If I could ask my therapist one question, any question at all, I would ask them, "How does being a therapist affect your personal life — how does hearing countless heartbreaking stories affect you on a personal level?" As therapy patients, we spend hours venting our feelings, shedding tears, and reliving trauma that we've tried to suppress to a person who cares enough about us and our wellbeing to sit and listen to us for so long and then offer the best advice they can.

Therapists check on their patients, but who checks on the therapists?

Because of client-counselor privileges, they are legally bound to not say anything to anybody beyond their office. They can't speak about their own struggles of hearing someone's trauma with their spouses or friends. They may go home and imagine what it must have been like to be in the patient's shoes.

When I asked a therapist for their opinion on the question, they said:

"I've been a social worker for 16 years. The first two years I would dream about clients — however, with good supervision I was able to develop strong boundaries and institute self-care. You gotta walk it like you talk it. In order to be an effective practitioner, you must incorporate self-care and limit setting. My client's stories are theirs alone. My role is to support, educate and help to build skills. I don't have the magic they do. I just uncover and help them to re-gift some things so it can come through. Because of this philosophy, I don't take things home, as much. I have created a strong self-care plan to help release stress every day. Self-care is mindfully incorporated into my daily life. Good habits."

I placed myself in the shoes of a therapist and sat to think about the times I cried to my therapist and how they went home thinking, "that poor girl." After hearing the therapist's response, it made me realize that while therapists are helping clients focus on self-care, they too are practicing self-care best practices so they can provide the right help to people who need it.

I wanted to be a therapist when I was younger because I wanted to help people, but then I realized that I would need to have to be strong enough to be there for clients and myself because if I couldn't stay strong for them, would I be of any help at all?

Therapists are just as strong as their clients because we don't know their story or where they come from — we don't know the battles that made them want to become a therapist.

That's not to say we should hinder ourselves from sharing, but take what they say into deep consideration because when they speak, they speak from the heart.