Who is TikTok therapist Shabree Rawls and was she really fired over a video?

Shabree Rawls — or as she is known on TikTok, @Unusuallybree — is really, really tired of the vitriol coming her way. The former psychologist has been on TikTok since 2021, but it seems that her time on the app may be coming to an end, and no, it wasn’t because she was canceled.

Why was Shabree Rawls fired over a TikTok?

It comes from almost a year of online abuse stemming from a fairly innocuous stitch  she made in response to @KieraBreaugh, who was commenting on a Psychology Today article titled, “The Rise of Lonely Single Men.” For reference, the brief article details a rise in loneliness in younger and middle-aged men. The article states that 62% of dating app users are men and that is only increasing as women raise the bar on what they want in a partner. Consistently, women are looking for partners who are emotionally available, which the author calls, a “Relationship skill gap.” Young girls are taught to communicate and use empathy, a skill that, even today, is still not widely taught to young boys.

The author, Greg Matos, suggests that the easiest way for men to get ahead in the dating world is some individual therapy to help them learn to effectively communicate, and to view time invested in intimacy, romance, and emotional connection as “Worthy of your time and effort.”

Shabree Rawls completely agrees with Matos’ take – even after it tanked her career. In an expletive-filled TikTok she encourages men to get the help they need in order to live their fullest life. She finishes her rant with, “Men truly just need to extend their emotional vocabulary so they can flourish and have meaningful healthy relationships. But instead, ya’ll listening to these Kevin Samuels-ass mother f*ckers, and it’s leaving you 50 and alone. Fix it.”

Her video went viral, but not because there was a sudden outpouring of support for mental health. Rawls says that her work is primarily within the Black Community and viewers saw her calls for awareness as an assault on the Black men she works with daily. In a statement from Rawls herself, the therapist explained that she was quickly awash with death and rape threats. What some called accountability was to the victim an onslaught of abuse.

Things only intensified after Rawls dug her heels in, refusing to apologize for what she said. The video is still available on her account, even now. Rawls doesn’t see the video as the problem. As she sees it, “…The reason I was punished online was because of my delivery. It wasn’t what I said, it was how I said it.“

It was a Black female journalist that doxed Rawl, something that she refers to as, “a complete betrayal.” Rawls says that it was incredibly painful to see her own community, one she had dedicated her work to, rejoice in her suffering. By week’s end, she had been terminated from her position, which she claims came from repeated swatting rather than ethical violations.

The TikTok may have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, but it wasn’t the first time Rawls had been questioned over her influencer status. After her firing, several industry professionals weighed in, saying that there were multiple incidents within Rawls’ videos that constituted a breach in the APA’s Code of Ethics. The most cited ethical breach: discrimination against the demographic Rawls worked with the most – Black men. While opinions expressed on personal social media accounts are typically outside of the APA’s jurisdiction, Rawls’ insistence on labeling herself a therapist on her social media profiles opened them up to professional scrutiny. While Rawls did have the right to social media, she perhaps should have considered a bit more extensively the consequences her unrestrained personality might have on her career.

What is Shabree Rawls doing now?

After losing her job, Rawls released a statement detailing her side of the story. She mentioned the clients she was unable to continue working with saying, “These same people had their therapy services abruptly terminated and have been the most harmed by everything that happened since I posted that video. These are people I maintained therapeutic relationships with for over five years, and they didn’t even have a say in the decision to fire me.”

She continued that her mannerisms did not reflect the message she was sending, but that she wouldn’t apologize for being her true self, a self that her clients were well aware of when they chose her to be their therapist. She said that her passion came from “being tired of Black men dying.”

Rawls is still an active presence on TikTok, though her videos deal more with her own mental health struggles than what she practices in her therapy sessions. She speaks openly about the weight she feels and the hard work she has put into simply existing after her life collapsed around her. While she still gets hateful comments on her social media accounts and regularly thinks about giving up, Rawls has stuck with her influencer profiles. After almost a year, Rawls says she’s had an influx of male followers, many of whom are apologizing for ruining her life. But Rawls isn’t in a forgiving place. As she rounds on thirty she has one piece of advice for people who are still feeling the pressure of bullies. “Do not suppress yourself just because someone says you should.”