I deeply resonate and loudly celebrate your identification of therapy moving into a larger “room” so to speak, because the goal of therapy (in my opinion) is learning the art of building bridges over personal disconnection and grief; the better we connect with ourselves and the areas we’ve been disconnected the more effective (in a non-corporate and icky way) we are at receiving true healing that likely can only come from community. Relational wounds need relational healing, and currently the workplace is the cornerstone of most adults’ lives. This is sustainable healing, and all the tools we can conceptualize “on the bridge” in therapy as we bravely look down into the chasm of our pain, can be truly integrated on a larger and more holistic level. Fantastic piece, thank you for articulating this!
She’s a researcher, not a therapist and there is great work out there both before and after hers. Many brands change direction, scale, or rebrand, especially when solid funding and platforms are available to support it, like the BetterUp partnership she announced last year. A lot of it comes from a profound place of privilege that is not always discussed. From opportunity to accessibility for folks.
I definitely agree with you Linda. Therapy as a whole is a deeply colonial construct with a very dark and violent past (especially against BIPOC and other minorities). One tool I’ve used as a POC when discussing privilege is to replace that specific word with “mobility”. Privilege has become such a buzzword/ weapon that I find it actually shuts down conversations and curiosity, whereas mobility captures and communicates what privilege actually DOES as an action word. For example, driving vs taking the bus results in two very different kinds of access to the world. Or as you mentioned with literal accessibility (be it financial or physical disability-wise), one’s mobility/ privilege plays a huge role. However just as Rosa Parks wasn’t actually the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat, she did become the ultimate face of a movement much greater than her. We all stand on the shoulders of our predecessors, with the goal of honouring them by doing better for the next generation vs fighting over who gets the official credit of doing it first.
There is so much goodness here in this comment. Like you I am using changing language because of the buzzword status including with belonging. I’m shifting to relational gravity since belonging is often code for “Well, we told you you belong so why don’t you feel that way?” Access gets me fired up. It’s not enough to “send the elevator back down”. You better make sure the door is unlocked, they had directions, a way to get there, etc. There’s so many things not considered and it’s very easy with all the access in the world to talk about a horizon other folks can’t even see. Also, following you immediately. :)
relational gravity vs belonging!!!!! Wow I’m going to add that to my personal lil dictionary! Thank you for that, I feel like we could have a great conversation about this. My personal intersectionality as biracial has left me with maaannyy convoluted experiences around “belonging”and I bet you have your fair share as well. Thank you for this lovely engagement, it’s a gift to engage with heart-forward individuals online <3
That can be arranged!! I have many thoughts, and have read most of her books :D I actually prefer that she’s a researcher > therapist since she’s brought such great attention and clarity to the infrastructure, language, and peripheral culture that shapes therapy vs therapy itself.
Very strong argument! I love that you took the time to write this amazing response which I read with interest. You brought me back to the essence of our work. Please keep on defending the SW field!
Thank you for your response and taking the time to educate us on your field of expertise. I love your passion and witness as the voice of the voiceless. Your work cannot be replaced especially now and after the fallout rains down from today’s messy world .
Fangirling over the Brené Brown brand as an institution healer is… something.
Brown didn’t rebrand. She bailed.
She got sick of being seen as “the help” who receives everyone’s trauma dumps, got tired of feigning grace, and wanted a seat at the corporate table so she could be taken seriously by bigger spenders. She knowledge vamped therapy and sold it back to leadership, turning emotions into corporate virtues to complete the feminisation of institutions.
She didn’t dare to lead. She dared to believe her ideas were a balm for workplaces, and in doing so, gave more ammo to the narcissists and corporate psychopaths to perform empathy so they can use your trust against you later. Workplace bullying and abuse stats haven’t gone down since vulnerability and empathy were sold as corporate virtues, and now the abusers have more tools to work with. Thanks Brené.
Institutions haven’t improved since her brand of leadership took over. And now she’s going to do even more.
We’re in a discernment crisis. Choose your heroes and elders wisely.
Far too many corporations buy the books and hire the speakers for a superficial cultural rebranding, and not an actual attention to the things that matter in improving culture. Thanks for your comment.
This is the one. This is the take I’ve been longing to see articulated. She didn’t shift and adapt- she jumped ship. It’s as much as an indicator for the ‘field of therapy’ as it is for everything and everyone else with corporate overlords in late stage feudalistic capitalism.
People can take good work out of context or weaponise it in ways its creator never intended, which isn’t what I’m describing here. Brené Brown deliberately brought vulnerability, empathy and other ideas drawn from therapeutic settings into leadership and sold them for use in workplaces (and still is). She has also written about workplace bullying, abusive leadership and destructive uses of power, so she's well aware that people who manipulate and abuse power are in leadership roles. If a leadership framework encourages vulnerability and trust without adequately accounting for how those people can exploit them, the problem can sit within the framework itself. Calling that 'misapplication' protects Brown and her work from criticism by placing responsibility for harmful outcomes entirely on the people using it.
I occupy 2 worlds, part- time therapist, part time finance professional. I’m leaving the latter because being around that level of dysfunction is becoming too dysregulating for me. It’s endemic in that field. The workaholism, people barely holding their personal lives together & using work to prop themselves up. I can’t do it anymore.
I echo Vilma’s thoughts! And if you choose to stay in both professions, you can become a Certified Financial Therapist (CFT). There are so few globally, and I’m sure it would expand your brand and reach. Regardless, congrats on having two very cool jobs!
Brené is a canny businesswoman. Until the west acknowledges that the pursuit of growth at any cost is destroying our planet and chances of survival, aiding the corporate sector is no more than an opportunist sell-out. Tweaking a psychopathic system is collusion in our destruction.
Yeah, I didn't find any credentials showing that she's a licensed therapist. Seems like she's only done research and never micro work with individual clients in her professional career.
I'm nauseated by a frankly mercenary act being extolled as virtuous revolution. What a lot of garbage. A real revolution would be seeing the mental health industrial complex for what it is and doing some good despite yourselves.
The first problem with people assuming that Brené is shifting her work from the therapy realm to consulting is that she has not been working as a therapist. She is a researcher and has been a professor. She has also been speaking for a very long time on her research regarding vulnerability and shame to large organizations. Many of us who are in therapy (and many practicing therapists) resonated deeply with her messaging (and her two early TED talks), and this gave her a reputation as America’s therapist, which is not a role she ever asked for (as she discussed in a recent interview in the NY Times). I am a big fan of Brené’s work, but I don’t feel at all that the work she is doing now is anything more than a continuation of what she has been doing all along.
As someone who spent over 25 years in executive coaching before completing a master’s in clinical psychology, I find this piece both fascinating and necessary, a long overdue wake-up call for the therapeutic field.
I went back to graduate school not to pivot careers but to deepen my own inner work. When memories from early childhood trauma resurfaced, I realized it was time to understand, through both personal and professional lenses, what true healing required. It was a classic case of “healer, heal thyself.” That process reshaped my perspective on both coaching and therapy.
As a coach, I often found myself working from a more therapeutic lens. During graduate school, I found myself as a new therapist working from a more coaching lens. That overlap revealed just how artificial the divide between the two fields really is. Sitting in those classrooms, I couldn’t help but notice how upside down much of the system felt, so focused on diagnosis, billing codes, and symptom reduction that it risked producing competent technicians rather than embodied practitioners. The model still treats the human condition as a checklist instead of a living process.
There’s also the professional gatekeeping to contend with. After publishing my first book, I noticed how quickly the conversation could turn to credentials rather than lived experience. That was partly what sent me back, to earn the degree, yes, but also to integrate the experience I’d already been living and teaching for decades.
It’s time for the field to expand. The rigid state-by-state licensing boundaries and the obsession with manualized methods don’t reflect the reality of an interconnected world. The next generation of practitioners must bring both depth and adaptability, people who embody the work, not just understand it.
That’s why I resonate so strongly with Brené’s evolution. She hasn’t abandoned vulnerability or healing; she’s translated them into broader human systems where they can actually shape culture. The challenge, and the opportunity, for our profession is to follow suit. The world doesn’t just need more therapists. It needs more whole humans who have done their own work and can help others do the same, wherever that work happens to take place.
Came here for the comments. Thank you all for already naming what I was thinking. Brene has never been a therapist. She was a researcher and has been talking about leadership for a long time. Also, from my perspective as a therapist, there is nothing shrinking about this profession. In fact, we have a therapist shortage from the demand in my area. I also see Brene as a mid-career professional pivoting to follow her authenticity as many of us do after doing something for twenty years.
Also here for the comments :). I’m a licensed therapist and completely agree that this profession is growing. People are hungry for healthy and authentic relationships.
This is indeed an interesting topic for the future of therapy. The reason for Brene Brown switching her audience may be much simpler though. There is simply more money to be made in the business coaching industry compared to self-help/therapy.
Therapy is indeed changing. It’s a shift to building resilience and agency. What happens when you walk out of the room? It’s that time that matters most. And what can we do as a collective to reach more people. Community and connection matters.
I deeply resonate and loudly celebrate your identification of therapy moving into a larger “room” so to speak, because the goal of therapy (in my opinion) is learning the art of building bridges over personal disconnection and grief; the better we connect with ourselves and the areas we’ve been disconnected the more effective (in a non-corporate and icky way) we are at receiving true healing that likely can only come from community. Relational wounds need relational healing, and currently the workplace is the cornerstone of most adults’ lives. This is sustainable healing, and all the tools we can conceptualize “on the bridge” in therapy as we bravely look down into the chasm of our pain, can be truly integrated on a larger and more holistic level. Fantastic piece, thank you for articulating this!
She’s a researcher, not a therapist and there is great work out there both before and after hers. Many brands change direction, scale, or rebrand, especially when solid funding and platforms are available to support it, like the BetterUp partnership she announced last year. A lot of it comes from a profound place of privilege that is not always discussed. From opportunity to accessibility for folks.
I definitely agree with you Linda. Therapy as a whole is a deeply colonial construct with a very dark and violent past (especially against BIPOC and other minorities). One tool I’ve used as a POC when discussing privilege is to replace that specific word with “mobility”. Privilege has become such a buzzword/ weapon that I find it actually shuts down conversations and curiosity, whereas mobility captures and communicates what privilege actually DOES as an action word. For example, driving vs taking the bus results in two very different kinds of access to the world. Or as you mentioned with literal accessibility (be it financial or physical disability-wise), one’s mobility/ privilege plays a huge role. However just as Rosa Parks wasn’t actually the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat, she did become the ultimate face of a movement much greater than her. We all stand on the shoulders of our predecessors, with the goal of honouring them by doing better for the next generation vs fighting over who gets the official credit of doing it first.
There is so much goodness here in this comment. Like you I am using changing language because of the buzzword status including with belonging. I’m shifting to relational gravity since belonging is often code for “Well, we told you you belong so why don’t you feel that way?” Access gets me fired up. It’s not enough to “send the elevator back down”. You better make sure the door is unlocked, they had directions, a way to get there, etc. There’s so many things not considered and it’s very easy with all the access in the world to talk about a horizon other folks can’t even see. Also, following you immediately. :)
relational gravity vs belonging!!!!! Wow I’m going to add that to my personal lil dictionary! Thank you for that, I feel like we could have a great conversation about this. My personal intersectionality as biracial has left me with maaannyy convoluted experiences around “belonging”and I bet you have your fair share as well. Thank you for this lovely engagement, it’s a gift to engage with heart-forward individuals online <3
Brilliant and well thought out comment. This should be an essay all unto itself. Well done. You gave me lots to consider.
Capitalism, women, children … YES! 🙌
That can be arranged!! I have many thoughts, and have read most of her books :D I actually prefer that she’s a researcher > therapist since she’s brought such great attention and clarity to the infrastructure, language, and peripheral culture that shapes therapy vs therapy itself.
Very strong argument! I love that you took the time to write this amazing response which I read with interest. You brought me back to the essence of our work. Please keep on defending the SW field!
Thank you for this reply.
Yes building bridges exactly!!
Thank you for your response and taking the time to educate us on your field of expertise. I love your passion and witness as the voice of the voiceless. Your work cannot be replaced especially now and after the fallout rains down from today’s messy world .
Couldn’t be said better!
Love this! Thank you for communicating all of this in manageable form! And - I have an idea for a follow-up...
I’d love to hear your idea :)
Fangirling over the Brené Brown brand as an institution healer is… something.
Brown didn’t rebrand. She bailed.
She got sick of being seen as “the help” who receives everyone’s trauma dumps, got tired of feigning grace, and wanted a seat at the corporate table so she could be taken seriously by bigger spenders. She knowledge vamped therapy and sold it back to leadership, turning emotions into corporate virtues to complete the feminisation of institutions.
She didn’t dare to lead. She dared to believe her ideas were a balm for workplaces, and in doing so, gave more ammo to the narcissists and corporate psychopaths to perform empathy so they can use your trust against you later. Workplace bullying and abuse stats haven’t gone down since vulnerability and empathy were sold as corporate virtues, and now the abusers have more tools to work with. Thanks Brené.
Institutions haven’t improved since her brand of leadership took over. And now she’s going to do even more.
We’re in a discernment crisis. Choose your heroes and elders wisely.
Far too many corporations buy the books and hire the speakers for a superficial cultural rebranding, and not an actual attention to the things that matter in improving culture. Thanks for your comment.
I’m glad it resonated. Corporate gaslighting is lucrative!
"We’re in a discernment crisis. Choose your heroes and elders wisely." - wow, yes!
This is the one. This is the take I’ve been longing to see articulated. She didn’t shift and adapt- she jumped ship. It’s as much as an indicator for the ‘field of therapy’ as it is for everything and everyone else with corporate overlords in late stage feudalistic capitalism.
There are not enough words for how much I admire the perspective of this post. Thank you.
100% agree!! Very well said
Respectfully, if someone’s work is taken out of context, misapplied or weaponized, is the burden of that on the work itself ?
People can take good work out of context or weaponise it in ways its creator never intended, which isn’t what I’m describing here. Brené Brown deliberately brought vulnerability, empathy and other ideas drawn from therapeutic settings into leadership and sold them for use in workplaces (and still is). She has also written about workplace bullying, abusive leadership and destructive uses of power, so she's well aware that people who manipulate and abuse power are in leadership roles. If a leadership framework encourages vulnerability and trust without adequately accounting for how those people can exploit them, the problem can sit within the framework itself. Calling that 'misapplication' protects Brown and her work from criticism by placing responsibility for harmful outcomes entirely on the people using it.
Well fucking said! All the yes
I have nothing to add. Just, slow claps 👏🏻 for someone finally saying out loud what so many of us have been thinking to ourselves.
Maybe my comment will seem unserious but I am being dead serious saying this: what if it was because it is because of corporate we end up in therapy?
Of course the modern capitalist system is what is making many people sick.
I occupy 2 worlds, part- time therapist, part time finance professional. I’m leaving the latter because being around that level of dysfunction is becoming too dysregulating for me. It’s endemic in that field. The workaholism, people barely holding their personal lives together & using work to prop themselves up. I can’t do it anymore.
I echo Vilma’s thoughts! And if you choose to stay in both professions, you can become a Certified Financial Therapist (CFT). There are so few globally, and I’m sure it would expand your brand and reach. Regardless, congrats on having two very cool jobs!
But think about it, what you’re doing is so cool. Not many dare two hold two very different jobs like you’ve done so far. Wow!
Not at all. The number of times I mentioned capitalism in my therapy sessions is…astounding.
Agree! I cringe when my work tries to do anything resembling therapy. It generally is clumsy and impersonal.
Completely agree.
exactly and often it is
Brené is a canny businesswoman. Until the west acknowledges that the pursuit of growth at any cost is destroying our planet and chances of survival, aiding the corporate sector is no more than an opportunist sell-out. Tweaking a psychopathic system is collusion in our destruction.
If you take empathy to the workplace and people start to see the nuances of a broken system, it could be the end of corporations has we know it.
hmmmm, lets find the silver lining
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but she was never a therapist. She was a researcher. She never counseled anyone in a clinical setting.
Yeah, I didn't find any credentials showing that she's a licensed therapist. Seems like she's only done research and never micro work with individual clients in her professional career.
I'm nauseated by a frankly mercenary act being extolled as virtuous revolution. What a lot of garbage. A real revolution would be seeing the mental health industrial complex for what it is and doing some good despite yourselves.
The first problem with people assuming that Brené is shifting her work from the therapy realm to consulting is that she has not been working as a therapist. She is a researcher and has been a professor. She has also been speaking for a very long time on her research regarding vulnerability and shame to large organizations. Many of us who are in therapy (and many practicing therapists) resonated deeply with her messaging (and her two early TED talks), and this gave her a reputation as America’s therapist, which is not a role she ever asked for (as she discussed in a recent interview in the NY Times). I am a big fan of Brené’s work, but I don’t feel at all that the work she is doing now is anything more than a continuation of what she has been doing all along.
As I said, we have a discernment problem.
I think most “coaching” is a complete crock.
As someone who spent over 25 years in executive coaching before completing a master’s in clinical psychology, I find this piece both fascinating and necessary, a long overdue wake-up call for the therapeutic field.
I went back to graduate school not to pivot careers but to deepen my own inner work. When memories from early childhood trauma resurfaced, I realized it was time to understand, through both personal and professional lenses, what true healing required. It was a classic case of “healer, heal thyself.” That process reshaped my perspective on both coaching and therapy.
As a coach, I often found myself working from a more therapeutic lens. During graduate school, I found myself as a new therapist working from a more coaching lens. That overlap revealed just how artificial the divide between the two fields really is. Sitting in those classrooms, I couldn’t help but notice how upside down much of the system felt, so focused on diagnosis, billing codes, and symptom reduction that it risked producing competent technicians rather than embodied practitioners. The model still treats the human condition as a checklist instead of a living process.
There’s also the professional gatekeeping to contend with. After publishing my first book, I noticed how quickly the conversation could turn to credentials rather than lived experience. That was partly what sent me back, to earn the degree, yes, but also to integrate the experience I’d already been living and teaching for decades.
It’s time for the field to expand. The rigid state-by-state licensing boundaries and the obsession with manualized methods don’t reflect the reality of an interconnected world. The next generation of practitioners must bring both depth and adaptability, people who embody the work, not just understand it.
That’s why I resonate so strongly with Brené’s evolution. She hasn’t abandoned vulnerability or healing; she’s translated them into broader human systems where they can actually shape culture. The challenge, and the opportunity, for our profession is to follow suit. The world doesn’t just need more therapists. It needs more whole humans who have done their own work and can help others do the same, wherever that work happens to take place.
Came here for the comments. Thank you all for already naming what I was thinking. Brene has never been a therapist. She was a researcher and has been talking about leadership for a long time. Also, from my perspective as a therapist, there is nothing shrinking about this profession. In fact, we have a therapist shortage from the demand in my area. I also see Brene as a mid-career professional pivoting to follow her authenticity as many of us do after doing something for twenty years.
Yes. When I refocused my career midlife because I was bored and ready to think differently, no one commented.
Also here for the comments :). I’m a licensed therapist and completely agree that this profession is growing. People are hungry for healthy and authentic relationships.
This is indeed an interesting topic for the future of therapy. The reason for Brene Brown switching her audience may be much simpler though. There is simply more money to be made in the business coaching industry compared to self-help/therapy.
I’m glad someone said it.
Therapy is indeed changing. It’s a shift to building resilience and agency. What happens when you walk out of the room? It’s that time that matters most. And what can we do as a collective to reach more people. Community and connection matters.
Yes
Great. What’s next? HR prescribing psychotropic meds to underperforming employees? Soma, perhaps?
You get it, this is the ultimate crock of shit from the parasitic managerial class.
What factual basis is there for the statement “therapy is shrinking?”
Didn't ger book dare to lead get published in 2018? So she's talked about organizational development for quite some time
If you followed her and thought she was the answer, you were asking the wrong question.