Life experience is a big factor for me too. I've been through a lot in my life, and I don't think I'd be interested in working with someone who is not able to relate to me.

But as someone with a trauma background, it it's less about relating and more about safety for me.

I think wisdom in application of clinical education and emotional competency matter more than life experience. In terms of emotional competency-I've said before-I've known some 16 year olds who are more mature than some 40 year olds, for example, but it really does take at least 10 years to be a 'seasoned' professional. This is true of many career fields. 'Data' collected by a worker over the years are inputs into decision-making, especially day to day micro decisions that you don't even realize your brain is doing. School is only supposed to be a base from which to build wisdom, it's not supposed to substitute things like critical thinking, autonomous application of concepts, exercising judgment (that may contradict what was learned in school), and developing your own methods that complement your strengths and benefit client populations (that also may contradict what you learned in school); especially applying new research and all the things you did not learn in school because programs can only include so many topics, and they may not be diverse as is true with many university programs that seem to be increasingly more dichotomous, especially because more information exists each year. The increase of information flowing into society actually means that we know less about what we don't know.

I think people who don't question their education (and instead take it is truth) and who don't continually educate themselves will be lacking in comparison with someone who exposes themselves to other experiences. Unfortunately, that usually takes time/years to build that knowledge. And as someone who worked in several career fields before going to college, I found university professors who did not have work experience in the field in which they are teaching to be lacking in understanding and appropriate knowledge. Experience is critical.

Businesses don't put someone who just graduated in charge of a highly important or complex project because of the risk. Why shouldn't I apply that same concept to mitigate risk to my psyche? Senior positions often require 10 years experience. Everyone has to go through this for the most part-gaining experience to build competency. It takes trial and error and making mistakes and learning from them to be a good decision-maker, as some therapists who are honest about this will tell you. Also, Having at least a decade of experience will help weed out those who won't be good at the job, who will hopefully be diverted to other positions (eg research). After 10 years, a therapist may have experienced more client issues, and harm done could be revealed.

The good thing for therapists is that it's one of the few career fields that age is seen as an asset rather than a liability, so therapists shouldn't experience as much age discrimination when older. Unlike many of us, who with the change of more extensions to the minimum retirement age and decrease in social security benefits, will be job seeking at age 60-70 and discriminated against. Which will be worse as in the US currently policies are being made to promote forcing Medicare recipients work, which will raise the unemployment rate and make it harder for older job seekers to get a job. Age discrimination in other career fields is very common.