The aspiration of becoming a great or even just competent psychotherapist is, at its root, somewhat paradoxical. Over the past 15 years of daily practice I have learned that psychotherapy is not about mastery, not about “fixing” people, and certainly not about discovering truth. If anything, it’s about constantly evolving, tolerating uncertainty, and embracing the often irrational and patently absurd complexity of human beings.

Here are 20 things I wish someone had shared with me earlier in my career:

1. Once you start working you will quickly realize that much of what you learned in school is inapplicable, useless, or misguided. The supervisors in your associateship or internship teach you everything worth knowing.

2. In session, you are modeling authenticity. This includes what you wear, how you sit, how you smell, how clean or dirty your office is, how you speak, what words you choose, the way you blink your eyes, if you fall into a food coma after lunch, how you stifle a yawn, if you swear or do not swear — everything. If you do not understand the paradox, irony and even comedy of the concept of “performing authenticity,” then you may want to reconsider........

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