Therapy Jeff: What Happened?
Banner from Therapy Jeff website
You might have seen discourse this week about a popular therapy influencer, Therapy Jeff. So, who is he and what happened?
Therapy Jeff, or Jeff Guenther, is an LPC in the state of Oregon. You might have seen his popular videos or even follow him yourself. He has a huge following on social media: Two million followers of Instagram, three million followers on Tiktok, and over 75k subscribers on Youtube. He has a book and a podcast. He also created Therapyden which is a website similar to Psychology Today, where counselors can pay to market their practice. In his videos, he says he sees clients, but his practice shows as permanently closed on Google. But he probably works in a group practice that is more private.
I follow him on IG and Tiktok, and I have a free Therapyden page for myself. I have enjoyed his videos in the past and recommended his page to my own clients.
So what did he do?
Trigger Warning: The following will be discussing sex acts.
Last week he responded to a sex therapist on Threads asking for “advice” about giving men hand jobs. Therapy Jeff commented (from his main page) a lengthy paragraph about his preferences for receiving hand jobs and gave advice. You can find the thread yourself, I won't detail it here.
It was cringy. It was inappropriate and unprofessional. I am sure social media influencers have anonymous accounts. So why use something like that? We all have personal lives outside our professions, but influencers are under a microscope and have zero privacy. I can’t imagine his real, actual clients reading his comment and feeling comfortable talking about sexual topics with him in session. I wouldn’t.
But I wouldn’t go to a male therapist.
Male therapists have a hard time. There really aren’t that many. Counseling and therapy is a female dominated profession. I see requests constantly in therapy referral groups asking for recommendations for female therapists ONLY. In my cohort for graduate school, there were 2 men. In most of my jobs after graduation, there were very few men.
I have had sexual trauma in my life, and I would not want to talk about that with a male counselor. That is MY PREFERENCE.
Does that mean men are bad counselors?
NO. Absolutely not.
I know male counselors who are great. There are male counselors who specialize in seeing only men, and I think they might have an easier time.
TW: Discussion of rape fantasy.
That brings us into the next hot topic of Therapy Jeff. Last week he made a post in response to the male rape fantasy discussion. People said that instead of focusing on the victims of rape, Jeff focused on the perpetrators. He spoke directly to men who have these fantasies, but have not acted on them. He spoke about how, if they have these urges, they can get help, and how they can cope with sexual obsessions. He was treating it like sexual OCD when it was not meant to be clinically interpreted that way.
I saw his apology post this morning and he clarified this. He took accountability and said he was wrong about his clinical interpretations. In my opinion, I can understand. I can see where he made a clinical judgement error and how his mind went to sexual OCD instead of focusing on the deeper issues of rape fantasy. People online were pairing his cringy Treads comment and this post about rape fantasies and assumed that he has rape fantasies. Does this mean that he has these feelings? No. I don’t think that is fair to assume.
I’ve seen countless attacks on him. And the loudest are by “therapy” creators I do not follow on purpose. Which I find ironic. They’ve been cancelled before, and now they jump on the bandwagon to cancel someone else so they can gain followers, I am certain.
Bottom line:
His overly sexual “advice” comment on Threads was extremely inappropriate. Full stop.
He’s a content creator. He feels compelled to speak about current topics related to men’s sexuality. I do not think his post about rape fantasy was inherently bad, or negative, or cancel worthy. I think he was wrong, and he took accountability and corrected it. He listened to the thousands of comments and posts about it. As I said before, I can see his thought process about sexual OCD and how he got it mixed up. It’s a critical thing to mix up, don’t get me wrong. But he heard others and responded. Do I think it’s fair to say that he has rape fantasies or is a sexual predator? No.
I’m not standing up for him. I don’t know him. I’ve never met him. I like his videos, they have helped me, and they have helped others. My point is that we need to be more careful about the amount of importance we give these content creators. After all, they are making money from our views and engagement.
Sometimes that content is helpful and teaches us something.
And sometimes that content is shocking, or fuels rage, and spreads misinformation.
Guess which one makes more money?
