Do I hate my job, or am I just in the wrong place?

Someone asks what you do for a living.

“I work with kids,” you say.

“Aww, that’s awesome!” they say. “That must be so rewarding.”

And you smile and nod, because what are you supposed to say? Not really. Most days I dread going in. I count the hours. I fantasize about quitting in the parking lot.

You don’t say that part out loud. You just carry it home with you, and it sits there, heavy, while you wonder what’s wrong with you. Everyone else seems to love this work. The mission matters. The people you serve need you. So why do you feel like this?

Here’s a question worth sitting with: do you actually hate this work, or are you just in the wrong place?

They feel the same at 6 a.m. when your alarm goes off. But they’re not the same thing.

Hating the work vs. hating the place

Hating the work tends to look like this: the population doesn’t move you. The day-to-day drains you even on the good days. You’ve tried different roles, different agencies, and the feeling follows you. It’s not the supervisor, it’s not the shift, it’s not the paperwork — it’s the work itself, and somewhere in you, you’ve known that for a while.

Being in the wrong place tends to look like this: you care about the work, but everything around it is breaking you. The agency is chaotic. Leadership is absent or toxic. You’re understaffed every single shift. The policies exist on paper, but nobody follows them. You go home angry at the system, not at the people you serve.

Most people I talk to are in the second group. They don’t hate the work. They hate where they’re doing it.

The agency matters as much as the job title

Here’s what nobody tells you when you’re new: the agency matters as much as the job title. Two BHTs can have the same role, the same population, the same pay — and one is thriving while the other is barely surviving. The difference is almost always the organization around them. Clear expectations. Real supervision. Policies that actually get followed. Leadership that backs you up when a shift goes sideways.

When you’re new to this field, you don’t know what a healthy agency looks like yet. So the chaos starts to feel normal. The dread starts to feel like just part of the job.

It isn’t.

Questions worth asking yourself

I’ve watched a lot of good people leave this field over the wrong problem. So if any of this sounds familiar, it might be worth wondering:

• On your best days there, does the work itself still matter to you?
• Are you exhausted by the people you serve — or exhausted by the adults running the place?
• If you did this same job at a well-run agency, do you think you’d feel different?
• Have you ever actually seen what a functional program looks like?

If what you’re feeling points more to the place than the work itself — that’s worth knowing. It changes what you do next.

What a healthy agency actually looks like

The hard part is that nobody teaches you how to read an agency. You’re just supposed to know.

So here’s where to start. In a well-run program, you’ll usually see:

• Expectations that are the same for everyone. Ask ten staff how incidents get reported, and you’ll hear the same answer ten times.
• Supervision that actually happens. It’s scheduled, it’s regular, and it’s not only when something goes wrong.
• Policies that get followed — by leadership too. Not just written down and signed at orientation.
• Handoffs that work. You walk into your shift knowing what happened on the last one.
• Bad news that’s safe to bring. When you report a problem, the first response is “thank you for telling me,” not blame.
• Training before you’re on your own. You’re not learning the job in the middle of a crisis.

If you’re interviewing somewhere new, ask: What does orientation and training look like? How often will I have supervision? What do your strongest employees do differently? How they answer tells you a lot about how the place runs.

Know what you’re looking at

That’s why I wrote Why We Do It This Way: The Frontline Guide to Behavioral Health Policies — so people new to this field don’t have to learn it the hard way, one bad job at a time.

It’s the stuff I wish someone had handed me before my first shift: how behavioral health organizations actually work, what the policies mean for your day, and why they exist in the first place. It comes with a companion workbook that includes real shift scenarios, interview prep, and the questions to ask so you know how an agency really runs.

You don’t have to love where you are right now. But you get to choose where you go next — and it’s a lot easier to choose well when you know what you’re looking at.

There’s nothing wrong with leaving a bad fit. The trick is knowing what you’re actually leaving.

Get the guide →