Why we built Three Sides

I wanted to learn psychodynamic therapy. What graduate school offered was a caricature of it: a brief overview and nothing contemporary. Mostly it showed me the limits of graduate-level training.

I looked for an internship with a psychodynamic supervisor and could not find one locally. I did as much self-directed learning as I could through books, articles, podcasts, and interviews on YouTube. What I could not find was anyone to practice with, explore the ideas with, or talk through the literature with.

In the comments under those YouTube videos, I started interacting with another graduate student. We found literature we could use to practice psychodynamic techniques together and began meeting over Zoom.

CBT training may be easier to find than psychodynamic training, but graduate students can struggle to explore any approach in depth. Cohorts are small, and classmates naturally have different interests. Finding someone who wants to study the same ideas, discuss the literature, and practice techniques together can be difficult.

That difficulty continues beyond graduation. Conferences, paid trainings, training centers, and message boards can introduce you to therapists who share your interests and enthusiasm. But geography, cost, and scheduling can make it hard to turn those introductions into an ongoing partnership.

Three Sides helps students and practicing clinicians find practice partners who share their interests in particular approaches, clinical topics, and populations. You can browse profiles, message each other, and arrange online meetings to discuss readings and practice techniques. That makes it easier to build an ongoing learning partnership beyond your cohort or local professional network.

The guides in Learn are introductions, but we’ve made a deliberate effort to avoid oversimplifying or misrepresenting the approaches they cover. Our aim is to present each approach as contemporary practitioners understand and practice it, while recognizing the diversity of thought and technique within each tradition. Each guide explores the core ideas, follows a fictional client through a course of therapy, and breaks down key clinical skills into pieces you can rehearse. The goal is to provide a thoughtful foundation for practicing with a partner, not to substitute for formal training or the depth of an entire therapeutic tradition. For those who want to explore further, each guide points to books, articles, podcasts, and recordings that inform the work of clinicians practicing within that approach.