Meet Dr. Karen Dyck and Dr. Melissa Tiessen

[00:00:00] Karen: So our self-care also needs to be in our workday. And I think it also needs to be something that is very intentional and dynamic because our situations change, right? In so many ways and if we aren’t kind of monitoring that and adapting our self-care based on our changing needs, we’re also going to struggle.

[00:00:26] Linzy: Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, where we answer this question. How can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:00:50] Linzy: Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today we have two wonderful guests, Dr. Melissa Tiessen and Dr. Karen Dyck, and we are going to be digging into a very salient topic of self-care in private practice and how that intersects with money, but before we get into that, I wanted to share a wonderful review I just received. It was so lovely that I wanted to share it with everyone. This review on Apple Podcast shares, empowering, enlightening, inspiring.

[00:01:19] They say, after months of floundering and feeling like things were spiraling out of control, I stumbled across this podcast. It has been life changing. Listening to Linzy and her excellent guests has helped me find my confidence, get clear on my budget, and set realistic goals for clinical growth. I recommended the show to so many colleagues and will certainly be signing up for her course in the future.

[00:01:39] Linzy, thank you for being a bright light of hope to all the therapists and health practitioners you reach. That review was from Therapist Tea in Canada. Thank you so much for that really beautiful five star review. It’s very moving, to hear how the podcast is impacting you and, I so appreciate you taking the time to share that review so other folks can find the podcast.

[00:02:00] So back to today’s episode topic.

[00:02:03] So today on this episode with Dr. Karen Dyck and Dr. Melissa Tiessen, we are talking about self-compassion in private practice. We talked today about some of the occupational hazards that come specifically with being therapists, and the life hazards that come with being women. How these things intersect and combine to make us really vulnerable to, self-sacrifice and burnout and not practicing self-care.

[00:02:28] Melissa and Karen share their revised definition of self-care and what it means for therapists specifically. The importance of thinking about self-care differently as therapists, and when we do self-care, and how we do self-care. And then they share about their specific framework for self-care, the four Cs, which is this very rich framework.

[00:02:47] I mentioned at the end we probably could have done a single episode on each component of their four C frameworks. There’s just so much here to dig into and explore around this ever important topic of therapists and our self-sacrifice and our need to take way better care of ourselves.

[00:03:05] Here is my conversation with Dr. Karen Dyck and Dr. Melissa Tiessen.

[00:03:19] So Karen and Melissa, welcome to the podcast.

[00:03:24] Karen: Thanks.

[00:03:24] Melissa: Thank you, Linzy. We’re so happy to be here with you.

[00:03:27] Linzy: I am so happy to have you here as well. We share something in common, which is that we are Canadians in like the therapist consulting space. There are not as many of us, which is generally like a fact in the world compared to the United States, our closest neighbor. There’s just less of us.

[00:03:41] So it’s always nice to meet folks in the Canadian space who are doing this work with therapists. And before we dig in today, I’d love for you two to tell us a little bit about the work that you two do together with Canadian therapists.

[00:03:53] Melissa: So my name’s Karen Dyck. I’m a clinical psychologist. I’m in private practice,outside Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada. So, I do have a private practice where I provide mostly assessments and also therapy. Melissa and I met each other actually through a psychology residency.

[00:04:11] Karen: So I was actually Melissa’s supervisor many, many, many years ago, and I had the good fortune of staying in touch with Melissa over the years, and I guess maybe in about 2018, she and I decided we wanted to do something a little different. And in our conversations we realized that in all the work we had done and with the mental health clinicians that we’ve worked with, self-care seemed to be a topic that many of us were struggling with.

[00:04:40] Linzy: Whether we kind of named it or not,there was lots of evidence, I think, to us that it was a struggle for us at some times, and definitely a struggle for other womenclinicians that we worked with. And so that led to our development of Intentional Therapist. So then your focus is self care for therapists specifically. Is that what you really zoom in on when you’re doing the support work with therapists?

[00:05:04] Melissa: Yeah, and particularly female therapists and it’s not of course, because male therapists don’t have to pay attention to their self care.

[00:05:12] They do as well, uh, we all do regardless of gender identification, but we really thought that it was important to focus specifically on female

[00:05:21] therapists, at least in the resources that we were developing, just because we do think that there are some factors that are unique to those of us who identify as female,

[00:05:30] in this profession. Especially as we have continued in this work over the past few years, we definitely see how a lot of the things that we talk about can apply to male and female therapists equally, but we just especially love to speak to the females in the room.

[00:05:46] Linzy: Absolutely, it’s the same when you niche in a private practice, right? Like you name your niche and you’re like, this is who I’m really good at serving. Like if you are this person, I’m going to show up and do mind blowing work with you, but also that work also often applies to other folks, too, right?

[00:05:59] But people can self identify. When they’re like, what you do also speaks to me and sometimes I’ll have folks reach out and they’re like, what you do also speaks to me. Is that okay? Am I allowed to be here? I’m doing a workshop series right now and we got a lovely email yesterday from somebody who’s participating and she was like, I’m a veterinarian, and I have a behavioral practice, but what you’re doing really speaks to me.

[00:06:17] So is it okay if I’m here? And so we are always going to like, have folks who are like. What you’re doing still really speaks to me. It’s not surprising to me that you’re going to have men and maybe non-binary folks who are also resonating with your message, but I’m hearing that specific passion is serving women around these things, which I can relate to,as a woman and a therapist.

[00:06:34] So let’s stick in to the money piece. Of course, this Being a Money podcast, how do you see money and finances and self-care intersecting?

[00:06:43] Melissa: Well, obviously, we’re speaking to the choir right now. I mean, it’s foundational on a very obvious level to start. The more money you have, the more means you have to take care of yourself and your needs, nevermind your wants, the easier it’s going to be to do the things that are so important to take good care of ourselves, and that’s in the stereotypical sense of like treating yourself

[00:07:05] kinds of self-care but of course, what we are talking about when we’re talking about self-care goes far beyond the stereotypical things of massages or bubble baths or spa days.

[00:07:16] It’s really about how are we taking care of ourselves, both outside of and within our work, and especially for therapists in private practice, of course, how we are setting our fees, how we’re setting our schedule that is just so integral to our own personal wellbeing. So if we’re not paying attention to finances, particularly as a therapist in private practice, but even therapists who aren’t in private practice, this still very much applies… If we’re not paying attention to finances.it’s just going to have such a huge domino

[00:07:49] effect for all of the other ways in which we can or can’t take good care of ourselves, which, of course, is then going to influence the quality of services that we’re ultimately going to be able to provide to our clients.

[00:08:00] Linzy: Absolutely, and that last piece,that you mentioned Melissa,is interesting ’cause when I first started talking about this with therapists… that like, if you’re not taking care of yourself and your money, it does impact your work, it feels a little bit mean, almost, like a mean call out because we do pride ourselves so much on giving good service

[00:08:16] but that is one of those things too that I find can also help people get hooked into the importance of this work. If you’re not taking care of yourself financially,if you haven’t set up your practice in a way that is financially sustainable, if you’re working like crazy, working into the evenings, working hours that you know are not good for you, you’re not actually being your best therapist-self.

[00:08:35] And again, it feels mean ’cause I know that we pride ourselves so much in giving good service. And the last thing we ever want to think is that we’re giving sessions that are not the best that they can be and that we’re not showing up the way we want to for our clients but it, I would argue, is inevitable.

[00:08:49] If you’re not taking care of yourself financially and emotionally, you are not doing your best work with your clients.

[00:08:56] Karen: Absolutely and I think where gender can be so important just recognizing some of the messages women get through socialization.through our training, right? The idea about really working hard. I think all of us who went to,graduate school,or university, realized how grueling that was

[00:09:15] and I think we got used to that pace, and when we move into our profession, it’s just so easy to take that student mindset with us, which means doing with less, really working hard. And so I think it’s so easy to continue those patterns . And on top of that, women are certainly given the messages that we are caregivers

[00:09:38] and that we should just be doing this. So I think when we bring money into the situation, it can really muddy things and to top it all off, women also get messages about their time not being really as important as other people’s time . So I think with that it can be so easy for female therapists to organize their schedule around their client’s needs and what’s convenient for them.

[00:10:09] And that’s not to say there aren’t times when that makes perfect sense to do, but I think it’s so easy for women to fall into that pattern that is just what we’re doing on an ongoing basis, right. And I think that can influence our scheduling and it can influence how much we’re charging for our services.

[00:10:27] Linzy: And it’s not sustainable, right? Over time, that can lead to feelings of resentment and burnout. It really can create such significant challenges for therapists. Absolutely, like I think, there’s so many pieces in here that we could dig into, right? Like I’m thinking about just how emotional labor is valued, spoiler not valued,generally, right? And like women’s time and labor and then also I’m thinking about how. You know, I have this theory.

[00:10:54] I was joking yesterday at this workshop I was doing. I’m, you know, if folks can help me with my thesis that the vast majority of therapists have basically been helpers their entire lives, right? Like we were little therapists when we were five and when we were 10.

[00:11:06] And I often refer to the fact, the first time I had somebody call me a therapist, I was 12 years old. A friend was like, you know, you’re my therapist and I thought, like that’s bad.That’s not friendship, but you know, we were already playing that role for free for decades before we actually became therapists.

[00:11:20] So also that even just individually, that transition of thinking, like this thing that I’ve always done for free, and often at my own detriment, is actually valuable and not only should I be getting paid for it, but maybe I should be getting paid well and maybe I should really be thinking about when do I want to be delivering these services and when do I not?

[00:11:36] That’s a real huge mindset shift ’cause often in our identities we are helpers, and we’ve always been helpers.

[00:11:43] Karen: Absolutely Couldn’t agree with you more, Linzy, and again, right women primarily have really been socialized in that way to begin with, and I think you’re right. I, I suspect Melissa and I could both identify with, that we began our role as therapists when we were kids. Absolutely such important points, Linzy.

[00:12:01] Linzy: And I am curious, like digging into this problem a little bit more, what do you see happens for a therapist and female therapists specifically, when we are like living out this narrative, You know, when we’re not prioritizing our time ’cause there’s a narrative that our time is not really important or the work that we do is not really valuable.

[00:12:19] What starts to happen for therapists who are living that out?

[00:12:23] Melissa: So I think there’s such a range of things that can happen. And I think a lot of it actually relates to the imposter syndrome or imposter phenomenon that also tends to impact on women more frequently than men. And in fact, I think the phrase was first coined to describe high achieving women specifically.

[00:12:46] So it’s always had this association with women, and it really goes back to the things that Karen was just talking about because of women being socialized not to value their time in the same ways as men. And also because women do tend to undervalue what we have to offer and our skills,even though there’s lots of evidence to show that women are actually more effective in many domains in the workplace than men are, but we tend to have this belief that we’re not as effective.

[00:13:14] So that can absolutely bleed into our work as therapists as well. And so, it’s not necessarily going to start with feeling like an imposter, but I would say many of us probably go through grad school with some period of time of feeling like an imposter as well. Then never mind moving into your career. And even if you’re not kind of full-blown experiencing the effects of being concerned that other people are going to see you as a fraud, we’re just maybe going to start to question ourselves. And if we’re questioning ourselves, we’re maybe going to then start, thinking, oh, I need to really. prepare well for this presentation, or I need to really be super prepared for all of my client sessions. And, of course, we do want to be prepared for presentations and client sessions, but we maybe don’t need to be over prepared. We maybe don’t need to be spending hours and hours before and after the primary tasks of our jobs, particularly if that’s being driven by fear. And so, that is one thing that then is going to have a direct impact on our self-care abilities and energy if we’re spending all of this time on these other tasks that are maybe not actually serving us all that well. Other things, of course, and I think this one is so incredibly important… If we do then start to question ourselves and feel like, oh, I’m maybe not as good of a therapist as my

[00:14:38] therapist colleagues are, then we’re going to start playing the comparison game and then most potentially detrimental, we are not going to be willing to reach out to colleagues if we are struggling with something, whether it’s our finances or clinical issues.

[00:14:53] And that is going to have a huge impact on our self-concept, and thus our self-care, because then we’re going to start to feel even perhaps ashamed

[00:15:03] of things that we’re struggling with, but not even realizing that we are certainly not alone in any of those struggles, and that really is one of the biggest messages that we like to share, that none of us are alone if we are struggling with anything, whether it’s fees or documentation or just sort self-care in general. If people aren’t talking about it, that doesn’t mean that they’re not struggling with it.

[00:15:25] Linzy: Definitely.

[00:15:26] Melissa: Just means there’s all kinds of reasons that they’re afraid to talk about it.

[00:15:29] Linzy: Yeah that silence and isolation and I think private practice, too, as an industry, like if we just think about the model that we work within is inherently isolating already, right? Like we’re all sitting in our beautiful little space that we’ve carved out in some old century building or medical building in our inner home.

[00:15:46] I remember when I worked in my physical office location feeling hungry for just casual interactions with people because the way that my schedule worked, and the folks around me, I saw lots of health practitioners, they were kind of like in the building for the minimal viable amount of time.

[00:16:02] So they would show up 10 minutes before their clients; they would leave right away afterwards. They’re taking full advantage of that time, flexibility, power to them, but it means thatI didn’t have any colleagues around. So just that hunger for just any kind of like, connection with somebody on a non-professional basis…

[00:16:17] ‘Cause sometimes I would come to the end of the day and realize like, oh, I had four really great sessions today. Some really great, like, clinical conversations, but I haven’t actually just chatted with somebody, right. And just that,isolation so then you add, you know, these struggles on top of it.

[00:16:31] Yeah,we’re not even in a place where you might end up casually talking over lunch with a colleague about something that you’re struggling with,because you’re probably not running into a colleague. So, yeah, there’s an environmental factor there that makes it so much harder too.

[00:16:44] Karen: I think that’s so true. In our discussions with different clinicians, it’s really been interesting. To hear how many clinicians that we’ve spoken with identify four clients a day as kind of being in their zone where they feel really good, and they feel like they can still have kind of a life outside of work.

[00:17:06] They have the energy because I think it’s you know, one part of overscheduling and the financial wellbeing, it can affect us at work, but also right, it extends into our personal lives, and how much energy do we have after our day if we are really struggling to come to terms and accept the fact that we really do our best work when we have X number of clients a day. And I think it’s really hard for so many clinicians to accept again, because I think we often assume our colleagues are seeing many, many more clients a day and are able to do it without any detrimental effects to the quality of their therapy or the quality of their lives.But the more we’ve spoken with women, we’ve really, I mean, that four, seems to stand out a lot for people.

[00:18:00] Linzy:Yeah, it’s a magical number, I think for many people because I think another shift when you get into private practice is also it, when we’ve been in agencies, often we are overworked in agencies, right? Like their default is you start at 20. 20 weeks is like the minimum, right?

[00:18:15] And I’ll talk to folks who are seeing six or seven clients a day, and for some people that does work depending on your energy and your style of therapy, but I know for myself, Karen, thinking about that four, my max was four clients four days a week. I couldn’t actually do five, and I would pay for it massively

[00:18:31] whenever I tried to delude myself into thinking that I could see more than 16 a week, I would just be like exhausted at the end of the day and yeah, like the cost to our personal lives when we’re overextending ourself in this specific field, because the work that we do is so emotional and takes so much of that interpersonal energy.

[00:18:49] I think largely the cost is to our relationships,but also just to our ability to show up for ourselves. After work and actually think about: okay, now what do I need? Do I need to push myself to get that yoga class? Do I need to take out my watercolors and spend time with them? Do I need to call a friend?

[00:19:03] Like that takes a certain amount of energy to make yourself do it, but sometimes we’ve depleted helping other people think all day about what they really need. So it is like really this precious resource that we can easily use up when we overdo it in our clinical work.

[00:19:18] Melissa: Yeah, and I was just going to add Linzy, that I think, because sometimes the work that we do can almost seem effortless, right? It’s not always super draining. Sometimes there are some days, or at least maybe not the whole day, but some sessions where I come away and I think, I can’t believe I just got paid for that. Right,

[00:19:37] Linzy: Yes.

[00:19:39] Melissa: Because that felt so easy, but, of course, we all know that is not every single session. There are other sessions where then we start to question is this what we still want to be doing? And I think hopefully for most of us, most of our sessions are somewhere in between those two extremes but I think it’s also kind of sometimes easy to forget that what we are doing is incredibly valuable. It’s not something that just anybody off the street can do.

[00:20:10] And most importantly, we are our best tools, right? We all know what makes the biggest impact in therapy is not the specific approach that we’re using.

[00:20:20] It’s the quality of the therapeutic relationship. For that to be the best quality it can be, we have to be taking care of ourselves. We have to be willing to show up for ourselves. We have to be willing to address the things that are maybe kind of uncomfortable to address, like fees or hours or all the other things that are potentially uncomfortable.

[00:20:42] So I think it’s so, so really important to remember that, yes, what we do is about techniques, but at the base of it, it really is about who we are, right? Even if you’re not a humanistic therapist, well, sorry, you are.

[00:20:58] Linzy: Right?

[00:20:59] Melissa: because we, we all have to be, that is actually what our work is based on. So yeah, if we’re not attending to ourselves and our own needs. as Karen and I like to describe it. If we’re not thinking about how we’re putting ourselves into our schedules as well, then everything else is just going to be more challenging.

[00:21:21] Linzy: Right and you mentioned earlier, when we think about self-care, of course there’s the more typical things, the bubble baths. I mentioned yoga, that’s probably another stereotypical one actually. Tell me, How do you define self-care? The kind of self-care we need to be thinking about as therapists.

[00:21:35] Karen: Yeah, so I think Melissa and I really,believe that self-care means putting ourselves into our schedule. It means,doing more,I guess deeper types of self-care, and particularly ones that are really well aligned with our profession because,there are hazards of our profession, certain stressors that,a massage, a pedicure, those really aren’t going to be effective.

[00:22:02] So our self-care also needs to be in our workday because I think so often when people do talk about self-care, it’s about things that we do outside our office and after our workday. And it’s not that those can’t be, a valuable part of our self-care, but if we’re doing those, and not really looking at our workday,

[00:22:23] I just can’t see us being particularly successful at taking good care of ourselves. And I think it also needs to be something that is very intentional and dynamic because our situations change, right? In so many ways. Our career stage, our family circumstances, other caregiving roles, our health. And if we aren’t

[00:22:48] kind of monitoring that and adapting our self-care based on our changing needs, we’re also going to struggle. So I think we really like to see it in a much, much broader sense. And it’s so important again that the self-care strategies are aligned with our profession and are part of our workday and I think that piece often gets missed. And women in particular, I think are so often kind of fed these more commodified versions of self-care and interestingly, often things that kind of focus on our appearance, right? Like manicures,pedicures, and that’s fine, right? If that is something that gives you some enjoyment, please keep doing those. And yet I know that those things in and of itself I don’t think are actually going to address the workplace stressors that we all just face as therapists.

[00:23:44] Linzy: And so some of those strategies that you’re talking about, you’re talking about these kinds of dynamic strategies that need to be integrated into our work week. It shouldn’t be something that we’re doing necessarily in the evening only. Tell me what some of those look like.

[00:23:59] Melissa: Yeah, so it really starts with a model that we’ve developed that we call the Four Cs,which includes connection, compassion, courage, and creativity. And so this is really the starting point for thinking more broadly about our self-care, and as Karen said, really thinking about how can we be incorporating self-care in how we are approaching our workday, our work week, or just how we comport ourselves as a therapist.

[00:24:27] Again, not just what are we doing outside of work. Again, that matters, but if we’re not paying attention to what we’re doing during our workday. That’s just going to be completely insufficient. So we really start the model through this lens of connecting with ourselves, like our values, what’s important to us, who’s important to us, but also of course, connecting with others,

[00:24:49] like we were just saying. So important to be connecting with colleagues, having conversations with colleagues about self-care, about fees, about documentation, as well as about what we normally think of when we think about connecting with colleagues, which is like clinical consultation, right? But all of these other things as well.

[00:25:06] Connecting with our colleagues. And then also connecting with new information like for example, all the great information in your podcast about fees and our schedules and just how we can be better taking care of ourselves from a financial self-care perspective. And I think really importantly too, connecting with this knowledge that there are so many factors.

[00:25:31] Again, especially as women, but even anyone in the therapy profession. There are so many factors that really are kind of conspiring against us to make self-care actually so much more difficult than it seems. And of course, we all have codes of ethics that we need to follow that speak to the importance of self-care, really,

[00:25:49] it’s an ethical imperative for all of us, but none of those codes of ethics actually spell out, well, what are you supposed to do? They just kind of say, make sure you take care of yourself. Okay, thanks. Yeah. Connection is really the foundation for, again, thinking more broadly about, okay, so For example, what is getting in my way of being able to charge appropriate fees or what’s getting in the way of me raising my fees, or charging cancellation fees, which I will admit that is the toughest one for me.

[00:26:23] or just really starting to, again, as Karen said, being intentional, pausing, being willing. There’s even a bit of courage that’s already required here in connection to be willing to look at what’s standing in my way, for example.

[00:26:37] Linzy: Yeah, so connection is then that foundational piece of your four Cs I’m hearing,which is like,one of my favorite words really in general, not surprisingly. I feel like a lot of therapists, if we had to get asked a favorite word…Cause also, again, I think that you’re directly addressing, too, that piece that I was mentioning earlier, but my experience being a therapist of how isolating it can be.

[00:26:55] So we are giving our clients an experience of connection and profound connection of us being with them, but,we need connection too as our whole selves. In these so many ways that you’re mentioning.

[00:27:07] Melissa: I think another piece that’s really important to think about when it comes to connection is our connection to our workplace values. So, of course as therapists, we often talk about values with our clients, but we’re, I think, often thinking about it in this sense of our values for ourselves and our families and we don’t often necessarily think about, well, what’s my values in the workplace, and that can be a really instructive exercise to just think about, like, what kind of work setting do I value most? Again, like we were saying,do I want a work setting where I do actually have more structured opportunities to connect with other colleagues, or do I want a work setting that I do just, work privately and I’m okay with that or also do I want to a work setting that provides me with paid benefits, for example, right. Again, back to the financial side of things, because I think,making a switch from a salaried position to private practice, of course, is a huge transition, requires a lot of courage, but the reverse is true as well because there’s, pros and cons of both sides of the equation and, and so just really being intentional with ourselves about what matters most to me. What’s going to be most fulfilling to me? And again, knowing that there’s no right or wrong. It doesn’t matter what our colleagues are doing. We really need to connect with what matters most to us and what is going to best support our own ongoing wellbeing. Again, this is about making things sustainable. This isn’t just about having a great weekend at the spa,

[00:28:42] Linzy: Yes,

[00:28:43] Melissa: But then going back to toiling in the coal mines.

[00:28:46] Linzy: The emotional coal mines. Yes.

[00:28:47] Melissa: Yes, yes. What’s going to be, what’s going to be most sustainable for us over the long term?

[00:28:54] Linzy: Yes, so first C is connection. Now I want to know what the other Cs are. So tell me about the other three Cs that you find are our core to this self-care reconceptualization.

[00:29:05] Karen: Yeah, so the other three are compassion, courage, and creativity. And I think compassion in a lot of ways is really kind of self-explanatory and yet, in our experience, therapists are so good at being compassionate towards others, but often really struggle in terms of directing that same type of compassion to ourselves and as Kristen Neff in all her work and her colleagues have spoken about, when we’re more compassionate with ourselves, we’re also better able to make the changes that we need to, right. So it’s not about letting ourselves off the hook per se, but it’s about understanding why we’re maybe having some struggles and when we connect with colleagues, recognizing that we’re not alone, which is such an important part of being able to be compassionate towards ourselves.

[00:29:52] And then, using that information to look at making changes and I think so important, too, are the two types of compassion that Kristen Neff talks about, right? The tender and the fierce and again, for women so often, I think we struggle with that fierce compassion as well, which is about setting appropriate boundaries and giving ourselves permission to also pay attention to our own needs.

[00:30:17] I think the connection and the courage piece really go hand in hand. The courage pillar is one of the ones we like to talk about the most because we recognize that true self-care that’s sustainable and really meaningful for therapists is going to be hard. It’s going to mean that we’re going to

[00:30:38] be acting against some of the messages we’ve probably received through our socialization as women,through some of our training experiences that kind of got us into that student mindset.

[00:30:50] That can be really hard to leave and yet. really taking good care of ourselves does require us to do things that are going to be uncomfortable and it’s not because we’re doing anything wrong, it’s just that it’s unfamiliar to us. So having the courage to kind of lean into the discomfort, having the courage to connect with colleagues and talk about these challenges we see as just so important in our model.

[00:31:17] To round things out, our fourth c, creativity, again, probably doesn’t immediately come to mind when people are thinking about self-care but I mean, you alluded to it earlier, Linzy, it is sometimes actual creative pursuits like painting or gardening or anything that really involves kind of creating something

[00:31:39] Melissa: And we think that this is actually especially important for therapists because the nature of our work, while it can be incredibly rewarding, there’s usually not something tangible that we can see as the outcome, right?

[00:31:52] And so, so many therapists that we’ve spoken to have really shared with us how much they do gravitate towards creative pursuits that can give them this concrete evidence of their outcomes because that really is something that is kind of missing in our work. But beyond what we might typically think of as creative pursuits, we also include play and humor in this pillar because, of course, play is so incredibly important. It’s not just for kids. It’s really important for us as adults as well, and again, particularly for women because the history of how women have been socialized, and this ties into the messages we receive about the value of our time as well. 

[00:32:46] Women have also been socialized to not feel as much permission to engage in leisure pursuits and most of the time have actually less time than male counterparts do to engage in more traditional leisure pursuits. This pillar is really about kind of claiming back our right to do things that are just for ourselves, to claim our right to have permission to not be available,which is something that,the author Eve Roski talks about, which is such important concepts that we have permission to do the things that are actually going to fill us up and then most importantly, we see creativity as actually being a willingness to get messy, which again, might actually mean we’ve got paint on our fingers or soil on our hands, but even more importantly, and interestingly, we think this, again, very much speaks to something that therapists often can struggle with… 

[00:33:22] It’s really about letting go of the need to be perfect, being more willing for things to maybe not go exactly as planned, but to be okay with that. To be willing to experiment and just gather data and then adjust and so, of course, this is so incredibly relevant when it comes to our finances because there needs to be this willingness to like, maybe try new things, right? Whether it’s a different stream of income or just thinking outside the box in terms of how we are going to meet our income needs. And again,being willing to pursue a particular plan even without a hundred percent assurance that this is going to turn out the way that we want it to. Of tolerating the uncertainty. Some more courage needed there for that and compassion.

[00:34:23] Linzy: Yeah, so much of what you’re talking about is,personally resonant with me, and I’m also thinking about some of our specific occupational hazards as therapists, too, like when you’re talking about art and creativity, I’m thinking about all of the emotional content that we have to process, which is kind of our job. But in an ideal world, we leave that content in the room with the client and we have our beautiful container visualizations or whatever

[00:34:47] but there’s always going to be things, too, that we have to process because it’s the scary, terrible, painful,uncontrollable parts of being human, and so I’m also thinking about how art is such a beautiful way to be with those things. And I’m thinking about some of my own experiences, too, specifically using art to process a clinical content that was not my trauma, but that was traumatic enough that it was still impacting me personally.

[00:35:09] There’s just so many things that I think we need to be extra mindful as therapists to be able to keep doing this work, right? This work that requires this very specific muscle,that we need to use, that as you say, we might take for granted, it might feel easy sometimes or it might be something we’ve been doing forever, but actually is a very specific skillset and a very specific set of gifts that also has hazards and costs to it that we need to take seriously.

[00:35:33] Karen: Absolutely, and unfortunately, I don’t think any of us really got kind of the specific training we could have benefited from in terms of looking at those specific work hazards and some things to offset or buffer some of those hazards and, fair enough. I know our training is so jam packed with everything else.

[00:35:58] I appreciate it. It’s hard to cover everything, and yet,I do think we could do a better job of preparing our therapists for the workplace hazards and for really integrating self-care into their workday, not just as an afterthought for the weekends or, the once a year vacation, because that’s definitely not sufficient.

[00:36:20] Linzy: No, no, certainly not. No. Karen and Melissa, there’s so much more to talk about here, but we do have to end at some point. So, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. There’s so many… My brain is going off in a whole bunch of directions, all of these rich pieces.

[00:36:35] I think each of the four Cs could be its own podcast episode just in terms of how much there is there. I think you’ve really hit on something here in terms of what we need as therapists. For folks who are listening who are interested in getting further into your world and learning more about what you do, where could they find you?

[00:36:52] Melissa: Yeah, so they can go to our website, which is just intentional therapist.ca as well you can check out our podcast called Putting You in your Schedule. We do also have some just to again reinforce the very important message that self-care is part of our jobs, not separate from our jobs. We also have,online course that we usually run cohorts of twice a year that is approved for continuing education credits. So more information about that is on our website and people can sign up for our free newsletter to stay informed about that.

[00:37:32] Linzy: Thank you so much to both of you for joining me on the podcast today.

[00:37:35] Melissa: Thank you so much, Linzy. It was really great to talk to you.

[00:37:38] Karen: Absolutely. Thanks so much, Linzy.

[00:37:50] Linzy: This conversation with Karen and Melissa got my brain going in so many directions, thinking about some of my own experiences, even just over the last few years, and the importance of these pieces that they’re talking about, like our need for connection and for that fierce compassion that they referenced.

[00:38:06] And courage, you know, the courage to do things that don’t feel easy, but ultimately are about getting your real needs met. And the creativity, and my own relationship with creativity and how hard it can be when we’re in that burnt out, depleted place. There’s so much here and you know, when I’m thinking about it further… A lot of what we talked about today brings up the fact that therapists were just not always great for lots of reasons that are largely outside of us, sometimes inside of us, at acknowledging that we are humans with the full range of human needs, right? We spend so much time showing up for other people.

[00:38:40] We spend so much time sitting with them in their pain and their needs and thinking about how to help other folks be well, but if we are not actually setting up our work week, our life our day, to have our own needs being met. We’re not practicing what we preach. Right. And that’s not just, an issue in terms of maybe

[00:39:02] integrity, right? But it’s also an issue like we talked about in terms of the quality of care that we are actually able to give, and then the quality of life that we have. There are just so many costs that happen when we don’t really acknowledge what we need. We need lots. We need connection. We need compassion.

[00:39:19] We need softness. We need rest. We need courage. We need creativity. We need these things in our life just as much as our clients do. So it’s so easy to stay in that helper role and deny our own needs, but I love that Karen and Melissa are out here, you know, preaching what we need, which is we need to give more of what we tell our clients to do to ourselves, like literally every day, not just, as they say, after a long workday or on the weekend. So, so appreciative of Karen and Melissa coming on the podcast today. If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can find me at Money Nuts and Bolts. You can also rate and review the podcast, like therapist teas review at the beginning of our episode. It’s so helpful and as a reminder, the two ways to work with me are through my two courses.

[00:40:02] I have Money Skills for Therapists, which is my course for solo practitioners that I’ve been teaching since 2018. That’s all about helping solo practitioners become calm and confident in their business finances. And then I have Money Skills for Group Practice Owners that is specifically for folks who own a group who have other therapists and practitioners working for them, that gets more into the complexities of financial leadership, which is about getting money working, but also how you show up as a leader to create a group practice that is sustainable and reflects your values. If you’re curious about either of those courses, you can head over to our website, Money Nuts and Bolts.

[00:40:36] You’ll see a tab there for courses, and you will see how to get into wait lists or, get into the webinar to be able to join those courses.

[00:40:44] Thank you so much for joining me today.