Trained to Betray: How Ideologically Captured Counselor Training Hurts Vulnerable Kids - Part 3
Therapists are being forced to adopt radical beliefs—or risk their careers, with kids caught in the crossfire.
When Mary and Jeremy Cox were court-ordered into family therapy—and banned from discussing their faith at home to avoid "harming" their gender-confused son—they had no idea they’d walked into a trap set years earlier in a university classroom.
Since 1988, major counseling organizations—including the accrediting body, licensing boards, and professional associations—have worked to restructure the field around multicultural ideology. The foundational document Counseling Futures explicitly calls for therapists to adopt and impose these values on clients.
To achieve this, counseling professionals created research to legitimize these values, accreditors restructured counselor education to ensure ideological alignment, and educators imposed these standards onto unsuspecting students and, ultimately, the general public.
Their vision was to improve society, and they were certain they knew exactly how to do it.
Indoctrination Into a Critical Theories Worldview
Fast forward to today, and not only do parents have to worry that a therapist may deem them unfit, but school counselors across the nation are bringing their ideological training into K-12 schools—in some cases, facilitating children’s gender transitions without informing parents.
These multicultural values, along with a drive to promote social justice, permeate counseling literature—from CACREP standards to the ACA Code of Ethics to textbooks used in every CACREP-accredited program, all 983 of them serving over 70,000 students each year.
The most ideologically charged coursework, the Multicultural Counseling class, lays out a worldview steeped in critical race theory, intersectionality, and social justice activism. Let’s examine how these concepts shape counselor training.
Redefining Reality From Racism to Gender Ideology
Counseling texts define racism not as individual prejudice but as an embedded system. The textbook, Developing a Multicultural Counseling Competence, 4th Edition states:
White supremacy is the framework that sustains racism and affords racial privilege to White people and those who approximate White.
This framework assumes that racial disparities are proof of systemic oppression rather than a complex mix of factors.
Similarly, Culturally Alert Counseling (3rd Edition) redefines racism:
Racism is inevitably tied to the concept of race because race has historically been associated with notions of inferiority and superiority. Racism can most simply be defined as prejudice plus power… The essential feature of racism is not hostility or misperception, but rather the defense of a system from which advantage is derived on the basis of race
Under this lens, students are evaluated on their ability to become "racially self-aware" and to recognize their own role in systemic oppression—a disposition they must demonstrate to advance in their training.
Microaggressions, as defined in counseling texts, are subtle, often unintentional slights that reinforce oppression. Because these incidents are vague and subjective, the concept invites paranoia—turning everyday interactions into racial offenses.
Intersectionality, another dominant framework, teaches counselors to view clients through an oppression hierarchy. The more marginalized identities a person claims, the greater their presumed victimhood—encouraging external blame over personal agency.
Nowhere is this shift toward activism more apparent than in counseling's approach to gender issues. The DMCC, 4th Edition states:
"Movement away from the focus on gender as a dichotomous construct will allow research to support practice based in activism to support gender equity."
In other words, rather than approaching gender dysphoria with a neutral, exploratory stance, counselors are expected to affirm and advocate. This trend has already led to real-world consequences, as families like the Coxes face government overreach due to their unwillingness to conform.
The Shift From Therapy to Activism
Counseling was once dedicated to mental well-being and individual empowerment. Today, ideological mandates have consumed that mission.
This passage in Counseling the Culturally Diverse by Derald Sue details the full intent:
A social justice counseling approach emphasizes that problems do not necessarily reside in individuals alone but may be externally located in organizations and the social system. A social justice approach has several overarching goals:
1. to produce conditions that allow for equal access and opportunity;
2. to eliminate disparities in education, health care, employment, and other areas that lower the quality of life for marginalized groups;
3. to encourage mental health professionals to consider individual, group, community, institutional, and societal levels in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of clients and client systems;
4. to broaden the role of the helping professional to include not only counselor/therapist but also advocate, consultant, psychoeducator, change agent, community worker, and so on.
According to this approach, therapists are expected to act as advocates and activists rather than neutral mental health professionals. Yet counselor training does not include coursework on reforming institutions or navigating economic and governmental structures. Instead, students are simply trained to view these systems as oppressive and in need of radical change.
Like all utopian fantasies, this plan is impossible to accomplish and severe collateral damage will result from any such attempt. Tragically, that damage is already piling up. The Cox family is not alone in their battle to keep their children out of government hands.
There is no firm count on how many children or vulnerable young adults have been sterilized as a result of this ideology. However, cases in Florida, Montana, and Ohio illustrate the impossible situations parents face when the state gets involved in gender-related medical decisions.
A Call for Ethical Counseling Practices
While the counseling profession claims to promote client well-being, its increasing focus on activism shows the ethical bankruptcy of training programs. Parents and ethical practitioners must push back—by advocating for the dissolution of CACREP.
Restoring ethical boundaries in counseling requires vigilance, civic involvement, and a return to the core mission: helping individuals navigate personal challenges without coercion or ideological imposition.
Jump to - When Straight A’s Aren’t Enough: The ‘Disposition’ Scam in Universities - Part 1
Trained to Obey: Required Grading of Counseling Students on ‘Dispositions’ Part 2.
How Therapy Became a Re-Education Camp — CACREP Dispositions Part 4
The Psychological Takeover: How Therapy is Becoming a Tool of Oppression, Dispositions - Part 5
Further Reading
Counseling the Culturally Diverse 9th Edition by Derald Wing Sue
Culturally Alert Counseling 3rd Edition
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About
Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.
Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.
You can also find my work at Minding the Campus
Thank you for foghting back. No one should be forced to co-parent with the government.