Welcome to your BCBA Reality Check
At times, we get blindsided by life.
We accept a job, get into a relationship, plan a trip—and halfway through we're thinking, “Wait... this is NOT what I signed up for.”
These instances, folks, are the nasty byproducts of our fuzzy expectations.
We set fuzzy expectations all the time. Fuzzy expectations are everywhere. Kind of like glitter—once you let 'em loose, they're impossible to clean up.
I harp on setting clear expectations all the time. Probably too much. But there’s a reason: most things that implode—jobs, relationships, vacations, birthday parties—implode because someone pictured something totally different than what actually showed up.
We’re all guilty. We script a version of how things should go. We romanticize. We dream. We assume.
And then reality struts in—completely off-script—and we're left holding disappointment in one hand and resentment in the other.
Sometimes we fall for the illusion of “This job should have been different.”
It’s not that we’re dumb. It’s just that when we’re new to something—a role, a company, a relationship—we don't know what we don't know. So we imagine a glossy version of reality. But glossy isn't real.
Real is beautiful, but messy. Real has curveballs. For BCBAs, real includes that one RBT who rolls her eyes during feedback or that parent who sends six paragraph emails…every…single…day.
If you didn’t expect those things? They’ll wreck your day. Your week. Maybe your whole outlook on the job.
One should dream, but one should monitor the quality of their expectations as well.
And expectations aren’t always bad. In fact, some expectations are fair.
If you're a BCBA and you expected a reasonable caseload, not one that could double as a census for a small town—then yeah, your expectations aren’t the issue.
If you expected supervision and instead got ghosted by your clinical director every week? Again, your expectations are valid.
But—and this is huge—some challenges are just baked into having a caseload as a BCBA. Leadership in ABA comes with weird emails, miscommunications, occasional disrespect, lots of “Can you believe that person did that?!”, and—every so often—people being really vicious jerks for no apparent reason.
One of the most terrific mistakes a BCBA makes is they make the “They can’t talk to me like that…” approach.
As such, one of the hardest pill to swallow is that people can, and often will, talk to you in disrespectful ways you didn’t sign up for.
And, yet, while it sucks—it’s also real. And real is beautiful, even if it’s hard.
We don’t get to control an RBT’s words, a co-BCBA’s moods, or a parent’s unresolved childhood trauma. What we do get to control is our response.
That’s where the magic happens.
The job isn’t about avoiding rude people. It’s about growing the muscle that lets you respond to them like a professional—even when you really want to respond like a WWE wrestler.
So, you have to take a little time to reframe your attitude with annoyance.
List the things about your role that annoy the crap out of you: long emails, defensive staff, difficult parents, documentation, late cancellations, etc.
Now ask yourself: what if those things weren’t annoyances? What if these “annoyances” were my direct path to clinical and professional excellence?
What if they were reps at the gym? What if they were like those ramps that speed you up in Mariokart? What if these “annoyances” are discrete trials on your way to being the best BCBA you can be?
And that’s not to fool your brain into doing something you know it doesn’t want to do. I can speak for all kinds of ABA leadership out there running clinics and organizations nation-wide. Give me the BCBA that looks at the hard things as a way to excellence. I’ll hire that BCBA 100 times over.
The more you lift these kinds of weights, the stronger you get. The better you get. The more confident and competent you become.
And that feeling of confidence and competence is a real reinforcer.
Over time, those stressors become steps. You walk 'em. You climb. And one day you realize you’re really freaking good at this.
And life? Life feels solid.
Martin Myers is a BCBA with a passion for helping improve the field of ABA. He is the creator of BxMastery, with over 4,000 goal ideas, sequenced, to inspire your programming. With 10+ years of experience in the field, he’s dedicated to empowering others and fostering positive change through effective leadership and communication. Connect with Martin on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for more insights and updates.