This is the first post in my Ask a Therapist series — where I take questions I've answered on r/askatherapist and go a little deeper than the comment section allows.

The Question

After dealing with clients all week, why do therapists come here to answer questions from random strangers? What do you get out of it?

My Answer

Honestly? I was a Redditor long before I was a psychologist.

But beyond personal history, there's a professional reason too. We actually have an ethical and scientific responsibility to disseminate psychological knowledge and research to the public. Doing that on Reddit lets me marry my professional duties with a community I already love being a part of. It's a total win-win.

Let's Go Deeper

Reddit has become one of the primary places people seek support for mental health — sometimes before they ever consider calling a therapist, and sometimes instead of it. As a provider, I thought it was time to throw my hat into the ring.

In graduate school, we were taught to be good stewards of the field — to share what we know beyond the consulting room. They mostly had conferences, journal articles, and grand rounds in mind. Times have changed. The internet is the new public square, and Reddit is one of its more honest corners.

The questions people ask there are real. They're not curated by a PR team or softened for a general audience. Someone is actually confused, actually struggling, actually curious — and they're asking in plain language. That's exactly the kind of question I want to answer.

Going forward, I'll be posting my thoughts here on questions I've answered over on Reddit — cases where I wanted to take a deeper dive than a comment allows. Seemed right to start with this one.

If this resonates, this is the kind of work I do. ovhpsychology.com