I know the field of therapy very closely and I want to explain what a licensed therapist invests in his career.
- He is for around 2 years in school in which he invests around $50,000 dollars and a SIGNIFICANT amount of work into his education
- Throughout his time in school, he needs to work in a clinic under supervision as a part of his education (it's called "internship"). He gets paid around $40 per session and he doesn't get paid a penny when a client cancels or misses his appointment. He also NEEDS to work night hours and Sunday hours, and he usually needs to work some of his hours in a school (under the clinic) and not in the comfort of a clinic.
- The first few years until he has a serious private practice he works in a clinic and he gets paid around 5-8 thousand dollars per month (minus tax). This means that until he gets into private practice he has lost a significant amount of money for the duration of a few years in which he could have made much more if he'd work in a different industry.
- A (good) therapist pays for a supervisor to meet him weekly and discuss his clients. He needs to sit humbly and take seriously the feedback which his supervisor gives him.
- A therapist will usually pay to attend trainings to "specialize" to work with certain modalities (for example IFS) or with specific challenges (for example addiction).
- A good therapist needs to keep working on himself in order to be able to do good work. The more a therapist works on himself the more he's able to help his clients work on themselves. A good therapist to works alot on himself in his personal therapy experiences. (It would be a long discussion to explain that)
- Providing therapy takes a HUGE amount of emotional energy, much more than imaginable. It requires the therapist to be compassionately present with the most "heavy" emotions of another person without getting too overwhelmed (-like siting in a hot fire without getting burned). This demands from the therapist to learn how to handle it and to do good self care (there's a HUGE number of burnout in this profession).
- Additionally, a therapist needs to be aware of his own emotions/biases which come up in the process and ensure that they don't interfere with the client's healing.
- Being a therapist is honestly not worth it if you do it only for the money; every successful therapist has a passion to help others and they find it meaningful.
Given all the above, I think it's not expansive at all for a therapist to charge 2-3 hundred dollars a session