Daddy Issues Week: Licensed, Paranoid, and Terrified of Irrelevance
Daddy Issues Week continues and we are breaking down the emotional dynamics driving today’s public LinkedIn meltdowns — and today’s exhibit comes straight from the trenches of professional insecurity.
I came across a post that was meant to be a sober defense of licensure in the therapy world. But let’s be real: it wasn’t about professional standards — it was about existential panic.
What we’re watching in the mental health industry is a classic paranoid decompensation — the psychological unraveling that happens when a fragile identity structure collides with the creeping awareness that the world has moved on.
At the root of this? Fear of abandonment. Not abandonment by clients, but abandonment by the market. The quiet, terrifying realization that outside of the LCSW or LMFT after your name, you didn’t actually build the kind of adaptive, marketable skills that would let you thrive in a shifting landscape. You learned how to pass state exams. You learned how to document. You learned how to speak in clinical jargon. But you didn’t learn how to compete.
And so — enter histrionic outreach. Loud posts. Moral outrage. Attempts to rally the tribe. But all of it is essentially a way to regulate the mild-to-moderate discomfort of feeling left behind. When people start yelling about “protecting the profession,” they’re usually protecting their ego.
What’s changing the game isn’t a threat to public safety. It’s a threat to professional relevance.
The market no longer cares what license you have — it cares what transformation you can deliver. And the more therapists cling to their old titles as shields, the more they reveal just how unprepared they are to play in the new arena.
So here’s the takeaway for today:
When you see a professional class lashing out over mild discomfort, you’re not watching leadership — you’re watching survival anxiety. And the future belongs to those who can regulate their own panic long enough to innovate.
Follow us on Instagram @elevate.epo, visit elevateepo.com, or reach out directly at enrique@elevateepo.com.
Let’s change the conversation. And more importantly, let’s change the system.
🎧 Download the latest podcast: Challenging Theories of Consciousness: Breaking the Loop
Enrique Arteaga - Chief Decompensation Officer - elevate.epo © 2025 APG, All Rights Reserved