When I was a budding psychotherapist, I understood the importance of developing the capacity to handle difficult emotions and account for every feeling that might be present in a given situation. Although feeling guilty, embarrassed or small whenever I made a mistake was very difficult to digest, a small voice in my head would say, “It’s okay, you are still in the learning space.” It was almost like an excuse I gave myself, one that helped maintain my identity and prevented the mistake from feeling like a threat to who I was.

But you do not always remain at that level. Years go by, the number of clients increases, you learn new skills, and before you know it, you are viewed as a reliable, dependable and referable psychotherapist. Although we may have done significant personal work and explored our injunctions and script beliefs, we continue to have limitations and vulnerabilities that can emerge in certain situations. As we become more visible within our professional circles, we may feel the need to maintain a one-up position, especially when others expect us to know better and do better.

We can begin to feel constantly watched. People look up to us and compare us with other professionals. This can threaten our Child ego state, and as a form of protection, we may feel compelled to wear a mask — a mask that never shows defeat, never reveals failure, does not appear easily threatened and can deny or deflect when under attack.

The mask of professional visibility

Let me paint you a picture and invite you to sit with what happens internally in such a situation. Imagine you are a well-known psychotherapist in your community. You are invited to facilitate a topic in front of a large gathering. You feel confident — you have prepared well. But during the group discussion, a participant challenges your thinking or openly disagrees with something you have presented.

What happens within you, and what are the first thoughts that run through your mind? When you feel challenged, do you still have the capacity to self-reflect, or do you take the easier route of challenging them back? In those intense moments, we may struggle to access our Adult capacity to remain in the here and now and process the emotions and thoughts being triggered. Instead, we may become highly conscious of how others are looking at us and what they might be thinking, and as a form of protection, we instantly put on the mask to hide our vulnerability.

Real-life ethical confrontations

In a workshop, I witnessed a participant share that he sensed a disconnect with the facilitator during a particular part of the teaching. The facilitator responded quickly, suggesting that perhaps it was the participant’s own material that led him to experience it that way. The speed of the reply made me wonder whether there had been even a brief moment of self-reflection before responding. This reflection helped me understand that, as professionals, we may not always retain the capacity to tolerate the emotional activation that ethical confrontation can trigger.

It is not enough to teach ethical principles; we must also consider whether we have the psychological capacity to engage with them when we are placed in real-life situations. In one of my sessions, a client challenged my ethical practice, and I found myself torn between denying the concern and acknowledging my mistake. The experience felt almost unbearable because I sensed that if I accepted my mistake, I might fall into a dark tunnel from which I would not easily recover. In that moment, my mind instinctively moved toward intellectualizing the situation, reversing blame and even subtly gaslighting in order to protect myself.

Fortunately, I was also able to remain sufficiently in my Adult ego state to face the difficult emotions that were being activated. I stayed with the discomfort, continued to self-reflect and allowed myself to remain curious about my internal process rather than defending against it.

Building capacity for ethical dialogue

This experience led me to realize that ethical dialogue requires more than knowledge or skill. It requires:

• Affective tolerance
• Shame resilience
• Decontamination of Adult functioning
• The capacity to remain in relationship under threat

The capacity for ethical dialogue is developmental and requires ongoing psychological integration. If we are to take ethics seriously, we must recognize that knowledge of ethical principles alone is insufficient. Ethical competence depends on the practitioner’s capacity to remain psychologically regulated in moments of confrontation. As members of a professional community, this invites us to reflect on how we foster environments that support ongoing personal integration, not merely technical competence. Ethics then becomes an embodied practice — one that requires humility, self-awareness and the willingness to remain open when challenged.