I’ve worked as a mental health clinician in British Columbia for several years. I entered this field with a strong commitment to relational, trauma-informed care and a belief that meaningful change happens when clients feel safe, understood, and supported. I continue to believe in the value and potential of therapeutic work to support real healing.
But over time, as I navigated the realities of public mental health care, I found myself increasingly constrained, not because I lacked motivation, but because the system made it difficult to practice in ways that support deep, sustainable healing. This isn’t about burnout from client care. It’s about a systemic mismatch between what clinicians are trained to offer and what the structure allows us to provide.
Let’s begin with what actually happens when someone tries to access mental health services through the public system.
First, they call a centralized number, and after a brief intake call, they are referred to initial group therapy, where five to fifteen people are in a room. The sessions last two hours, once a week. Usually, six to eight sessions, which means that for several weeks before anything else is offered, people are exposed and vulnerable in an environment that doesn’t feel safe.
The intent here is efficiency, a system trying to manage high demand with limited resources by streamlining access and standardizing care. But the outcome is often far from healing. For many, it leads to re-traumatization, disconnection, or even despair, with many falling out of the care pathway entirely. And when that happens, the loss is significant. Seeking help takes immense courage, and when the system can’t meet that courage with care, it leaves people more wounded than when they arrived.
Group therapy can be a powerful space for healing when it’s chosen, not assigned; when it’s grounded in safety, not urgency. Decades of research and clinical experience show that group work can reduce isolation, foster connection, and help people feel seen in their shared struggles. But when it’s offered as the default first step, without choice or context, it can feel premature and unsafe. Instead of meeting people where they are, it often asks them to open up before they feel ready, in a room of strangers, without the foundation of trust or consent.
When used this way, group therapy becomes a procedural hurdle, a requirement to fulfill before someone is deemed eligible for individual care. And even then, what’s available is unclear and often limited. Many never make it to that next level of care. Others are caught in a loop, cycling through short-term interventions without receiving the depth of support they truly need.
In the meantime, clinicians are expected to support too many people with too little time. Treatment plans become checklists. Sessions focus on documenting “risk” and “coping skills” rather than addressing the root pain underneath. And when the system fails to deliver what people need, it’s not the structure that’s questioned; it’s the therapy that’s dismissed, and the therapist who’s left holding the weight.
When I hear someone say, “I tried therapy and it didn’t help,” I often ask myself: What kind of therapy did they actually receive? Was there enough time to build trust? Were they offered real continuity and care, or just a rushed intake, a few group sessions, and a model that didn’t meet their needs?
Meanwhile, clinicians are working in systems that suppress our ability to offer meaningful care. We’re asked to follow rigid protocols instead of trusting our clinical judgment. We’re expected to remain regulated and empathetic in environments that are often chaotic, under-resourced, and transactional. We can see what would support healing, but we’re not given the time, space, or conditions to offer it.
That ongoing mismatch, between what people seek in care and what the system is structured to provide, creates tension, confusion, and disillusionment. Clients may begin to doubt themselves or the value of seeking help at all. Clinicians, caught between their training and their constraints, begin to question their own effectiveness. Over time, this erodes trust, not just in the process, but in the very possibility of healing, and in the mental health care system itself. ⟡
What drew me to Inner Immersion wasn’t just the promise of a new modality. I saw what felt like an entirely different approach to healing, one that begins with emotional safety, a space where clients don’t have to prove their pain to receive support. Where clinicians are not left to carry the work alone, but are held within a supportive cohort. And where healing unfolds relationally, through story, art, the body, and the breath.
Inner Immersion is a real alternative to the way things are usually done. It aligns with the core principles of trauma-informed care, starting with safety, not forcing vulnerability. Facilitators are trained to hold space with presence, not just deliver interventions. Participants aren’t rushed into disclosure or pushed through protocols. Instead, they’re supported in ways that respect their timing and capacity. It’s structured, relational, and attuned, everything the current system so often fails to be. It shows what’s possible when we build care around people, not performance indicators.
This approach invites us out of crisis management and into authentic connection. It trusts that transformation happens when people feel truly met. And it gave me hope.
If you’ve ever felt like a compassionate, skilled practitioner working in a system that wasn’t truly designed for healing, you’re not alone. Much of what we call care today is shaped by liability protocols and institutional survival. It’s a system built more for managing risk than supporting transformation. And when you try to bring your full presence and skill into that space, it can feel like there’s no room to truly meet the people you’re there to help.
There is another way. One that includes your spirit, honors culture, and makes space for your full humanity, not just your usefulness.
We can’t fix this system overnight. But we can stop pretending it works. And we can start imagining what it would mean to build systems of care that truly care.
The system, as it stands, is stretched too thin to hold us. But maybe it was never meant to. We were meant to be held by each other. And that’s where healing begins.
