I think I would be a terrible therapist. It's odd that the very same things that make therapy a good fit for my personality (my sensitivity to other people's pain, openness, etc), would also make me a terrible therapist. In a way you need to be be tuned into people and sensitive enough to help them open up and feel safe, but at the same those very things make me particularly vulnerable to getting stressed out.

I am totally not the kind of person who would see someone dealing with major trauma or abuse, and then go home and go on to dinner with friends and sleep soundly through the night. I am a sponge for people's pain and misery. Except that I can't do anything with it, except feel overwhelmed with so much pain and suffering in the world.

So I find it a cruel joke that several personality tests I've done typically list becoming a therapist as one of the top five or ten choices for someone with my profile. I suppose it's doable but I'd have to tripple my meds and spend 2 hours a day in therapy myself just not to go crazy! It's too bad because because I like the thinking part of it quite a bit, but I totally can't imagine myself sitting there for half hour watching someone cry their eyes out.

Also I hate not being able to help people in more fundamental way. I can't make a lot of their problems or troubles go away. Can only help them cope better, and not everybody either. I could make mistakes. People could leave early. What if a client committed suicide! I'm so prone to guilt even in normal circumstances, no no no I can't, no matter how I look at it (and I've looked at it several times, hoping to make that possibility work).