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I disagree with your premise:[…] therapists are mostly highly functional individuals from supportive backgrounds who succeed academicallyI am among the many, many clinicians who entered this field (at least) partially because we know psychic pain, family dysfunction, trauma, abuse, and worse.“Wounded healers” is a popular term for folks like me.I was born into crazy and quickly learned to read the room, intuit others’ moods, and remain ever viligant for signs of danger. I was my mentally ill mother’s caretaker, victim, and helpless audience.I was born in 1963 — way before folks talked about child abuse, let alone intervened. Were I born even 20 years later, perhaps somebody would have rescued me.Instead, I became a raging, acting-out adolescent. The identified patient, in family-therapy-speak. Nobody considered my environment, lack of parenting, disconnected and chaotic home, Not once was I asked what drove my dramatic, albeit futile, distress signals.I eventually found a wise, wonderful therapist who helped me un-learn the toxic narrative I’d been taught. She mothered me into wellness. She saved my life.And I became the therapist I needed as a child.I’m remarkably good at what I do. I believe my back-story informs my work and silently informs kids I get it, I hear them, I respect them.Though there must be gifted clinicians who come from normal, none of my clinician-friends, colleagues, or mentors fit that profile. Granted, my sample is biased — I’m certainly drawn to other wounded healers.But no- one needn’t experience something in order to treat it. Else we’d not have gifted male OB-GYNs, non-diabetic metabolic experts, or neurotypical autism specialists.Trauma, mental illness, poverty, and neglect are neither necessary nor sufficient to become skilled clinicians.We may have developed our therapeutic skills much earlier than non-wounded healers, but we all get the same extensive training, education, and supervision. We’re all naturally empathic, verbal, attentive, and aware. Core therapeutic elements are not taught. We’re born with those gifts, learn to hone our inate skills, master therapeutic interventions, develop critical professional boundaries, perfect the art of listening, and understand the magical power of words.Rather than exclude non-wounded healers, I strongly suggest you actively seek a therapist with whom you feel safe, heard, respected, and valued. You’ll know when you find her.Therapy is one of the most meaningful and important presents we can give ourselves.I hope you allow yourself that gift.Best wishes on your journey.

I don’t believe cats have some inate sense that tells them when we are ill. However, I’ve had several cats that became demonstrably more affectionate when they were ill. My veterinarian told me she didn’t believe that it was a true sign of illness in cats until she had so many clients tell the same story. It got to the point that with one cat, I would take him in based on that “symptom” alone.

Become an Excel guru - a 'right hand man/woman'.I've been in the financial services, investment banking and real estate industries for about 20 years - and been an INTP for longer than that. I've always had the desire to analyze things - to look at a problem from many different angles - and run through all the different permutations. But I've never once wanted to manage people. I was lucky to be asked by my employer at the time if I wanted to start building interactive business case modeling tools in excel. I did not have superior Excel skills, but I was the new guy with time on his hands.I was paired with a true Excel guru at the firm and she got me started reviewing a few of her models. The INTP in me was able to copy...err...reverse engineer the formulas, VB and format of her models, and incorporate the pieces into my own models. I also had an internal desire to make my models unique to me & my style, another trait I believe comes from being an INTP.This was a perfect match - I became an Excel guru and subject matter expert. As a consultant to telecom equipment manufacturers, I would travel with another consultant who was more engineering focused and we'd tag team clients. They would talk packets and what not, and I would explain how I could make a robust business case model and use VB based input screens to put a pretty face on their analysis. The creative part of me did a great job making the forms more intuitive than what had been done by my mentor - and they were very well received by our clients.That began a career that led me to become a quantitative analyst within the investment banking field for almost a decade, and now performing underwriting analysis for a governmental agency focusing on real estate development.I found out I was the perfect 'right hand man' in business. Someone else could be the outgoing, sales-focused person, and I could be the 'numbers geek'. As an INTP, I've crafted my career to suit my personality by:Supporting senior consultants instead of having to try to build my own client list.Spending more time in front of computer and less time in front of clients.Leveraging the investigating / learning skills I have by teaching myself Excel modeling and other software packages by trial and error & reverse engineering.Becoming a subject matter expert that people in finance/business can lean on. Providing data to ease the decision making process, but not actually responsible for making the decisions.And, most importantly...never having to manage a team! Of course, I do enjoy working with younger workers as a way of helping them grow as I was helped in the past. But its always as a mentor, not a boss. So that means training can be had over beers.All in all, I've been able to leverage this Excel knowledge and my inate analytical skills into a very good career. I know that my personality does not lend itself to leadership, management and significant upward mobility. But I am very fine with that. And I can lead by example and add value by creating work product that management/decision makers respect and can depend on.