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What are the common problems that many therapists have to overcome? Do you struggle with often self-sacrificing even though you try to teach your clients self-empowerment? How can therapists experience real, true fulfillment in the work that they do?
In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks about finding real fulfillment and flourishing in your work with Erin Gibb.
Podcast Sponsor: Blueprint
Providing great therapy day after day can be challenging – even for the best of us!
At Blueprint, they believe that nothing should get in the way of you doing your best work, which is why they created a platform that provides therapists with an array of clinical tools – things like therapy worksheets, intervention ideas, and digital assessments – that are designed to help you and your clients can stay connected and confident throughout the care journey. Even better, Blueprint helps streamline your documentation so that you can spend less time on your notes and more time on the things that matter.
To learn more and request a free 30-day trial, visit blueprint-health.com
Meet Erin Gibb
Erin Gibb is a therapist, clinical supervisor, group practice owner, podcast host, Therapist Fulfillment coach, and early adopter of the weird and wonderful that accelerates expansion.
She created Therapist Expanded (her podcast and coaching business), after years of mentoring therapists and seeing how deeply the industry conditioning goes, and how courageously living from the source of our dreams incites mental health revolution.
Visit Erin’s website and connect on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Freebie: What’s Your Therapist Fulfillment Flavor?
In This Podcast
- Macro problems in therapists’ lives
- The underbelly of empowerment
- How to make positive progress for therapists
- How therapists can experience fulfillment
- Erin’s advice to private practitioners
Macro problems in therapists’ lives
The earliest experiences of most therapists are often the same.
Somewhere in childhood we learned that having needs wasn’t as good as looking after other people’s needs. That is a common story for therapists in the making.
Erin Gibb
As many therapists continue on their working journey, they come to discover that they used the empathetic response to survive when they were young children in a potentially difficult or lacking household.
Unfortunately, many places in the world struggle with systemic problems that impact almost every family.
When we fast forward to higher education, we start getting the message that [we] need to comply … to be obedient to these systems.
Erin Gibb
This combination often leads most therapists to be overly compliant in every aspect, from checking the boxes in a hierarchical manner to moving through grad school.
There’s a disconnect where therapists are taught that they are only guides in their client’s recovery, but that if a client dies in their care, then they are held liable in some way.
Due to this, so many graduate students receive their qualifications with a deep sense of fear.
The underbelly of empowerment
Therapists are smart, quick-thinking, and resourceful problem-solvers that know what to do and when to do it.
They have a powerful wealth of knowledge and skills that equip them to handle some of the toughest situations. However, there is an underbelly that can cause therapists to undervalue themselves.
Then there’s the moment where we need to choose to prioritize ourselves over others, and that comes up many times in our careers. It can come up when you’re fee-setting it can come up when you need to make a change in practice, [and] it can come up in the micro level all the time in the therapy room.
Erin Gibb
The only sustainable way forward is for therapists to first look after themselves completely before opening the door to someone else.
How to make positive progress for therapists
There can be real, genuine fulfillment for therapists in the work that they do without requiring them to undervalue or sacrifice themselves along the way.
The first step is to find and reconnect with the center of yourself. What inspired you to do the work that you are currently doing? What were you like as a child, before you were conditioned to self-sacrifice or over-empathize for survival or safety?
Secondly, when therapists live fully and freely, they can take everyone that they support much farther.
[When] we stop accepting broken systems [that] starts to revolutionize mental health, not by going after the system directly … [but when] we change ourselves, we change the world.
Erin Gibb
How therapists can experience fulfillment
Sure, therapists do need money to live comfortably which affords them the chance to focus well on their clients instead of worrying about their own finances. However, true fulfillment goes deeper than that.
There’s such a difference between success and fulfillment, and success may or may not have anything to do with fulfillment. It might be what we thought we needed to do from our conditioning.
Erin Gibb
Fulfillment is not about money. It’s about finding the state of being within yourself that feels like fulfillment, and then reversing the strategy to find the process of how to get there.
So, rather than focusing on what to do from the get-go, let yourself explore what fulfillment feels like for you by being aware of when you feel that moment of joy and peace, and excitement, and then notice how you ended up getting there.
Erin’s advice to private practitioners
Fundamentally, we will take clients as far as we’ve gone. By you investing in your own fulfillment, you can watch how that will unlock that ability and sanctify that same behavior for your clients.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Dr. Gloria Mark – Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity
Sponsors mentioned in this episode:
- Request a free 30-day trial, at blueprint-health.com
- Apply to Work 1-on-1 with a POP Consultant!
Useful links mentioned in this episode:
- Visit Erin’s website and connect on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Listen to Therapist Expanded.
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Meet Joe Sanok
Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.
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