How Financial Therapy Supports Small Business Success

I’ve been a small business owner since 2014 and at the start, I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into. As a mental health therapist and serial entrepreneur, I take pride in my ability to create and help others to heal and grow. Yet like so many in my field, I hadn’t earned a business degree to embark on my small business journey with the confidence I craved. I was anxious that I was going to be part of the statistic that says 50% of small businesses will fail in the first five years. And as a driven professional with my small business being my sole income, that felt like a lot to risk!

Luckily, several years into my business, I was fortunate to be accepted into the Goldman Sach’s 10,000 Small Business Program, a mini MBA that catapults small business scholars into a better understanding of the world of business. Things took on more dimension and clarity. I left feeling motivated and invigorated. The experience brought so much value to what I wanted to accomplish within my business and community.

Fast forward to our time with COVID. Workaholism is on the rise with the hope of financial security in the face of so much uncertainty. I too found myself backsliding into a scarcity mindset and was suffering from Noble Poverty. I knew I needed to continue to work on myself and my relationship with my business to find balance again. Enter Financial Therapy!

Financial Therapy is a process of healing our money stories and improving our relationship with money. It’s exploring our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors around money. As a workaholic therapist with significant student loans who comes from one saver parent and one spender parent, I knew there was work to be done.

Wealth

Financial Therapy is offered with compassionate curiosity, inviting us to do the work of uncovering what wealth means for us. Is wealth about having financial security? Taking vacations without guilt? Paying for our kids’ college? Getting out of debt? Perhaps our process begins with being more comfortable talking about money. By exploring how wealth is defined and measured for us each as an individual, we can invite wealth into our lives through saving, strategizing, and embracing money tools that work for us to be one step closer to our money goals.

Worth

There are several studies out there that say happiness is defined by a specific yearly income. But what if I told you our hardship over happiness isn’t actually about money? For some driven professionals, it’s about our worth being wrapped up in what we do. What we contribute. How we help. We are only as good as what we do. What if our low sense of worth prevents small business owners from raising our rates or collecting payment for a job well done? Money is one piece of our worth story. Financial Therapy uncovers the complexities that shape how we show up in our personal and professional lives.

Work-Life Balance

If Workaholism is defined as a money disorder, then I’m one of thousands of professionals looking to maintain a better work-life balance. Folks who are fighting against the urge to work 24/7 and feel guilty when we take a break. Small business owners who skip social events to work long hours or weekends. Entrepreneurs who struggle to stop thinking about their business at all hours of the day and night. It doesn’t have to be this way. Financial Therapy uncovers that inner dialogue about worth and work that can signal the beginning of healing our money story. Work-life balance is possible! Financial Therapy can be part of the magic to making it happen.

If you relate to any of these experiences, Financial Therapy may be the missing piece you’ve been seeking to achieve the next level of your small business success! I know the process has been invaluable to me as a driven professional and the team at Financial Therapy Solutions would be honored to help you on your journey to financial freedom!

Supporting Small Business Owners to Redefine Wealth, Worth, and Work-Life Balance

Originally Written by Khara Croswaite Brindle for Financialtherapysolutions.com

Emotional Valet and Elevated Antibodies

What if thyroid antibodies become elevated as we hold stress for others? It’s one of the many questions I explore in my soon-to-release new book Helpers with Hashimotos. My inspiration was my clients and colleagues over the years. And of course my own journey to find answers.  Clients were coming to my office with thyroid problems, anxiety, and depression, in some ways paralleling my own personal journey with Hashimoto’s. Then a fellow helper shared that her antibodies climbed dramatically while she was doing her own trauma healing work and a lightbulb went off.

Is it possible that our vicarious trauma and holding of space for others as professional helpers is adding to our risks for developing a thyroid condition? Is one of the ways this shows up in our body increased inflammation and antibodies? Is this adding to why 1 in 8 people have a thyroid condition, including 1 in every 5 women?

So many questions and not enough answers! Yet it all starts to make sense when we think about caregivers, called to helping professions, who put on the superhero cape daily at the risk of their own compassion fatigue and burnout. Becoming an Emotional Valet for others. What’s the cost? An increase in thyroid antibodies and resulting thyroid diagnoses in helping professionals, I suspect.

Intrigued? I’m excited to share more later this year in Helpers with Hashimotos: The Rise of Thyroid Conditions in Professional Helpers and What We Can Do About It. Exploring a relationship between helpers and thyroid conditions, it’s time to embrace strategies to get us back to wellness so we can continue to do what we love!

Self-Care Isn’t Always About Slowing Down

As a workaholic choosing balance on a daily basis, I know that if a stranger were to approach me tomorrow and say, “Khara, just slow down!” I’d politely acknowledge their suggestion without any desire to act on it. As a driven professional, I’ve heard this sentiment for years. From family, friends, and colleagues. Even briefly from my doctors. Yet like many of our clients, having someone suggest slowing down isn’t enough. Workaholics have to examine it, plan it, and justify it to avoid the resulting feelings of restlessness or guilt.

I saw a quote this week that said, “If you don’t make time for wellness, you’ll be forced to make time for illness.” Truth! To ignore the warning signs of burnout or write off self-care as frivolous isn’t an option. However, slowing down isn’t a comfortable option for driven professionals either, so what can we do?

I watched a respected colleague experience distress when exploring how to slow down her life. An extrovert and passionate business owner, she named that she had no desire to have unstructured weekends or embrace boredom. I can relate. I spoke to this in a previous blog called: What If Working Is Your Self-Care? My response to her distress was to share that self-care isn’t always about slowing down. It can be about pivoting and pouring our energy into something restorative and energizing instead. I watched her shoulders drop and a smile return to her face as she began exploring a new way to define her self-care strategy. Discovering what could support her in feeling restored without feeling bored.

People continue to think self-care is vacations, spa days, and bubble baths. All have an element of slowing down, which has value in certain situations. But what if we don’t like any of those things? What if these activities breed discomfort or resentment instead of joy? For workaholics and driven professionals, the abrupt change from 60 miles an hour productivity to full stop leaves them feeling like they’ve been hit by a truck.

It’s why I’ve talked in previous posts about redefining self-care as rest AND restoration. Maybe as a driven person, you like the idea of restoration more than rest. Maybe it fits your personality better, much like my colleague. Instead of binge watching a show and vegging out on the couch, maybe now you are walking in nature or cooking a nourishing meal. Perhaps you are painting or dancing or creating instead of embracing stillness. After all, a lot of entrepreneurs find stillness painful, worrying that it invites in stagnation. Moving and creating feel better to these folks.

So what would be on your self-care list if it wasn’t about slowing down? What would replace the naps, movie marathons, and pedicures if we wanted a self-care activity that was equally active and invigorating? Take that next step and watch how your work-life balance shifts for the better!

Participation Trophies and Perfectionism

What if participation trophies have caused more harm than good? The running criticism of the Millennial generation is that participation trophies were awarded to kids to make sure no one was left out and to promote a feeling that everyone wins. Enter eye rolls of the older generations as we explore how participation trophies could be a possible culprit of increased perfectionism in both Millennial and Gen Z generations.

The Millennial generation is defined roughly as individuals born 1980-1996. Stereotyped as the entitled generation that moves from one job to the next, Simon Sinek was willing to name some of the challenges in his viral video on Millennials in the workplace. Dr. Jean Twenge explored additional factors for this generation in her book Generation Me. Thanks to her research, I discovered a detailed picture of how and why perfectionism has elevated since the early 1980s. Additionally, the full experience of Millennial finances and workaholism is captured in Anne Helen Petersen’s book Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.

Following the Millennial generation, Gen Z captures folks born roughly 1996-2004 and has been named a generation that is more open to talking about mental health, quality of life, and feelings of isolation. Dr. Twenge dedicates a book to this generation’s challenges called iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—And What That Means for the Rest of Us. Serving this population in my mental health practice, I continue to see themes of perfectionism, anxiety, and burnout based on high expectations of themselves to perform well and achieve success.

How does this connect back to participation trophies? Please allow me to explain. A client of mine was doing therapeutic work around messaging their received in childhood about their worth being wrapped up in what they do. Their belief was that the more they do, the more value they possess in the eyes of others. They described getting a participation trophy for an event and recognized that it mean nothing to them because everyone else got one too. Not only that, they felt the trophy encouraged imposter syndrome in feeling like a fraud! Therefore my client felt they had to work even harder to earn accolades and positive feedback on their worth as they got older. Enter workaholism, poor boundaries, and absent self-care which landed them in my office.

Does this resonate with you as it does with me? As an Elder Millennial and therapist, I recognize powerful patterns in my own worth as well as my clients work. Is it possible that participation trophies started a spiral of messaging that our worth is wrapped up in what we do? Combined with money earned for good grades, promotions for working overtime, and focusing on our children’s accomplishments when asked how they are, is this not the perfect storm for perfectionism, workaholism, and resulting burnout as adults?

Participation trophies are not the only piece of this puzzle. I am honored to continue this journey of self-discovery with my clients as a Perfectioneur, mental health therapist, and burnout consultant. My client’s disclosure provided another layer of perspective related to rising perfectionism and burnout in these two generations. It’s not the end of our story! Our narratives of self-worth, value, and workaholism are worth exploring and rewriting to remove our badges of busyness and achieve better work-life balance!

How to Stop Celebrating Noble Burnout

What if we’ve received messaging that we are only as good as what we do for others? This is a common core belief for helping professionals. Subconscious or not, it has the potential to increase risks of poor boundaries, workaholism, and burnout.

If we choose a profession built on caring, responding, and helping, we tend to carry the weight of being vigilant, responsive, and always “on.”  As we work harder to help others and meet work demands, we pay less attention to our own boundaries for self-care and that superhero cape stays on way too long.

It’s a phenomenon I like to call Noble Burnout. The cape starts to weigh us down as we run the risk of forgetting our own needs entirely, which results in burnout. Yet we are praised for our sacrifices and our worth remains defined in what we do for others. While the effort to help so many people is noble, it’s not sustainable as we neglect our own self-care needs. Even superheroes need a break.

Finding Balance Over Noble Burnout

1) Learn to Say No, More. I’ve heard it called “acting your wage.” Stop working for free when what you offer has value! Having some prepared phrases or responses can help you hold your boundaries and practice of saying no.

2) Improve Your Relationship with Money. Exploring your money messages will help you identify a healthier relationship with your finances as a professional. What if you think poorly of people who are rich or well-off? What if you worry about becoming Scrooge? These internal beliefs may prevent you from meeting your full financial potential because you worry about the impression you make on others. Healing your money story is an important piece to the Noble Burnout puzzle.

3) Remember Your Values. If you are working within your values, you’ll enjoy the rewards of fulfillment and purpose at work and home. If your values are absent, how can you bring them back into the equation? If our values are identified and prioritized, we can utilize them as a healthy gauge for wellness rather than misplaced fuel for the Noble Burnout fire.

4) Embrace Authenticity. You are a person first and professional helper second. This means being able to honor your needs and take break. Being human, having limits, and saying no are all allowed.

Together we can stop subscribing to Noble Burnout as helping professionals and as a community! Just imagine what we could accomplish if we weren’t celebrating self-sacrifice and instead chose to celebrate self-care.

What if Working is Your Self-Care?

I was bonding with other powerhouse business women in a working retreat recently and was asked to facilitate a goal-setting exercise. What do we want to accomplish in the next six months and how can we help one another achieve these goals? I’d had them narrow it down. Brainstorm. Prioritize. Share. Ask for help.

Then it was my turn. I jumped in with enthusiasm, rattling off my goals of book sales, the Amazon best-seller list, and a TED Talk. I was excited to share! To manifest, to make it more real. And then came the question. “Khara,” one of my colleagues said, “that sounds great. But, what’s the end goal?” I felt my excitement wheeze and deflate like an untied balloon. I felt confused, unsure, and started to sweat. Why couldn’t I come up with an answer for her? An answer for myself? I knew in my heart that I didn’t want to retire early and not have work. Working gives me a sense of direction. Work gives me purpose. More specifically, creating gives me purpose. And yet I didn’t know the end-result. Through a constricted throat, I claimed I’d have to get back to her, finding my mind going blank.

Soon after the retreat, she texted me. “Khara, I owe you an apology. My question to you was flawed from the beginning. It was a projection of societal expectations that there has to be a particular outcome more than just enjoying the process. Enjoying the process might be the point and that is actually really beautiful.” She proceeded to send me this quote:

“The fruits of a fulfilling life—happiness, confidence, enthusiasm, purpose, and money—are mainly the by-products of doing something we enjoy, with excellence, rather than the things we can seek directly.”    --Dan Miller

The tightness in my chest loosened, the panic of not having an answer and worrying about not having an answer, lifted. I felt seen. It lead me to a question of, “what if working is my self-care?” What if working is yours?

They say “if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” That may be true for some, but it’s also one of the villains we blame for our current workaholic culture. Doing what we love is a privilege. Does the work invigorate you? Inspire you? Feed your soul?

I can tell you that creating for me brings feelings of happiness and joy. It’s as close as I get to contentment in knowing I’m producing things of value. I can also tell you that to the outside world, I’m churning things out at a breakneck speed. A speed which others might find unhealthy, believing I subscribe to workaholic culture, I am workaholic culture, and that I need to take it down a notch. That I’m steamrolling instead of stopping to smell the roses. They assume I don’t get enough sleep.

There’s a sweet spot for functioning in a productivity loop. For those creatives out there, you get it. We get ideas in the shower, while driving, and at 4am out of blue. We feel a rush to put our ideas into motion, creating something that can have a positive impact for ourselves and others. We do in fact maintain enough sleep to get to good ideas, the ahas that inspire action. So to tell us to slow down, stop our work, or accuse us of poor self-care is missing the mark. It’s once again operating from the flawed lens of society. The all or nothing thinking. Society which demands answers to the question, what’s the end goal? Why do it? What’s the point? Why?

Simon Sinek said it best when he said start with your why. If you embrace it, the rest will fall into place. If our why as women entrepreneurs is to make an impact and a meaningful difference in the world through our products and leadership, we can do that. We can work and have it be meaningful, fulfilling, and consider aspects of it as part of our self-care.

Self-care has been commercialized, having us thinking of vacations, massages, and manicures. In previous talks, I’ve invited others to redefine self-care as rest versus restoration. Rest is easy to measure. Taking brain breaks, vegging out, getting enough sleep. But what feels so enticing for creative entrepreneurs is restoration. What energizes you, invigorates you, inspires you? From this lens, it’s not surprising that parts of our business can restore us. Creativity. Leadership. Integrity and Purpose.

Adam Grant highlights the importance of creativity in the workplace by showing that employees who had 20% of their work hours carved out for creativity were more productive, were responsible for some of the latest innovations to change the world, and were more emotionally invested in their workplace. Does this not sound like a great recipe for burnout prevention and challenging our workaholic culture?

I’m asking you to change your beliefs about the churn. Creativity and enjoying the process in your work can be self-care. Creativity at work serves the dual purpose of encouraging feelings of productivity and contentment. Working may not be rest but it can be restorative. Therefore it can be part of your self-care practice. Do something you enjoy with excellence, and the fruits of a fulfilling life will follow.

From Workaholic to Well-Balanced in COVID

These strategies are for you if:

1) Work has become your first priority over family, relationships, self-care, or social activities

2) You’ve have a hard time saying no to more projects, more time, or more opportunities

3) You’ve canceled social plans because of having to work more or work late

4) You’ve been working weekends or late into the evening in an attempt to get ahead

5) You’ve checked your emails compulsively when feeling bored

6) You’ve felt guilty or restless when experiencing down time

7) You’ve worked while on vacation

8) Your sleep is disrupted by anxiety or worry about your business

9) You’ve taken on more in wanting to feel stable financially

10) When people ask how you are, you’ve said "busy."

Do you worry that you are a workaholic? Studies indicate an increase in work addiction or workaholism thanks to COVID restricting our after work activities and lifestyles. Let’s take a deeper dive into how things have shifted.

COVID has challenged our boundaries in the following areas:

·      Work

·      Family

·      Finances

COVID is responsible for symptoms like:

·      Poor work-life separation

·      Sleep disruption

·      Loss of energy and increased fatigue

·      Loss of creativity

·      Increased workaholism

·      Increased stress (scarcity and uncertainty)

·      Limited opportunities for connection

·      Isolation and loneliness

·      Relationship conflict

·      Shorter fuse and increased irritability

·      Brain fog and inattention

·      Escapism

Can you relate? Let’s take a closer look at each sphere that’s been challenged by COVID and what we can do about it.

At Work

Let’s start with the Work Sphere since we are talking about Workaholism. Workaholism can be defined as an addiction to work where work feels like the top priority and there is guilt or anxiety when not working. It also describes serious struggles with work-life separation.

So where is the link between COVID and workaholism?

-Even less work-life separation in working from home

-Increased workaholism in not having after-work activities available

-Loss of creativity in feeling stuck

-Brain fog and inattention

So even though we are working more than ever, people are describing a decline in productivity! Let’s look at some ways to improve your experiences at work.

Work Exercises

1) Set Boundaries

Schedule your lunches, your breaks, your do-no-disturb phone settings at night and on weekends. Your best friend in battling workaholism? The schedule email feature! Even when you have a thought, don’t send an email, schedule it! Model good boundaries for others by having those emails populate on a work day, even if your creativity hits you on weekends or odd hours!

2) Set Rituals to Leave Work at Work.

This may seem harder in not having the commute from your office to your home but it is an opportunity for creativity. Are you powering down your computer? Changing your clothes? Separating work from home by moving to another space? Do you restrict the space you work in rather than having it bleed over onto the couch where you also like to relax? Can you pack up your work items and put them away? One colleague of mine would pack up her things and walk down the hall to the front door and back, mentally transitioning to being home. Whatever ritual works best for you, give it a conscious try for 30 days to see if it makes a difference!

3) Go Lean on Lists

A popular exercise from our Amazon #1 Best Seller Perfectioneur: From Workaholic to Well-Balanced, this may feel even more relevant in battling brain fog. Our minds can only remember 7+-2 memory items at a time.

Write down all the things you want to accomplish in the next 6 months. Next, narrow it down to your top ten priorities. Are they truly your top ten? If so, you aren’t allowed to focus on any of the other tasks until these 10 are done. This means not adding to your list or taking on new projects as a serial entrepreneur. Resistance and anxiety may appear, just know that if you embrace your top 10, the benefits of feeling more focused and productive makes the discomfort worth it!

4) Carve Out Time for Creativity

It’s not about arts and crafts as much as it is about honoring the times when you get your best ideas. Adam Grant speaks about 20% of your work week being allotted for creativity. Are you a morning person who likes to get things done early? Are you a night owl with your best ideas after the quiet of others going to bed? It’s worth taking a look at reworking your schedule to carve out time for these moments of creative thought to support you, your business, and your family.

Family Sphere

Speaking of Family, a second element impacted by COVID and workaholism is the Family Sphere.

-We’ve established there is poor work-life separation. Working from home. Those of you with kids might have had to homeschool at some point.

-The added stress of balancing out added responsibilities is increasing irritability and creating a shorter fuse! Snapping at your kid for leaving dishes in the sink. Coming unglued by the piles of laundry. It’s a lot to manage on a good day, let alone in a pandemic.

-This leads to zoning out and escapism. When overwhelmed or feeling stuck, we feel we want to escape into something easy or effortless. It might be a video game, movie, or show.

-The final area of the family sphere to note is increased relationship conflict. This might be between you and your kids or you and your partner or spouse. Perhaps it’s too much togetherness in quarantine where you can’t take a break from one another. Or isolation and loneliness in not being able to see your family in person very often.

Family Exercises

1) Self-Care Redefined

One way to address these challenges is by redefining Self-care as rest vs. restoration. The commercialized self-care options of vacations and spa days weren’t available at the start of COVID, financially or from a place of feeling safe. If we redefine self-care as rest vs. restoration, something amazing happens, it feels doable again. So what is rest? We are pretty good at resting like staying in our sweats all weekend, not making plans, or binge watching a show. Yet equally important is restoration. What energizes you, invigorates you, restores you to a place where you have energy in the tank again? Perhaps it’s being in nature, petting your dog, listening to music, or dancing around the house? I also encourage you to revisit what you used to enjoy as a kid. Is it about flying a kite, having a picnic, or playing with LEGO?

2) Self-Care Solo or Together

Once you get the juices flowing on possible self-care activities, I want to challenge you to have some ideas for each of these four categories:

·      solo quiet (like reading a book, writing, knitting, meditating)

·      solo active (like taking a walk, stretching, dancing around the house)

·      together quiet (like listening to music, watching a show, taking a drive)

·      together active (like cooking, an exercise class, learning something new)

By having ideas that fit all four categories, you have a greater likelihood to remain flexible in the face of fatigue, picking the activity that works best to restore you. What I appreciate about these exercises is that they don’t cost a lot of money. After all, our last sphere impacted by COVID is the Finances Sphere.

Finances Sphere

What if the rise in Workaholism is due to:

-Financial insecurity –Our changing economy and fluctuating revenue? What if we find ourselves reacting by reducing spending and increased anxiety? Have you noticed anger and a desire for control around a fluctuating bank account or compulsively checking to see what funds are available each day?

-This leads to us operating from a place of scarcity. Due to uncertainty and the unknown, we find ourselves worries about the what ifs. What if I get laid off? Fired? What if I lose my job? Lose my contract? What if I can’t pay my bills?

Finances Exercise

Based on this stressful experience, we want to take our power back.

Grab a pen and paper and try out this writing exercise. Ask yourself:

1. What is my current relationship with money?  Allow the thoughts and feelings to come out on paper, unscripted and unfiltered. What themes do you notice?

2. How do you want your relationship with money to shift or change? Again, allow the thoughts and feelings to pour freely. What’s one thing you can do to get yourself that one step closer to a healthier relationship with your money?

A Money Quiz

Ready to look a little deeper? There are four scripts that provide messaging of how we should behave with our money. Let’s look at a quiz first and record your responses.

B) Here’s a playful Quiz to get us started in a conversation about our relationship with money

You get a bonus at work. You decide to:

1. Buy that pair of shoes you’ve been eyeing. (S)

2. Put it straight into your 401K. (V)

3. Text your besties, “we’re going out and I’m buying!” (W)

4. What bonus? You haven’t checked your bank account balance in weeks. (A)

You’re calculating your quarterly taxes for your business this year and find yourself:

1. Feeling confident that you’ve put enough aside for when taxes are due. (V)

2. Hoping for a tax return to fund your next much-needed vacation. (W)

3. Starting to sweat. Can’t you put this off until next week? (A)

4. Excited to upgrade to the latest phone you’ve been wanting. (S)

Your parent wants to sit down and talk about their estate planning as part of their retirement. You respond by:

1. Brushing them off saying you are busy for several months. (A)

2. Giving advice on what they should do with all their money. (S)

3. Asking how you can help celebrate their hard work. (W)

4. Worrying about how the maintain the estate if they ask you to. (V)

You stumble across a video on the importance of running financial reports as a business owner. Your reaction is:

1. Determination to work even harder to see those numbers grow. (W)

2. An upset stomach and your mind going blank. (A)

3. Anticipation about your next big purchase. (S)

4. Eagerness to invest your profits for your future. (V)

Curious what the quiz means? The responses are capturing the 4 scripts in action!

Avoidant (A)

“I don’t want to talk about money.”

·      Doesn’t ask for raises or promotions

·      Minimizes own abilities and paid opportunities

·      Requires workaholism to make ends meet?

Worship (W)

“The more money I make, the happier I’ll be.”

·      May experience hoarding

·      May spend in large amounts to show love to others

·      Increased risk of workaholism

Status (S)

“My self-worth is tied into how much money I make.”

·      Desire to display wealth publicly

·      More often seen in young adults

·      Work hard, play hard

Vigilant (V)

“I can feel in control of my money.”

·      Doesn’t spend money lavishly or gamble

·      High anxiety about money

·      Difficulty enjoying money due to feelings of guilt after purchases

Which script do you relate to most? Which script do you prefer? What’s one thing you can do to get yourself one step closer to a healthier relationship with your money?

Workaholism continues to impact work, family, and finances. Are you ready to celebrate work-life balance and leave workaholism behind? Practicing solid work boundaries, redefining self-care, and healing your money relationship can bring you closer to balance. Grab our Amazon #1 Best-Seller Perfectioneur: From Workaholic to Well-Balanced and subscribe to our YouTube channel for even more tools.

Resiliency vs. Vulnerability: Approaches for Trauma Healing

“I can’t be resilient and ask for help.”

The conviction in my client’s voice had me speechless for several seconds. Finding myself curious in traditional therapist fashion, I asked her to tell me more. In her journey to better understand her childhood trauma, she felt that living life from a place of resiliency was the ultimate goal. But what about the vulnerability of asking for help? As we explored it further, she disclosed that the message she had downloaded throughout her life was that she can’t have both.

How did this happen? How can a person achieve resilience without asking for help here and there along the way? If resiliency is defined as the capacity to spring back quickly, have elasticity, and overcome difficulties quickly, how can we realistically expect youth and adults to achieve this 100% on their own?

I found myself gently challenging my client on this very notion by asking her if her five-year-old self was supposed to figure out resiliency without relying on anyone. Of course she said no, that wasn’t realistic. My client isn’t alone in finding herself battling the emotional desire to rely only on herself in response to trauma wounds while her logical and developmental self is wanting to ask for help. Therefore I think there is some powerful therapeutic work to be done to challenge the black and white thinking of resiliency vs. asking for help from a trauma perspective.

1. ACEs – by exploring the 10 questions of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, my client was able to better identify the limits of adult stability and parenting within her household which were contributing to her inner narrative that she couldn’t ask for help in not having stable adults present in her life to respond.

2. Attachment Style – by introducing my client to attachment styles from childhood to adulthood, she was better able to identify patterns of behaviors in relationships that were preventing her from asking for help or embracing vulnerability in her interactions with others.

3.  Negative Core Beliefs – by engaging my client in a deeper dive of what these events say about herself, she was able to name painful core beliefs like “I am unlovable” and “I don’t deserve good things.” We were then able to explore how these core beliefs influence her behaviors and responses to others from the lenses of vulnerability, self-sabotage, and integral resistance.

4. Flash Technique – by exploring her strengths and reinforcing them with this trauma technique, my client was able to find ways to embrace her vulnerability and resiliency, allowing it to settle into her being at a cellular level that felt empowering, pleasant, and real.

These techniques are by no means an exhaustive list of how to address vulnerability and resiliency in trauma work. However, I have found them useful in opening the door of possibility that trauma survivors can embody both vulnerability and resiliency in their therapeutic journey, allowing them to show up authentically for themselves and others as they heal.

Finding Yourself in the Fix-Its

It’s important to recognize that the therapy process isn’t fully predictable or formulaic. It’s a connection between two people, one with hurts, stressors, and needs. The other holding their own needs and biases in check in an effort to be helpful. Because of their limited time in the field, it is not uncommon to have a new clinician find themselves in an advice-giving role or “fix it” mode.

The perception is that the client is asking: What should I do? Help me. Tell me what to do.

Recognizing that a clinician holds some authority in the therapeutic relationship, we can easily find ourselves immersed in the urge to fix things. To reduce our client’s pain. To find a solution that would make both of us feel better. We’re human and want there to be hope and solutions.

But in an effort to make things better, the fix-it mode also comes with risks that the client could feel misunderstood, pressured to change, or pressured to adopt the perceived advice without a say in the matter. This can result in broken rapport, frustration, and possible disengagement from therapy if they don’t feel they can speak up or advocate for themselves.

So what can we do as clinicians to avoid the easy trap of wanting to fix things? Here are some ideas for therapists to remain present in a client’s pain.

1. Check Yourself – Practice self-awareness to recognize the warning signs that you are slipping into or existing within the fix-its. Are you noticing tension or discomfort in your body? Have you entered a pattern with your client where you offer an idea and they respond with the “yes, buts.” Have you talked with your partner about this? Yes but they don’t get it. Have you tried mindfulness. Yes but I have trouble focusing. It becomes a verbal tennis match where the client keeps returning the ball to you with no resolution.

2. Breathe – Once you notice you are in this negative volley of ideas being returned, take a breath. Pause and take a drink of water. Notice the frustration that may come up from your client declining your ideas.

3. Practice Self-Compassion – Engage in self-compassion to address the discomfort and frustration that may be brewing due to the fix-it exchange. An inhale with compassion for yourself, an exhale with compassion for your client. Inhale—It makes sense I’m frustrated, I’m trying to help—exhale—this must be so hard for them to feel like nothing could work.

4.  Name the Impact – A true practice of vulnerability is naming the impact of the negative exchange with your client. “I’m noticing some frustration in my chest in regards to what we are talking about. Is it possible you feel the same?” Sometimes modeling what it means to be human and own our emotions encourages the client to open up on what’s going on for them, allowing positive shifts in the dynamic out of the fix-its.

5. Ask What Would be Helpful – An important last piece of shifting completely out of the fix-its is to ask the client what could be more helpful in this moment. We’ve grounded ourselves through breath, we’ve practiced self-compassion, and we’ve modeled naming the emotions that are rising in the fix-it exchange. By asking for their feedback, we can repair rapport and engage in a new direction that might help them feel more seen and heard in the session.

Here’s an example from my own experience that illustrates how this process could look.

I had a client who was showing signs of frustration, responding to my questions in a clipped way that was not typical for her. I was trying to re-engage her at a deeper level, finding myself frustrated with the perceived withdrawal and surface level processing. It was necessary for me to check my own emotions and evaluate if I’d overstepped in some way before naming it to her. Once I named out loud what I was noticing, she confirmed she felt unheard and that we were moving too quickly into solutions, causing her to withdraw. Once I compassionately acknowledged her experience and thanked her for sharing this with me, I followed up by asking her what she needed more of in this moment. She reiterated that my ability to hold space for her pain would be most helpful, which we were able to do together for the remainder of the session.

I have to admit, some of my most powerful sessions come from exiting the fix-its or repairing a misunderstanding with a client in session. The ability to recognize the error, own it, and engage the client in compassionate collaboration can serve as meaningful examples of staying human and practicing healthy conflict resolution. To feel heard and get back on track in ways that feel supportive can be a powerful healing element all on it’s own. Finding yourself in the fix-its is a real possibility, for both green and seasoned clinicians alike. It doesn’t have to remain a frustrating experience for both you and your client, it can help you both grow.

Money Mentality in Mental Health

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 the community struggling with how to navigate money matters in private practice. It could be considered a challenging rite of passage when becoming our own boss.

We don’t know what we don’t know. Thankfully, we can support one another in the process of creating a healthier relationship with money! Embracing our vulnerability by asking how to go about increasing our rates, move to a cash-pay practice, when to charge for no-shows, and throughout COVID, how to collect an outstanding balance from a client who is experiencing financial difficulties.

It’s the challenge of running your practice as a business offering a valuable service and giving back to your clients and the community at large. Because it’s such a delicate balance, there are times we receive judgement from our communities, questioning our motives, our focus or purpose, or believing 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 improve our mental health and relationship with money.

1. Read a Money Book. I appreciated the exercises exploring our relationship to money in Jen Sincero’s book, You are a Badass at Making Money. Writing a letter to “break up” with the unhealthy relationship with money was a meaningful exercise and can really highlight some themes of money for each of us as professionals.

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.

3. Complete a Money Course. Want to have the accountability and structure of a course that walks you through your relationship with money? Wendy Wright, a colleague and financial therapist in Denver, CO is offering several online masterminds in February to start you off on the right foot!

4. Work with a Financial Therapist. I was excited to discover 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 and specialty!

Your relationship with money will evolve and change as you do your own meaningful work. 2021 is a new year with new perspective for all of us. Let’s cultivate a healthy relationship with money for improved mental health and work-life balance!