The Human in the Helper: I was a shell of a person

Laura is known as a leader in the mental health community. With her passion, wisdom, and integrity, she is showing colleagues ways to level up their practices. Yet her own practice had to take a pause when she found herself struggling with significant anxiety and OCD behaviors postpartum. “I anticipated that postpartum would be awful, and I was right,” she shared. Laura was struggling with sleep, and wouldn’t get the sleep she needed after nursing her daughter at night. “I went into my support group and asked them if they were sleeping and they all said they slept like logs. That’s when I knew something was wrong.” She described insomnia that would keep her awake and when she’d finally feel tired, it was time for her daughter to nurse again. “My husband would leave the house for work and I’d cry, knowing I was left home alone with my baby, I was so tired.”

Laura noticed that her insomnia contributed to her anxiety as she worried about the insomnia itself and not getting enough sleep each night. Then she noticed some OCD behaviors showing up in her life. “I think I was looking to feel in control of something,” she reflected. Laura found herself using an app to track all of her infant daughter’s activities, which isn’t uncommon. What felt disruptive was that she was methodical about logging every activity and exact times for all the activities, which she recalls felt obsessive and made her anxiety worse. “I focused on every minute and every activity. I was in the app all the time. “ She didn’t know how much of a hold it had on her until someone said to delete it. “It was when my daughter was 18 months old that a friend suggested I delete the app in not needing it anymore, and after some hesitation I did.”

Although Laura was able to break away from the app and the behaviors associated with it in her postpartum recovery, she shared that it took her longer to recover from the sleep deficit of motherhood and insomnia. “It was probably a solid four years before my sleep was back on track.” The thing that helped her most was getting trained in CBTI, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, which she used on herself as well as with her clients.

Laura is honest with herself that her postpartum journey was challenging and that her experience isn’t everyone’s experience in becoming new parents. She does have some advice for therapists who are planning for maternity or paternity leave, however. “Save for your leave.” Laura identified that she was fortunate to have saved enough for several months of maternity leave, which allowed her to be more honest with herself on her timeline of coming back to work. “If I’d come back at 12 weeks, I wouldn’t have been a very good therapist. I was a shell of a person.” Through her saving and thanks to a supportive spouse, Laura was able to extend her maternity leave to allow herself more time to adjust, before slowly easing back into private practice two days a week to start. “Set aside money for your leave, you don’t know what your postpartum will look like.”

Things happen to us as humans, even as we support our clients as professional helpers. Do you have a story you want to share the mental health community? Email us at croswaitecounselingpllc@gmail.com to learn more about the Human in the Helper Series!

Master Your Money in Private Practice: Five Tips from a Financial Therapist

Photo by micheile dot com on Unsplash

As we find ourselves fully in the fourth quarter of 2022, perhaps you’ve started thinking about your goals for next year. You might be thinking about setting a goal to earn a certain amount, launching a secondary income stream, or are preparing to raise your rates. Do any of these bring up some anxiety? If so, you are not alone! Mental health professionals are helpers through and through. Some would say our worth is wrapped up in what we do for others. We complete extensive training to provide professional interventions and obtain a license to practice, but for many of us, having a business degree isn’t part of the initial equation. Therefore it’s not uncommon to see our community struggling with how to navigate money matters in private practice. It has become a challenging rite of passage when becoming our own boss.

Thankfully, we can support one another in the process of creating a healthier relationship with money to thrive in private practice. We’ve already embraced our vulnerability by exploring how to go about increasing our rates, moving to a cash-pay practice, and navigating when to charge for no-shows and late cancellations, as just a few examples. It’s the challenge of running your practice as a business that brings up some additional money blocks. Sometimes the blocks aren’t even ours to own! There are times we receive judgement from our communities who may question our motives, our focus or purpose, or believe we can’t maintain a thriving six-figure business and be a heartfelt professional at the same time. A change in mentality around money is needed. Although we can’t make the bigger systemic change overnight, there are several things we can do as helping professionals to master our money and meet our professional goals.

1. Read a Money Book. Find a book that speaks to you, preferably one with built-in exercises to challenge your own discomfort around money. I appreciate the exercises found within Jen Sincero’s book, You are a Badass at Making Money and Bari Tessler’s book, The Art of Money. Exploring our current emotional response to money in crucial. Are you avoidant with your money? Do you feel like your money is controlling you rather than you controlling your money? What do you want your future relationship with money to be? By moving through these simple yet powerful exercises, you can remove money blocks and recognize your money triggers as a business professional.

2. Revisit Your Values. When exploring your relationship with money, it helps to know what holds the highest value for you. If one of your top values is stability, you may find yourself pursuing income streams to ensure stability within your business. If one of your top values is community, you may consider carving out a select number of reduced fee or pro bono spots to serve clients who couldn’t normally afford your services. Values, in principle, mean they are important to your life. Check in on how present your values are in your work now. If one of your top values is family but you find yourself working all the time, reworking your beliefs about money can help.

3. Watch Something on Money. I love having people watch the movie “Knives Out” to see what comes up for them in their money story related to each character. Who do they relate to and why? Who are they repulsed by and why? Seeing money behaviors and disorders represented in these characters can be an eye-opening experience for professionals to discover their own limits when working with clients and money. More recently, Netflix put out a documentary called “Get Smart With Money,” where four individuals were paired up with financial professionals to identify strategies to help them achieve their money goals. For some, it was about getting out of crippling debt. For others, it was about investing and making their money work for them. The concepts and tools presented throughout the documentary have value, so I encourage professionals as well as clients to watch.

4. Know Your Numbers. As you explore your emotions around money, it’s equally important to know your numbers. Do you know your average income each month? Do you have a sense of your expenses each month? Have you created a PTO account to pay yourself while taking a much-needed break for self-care? Do you know your net worth? Fortunately, there are tools out there to help you organize your money. Perhaps you start with an excel spreadsheet of your expenses to see where things land. Or maybe you have a graph already populating your spending habits through your online banking portal. You might invest in an app like TillerHQ, YNAB, or Mint to track your money or save for the future. With so many options out there, the important thing to remember is to find one that works for you.

5. Work with a Financial Therapist. As a Financial Therapist myself, I was inspired to take the leap into this role after doing my own personal money work. Talk about ah-has and epiphanies! I’m excited to share that the Financial Therapist community is growing and that there is a whole directory of Financial Therapists online who focus on helping people improve or heal their relationship with money. Find your best-fit professional by state or specialty and see how your feelings towards money shift, in having a safe space to do this powerful work as a practice owner.

Your relationship with money will evolve and change for the better as you do your own meaningful work. 2023 is a new year with new perspective for all of us. Let’s cultivate a healthy relationship with money for improved mental health, work-life balance, and money mastery as professionals in private practice!

Khara Croswaite Brindle, MA, LPC, ACS, CFT-I is a Certified Financial Therapist-Level I, Licensed Professional Counselor, Approved Clinical Supervisor and Group Practice Owner in Denver, CO.