Is being a therapist a calling?

I have heard a few times from therapists that they believe they have a vocation or a calling to be a therapist. Given the religious roots of the term, I find this somewhat creepy. Even as a secular concept, it suggests it's something more than a career choice. I don't regard being an academic a calling, it's just what I enjoy and am good at and want to spend my time doing...but I'm not going to say I'm serving some higher purpose by doing it.

So, what say you? Is therapy a vocation or a calling?

I don't know that it would be any different from others, particularly those in health care, who say such nonsense. I don't believe it but don't really see it as all that big of a deal. I hate many more other things about those guys than whether they want to mistakenly believe being a therapist is a calling.

As I said in the other thread, the idea makes me feel a little bleugh. I'm not sure if I believe in the concept at all if I'm honest. I kind of think we are led to where we are by a mixture of who we are as people and our circumstances. I don't think we are born to do something and it seems a bit over-romanticised for me.
I answered no; I agree with "let them think that if it makes them happy" bit, but I'm fairly certain I feel my answer to the question is no, no matter what occupation was inserted there.

So, not to be persnickety but in looking at the bolded part, I could well believe that I am serving a higher purpose -- as defined entirely by me -- to say, laze about doing absolutely nothing (which I do believe) but no one else need believe it.

So, does the definition of calling have to be one that inlcudes shared meaning of some sort? In which case, I would consider anyone -- including those doing anything with religion -- using the term as umm....delusional.

And, if not, I wouldn't necessarily take umbrage at it.

I mean, I define it as the latter (i.e., no shared meaning) -- so, for the most part, the only crime I see in using the term is one of indulging in melodrama but that's about it.

And, like I said earlier, I seem to hear that term used by all and sundry -- it's a bit like that other awful word with religious roots, "blessed", that's thrown about by folks to mean anything from they got extra fries at McD's to actually surviving major surgery.

Yeah, but if you're called someone has to call you. That makes sense in a religious context, or maybe in occupations like the armed forces (Uncle Sam Wants YOU), but who's calling therapists? The ghost of Freud?

I'm appalled with the notion. And my belief that many therapists may feel that way about themselves and their profession is appalling to me, too. It's a narcissistic notion, focused on the "goodness" of the therapist and may very well add to the difficulty in seeing when they have made a mistake and hurt the client.

I don't know, but if it is a calling, there seem to be quite a number of them who should not have answered.

Or maybe it was a wrong number?

(Between this post and Lucy van Pelt, you're really on a roll today!)

I would find it creepy. Both my T's have said that some people go into the profession due to their own issues , and one T I encountered definitely shouldn't have answered the call - wrong number.

I see it partly the same and partly differently. People I know use the term with respect to their careers/jobs and do not mean it in the religious way, but it does seem like it is more than a career choice. But I do not hear people claiming their work has some "higher" purpose as in "I'm better than you schlumps who just have jobs" or that it is objectively more meaningful than any other work.

When I hear people use the term calling, whether they are teachers or social workers or judges or nurses or a business that provides replacement limbs to people who have lost them or other work that might be loosely classified as in the "public interest," it seems they mean that they have found personal meaning or purpose in their work. Often that is tied to an early childhood experience, as in "I lost my father when I was young, so I wanted to work with children who are grieving the loss of a loved one." A veteran who went back to college after his tour who started a campus center for veterans. To me the term "calling" implies more of a personal connection to one's work that brings meaning and/or purpose beyond the enjoyment of doing work that you love. This is what it feels like for me individually as well. I'm not religious at all and I don't believe that I'm serving any kind of higher purpose, but my work does feel like this is what I'm meant to do, that I derive meaning and purpose from work that sometimes is helpful to others in all kinds of different ways, and that it is just right for me as I am right for it.

So my poll answer was "just like anyone else", T's can find their "calling" in their work. i would not relate to one who invoked this term in the context of a "higher power" (and I've never personally known one who used the term), but I might think that my own T would say that she took a negative experience from childhood and transformed it into something better through the work she does with those who have been traumatized. She would probably leave the "calling" terminology for those Ts who travel to war zones or work with children in emergency rooms, but I suspect she would agree that what she finds in her work is more expansive than a good career fit.

I don't think you have to have a personal connection to your work-- although I find academics often do, in terms of what they study-- to find purpose or meaning in it. Nor do I think that people who feel they have a "calling" versus those who dig their careers are somehow elevated in their enlightenment. I suspect it is something subtle that is more about the person than about the career, and like most things, it's not the thing itself that may be inspirational or annoying, but what's behind it.

I used to work as a counselor and for me it was a calling. It was work I did despite the long hours, horrible things I heard from clients, difficult people, etc.

It was a personal "calling", I do not think it made me better than others, in or out of that line of work. I also did not consider it in service of a "higher power".

I have also known plenty of good therapists who do not consider it a "calling", but just a job that they work hard at.

I've never though much about the actual term "a calling," but despite its religious connotations, I think that for some people they truly have always known that they wanted to be in a certain field. My cousin, from a young age, used to always say she wanted to be a nurse or doctor. She has been a pediatric nurse in the ER now for many years, and loves it. It is what she has always worked towards, and I don't know if she'd call it a "calling," but it is something that she was always driven towards.

Sure; why not? I don't think calling vs vocation is about the job so much as the person. Or, perhaps, how the person is feeling at any given moment. Teaching feels like a calling when everything is going right. Then some kid eats a booger or I forget to take my Zoloft and that lofty ideal comes crashing down.

I consider my job to be a 'calling' in that it calls to an inner part of my Self. It calls to me. No more or less than that.

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. - Thucydides

calling
ˈkɔːlɪŋ/
noun
noun: calling; plural noun: callings
1.
the action or sound of calling.
"the calling of a cuckoo"
2.
a strong urge towards a particular way of life or career; a vocation.
"those who have a special calling to minister to others' needs"
synonyms:
vocation, mission; More
call, summons
"those who have a special calling to minister to others' needs"
a profession or occupation.

Ooh! Next time DBC says she has a calling, I'm going to call like a cuckoo!

CuckOO! CuckOO!

And now that puts me in mind of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Not a good association for therapy.

Eta: I may need to get more sleep.

Good post above from LMTL. Thats how i see it to.

Ive always been a bit enviuos of people who knew what they wanted to do at a young age, 'calling' or not. I never knew what i wanted to do for a career until recently. I think knowing what you want to do helps you live a more fulfilling life. The drudge of unfulfilling work is draining to me.

However Id likely run from anyone who said they had a higher purpose in doing what they do.

ATAT, did you once say your father saw his job as sort of a calling? Maybe im mistaken, but just wondering.

I think most people use the term "calling" in a loose way, to describe just what the OP described about choosing a particular career field. Finding or creating a job that they like (in a good case) and that is compatible with their abilities and personality. I don't see why therapists should be an exception. Feeling that a profession is a good fit does not imply that they/we do a good job of course.

Not his normal, daily medical work - he called his charitable work - done through a religious organization - that a few times.

Despite the responses, what bothers me about therapists' use of the term is that it fits in well with some of the basic attitudes of their profession - therapist superior, client inferior in knowledge, etc. A used car salesman who thinks his job is a calling doesn't have that same rhetorical background behind his use of the term. - he's reaching for a different message.

I already believe those guys think too highly of themselves. But for me, having the therapist's husband around the office collecting the payment would be the thing I would not do. Romanticizing their job is, in my opinion, an occupational hazard for those people.