The Midcareer BCBA Values Check-In You Keep Putting Off

Somewhere between year five and year ten, a lot of BCBAs hit a quiet recalibration moment, the kind where the job still works on paper but feels off in the chest. You are good at your job. You hit your billables. You still care about the kids. And yet something has slipped sideways, and you keep putting off the conversation with yourself about why. This is a short check-in for that moment.

A quick note before we start. In the talk this page is built on, Megh Crowley asked the audience to drop their values in the chat. Words came in faster than she could read them. But she also said something that stuck with me, and I want you to hear it first, because it is probably the most honest sentence in the whole hour for the midcareer reader.

If you're having a hard time listing a value in the chat, perhaps making some space for that and thinking about what your values are as a clinician.

If that is you, you are not behind. You are exactly the person this page was written for.

Why Year Five to Ten Is When Values Drift Shows Up#

In your first three years, you are mostly trying to not drown. You are learning to write a treatment plan, run a parent meeting, manage a tech, and keep up with auths. Your values do not really get to talk yet because you are too busy trying not to mess up.

Year five to ten is different. You can write a treatment plan in your sleep. You know what the family is going to ask before they ask it. You have the bandwidth to notice things. And what a lot of BCBAs start to notice is a small, ugly gap between what their company says it does and what the family in front of them actually needs. Or a gap between the clinician they wanted to be in grad school and the clinician they have become by accident.

That gap is the drift. It does not mean you are broken. It means your values have gotten clearer, and your day job has not caught up.

The Two-Column Audit (Company on the Left, You on the Right)#

The simplest exercise from the talk is also the one most midcareer BCBAs skip, because it feels too basic. Do it anyway. Get a sheet of paper. Draw a line down the middle.

On the left, write your company's values. Not what the website says. What the company actually rewards. What gets you praised in a team meeting. What gets you a side-eye. If your company has no posted values, look at the intake packet, the training materials, the language in the parent handbook. The values are in there even if no one named them.

On the right, write your own values as a clinician. Not the ones that sound good. The ones you actually act on when nobody is watching. The ones that make you slow down with a family even when the schedule says speed up.

Now look at the two columns. Are they the same list? Mostly the same? Or are you looking at two different jobs?

That is your check-in. You do not need a workshop. You need a piece of paper.

Three Symptoms You Are Out of Sync (and What Each One Usually Means)#

Most midcareer BCBAs do not show up to this conversation saying "my values are misaligned." They show up with symptoms. Here are the three most common ones and what each tends to be pointing at.

You dread the parent meeting more than the session. When the clinical work still feels fine but the meeting with the family makes your stomach drop, that is usually a sign that the script your company hands you does not match what the parent in front of you needs. You are being asked to sell something you no longer fully believe.

You catch yourself softening the data. When you start hedging the graphs, downplaying ascent withdrawal, or quietly leaving things out of the report, that is rarely laziness. That is usually your gut telling you the program is technically working and ethically wobbly, and you do not have a safe place to say so out loud.

You start fantasizing about a totally different job. Coffee shop. Yoga teacher. Anything but this. That fantasy is rarely about leaving the field. It is usually about leaving the version of the field you are currently practicing. Big difference.

If you have one of these, you have drift. If you have two or three, the check-in is overdue.

What a Real Check-In Is Not (Updating Your Bio Does Not Count)#

This is the part of the talk that sat in my chest for a week. There is a version of values work that looks like values work and does nothing. Updating your LinkedIn bio. Adding pronouns to your email signature. Changing "client" to "learner" on the website. None of that is bad. None of that, by itself, is a check-in.

Megh said it plainer than I ever could.

Your values are not just something you add in at the end to make treatment sound nice. You need to live and breathe what your values are.

A real check-in changes how you run an intake. It changes which assessment you pick. It changes when you push back on an auth requirement. It changes which questions you skip and which ones you sit in for an extra ten minutes. If the only thing that changed after your "values work" was the wording on a slide, you did not do the check-in. You did the cosmetics.

The 30-Minute Exercise: Print Your Last Treatment Plan and Highlight#

Here is the exercise. Block thirty minutes. Print your most recent treatment plan. Two highlighters, two colors.

Color one: every line that exists because of the client and family in front of you. The specific kid. The specific kitchen. The specific bedtime. The specific reason mom is exhausted on Tuesdays.

Color two: every line that exists because of the template, the funder, the company packet, or because that is just what you always write.

Stand back and look at the page. What is the ratio? If color one is most of the plan, your values are showing up in your work. If color two is most of the plan, you are running a script. Neither answer is shameful. The first is just data.

This is what recalibration actually looks like in the talk. Megh described how her own intakes have changed.

The way that I learned to do intakes is very different than how I do them now. And I never would have considered, you know, putting my personality into an intake. I never would have considered skipping question three to go to 12 and then circling back to four and then to three.

That is not a small shift. That is a clinician whose values caught up to her practice. You can do that too. You just have to be willing to mark up the plan first.

What to Do With What You Find (Stay, Adjust Your Sphere, or Leave)#

When the check-in is honest, you usually end up in one of three places. None of them are wrong.

Stay and shape what you can. Most BCBAs do not actually need a new job. They need to use the influence they already have. You probably have more pull than you think over your own intakes, your own assessment choices, your own parent training, and what you teach your RBT to notice. Start there. Change one intake. Change one goal. Change one feedback conversation.

Adjust your sphere. Sometimes the company is fine and the caseload is wrong for you. Trade your school cases for in-home. Trade your feeding cases for early learners. Ask for cases that match the clinician you are becoming, not the one you were when you got hired.

Leave. Sometimes the two columns just do not reconcile. The company is selling something you no longer want to sell, and no amount of shaping is going to fix it. If that is the answer, the check-in did its job. Leaving is not failure. Leaving with a clear head, after an honest audit, is one of the most ethical things you can do.

Whichever path you pick, do not skip the part where it feels bad. The whole point of the check-in is that it surfaces things you would rather not look at.

Get comfortable being uncomfortable.

That is the line for the wall above your desk.

FAQ#

How do I know if I have outgrown my ABA company?

The cleanest tell is the two-column audit. If your column and the company's column have stopped overlapping, and the gap keeps showing up in concrete moments (the intake script, the goals you are asked to write, the feedback your supervisor gives you), you have probably outgrown the fit. One mismatch is a bad week. A pattern across cases is a signal.

Is it normal to feel disconnected from ABA after five years as a BCBA?

Yes, and it is usually not what people think. The disconnect is rarely from ABA the science. It is almost always from a specific version of ABA you are being asked to practice. That is good news, because it means you do not have to leave the field to feel like yourself again. You probably have to change what you do inside it.

What is the difference between burnout and a values mismatch for a BCBA?

Burnout is mostly about volume and recovery. Too many cases, too few breaks, not enough sleep. A values mismatch is about content. You can be well rested and still feel sick before a parent meeting. If a week of PTO makes you feel new again, it was probably burnout. If a week of PTO makes the dread sharper because you have to go back, it is probably a values mismatch. Different problem, different fix.

Next#

If the two-column audit was hard, start with sibling pages on naming what your values actually are. If it was easy and the answer was uncomfortable, the harder work is in front of you, not behind you. Either way, do not let this be the third time you put the check-in off.

Watch the full talk from Megh Crowley on openceu.com and bring the two-column audit with you.