214. Too Buddhist, Not Self-Hating Enough: Counseling Whistleblower Suzannah Alexander
Download MP3In this episode, I sit down with Suzannah Alexander — counseling-education whistleblower, writer of the Substack Diogenes in Exile, and now organizer with the National Association of Scholars. Suzannah enrolled in a Tennessee counseling master's program after 25 years as a stay-at-home parent, only to discover that what was being taught wasn't psychology at all. It was demographics, identity politics, and what she eventually came to call a totalitarian philosophy dressed up as "multicultural competency."
We unpack the moment that broke her trust in the program: when she described the Buddhist practice of the non-self — focusing less on your own identity so you can extend loving kindness toward an aggressive client — three separate professors told her, within 48 hours, that this was "invalidating to other identities." She was ultimately deemed unsafe for practicum because she hadn't sufficiently absorbed the program's values around whiteness, privilege, and cultural deference.
From there, the conversation widens into the structural picture. Suzannah walks us through CACREP, the accrediting body that's been quietly building a near-monopoly on counseling education, the ACA Code of Ethics that's now baked into most state licensure boards, and the consortium of organizations that decided — without testing whether any of it produces better clinical outcomes — that critical social justice ideology would be the "professional identity" of American counseling.
We talk about why this matters for patients, what it does to the people who would have been excellent therapists, how we might build alternative training pathways and apprenticeship models outside the current system, and why the problems of the 21st century — including AI psychosis — will demand the kind of pioneering, free-thinking practitioners this ideology is actively driving out.
Suzannah Alexander is the External Affairs Coordinator for the National Association of Scholars. She came to this work after blowing the whistle on ideological indoctrination in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Master's program at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Since that experience, through work with FAIR, she has spearheaded OCR complaints against the counseling accreditation body CACREP and Colorado State University, where her reporting work drew attention to the Whitelash Study, documenting public humiliation of white social work students due to their race, and the disparagement of minorities as not good enough to succeed on their own. Now she is focused on policy measures to curtail accreditor and higher education overreach that are threatening free speech on campus.
Substack Diogenes in Exile: https://www.diogenesinexile.com
X/twitter: https://x.com/DiogenesInExile
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DiogenesInExile
Minding The Campus: https://mindingthecampus.org/author/suzannahalexander/
National Association of Scholars: https://www.nas.org
[00:00:00] Start
[00:04:59] What She Found In The Program
[00:14:32] Steel-Manning Critical Social Justice
[00:18:39] Pushed Out Before Practicum
[00:24:05] The Bitter Irony Of Buddhism Rejected
[00:34:37] Realizing The Problem Is Bigger
[00:41:02] Counseling Futures And The Historical Roots
[00:47:09] Who Gets To Be Okay?
[00:56:37] What CACREP Is And Should Do
[01:00:25] Microaggressions And Borderline Thinking
[01:05:47] The CACREP Monopoly Explained
[01:14:38] ACA Code Of Ethics And The Need For Alternatives
[01:22:52] Mia Hughes Parallel And A Field Breaking Down
[01:26:43] AI Psychosis And 21st-Century Problems
[01:30:22] Building New Networks Outside The System
ROGD REPAIR Course + Community gives concerned parents instant access to over 120 lessons providing the psychological insights and communication tools you need to get through to your kid. Now featuring 24/7 personalized AI support implementing the tools with RepairBot! Use code SOMETHERAPIST2026 to take 50% off your first month.
We unpack the moment that broke her trust in the program: when she described the Buddhist practice of the non-self — focusing less on your own identity so you can extend loving kindness toward an aggressive client — three separate professors told her, within 48 hours, that this was "invalidating to other identities." She was ultimately deemed unsafe for practicum because she hadn't sufficiently absorbed the program's values around whiteness, privilege, and cultural deference.
From there, the conversation widens into the structural picture. Suzannah walks us through CACREP, the accrediting body that's been quietly building a near-monopoly on counseling education, the ACA Code of Ethics that's now baked into most state licensure boards, and the consortium of organizations that decided — without testing whether any of it produces better clinical outcomes — that critical social justice ideology would be the "professional identity" of American counseling.
We talk about why this matters for patients, what it does to the people who would have been excellent therapists, how we might build alternative training pathways and apprenticeship models outside the current system, and why the problems of the 21st century — including AI psychosis — will demand the kind of pioneering, free-thinking practitioners this ideology is actively driving out.
Suzannah Alexander is the External Affairs Coordinator for the National Association of Scholars. She came to this work after blowing the whistle on ideological indoctrination in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Master's program at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Since that experience, through work with FAIR, she has spearheaded OCR complaints against the counseling accreditation body CACREP and Colorado State University, where her reporting work drew attention to the Whitelash Study, documenting public humiliation of white social work students due to their race, and the disparagement of minorities as not good enough to succeed on their own. Now she is focused on policy measures to curtail accreditor and higher education overreach that are threatening free speech on campus.
Substack Diogenes in Exile: https://www.diogenesinexile.com
X/twitter: https://x.com/DiogenesInExile
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DiogenesInExile
Minding The Campus: https://mindingthecampus.org/author/suzannahalexander/
National Association of Scholars: https://www.nas.org
[00:00:00] Start
[00:04:59] What She Found In The Program
[00:14:32] Steel-Manning Critical Social Justice
[00:18:39] Pushed Out Before Practicum
[00:24:05] The Bitter Irony Of Buddhism Rejected
[00:34:37] Realizing The Problem Is Bigger
[00:41:02] Counseling Futures And The Historical Roots
[00:47:09] Who Gets To Be Okay?
[00:56:37] What CACREP Is And Should Do
[01:00:25] Microaggressions And Borderline Thinking
[01:05:47] The CACREP Monopoly Explained
[01:14:38] ACA Code Of Ethics And The Need For Alternatives
[01:22:52] Mia Hughes Parallel And A Field Breaking Down
[01:26:43] AI Psychosis And 21st-Century Problems
[01:30:22] Building New Networks Outside The System
ROGD REPAIR Course + Community gives concerned parents instant access to over 120 lessons providing the psychological insights and communication tools you need to get through to your kid. Now featuring 24/7 personalized AI support implementing the tools with RepairBot! Use code SOMETHERAPIST2026 to take 50% off your first month.
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Show notes & transcript provided with the help of SwellAI.
Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, “Half Awake,” used with gratitude and permission.
Show notes & transcript provided with the help of SwellAI.
Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, “Half Awake,” used with gratitude and permission.
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