First, I'm sorry to hear your story or the list anyway. I too was neglected early, have felt abandoned in life and in therapy, experienced dysregulation when that happened in therapy, caused huge pain and suffering.

I think schools do "guard themselves," but it depends. Some schools are over worried about getting sued so dismiss students who show the slightest sign that they may not be OK as a T. So there are oversights. Many schools make personal therapy a requirement so that you work out all your stuff before or during seeing clients.

And there is some data out there, maybe not published, but one study I vaguely remember reported that many mental health professionals go into it because they have their own issues so think that being a T somehow proves they are not "crazy" after all. This is a high percentage, like over 90%.

That is scary if you really take it in. That the healer is the wounded, when we are wounded and want a healer. Sorta backwards.

Therapy is a business, but it is not just any business. People who do it could make more doing something else and avoid sitting with people's pain. I don't think people do it for money. There may be some who are really only in it for that, but I'm not convinced. I don't even like the word "client," because that is a business term. What is so wrong with "patient"? It means something like someone who suffers. That is why we go to therapy, suffering. Now they want to change from client to consumer, even more about money.

My T has made mistakes, sometimes owned them, but he has said that the work is the closest he gets to feeling a sense of what he calls "the sacred." I don't really care about money or even religion. But the fact that he sees therapy as something other than a business transaction make the space and time something important, something I don't really get elsewhere.