Toxic culture and unqualified leadership - Counselor Pyramid Healthcare Employee Review

I worked on the clinical team for about a year and ultimately left due to an overwhelmingly toxic work culture. The leadership team severely lacks the professional maturity, ethical standards, and foundational clinical knowledge required in the mental health field. Fortunately, having previously worked exclusively under licensed, qualified supervisors, the glaring incompetency at this facility became apparent to me almost immediately. I strongly advise against Master's-level clinicians applying here. The management structure is deeply flawed and poses a liability to both staff and clients. Throughout my time there, management repeatedly demonstrated an inability to evaluate clinical competency due to a lack of advanced degrees and supervisory license in mental health among upper oversight. It was claimed by leadership that I was "not trained" to utilize Internal Family Systems (IFS) in sessions, then I actually had to teach them what IFS means. They were entirely unaware that these fundamentals are taught in Master's-level counseling theories and that I had extensively practiced them under the guidance of qualified licensed supervisors. Management projected their own lack of education and competency gaps onto qualified counselors, and they could not even find a connection between SUD and trauma. Thanks to my education that trained me well, clients’ amazing feedbacks and sustainable clinical outcomes, that I immediately recognized their incompetency. Executive leadership at facility appeared entirely preoccupied with internal office politics rather than clinical success, demonstrating a staggering lack of basic clinical education. It was explicitly stated to me by them that "we don't do trauma, we do crisis stabilization"—completely unaware that textbook clinical knowledge establishes crisis stabilization as the essential first phase of trauma work, especially practiced in SUD settings. The supervisory roles here desperately need to read some Gabor Mate books and attend workshops for licensed professionals to learn and stay updated in the field. The internal oversight is equally unqualified and lacks the fundamental competence necessary to safely, ethically, and effectively lead a clinical team. They thought IFS is family therapy. They talk down to people, mock and bully employees, gossip, and use oppressive language of the 1960s like "I will write you up," which is highly unprofessional. Overall, the rampant retaliatory behavior, absence of foundational clinical education among leadership, and severe lack of basic ethics make this facility an embarrassment to the mental health profession. This experience served as a hard-learned lesson for me to never work with unqualified and unlicensed supervisors again. You end up teaching more than actually learning. The entire system is broken, and it is absolutely not an appropriate environment for Master's-level clinicians.