelor’s degree, or that you’ve demonstrated how you’ve wanted to be a therapist since you were six years old. Your application doesn’t need to imply that you’re going to be a world-class researcher (which it might if you were applying for a research-heavy psychology PhD program). It just needs to suggest you’re a good fit for learning how to counsel people.
LIFE EXPERIENCE IS AN ASSET, NOT A LIABILITY
If you’ve been working for 10 years in the financial services industry, or you stayed home to raise a family, congratulations! You’re a great fit for an MFT program!
Listen, who would you rather have as a therapist? Someone who went straight from high school into a psychology undergraduate program, then entered a master’s MFT program right after graduation, and got their MFT license by the time they were 26?
Or…would you rather talk about your struggles at work with someone who’d been in the corporate world for 15 years? Or share your concerns about your teenager with a parent who’s been there, done that??
Admissions committees at MFT programs know that a meandering life path that ultimately leads to the desire to become a therapist usually means they’re looking at a candidate who’s more prepared to sit with a greater variety of clients.
Look, some of my classmates in my MFT program were in their early 20’s and had, indeed, done the school —> school —> school route to get there, and they’re wonderful and competent clinicians! In fact, I might trust parenting advice from some of them over MFTs who are actual parents just because perhaps their judgment might not be clouded by personal experience. I’m not saying you can’t trust a therapist until they’ve had life experience with the particular issue you need help with.
What I AM saying is that your personal journey to the current point in your life where you’re considering becoming a therapist is not something you need to apologize for. In fact, you’re going to bring the richness of your life experiences to your program, where your perspective (as a former banker, or a parent, or whatever!) is going to deepen class discussions, making the education more valuable for everyone. You’re going to carry those experiences into the therapy room with your clients, where it will help expand therapeutic possibilities in a wonderful way.
Whoever is reading your application knows all this. All you need to do is think about how your life experiences are going to make you a better therapist and communicate that awareness in your essays and interview.
THERAPY SCHOOL ISN’T BUSINESS SCHOOL…UNFORTUNATELY
One of the biggest complaints you’ll hear from therapists is that therapy school didn’t prepare them for the workforce. I’m here to confirm this 100%. Many people go into agency work after graduation for exactly this reason—someone else can take care of all the legal, financial, and marketing issues while you just focus on providing therapy for real. This is still a tough transition for folks with little work experience, however, because you’re also learning how to navigate workplace culture while also trying to define yourself as a therapist. Going into a private practice setting is the hardest, though—even as an Associate working under the license of your supervisor, you’ll still generally be expected to generate your own client leads and cultivate your own caseload. Once you’re licensed, then you’re really on your own to run your small business. And there’s absolutely no instruction in master’s programs about how to do this.
That’s why it’s a HUGE advantage to enter the field of psychotherapy after having had work experience in other fields, especially if you happen to have run your own small business! MFT programs want to admit students who they can reasonably expect to succeed in this field, and if you bring to the table an established track record of having succeeded elsewhere, that’s one less thing an MFT program needs to worry about with you!
YOU MIGHT BE DISAPPOINTED…
The thing I want to warn you about is that you, the career-switcher, might be disappointed, especially if you’re coming to this field from a high-powered or competitive field like medicine or tech. You may have gotten used to coworkers with intense work ethics, or the rigor and due diligence that comes with companies that have a lot of money to pour into research and development. To these folks, the field of psychotherapy can feel…a little loosey-goosey, a little fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, a bit trust-your-gut-and-hope-for-the-best.
I personally experienced this whiplash because my expectations were really high. I came from the entertainment industry, which is…a very interesting place. Lot of money, not a lot of responsibility. I expected the field of psychotherapy to be more like the field of psychiatry, with a deep respect for science and research and rigorous training, and I was looking forward to stability and certainty.
That…is not so much the case. Not in all corners. In some parts of this field, a more relaxed approach to everything is the norm.
So how does this affect your application to an MFT program? No one is going to be impressed with the dollar amount of advertising accounts you managed, or the sales figures you generated, or the work you put in to become certified in this thing or that. They’ll want to know what you learned from your work, how it changed you as a person, and what life lessons you’ll bring into your work as a therapist. It won’t hurt if you’ve been successful, but it won’t help you to come off as competitive or ambitious in your application.
At the end of the day, this is a great career that accommodate your own vision for your future. No matter where you’ve been in life so far, it’s only prepared you for this path. Making the switch to psychotherapy was the best decision I ever made, and I hope it is for you, too!!
