CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Are Therapist Influencers Doing More Harm Than Good?

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

It’s time for an honest look at therapists on the internet. Whitney answers the question of whether or not therapists as influencers and content creators are a problem... which includes an honest self-reflection.Whitney Goodman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Calling Home, a membership community that helps people navigate complex family dynamics and break harmful cycles.Have a question for Whitney? Send a voice memo or email to [e-mail] the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.coFollow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhitFollow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmftOrder Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivitySign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0oThis podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am a highly trained professional not in your field. Any professional on this app is on here to address their own egos and ego injuries. They need adoration, attention, validation because they don't have any real sense of self. I feel sorry for them. You and therapists like you on TikTok actually cause a tremendous amount of harm to individuals and families. Put that in your podcast. I dare you. That's a real comment that came in on TikTok and I'm reading it to you word for word because if we're going to talk about this topic that I want to talk about today, I think we have to start with the loudest version of the critique and sit with it and ask which parts have a point and which parts don't. So that's what we're going to do today. Today we're going to be talking about

therapists as influencers. Welcome back to the Calling Home podcast. I am Whitney Goodman, and this is the show for people who are doing the work nobody handed them a manual for, like breaking patterns, navigating complicated family dynamics, and figuring out what they actually owe the people that they came from. And today, we're talking about the people who are increasingly part of how you find your way through that work. Therapists on the internet. Before we get into that, just two quick things. First, if any of what we talk about on this show feels like work that you've been trying to do,

but you've been doing it alone and it doesn't feel good, you don't have to do that anymore. The Family Cycle Breakers Club is our membership at Calling Home. It's a community of people who are actively breaking generational patterns with structured support, real tools, and clinicians who get it. The link is in the show notes, and I hope you'll come and join us. Second, mark your calendar because starting June 2nd, we are going back to two episodes a week. I am coming back from maternity leave.

I am no longer pregnant. Very exciting. I hopefully will not like lose my breath during this episode. get through it with a little bit more energy. Thank you for sticking with me during the end of my pregnancy as well as my maternity leave. And thank you for all your support listening to all of those episodes that I put out for you while I was out. We'll continue doing these kind of episodes on Tuesday, more of a deep dive and then Thursday going back to the Q&A episodes where I answer your questions. I have a lot of questions saved up from while I was out. But as always, you can

submit your questions to me via email at Whitney at callinghome.com. and we will also put that in the show notes. Okay. Let's talk about therapists on the internet. So the reason I wanted to record this episode is because while I was out, some of you may know this, but there was a therapist with quite a significant following who got himself in some pretty hot water with some, what I would say, was pretty egregious behavior to be displaying on the internet as a therapist, especially with that big of

a following. And I think that there are so many ways to approach being a therapist online. And the trickiest piece about all of this is how much of ourselves we decide to share and what that does to the profession, to our relationship with our clients, with our audience. I think we are seeing a lot more clinicians who are becoming strictly content creators rather than being clinicians or working one-on-one with people. And this is where the waters get a little bit muddier. And I'm going to talk about that more. But I opened up with that quote, with a comment that was left. And it's one of the more extreme arguments about this because I think that we do need to contend with the fact that people expect their therapists to sort of be this flat, non-person-like person

that they meet with in a, you know, room alone and that therapist doesn't exist outside of that space. And so the more that a person puts themselves out there, especially with therapist, we tend to recognize that behavior as being narcissistic, egotistical, lacking a sense of self or self-worth. And I've seen this comment a lot. And I understand it. You know, there's a lot of people that will say things like, I would never see a therapist that posted things on social media because I would think that they need constant validation. They don't have a strong sense of self. There were operating from their ego. And a lot of this is projection, right? Especially if you are someone that feels uncomfortable with all of those things

yourself, it's going to be uncomfortable maybe to see that in a therapist. There are also people who might want to be that way, want to be more confident about putting themselves out there. And so they like seeing a therapist doing it. That gives them a little bit of confidence or they feel like maybe that person could teach them something. But when we see clinicians online, I think for therapists and for lay people, it brings up a lot of feelings within us. And I want to go into that more today. But before we keep going on this and I talk about any other therapists or about what this means for the field, I want to, of course, put this disclaimer out there that I'm a therapist and I have followers on the internet. I have been posting online. And I have been posting online. And I've

built a platform on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube in this podcast over the last eight years. And I use that to share information as well as to support my community of calling home, which is one of the main sources of my income. I do not make my living from social media, which I think is where a lot of like this can get murky when you become like a content creator that is making money off of the content to support yourself. That can be a slippery slope. We'll talk about that more. But it is certainly part of the funnel that supports my business like every other business on the planet right now that is utilizing social media as a marketing tool. And I was one of the first therapists to get on

Instagram eight years ago when it was still really weird and people were telling me not to do it. And I know people were making fun of me for it and especially within the field, I faced some rejection and pushback from people on that. And I totally understand why. And I think a lot of the critiques are valid. It just never was enough to stop me from wanting to do it. I thought that the good outweighed the bad. And I still feel that way. So when I am talking about this topic, I want you to know that I am coming from that lens and I have eight years of being like on the inside of what it's like to be a therapy influencer, content creator, educator on the internet. And I've watched a lot of colleagues and peers do this beautifully. And I've watched people do it in some really horrible ways. And I've watched

myself get it right and get it wrong, you know, sometimes in the same day and in the same week. So now with all of that disclaimer out of the way, let's actually get into this conversation. I think I mentioned this before, but I think that therapists being on the internet causes a lot of feelings to come up in people. Okay? Because there's a cultural script that therapy is supposed to be private. The therapist is a mirror. they're a blank slate that you can project onto. And a lot of us were trained in this type of therapy and some people are still really

practicing it. I personally don't share a lot about myself online. I think a lot of you actually know very, very little about me, except that I have children. I'm married and I'm a therapist. I don't get into a lot about myself because I'm not. that kind of therapist. I decide when I want to disclose and when I disclose it's because there is a purpose to it. Now, there are therapists who come online and share about their past because it is the subject that they are talking about. So they share about their childhood trauma. They share about

their relationship with a family member because that's the reason why they're doing what they're doing and them sharing about it is part of their work. It's part of who they are as a therapist. Now, I want to say that there's been therapists doing that since I entered the field on their websites. And a lot of therapists are encouraged to market themselves this way. Like, to put on their about page on their website, I am a childhood trauma survivor. I went through X, Y, and Z. This is why I can help you. And you'll see this a lot with like coaches and stuff too. I mean, think of all the biggest creators that you know in the self-help space. Okay. They follow an exact formula. It's like they went through this thing. They had this awakening.

They figured something out and now they're on the other side and now they're going to teach it to you. I don't practice like that because I don't like that model. I think it's very like guru adjacent. It's not for me. I don't think. it's rooted in evidence and in practice, I also think that you can have gone through something and it be a huge part of your story and you overcame it. And it applies to no one else but you. And to think that because you overcame something that you can now apply that to thousands of people doesn't make sense to me. Now, that doesn't mean that your story can't be informative and helpful and inspiring and help people.

But it's not the same as using tools that have been tested across a wide variety of people and that have been validated and observed. There's something about the therapy profession being public facing that triggers a specific kind of suspicion. And I've been thinking about this a lot because I don't think anybody calls a pediatrician, a narcissist for writing a parenting book. Nobody says that a cardiologist has like an ego injury when they do a podcast about heart health. But the second that a therapist shows up on like a social media platform, the assumption for a lot of people is that you must be a narcissist or sick or need someone to like stroke your ego. And I think this has a lot to do with therapy being a mirror for you and kind of what people project

on to a person of what a therapist should be like. There's also this suspicion that like if you are drawn to being seen visibly in this field, you must be compensating for something. And of course, some people are and some people are. But I think that's true in every profession. profession, but it often gets weaponized against therapists in a way that it doesn't with lawyers or surgeons. And I was talking about this a couple of weeks ago with someone that when you are a therapist and you talk about anything, people assume that you are talking about yourself. So if you went to

specialize in childhood sexual abuse or addiction or marriage, that you are having a problem in that area of your life. But when a lawyer decides to become like a criminal defense attorney, your first instinct isn't, oh, their parents must have been criminals. You know, it's like there is this assumption that anything you're doing in this field is a reflection of the person. And I think that that gives people a lot more suspicion about what therapists are doing or saying. And there's also a lot of transference. going on. So people are bringing things to a therapist that they've never met. And now when you're seeing other therapists having like a camera on them, you might start feeling the same way that you feel about your therapist towards this therapist that you're seeing online. You know, I know that that

hostile comment that I read at the beginning of this episode isn't really about me as as a person. It's about the version of me that someone has constructed from seeing videos of me and then making assumptions about what that means and knowing that like those videos of me talking about therapy concepts are like 0.2% of like who I am as a person. The other thing that's happening here though, and I think this is something that therapists need to be really honest about is that visibility creates a lot. more ethical dilemmas and pitfalls that can come up. Likes our validation.

Engagement does give us dopamine. And when you're building an audience, it can change you in ways that you don't always notice. And this is a real thing that is being reflected back to us as clinicians and as a field now that we need to pay attention to. that I do believe that some people are not meant to be forward facing like this. You need to be able to withstand the pressure, the criticism. You need to have a very strong foundation under you.

You need to not sort of be just like blowing with the wind every time you get feedback or there's a new trend or a new thing that comes up because that can be really, really dangerous. And so I actually think like if you come into this work with a fragile sense of self and not being really grounded in what you're going to do as a therapist and who you are as a therapist, it can get really, really tricky. And that's why, you know, I started on here, gosh, so early in my career. And I think that was really naive and new of me to do. And I can look back now and be like, wow, that's why, you know, people who were older, than me or who had a lot more experience than me probably were like, Winnie, what are you doing?

And I understand that now. Luckily, I didn't make a lot of huge mistakes, but I could see how you could. And it could be career ending. Now, I asked my audience before this episode, my audience on Instagram, do therapists on social media have a mostly positive or mostly negative impact? And about 2,9, under 45 people answered and 61% said mostly positive. 36% said they were undecided and 3% said mostly negative. Now, of course, kind of skewed results because obviously all these people are following therapists on social media, but I do have really strong percentage of people that hate follow me and tell me that my stuff sucks like every single day.

So I know that some of you showed up in those votes and, uh, Maybe you're the nice like 3% here. I also did a second poll where I asked, have you ever done therapy with a therapist who has a social media following? And 8% said yes. 54% said no, but they would. And 38% said no and they wouldn't. So there's a gap here, right?

61% of my audience thinks that the content has a mostly positive impact, the 38% of them would actually become a client of someone who does this work publicly, which is funny because I started out doing this work literally just to like grow my private practice. And then over the years it has, you know, just transformed into something else. But it's something to think about if you're a therapist that just wants to build a private practice and you don't have any goal of like going beyond that. Like that would be, that's your version of what you really. want your career to look like, something to think about. I think people can value the content

while still drawing a line between like, I learn something useful from this content, but I don't think that I want to have this person as my therapist. And I think one of the biggest reasons that I have come across for that is that clients are really afraid that their story is going to be mined for content. And this is something that we really, really need to talk about when we get to the red flags. But first, I want to talk about the green flags. I asked people what therapists are doing a great job and what are they doing? And these are the things that people loved. They love psychoeducation that names what was normalized in dysfunction, practical advice with receipts. So with like actual data behind it. Therapists who stay in their specialty instead of having a

a hot take on every diagnosis, very important. Content that builds community instead of putting themselves on a pedestal. People who name what they don't know. So therapists who are able to say, like, I'm not an expert in this, but this is what I think or what I've encountered, but really calling that out. They like therapists who don't talk about their clients. Me too. People who make complicated things accessible without flattening them or removing the nuance, and people whose visible work matches the values that they hold, or that the therapist says that they hold. And these are the five most named people in the responses that are doing a really good job. Nedra Twab, codependency Kate, both of them have been on my podcast, Patrick Tien, also a podcast guest.

Morgan Pommels also has been on the podcast, and Dr. Tracy also has been on the show. Those five appeared more than anyone else. And then the next some honorable mentions are Amanda White at Therapy for Women, also has been on the show, Esther Perel and Dr. Becky Kennedy from Good Inside. And so if you are looking for some good clinicians to follow, these were vetted, you know, by I think I got 2,500 responses. And those were the top mentioned names. Now I want to talk about some of the red flags.

that these are the things that people don't like that therapists are doing on the internet. The number one critique by a mile is oversimplification and black and white thinking. So when therapists reduce complicated human dynamics to a 60 second video that assumes like there's one cause and one fix, people are exhausted by that. And after that, people also mentioned pathologizing for clicks.

So like seeing like the narcissistic personality disorder thing everywhere. A lot of people are mentioning that. Sharing client stories. Big red flag. High self-disclosure that doesn't serve the audience. I thought that was interesting. Therapist posting more about their personal lives and their actual clinical area. Aggressive selling.

Brand deals that drown out the content. Course launches that feel more important than the message. False or inflated stats. A lot of people were mentioning like therapists that now are talking about how much money they make online. People did not like that. Toxic positivity or like the forgive them, it's good for you type of framing, claiming credentials that aren't real. A lot of people were mentioning things about life coaches, more of that than actual therapists.

They also really don't like sensationalism, clickbait or posts that are so broad. that clients take them into sessions and they are having like serious misinterpretations of those posts. I think also because of the population that I serve, multiple people wrote me some version of like it's really hard to see family members following accounts that just give them a free pass and discovering language like let them or just stop complaining. They use that to dismiss the very real pain. that they are experiencing. Now, I want to be honest about something.

You know, I have done some of these red flags. I've definitely oversimplified a complicated dynamic. I've used like hooks that I would write differently now. And I think the point of me naming this isn't to like perform my purity or act like I'm not doing any of these things. But I do think that it's important that we listen to the people that are following us as clinicians online and see. that the line between like green flag and red flag is actually not that wide and that we do need to be careful. I want to talk about what eight years of doing this has actually been like because I think this is the part of the conversation that we usually don't get to hear. And I spoke

a little bit about how I don't think that this work is for everyone. I don't think that every therapist should be forward facing or be online. And it's fun. that, you know, this comment about like just wanting ego stroked or validation or like to stare back at yourself on the screen because there was a point and I've talked about this before where I was Googling like, how can I make videos without showing my face online? And when reels and all this started to get so popular, I really had to work myself up into this place where I was going to do video because it was necessary. And there was. And there was, was no way that I could just keep going and, you know, write books and sell them and do that without,

like, putting myself on video. Like, at some point, it just got to this place where I had to do it. And I had to, like, really build the confidence and bravery to do that. And I still, like, you know, I've heard people, like, in my circle making fun of me for doing this. Like, I know that when I first started recording videos. Like, people would make jokes to my face about it. Like, I get it. It's like you're going to be a little bit fringy. It's embarrassing and you just have to keep pushing through it because I think that the information is valuable and necessary. And that's why I keep doing it. And now I'm on camera like every single day and I just don't even think about it anymore. But it certainly was not for me like I wanted to get my camera out and post selfies for validation every day.

It actually was quite the opposite of that. But over the last eight years, I think, you know, I have gotten a lot wrong. I don't think that therapists should be removed from social media or from the internet. I really think that therapists on social media as a. whole have been a positive influence. I think that people who would never walk into a therapist's office are getting language and framework and hope that they would never get otherwise. And a lot of people shared this with me when I was doing research for this episode. And they shared that the work they've done internally started because of something they read on Instagram and someone called it a

gateway to therapy. And I think that matches what I've seen. There's also a lot of community here. There's people discovering that they're not alone. And that's why I started calling home. That's why I got on Instagram. I was like, you know, I want to promote my private practice. I really like writing. It's a great creative outlet. And maybe I can connect with people who have all experienced the same thing and they can see

that they're not alone. And I think that that's been, for me, the most transformative thing I've been able to offer people as a therapist and why we created calling home was to create that for people because it didn't exist. I also really love the accountability piece. And this is why I would argue that finding a therapist who has a social media following actually is kind of good for you. I have become a better clinician over the years because of my social media. And I want to explain that. It has opened me up to wanting to learn about a lot of different things that I see people talking about. It's shown me how people think what other clinicians are doing, what a lot of

people are talking about, and it pushes me to research and learn about things. And every time that I am recording a podcast episode or I'm working on a post, I am reading studies and doing doing research and learning about things and talking to people online and saying, how has this affected you? What's this like for you? It's constant information gathering when you have a community like this at your fingertips. And I watched therapists that I worked with in the past really phone it in because they were meeting alone with clients in an office. I'm not saying everyone's like this. But there are a lot that are that they, even if they've been, a therapist for 20 years, they are just recycle and repeat the same stuff over and over with every

client. It's what they've always been doing. They're not exposing themselves to anything new, really, and they keep doing the same thing. I can now go to a therapist Instagram and be like, wow, they are talking about this book that they read, this study that they read, this training that they're doing. Here are their beliefs about X. And I can learn so much about them in that one place that actually allows me to feel a lot safer and more secure about what I'm walking into. The therapist is much more transparent about what they know and what they don't know. And I really like that. I think that seeing how a therapist is on social media can give you a little bit of insight

into their personality and how they are. But it's also going to feel quite different to sit with them. I've also had a lot of clients over the last decade. that didn't even know that I have social media. Like, this isn't part of our work. And so that brings me into the part that that kind of scares me about the future of the profession. I am seeing a lot, a lot of therapists using their therapy sessions as content.

And this is very wrong. It should not happen under any circumstances. It shouldn't. I've been doing this for a long time. There are ways to do it without using that. You don't need to do it. There's no excuse for it. And I know in the past I had definitely done the like this week I was talking with

the client about X and I wouldn't share anything about it. I would just use it as a way to introduce the topic. And I think even that can feel a little strange, especially I see videos and I don't know if these are real of people popping on and being like, I just got out of a session with my client. And this is what we were talking about. And they don't share anything about the client, but they're talking about the topic. And I still think that can feel a little strange if you popped on after your therapy session.

We're like, okay, we just talked about my relationship with my sister. And now they're talking about sister relationships, you know, on their TikTok. That feels weird. We also run the risk of like the conflation of therapy content with actual therapy. They are not the same. A real cannot replace 50 minutes of someone sitting with you, knowing your history, watching your face, interacting with you, and really like doing the actual work of psychotherapy. And people who are making major decisions like going no contact, ending marriages,

cutting off siblings based on a 90 second post, are not doing the right thing. We also have to be careful within the profession and for people that are following clinicians and people that are even following me, that the loudest voices are not always the best ones to follow. The ones with the most followers are not technically the most informed. And I think that when you jump from being a therapist who maybe creates content on the internet to a full-time content creator who is relying on that content to generate all of your income, that economic pressure can push well-intentioned therapists into producing content that they don't even fully stand behind. And this is what happens when you are looking at what is going viral and

feeling like you have to make a comment about everything. Like, there are certain things that I don't touch because I'm not an expert in them. And I don't care if it is the most popular topic on the internet at that time. I don't talk about ADHD. I don't talk about schizophrenia. Like, I don't talk about these issues. I'm, I really. day so firmly in my lane of like adult family relationships. And if there's not like a hot button thing that's going on within that lane, I don't touch the other stuff. And this is where I think things are going really sideways. And what we saw with that creator that was really not doing a good job, like as of late, I think it was that. It's this pressure to be like, okay, well, I need to make

money, my videos are doing, you know, these really high numbers. And the way to do that is to jump on these trends. And so you're constantly juggling this thing as a therapist of like, do I stick with like my competency and my ethics and what I know or do I try to prioritize this part of my career that I am now a content creator who needs to do what content creators do? And that is really going to get us in trouble. I love this work, but I can also be kind of scared about where it's going when we are incentivized as clinicians to step outside of our competency, our expertise, and our ethical guidelines in order to get clicks and get more followers. I want to end this episode with some practical takeaways. And if you take nothing else from this episode,

you know, take this. I think it's really important to check critical. a real therapist will have a license as a psychologist, a licensed married and family therapist, a licensed professional counselor. These are often different across the country. A life coach is not the same thing. There is no licensing body. Doesn't mean they can't be useful, but you should definitely know what you're buying. And I found that most people's complaints about mental health content were actually about coaches and not about therapists. So that's interesting. If a therapist publicly posts identifiable client stories, stop. Red flag. Unfollow them. Full stop. No exceptions. Also, notice how they handle disagreement. You know, are they piling on other

clinicians? Are they getting on in a bunch of fights online? Like, are they really acting in a way that would be considered unprofessional in any other context? It's also important to look at what they are selling. I think courses and programs are great, but what are those courses and programs? How are they being sold? Do you know other people that have worked with this person? What are the reviews like? This is important. And also use the content as a starting point.

This is an issue that I also have even with people that follow me, especially on TikTok. Well, you never talk about X. You're always talking about this. my social media is 1% of the work that I do. It's where I spend the least amount of time. It's where you will hear the least thought out concepts from me just because of the nature of the beast. And so in your own life and when you're following therapists, use it as a starting point. You can go to your therapist and say, like, I learn this concept from a therapist on the internet.

And now I want to talk about it more. I want to make sure that I understand it. I want to read more about it. I'm not going to act like this is enough to base a huge decision off of or to have a full understanding about something or assume that it 100% applies to me. I think also you have permission to unfollow these people, including me. You know, if someone's content is making your mental health worse, it's probably not the best mental health professional to follow.

And you also might follow people for seasons. You know, I was talking about this with someone that works at calling home the other day that, like, we had a lot of people drop off of our memberships this month that had been with us for, you know, since we started. So like two years, they've been members. And I'm like, you know, I think that's actually a really good thing. I don't want to come to a support group with 20 people that have been, you know, seeing no change, no improvement.

They're not getting tired of the content. They don't feel like they've been able to move on. on. And that's not to say it should only take you two years. I just mean that like, it is okay to say I have grown out of this. I've grown past it. I'm looking for something different now or I don't want to see this on my feed every day. Like if you start to feel that way, it's good at data and information on your part. You can always mute these people, go back to them later, check them when you're feeling up to it. So the hostile comment from the start of this episode wasn't entirely wrong. There are real ethical risks in this work of being therapists online.

There are people in the space that are doing harm. And there are versions of this content that pathologize, even just like the regular human experience. There's people who are selling snake oil to people in pain and people who really are in service of avoidance rather than supporting growth. That is all true. And it's also not the whole story. I think there are people in this space.

including the people that I named today that are doing some of the most important psychoeducation that we've ever seen like at scale. There are people in your life who got into therapy because of a post. There are maybe family dynamics that have shifted or softened because someone finally had language for what they have been feeling for their entire life. And so the work for you as a listener of this podcast as someone who's following therapist online isn't to decide whether therapists on social media are good or bad. It's to develop your own discernment about which voices to let in and how much weight to give them in your life.

And I think the work for me and maybe for other therapists listening to this who are on social media or who are thinking about it is to keep paying attention to like that pull. Like you need to be willing to say you got it wrong. You need to remember that the goal here is not to have the most followers, but to be useful. We need to remember that first we are therapists and then we are educators or content creators or influencers, not the other way around when you are trying to operate, you know, from your profession online. If this episode hit on something for you and you want to keep doing this work in a structured way with people who get it, or if you're just looking to like,

get off social media, but still keep doing this work. The Family Cycle Breakers Club is where we do that. It is our membership community at Calling Home, and it's full of people who are already doing the work of breaking generational patterns. We have communities, structured guidance, and clinicians involved who care about the same things that I just spent time talking about. And the link to join is in the show notes. And just a reminder, starting June 2nd, we're going back to two episodes a week. Tuesdays will be these deep dives and Thursdays for Q&A. So if you have have a question you want answered, send it to me. Thank you for spending this time with me.

And thank you so much to the over 2,000 of you who answered the polls and the comments that helped build this episode. You shaped every part of it. I will see you next week. The Calling Home Podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified healthcare provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and calling home,

or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Holmes Terms of Service linked in the show notes below.