A Note to Clinicians: Your Expertise Has Value

Second, the deeper issue is often not payment. It is alignment. Many of these requests come from the rapidly growing space of therapy-adjacent technology. Apps, platforms, and tools that borrow clinical language while positioning themselves as scalable solutions to relational pain.

As clinicians, especially those trained systemically, we need to slow down and assess what is actually being proposed. A common premise sounds like this: "People know the skills, but they cant access them when activated. So we built a tool to help them do that."

On the surface, that sounds reasonable. Clinically, it reveals a misunderstanding. The knowing-doing gap in relationships is not a memory problem. It is a nervous system problem. It is not that clients forget the concepts. It is that under perceived threat, their attachment system overrides cognition.

Naming the Four Horsemen does not stop contempt. Understanding flooding does not magically regulate it. Insight does not create new relational moves. Rather, what creates change over time is:

• Another regulated human nervous system

• Live interruption of entrenched patterns

• Co-regulation

• Rupture and repair

• A felt experience of being met differently while dysregulated

That is not content delivery. That is relational work.

When a product positions itself as a coach you talk to, or a stand-in when things get hard, it is no longer a neutral tool. It is simulating the very mechanism that produces change while removing the relational risk and accountability that make change possible.

This does not make the founder malicious. But it does make the model misaligned with how therapy actually works.

Third, clinicians need a values-based filter, not just a financial one. The question is not only, "Are they paying me?" It is also:

• Does this align with how I believe change occurs?

• Am I being asked to legitimize something I would not actually recommend to clients?

• Would I be comfortable seeing my ideas abstracted, simplified, and scaled without my oversight?

• Does this tool support relational work, or does it subtly replace it?

• Is my discomfort fear, or is it data?

There is an important distinction between adjunctive tools that support therapy and products that attempt to bypass the relational core of the work. Each clinician gets to decide where that line is.

Fourth, refusing misaligned work is not anti-innovation. This is important to say, especially in a field that is frequently accused of being slow, resistant, or outdated. You can be curious about technology and still decline to participate. You can value access and still reject models that erode depth. You can support innovation and still protect the relational heart of therapy.

Not every product needs your stewardship. Not every idea needs your critique. And not every request deserves a yes. Sometimes the most ethical move is simply to name misalignment and step back.

Finally, permission to say no. You do not owe free consulting, conceptual education, clinical validation, or emotional labor simply because a request is framed warmly or personally. A clear, professional no is sufficient.

Your expertise has value. Your discomfort is information. Protecting the integrity of the work also protects clients. You are allowed to choose alignment over access. You are allowed to choose depth over scale. You are allowed to say no without explaining yourself.