Therapy Jeff Is Not Your Therapist

There are some big differences between Jeff Guenther, LPC, and Therapy Jeff.

Jeff Guenther is a licensed professional counselor in Portland with a 20-year private practice. Therapy Jeff is a mental health influencer with nearly 3 million followers on TikTok and 1.4 million on Instagram.

Jeff Guenther, LPC, speaks calmly, traces current relationship challenges back to your family of origin, and might make you cry. Therapy Jeff speed-talks and distills complicated psychological concepts into one-to-three-minute videos. (Recent videos include: “Three ways you’re accidentally sabotaging your dating life,” “How to stop ruminating,” and “What is the No. 1 habit that makes relationships feel safe and satisfying?”)

Jeff Guenther, LPC, is paid for 50-minute sessions by insurance companies or out of pocket. Therapy Jeff has current brand deals with Netflix and the dating app Feeld, plus previous sponsored content for Amazon, Hulu, various meditation apps, and sex toy companies.

But the biggest difference? Therapy Jeff is not your therapist. (Not unless you happen to be one of the five to eight couples or individuals he still sees in private practice in his Northeast Portland living room.) Lots of people see his addictive, accessible, charming TikTok content and reach out asking if he will treat them. This would be a bad idea, he says.

“You are going to be so disappointed,” Guenther says. “And you already have a parasocial relationship with me, and I don’t even know how to fucking manage that. I didn’t learn this in grad school.”

No, safe to say that the early-2000s marriage and family therapy master’s program at the University of Southern California did not cover parasocial relationships with TikTok influencers, which is when someone has a one-sided bond with a media figure who does not know they exist. Guenther stopped taking new clients after he went viral in 2021—which happened the very first week he started posting.

Parasocial relationships are just one of many ethical conundrums that have come up for Guenther during the past five years. A “follow” on social media does not constitute a therapeutic relationship, surely…but what if the follower is paying for his premium content?

Another biggie: Heavy social media use is associated with an increased risk of depression and anxiety. So isn’t there a conflict with creating content that attracts and keeps people on social media?

“Yeah, I think it’s a conflict for me and all the other therapists and mental health creators online,” Guenther says. That said, “if you’re going to get therapy content, you should at least get it from a professional.”

Guenther, 45, says he gets recognized about half the time he leaves his house. His fans call themselves “Jeffies,” and they are 85% women between the ages of 25 and 44.

He doesn’t get recognized during a coffee meeting on a drizzly December afternoon in Irvington, though he is wearing nearly full Therapy Jeff regalia: a ’90s band shirt (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and a button (“My Name Is Jonas,” a Weezer reference), but no nail polish today.

Guenther’s fondness for ’90s culture is a big part of the Therapy Jeff brand; the thumbnail images for his Instagram Reels look as if the opening credits of Saved By the Bell barfed all over his grid. Some of the icons of that era love him right back: When asked who the most famous Jeffies are, he cites Alanis Morissette, Jewel, American Pie actor Jason Biggs, and the lead singer of the band Nada Surf. (Bestselling self-help author Brené Brown’s star rose later, but she’s a fan too.)

Guenther grew up in Santa Monica, Calif. An interest in relationships started young when he listened in secret to the seminal call-in radio show Loveline in his bunk bed starting in fourth grade. Guenther moved to Portland in 2005 after finishing his master’s degree, based only on the cool vibe he got from another therapist in his program who was from here. He got married to writer Kate Happ in 2013. They divorced in 2020.

He worked at a crisis hotline before settling into private practice, specializing in treating couples or individuals who feel anxious in relationships. He started making therapy videos online as a creative exercise to while away time during the pandemic. Anxiety was spiking and therapy was trending. Guenther had always had a talent for coming up with helpful one-liners for his clients, a knack that readily lent itself to social media.

After he first went viral, his own mental health cratered.

He ruminated at night on negative comments he’d received—whether it was about his content, his appearance or the way he talked—and struggled to get enough sleep. One commenter asked why he had no eyebrows, something Guenther says he’d never thought about before. He bought eyebrow serum. He thought about quitting 10 times.

“If there were just thousands of people giving you unfiltered feedback, isn’t there a part of you that would be interested in what the world actually thinks? What a gift!” he says. “It’s not a gift. Don’t do it.”

Therapy Jeff’s most popular content are numbered lists, often of questions people should ask themselves. “Ten questions to ask your partner before you move in with them” is a classic, and “15 questions you should easily be able to answer if you’re truly connected to your partner.” He loathes Mel Robbins of The Let Them Theory fame, and his videos calling her out as a “life-coach grifter” perform well too. He delivers these missives in front of a purple wall in his home, decorated with plants, fuzzy dice and cassette tapes. He’s a one-man band, writing, editing, producing, shooting and adding captions himself for about six videos a week. (He employs a manager to help with sponsored content.)

As the comments and brand deals flooded in, the publishing industry took notice. He signed a six-figure book deal. Big Dating Energy came out in 2024 with ex-wife Happ as co-author. (The two also still share a phone plan and a 9-year-old Labradoodle named Josh.)

Writing the book with her ex was “a ton of fun,” Happ tells WW via email.

“I’m fully confident we could not have done it while married. We were able to tap into the twinlike shorthand you develop when you live with someone without the emotional overhead of still living with them,” she writes. “One point of contention in our marriage was my unpaid labor on his projects. Getting generously paid this time was both satisfying and therapeutic. Money can buy healing!”

The money is irregular, and Guenther is aware it could disappear at any time, whether because he burns out or the algorithms change. All of the platforms to which he posts videos pay him—some based on views, and some throw in a little extra since he’s making educational content. TikTok is the most lucrative now, though when he started, Instagram paid more. Some months he makes $3,000, others he rakes in $50,000. He’s working on creating his own platform or app or paywall, which would be the next step for any big content creator like Therapy Jeff.

Portland psychologist Kyler Shumway is newer to the influencer game. His account, The Hungry Psychologist, combines therapy basics with cooking into three- to five-minute videos, such as one where he bakes banana bread while using the browning bananas as a metaphor for body acceptance. Shumway launched six months ago and now has about 13,000 followers across three platforms.

He loves the medium for being able to reach zoned-out doomscrollers who might need therapy but wouldn’t admit it or seek it out; using cooking is kind of inviting them in through a side door. He offers helpful insights and evidence-based education while validating viewers’ feelings. “I wanted a way to share those things in a format that was easy to digest, in more ways than one,” he says.

Shumway doesn’t know Guenther personally, but he admires the Therapy Jeff account, which made him smile during the dark days of the pandemic.

“He’s an incredibly skilled communicator, marketer, and entertainer,” Shumway says.

Another reason: The first video on Therapy Jeff’s accounts makes it clear that his content isn’t meant to replace mental health care and that he is not working as a therapist for his viewers. The real risk of mental health influencers on social media, Shumway says, is misinformation and false authority. (Shumway is chair of the public education committee for the Oregon Psychological Association.)

“For every creator like Jeff or myself, there are dozens of people spreading ideas that sound authoritative but aren’t grounded in evidence or ethical training,” Shumway tells WW.

What Jeff Guenther, LPC, does for clients in long-term therapy is very different than what Therapy Jeff does in short-form videos. They don’t have equal value, but they do both have value.

If this were a Therapy Jeff video, it would be “Four things a mental health influencer tells himself to justify his career.”

1. If licensed therapists didn’t make content, then other unlicensed people would, and it wouldn’t be scientifically backed.

2. He’s lowering the barrier to mental health content and broadening access.

3. He’s helping to destigmatize therapy.

4. Hopefully, people can use the videos to go forth and make positive changes in their lives.

Guenther leaves the coffee shop to shoot and edit a new video in his Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt. Today’s topic, shot and posted just in time for Christmas, is about dealing with family gatherings: “Three ways to calm yourself down when you’re hiding in the bathroom wondering how you’re related to these people.” He hopes it helps some Jeffies.

“I could totally just be telling myself this,” Guenther says. “But I think it can be true, some days. I like to see myself as a positive part of the internet. It’s not just brain rot.”