Why a Psychologist Would Write a Memoir—Knowing Clients Might Read It

Before I ever wrote a word of my memoir, I wrestled with a question every therapist will recognize: What happens when the wall of professional privacy meets the need to tell the truth?

People often ask why a psychologist would write a memoir that reveals the most intimate and painful parts of their life—especially knowing that current or future clients might read it.

It’s a fair question. Our profession prizes privacy and carefully bounded relationships, after all. Clear boundaries keep therapy safe. They create a space where the client’s story is always at the center.

But for me, telling my story wasn’t a breach of those values; it was an expression of them.

Living the Vulnerability I Teach

Every day in the therapy room, I invite people to embrace vulnerability, to face pain directly, and to weave it into a life that holds meaning and purpose. How could I ask for that kind of courage while hiding my own?

Writing a memoir became my way of living what I teach. It allowed me to show that healing doesn’t come from avoiding pain but from allowing it to be seen and transformed. Pain that is faced can be redeemed.

I also wanted those who might one day sit across from me to know that I understand depression, trauma, grief, loss, and divorce not only from a textbook but through lived experience.

The work I do is informed as much by scars as by scholarship.

My clinical training gave me tools; my own journey gave me empathy, nuance, and patience for the long, uneven road that healing often requires. Clients sense that difference. They feel when understanding is earned as well as learned.

Strengthening Trust Before We Speak

Some readers eventually become clients. For them, the memoir offers a fuller picture of the person behind the professional role—the history, struggles, and hard-won insights that shaped the therapist they meet today. They can decide whether to bring that knowledge into the therapy room, and that decision itself affirms their agency and sets the tone for a collaborative relationship.

Far from blurring boundaries, this kind of transparency can open new space for authentic dialogue. It signals that their own complexity and pain are welcome. When a client says, “I read what you wrote about grief, and it helped me feel less alone,” we begin from a depth of trust and mutual recognition that might otherwise take months to build.

Extending Healing’s Reach

Not everyone who needs help will walk into a therapy office. Many will, however, pick up a book in the quiet of their own home, maybe late at night when sleep won’t come. I hope my story finds its way into late-night kitchens where grief will not loosen its grip, onto park benches where someone is weighing whether life is still worth the fight, into faith communities where silence around identity still cuts deep.

Ultimately, I didn’t write this memoir to collapse the distance therapy requires. I wrote it to widen the circle of healing—to meet people where they are.

This was never about centering my own story. It was about reaching back for the wounded and whispering, You are not alone.

Because sometimes the most professional act is the most profoundly human one: to tell the truth about our own pain and hope, and to offer that hard-won truth as a steady companion on someone else’s path toward wholeness.

Your Brother,

John the Exile