[00:00:00] Linzy: Hello and welcome back to another Feelings and Finances episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. These are our short and sweet Friday episodes where I either answer a question from you, the listeners of the money skills for therapist podcast, or I share a little nugget, just a little short takeaway, about private practice and finances for you to take into the weekend.
[00:00:22] And today’s episode is one of the latter.Today, I’m going to talk about the second of the big mistakes that I made in my own private practice. And that mistake is one that pains me to think back on, because this is a really important thing for me and what I need is it was setting a schedule that did not actually suit my needs. So, there’s a few elements to this mistake for me.
[00:00:48] One was trying to see too many clients. That’s a big deal for me. And then the second piece is seeing clients at a time that didn’t really actually work for what I needed as a practitioner. So number one, seeing too many clients. When I was in private practice, there was this idea in my head. that a full caseload, you know, for a full time practitioner was like 18 or 20, something like that, right?
[00:01:14] So it’s like four clients a day, five days a week. I knew that if I did more than four sessions a day I tended to basically be a zombie afterwards. My partner would comment on this. If I had done a day where I, you know, tried to squish somebody in, fit in an extra appointment because I couldn’t get somebody somewhere else, and if this is, something that’s relevant to you, you might want to listen back to the previous Feelings and Finances episode about setting a regular appointment system and how I wish I’d done that way sooner.
[00:01:39] One of the costs of not having a regular appointment systemis trying to squish people in here and there, so that you can still see them in a given week. And whenever I would schedule a day that had even five sessions, I would deeply pay for it. Like, I energetically did not have it.
[00:01:57] It was not in me. I would basically be depleting myself emotionally and I would get home and be a zombie, basically. This is something that I did before I had kids.
[00:02:07] When I became a parent, I had to really take an audit of how much work was generally costing me emotionally. And at that point I actually had to realize that I couldn’t be the parent that I wanted to be and continue doing the clinical work I was doing. But, this is an even more pronounced version of that which is kind of playing with my own limits and overstepping my own limits in terms of how many clients I could see.
[00:02:30] So for me, four clients a day, I would have called it my sweet spot. My partner would tell you adamantly that it was actually three. If I saw three clients in a day, which might be like an hour and a half session and two one hour sessions, so let’s say three and a half hours of sessions or maybe even four hours of sessions.
[00:02:46] But if it was only three people, when I got home, I still had energy in the tank. I could still be playful and want to make dinner and maybe want to do something. But when I would see more than four clients a day, it was at great cost to myself. And it’s one of those lessons that I had to learn over and over and over again, like so many humans, where, you know, I hadn’t done it for a while.
[00:03:09] I hadn’t seen a five client day in a while, so I would do it again just to remember exactly why I didn’t do it, which is, it’s so emotionally exhausting for me. I would pay for it on many levels. So that was one thing. Overbooking myself. Trying to see too many clients in a day or too many clients in a week. On weeks where I would have 18 sessions, I would go into the weekend very, very depleted.
[00:03:30] Like I kind of gave away all my goodness throughout the week. and then the weekend I would just spend basically recovering. I used to have what I called nothing days. This is before I was a parent. Not an option anymore. But I would have nothing days where I would just basically zone out for half a day, like just like watch Netflix all morning.
[00:03:47] mostly I think it was probably watching Netflix if I reflect on it, but where I would basically be going into like a hypo arousal, like, you know, it was rest, but it was rest because I was depleted, to try to just get back to some level of functioning again. As a parent now, I can’t do that. So I have to be a lot more thoughtful about my energy in general.
[00:04:05] The other thing that I wish I had done sooner, a mistake that I made, was seeing clients outside of the hours where I was really actually a good therapist. So seeing clients in the evenings, trying to accommodate evening sessions, you know, catch people when they were done with work, because it worked better for them, obviously, it was more convenient for them.
[00:04:25] It felt like an easier way to get a client to say like, sure, yeah, I’ll see you at 530 when you’re done work. But for me, this is a joke that I still make… And it’s a joke, and it’s also true. I’m pretty dumb in the evening. I really run out of cognitive energy as I get into the evening, and at a certain point I started to realize that even my 4:30 sessions were not getting the same quality from me
[00:04:47] as my daytime sessions, right? So yes, I was able to see these folks. I was able to fit them into my schedule. We were able to have a clinical relationship, which was great, but I definitely was not my best. Like they were not getting the best of me. And I was tired, and I was kind of ready to go home.
[00:05:02] But I had committed to doing like really vulnerable, important work with somebody instead, right? And it’s never good for us and it’s never good for our clients if we don’t want to be there. If you’re exhausted and you are already thinking about dinner or thinking about a phone call you need to make later that night, you are not giving somebody your best service, and
[00:05:22] they would probably actually be better served by even somebody else rather than us when we are in that state. So, stretching myself beyond my schedule limits and trying to see too many clients cost me a lot of energy over the years. It made therapy into something that was burdensome emotionally, because I was giving too much of myself away.
[00:05:44] And as I started to be more honest with myself about my limits and, of course, having a full caseload allowed me to do this more easily, right? Because I did have enough demand, and I had a wait list. When I got to that point and I could actually reflect on what actually works for me, I had to accept the fact that I really
[00:06:04] was not doing well on any sessions after 4 p. m. Like 4 p. m. was actually my last spot of the day, and for my last couple years of being a therapist, that was my last appointment slot of the day, right? I did four sessions a day I had two in the morning two in the afternoon or maybe one long one in the morning three in the afternoon, always had a lunch break, and my last session finished at 5, when I still was giving quality, quality therapy to somebody.
[00:06:30] I wasn’t bending myself to try to accommodate them, and in doing so actually giving them worse service and exhausting myself. So, for folks who are listening, if you’re finding yourself in this schedule trap, I know it can be a tough one to unwind from… There’s all sorts of stories and scarcity thinking and objections that can come up internally.
[00:06:51] But at the very least, I would encourage you to be honest with yourself about, are you actually doing your best work? If you’re seeing six or seven clients a day, is client six or client seven getting the same quality of work as client two or three? What is the cost to you emotionally of the schedule that you have set in terms of quality?
[00:07:11] In terms of quantity of sessions, and also in terms of the timing of your sessions? AndI’m a big fan of incrementalism in general. So if you’re not in a space where you’re ready to make some big move around no longer working evenings or something like that, are there little changes that you can make that would start to give you your energy back?
[00:07:30] Let you have more energy for your life, and also let you see yourself doing really good work. I think that one of the things that can contribute to therapists having a hard time thinking about charging the fee that they actually need to be well is If we don’t feel great about our work, if we see ourselves feeling burnt out and depleted, it’s hard to value it.
[00:07:50] And you’re probably still making a very big positive impact in your client’s lives, but you’re certainly not thriving, right? And you’re not feeling yourself really in that, that zone of being really good at the work and enjoying the work. Because when we are depleted, when we’re overextending ourselves, we are doing the work, but we’re doing so at great cost to ourselves.
[00:08:09] So if you are in that space, I would encourage you to think about how do you start to tweak your schedule a little bit, you know, take away one or two evening sessions, see a couple less clients, give yourself a light Friday. What can you do to start to get more of a taste of what a balanced schedule would feel like for you.
[00:08:25] So you can start to give some energy back to yourself, back to your life. And in doing so your clients will actually get better care from you. So it is a win win, and it is something that I wish I had done much, much earlier in my own practice. If you have a question for me for one of our Feelings and Finances episodes, all you need to do is click on the link in the show notes, or head over to our podcast page and you just, you’ll see a little button there.
[00:08:50] It says, do you have a question for Linzy? Or something like that… You just need to click the button, share your name, share a little bit of context, and share your question. And I would be happy to answer your specific private practice finances question, whether it’s more emotional, more practical, more technical, on one of our upcoming episodes of Feelings and Finances.
[00:09:11] Thank you so much for joining me today.