บทถอดความฉบับเต็มของ Session 366: A Guide to Getting Started On Becoming A Therapist

that we all know the grueling process that is often that of licensure. 00:03:38 Speaker 2: So this listen. 00:03:39 Speaker 1: Josephine, your eyes rolling all the way back in your head. It's just so many steps and so this is the thing that it feels like had the most energy when we talked about it on social just because I feel like a lot of us did not know what we were in for in terms of like you think you go to school and it's like okay, well I'm good, but no, they are all these like post degree licensure supervision hours, and like y'all have already talked about, sometimes we have to find people to pay to do those. So let me just read you a couple of other comments. So Crystal George RD wrote, transitioning from a trainee to an associate is a mental hurdle. One minute, you're an amateur, and then when you get a job and you're expected to be the expert. It takes a lot of grounding and self acceptance to know that you're still an amateur that will always be growing and learning through the field. There's a lot of imposter syndrome that comes to as you deal with more difficult cases, but eventually, as you become more competent, it passes. Sarah Phoebe wrote the required three thousand hours are a pain off, and then State of Mind Journal wrote, I wasn't prepared for all of the stigma. I also wish someone would have told me that most of the costs came out of your pocket beyond just the degrees. Every licensee in North Carolina wants me to pay their rate by the hour for my supervised hours. They only allow a small group of students and to graduate school where their supervised hours are a part of their degree. I should have gotten a bachelor's in social works so that I could still be making an income while I'll wait, but lessons learned. So talk to me a little bit about your licensure process, Josephine. It sounds like you're still having a bit of a licensure process as you work to become a supervisor. And some of the things are words of wisdom that you would offer to people who are kind of in this journey. 00:05:17 Speaker 3: Now you are so right. Yes, my eyes definitely went all the way in the back of my head what you said licensure, because i finished my licensed clinical social work hours three three hundred and sixty of them, and that I'm doing the hours for the MFT, which is another two thousand, and then I'm doing the hours for the license Addictions Counselor, which is another two thousand. So I have found that when it comes to licensure, it is a journey that I think it makes me a stronger therapist, like gives me real thick skin in terms of being able to handle the oppressive systems that we operate within. And the silver lining of it is it's really open the opportunity for me to meet other professionals that I don't think I would have otherwise been able to work with. My experience in becoming a licensed clinical social worker was unique in the fact that I was working in many different places at the same time, so I was trying to collect all of these hours, which meant that I had the opportunity to learn from so many different professionals. I implore folks working towards relicentshire to not amount their worth as a therapist to the license. There's a huge and at least in my experience, I thought I was less of a therapist because I didn't have the LCSW yet, But that's just simply not true. You're getting these hours so that you're able to get more experience. But there's a reason why you got into graduate school. Let's start there. There's a reason why you got whatever employment that you got, or if you're in private practice, there's a reason why you're doing that. So there's so much that you can offer and that you can give while you're on your way there and when you get there. I threw myself a whole party when I got all of my hours, because it is a huge accomplishment doing it once doing it twice, doing three times for me, And it's so crucial to know the steps and know exactly what the licensing agencies are looking for and being aware of what changes happen, because in Colorado the licensing requirements for social work have changed about three times over since I started with trying to get my license in twenty twenty and now working to be a supervisor. Luckily there aren't a ton of requirements for that, but those things keep changing. So I always imploor folks to really keep your eyes open, subscribe to whatever newsletter your licensing agency has so that whenever there's an update, you're always up to date on it. So those are a couple of things I fly thank. 00:08:13 Speaker 1: You for that, and I think it is important to talk about. So as therapists, we are licensed in individual states. So as of yet, though there is some movement to talk about, like okay, can we have national licenses, like is there really a need to have this, But as of right now, we are licensed in each individual state. So if you want to see clients in Georgia, where I am, then you have to have a license from the border social work, border psychology, border marriage, and family therapy to be able to see clients. And if you want to do that, then in North Carolina you have to have a different license, right, And the states don't all have the same requirements. So some states have like this verbal thing that you have to go and do. Most states have like a test that you have to take. But there are lots of different requirements. So that's a great point, Josephine, is to kind of make sure that you know the requirements, especially if you're somebody who's going to be like applying in different states at the same time. You want to make sure you don't miss something because one state requires fifteen hundred hours versus two thousand. So I think that is important to kind of point out what about you, Doctor Orio will talk to us a little bit about your process. 00:09:14 Speaker 2: This is such a long time ago because. 00:09:18 Speaker 4: Right, so, like I walked across the stage with a license because

I took my test before I graduated, because you're allowed to do it so many months ahead of graduation, sophen ahead, and I was like, well, might as well go ahead to take it to one. 00:09:33 Speaker 2: If I failed, then I got a little grace period. I can do it again. 00:09:36 Speaker 4: But I will say this the number one strategic thinking is my strength, and that was part of my strategy. If I can walk across the stage with my license, then that's one last thing for me to have to worry about when I got my degree in hand, because I will walk across the stage knowing that I'm licensed. And when it came time to do the clinical licensure, the way I was studying, I was just like, we study a little bit at a time. 00:09:57 Speaker 2: We don't cram. 00:09:58 Speaker 4: I took my time, I read books, but I probably did things in a way that some people don't. I took a practice test first before I began studying. I'm like, there's no point in me studying for things that I already know, so let me let the test tell me what I already know. Then I could study to my weaknesses and not study to my strengths. I mean, I was still gonna get those strengths anyway, but that was part of my strategy. 00:10:21 Speaker 2: You're gonna have to do what you do for you. 00:10:22 Speaker 4: And same thing when I was doing ASEX certification, just making sure that you understand exactly what the requirements are. 00:10:29 Speaker 2: Just like Josephine said, like, don't be planed around. 00:10:33 Speaker 4: You're gonna find yourself in the world to hurt, not knowing what it is that you're doing and for where you're doing it, and knowing that certain licenses do not just automatically transfer, because I think that a lot of people thought that you could just apply and be given reciprocity. 00:10:48 Speaker 2: New York. 00:10:49 Speaker 4: Don't play those games. California. Don't play those games in California. 00:10:53 Speaker 2: You gotta take a law class. Stop playing. In New York. 00:10:56 Speaker 4: They require very specific classes as well that a lot of states do not require. So you're gonna have to get that first. And if you want to transfer that license, it's ten years. You have to do ten years already as a clinical social worker, because I'm a social worker in order for that joont to even go over there. 00:11:13 Speaker 2: So I think that a lot of people. 00:11:15 Speaker 4: Are not looking when they're doing this thing, and sometimes we're in such a rush to get the thing that we're not sitting down to look at. Okay, whether the requirements, what do I need to do, What is the best order for me to do this in as opposed to let me just start and hope I don't have to double back. 00:11:35 Speaker 2: I find that that is a. 00:11:36 Speaker 4: Beautiful, delicious, tremendous waste of time and taking the time to sit down and consider what you want where you want it, and also bringing in the why, because I don't think that all of us are fully entrenched in our

why. I know some therapists that I look at them, I'm like, Wow, you better than me. They got ten ten licenses in ten different states, and for the life of me, I cannot figure out why, Like, what was the purpose behind ten licenses in ten states? And if you don't know your why, then maybe pause, figure out the why, make sure it's an alignment with what it is that you're saying that you want, and then move forward. Because I'll say this, I did consider licensing in New York and California and Georgia, and then I remember that baby girl been full since twenty eighteen. I've been full since twenty eighteen. I'm not hurting for clients. Why would I get that license in these other states? When I can't see nobody, I'm like, could I hire somebody else? 00:12:40 Speaker 3: Yes? 00:12:40 Speaker 4: Or just throwing this out there right, Or I can focus on where I am because I love my sisters here in the DMV and we still need stuff. I can let people who are in New York handle New York and I can handle the DMV. So just throwing that out there as well, because I see everybody going for all fifty states and I'm just like, better you than me, because when it comes time to pay the piper on those renos. 00:13:09 Speaker 2: Not I. 00:13:11 Speaker 1: So we already know that becoming a therapist takes a lot of work, from school to licensing to clinical hours. Well, one type of work that is overlooked is self work, interrogating your own internalized biases and traumas that could potentially show up in your work with clients. Here's a snippet from Becoming a Therapist, Part two. We respond to a community member's story about learning about wounds they didn't even know existed until working with clients, So something we didn't get a chance to get to in Part one of this conversation was of the personal development piece that is required to become a therapist. So one of our community members wrote on Instagram at Jump for Joe, she said, I definitely didn't expect the healing it forced me to do in places I thought were already healed. It has made me a more attuned human so that I'm able to properly show up, not just for my clients in the therapeutic space, but also for myself and loved ones. So I'd love to hear from both of you a little bit about like your own personal development and like what kinds of things have you learned about yourself or had to attend to in your work as a practicing clinician. 00:14:18 Speaker 5: Well, I got a lot of feedback in internship. I was a fixer when I first came in, and so I just wanted to dive right in there and try to give my clients the answers as opposed to accompanying them on the journey of building insight and developing that sense of self awareness and that mindfulness of what it is that they're dealing with and helping them put those puzzle pieces together. So on the outside I was like, Oh, I see this, and let's do this, and we can at this and we can do that. And that was sometimes not helpful for my clients and internship

because they didn't learn from the process. So I had to learn to hush myself in session. And I also had to learn to monitor my nonverbals. I think that was really another one for me, because my face will speak before I have an opportunity to and with all my black girl energy that I was trying not to bring to the military space because it didn't seem like a warm, welcoming environment. For that that used to be a challenge for me. I also, upon embarking on treating trauma, had to learn to work through my own stuff that I thought was healed but was not. And especially in the context of providing manual based therapy like cognitive processing therapy or prolonged exposure, those kind of things can really have an impact, especially once you start doing it regularly with multiple clients. And so sitting with that and working through your own stuff, getting your own counselor and continuing to see your own counselor so important in the process of becoming a therapist. 00:15:50 Speaker 6: Yeah, I agree with so much of that. And I was thinking about to how when I was in graduate school, do you think you made it right, especially like on a doctoral level, you're like, man, like I've gotten an American dream or whatever. And then when I came to do and I can remember clearly a time where we were talking about the idea of stereotype threat. I went to NYU. They were doing a lot of that work at NYU went at the leads On that was still a professor in the Steinhart School, so I was familiar. But then I learned that the other person, Claude Steele, was a black man, and in my head I thought that Clode Steele was a white woman, like I guess I had the Danielle Steel books in mind or whatever. 00:16:40 Speaker 2: So that was the first thing. 00:16:41 Speaker 6: And then at the time that I was in graduate school, Norm Anderson was the CEO of APA, and he is also a black man who graduated from North Carolina Central University. And you know, I mentioned I'm from the South, but I'm from North Carolina specifically, and I went to boarding school right down the street from NCCU and didn't really seriously consider going there because of really all of this internalized racist stuff, frankly, that I had growing up as a black kid in the South. And so when I realized that, and I noticed my surprise about that, Hey, these are really successful people and they're you know, they're black people and they grew up similar to me, I was like, oh crap, Like what am I assuming about myself and my own likelihood of being successful in graduate school? If it's really this surprising to me that there's black people out here doing this, and to think that not everybody that gets a graduate school is going to have those emotion skills to be able to pinpoint something like that. And so yeah, as long as it's undeveloped, like, realizations like that are really jarring and difficult. And then when you get into kind of your passions or and when I've gotten into my passions and things that you know, I feel strongly about caring for black youth, tending to racially stressful and traumatic events in the community, and then you have people kind of devalue those things, people that you think should know better because they're all in the mental health fields. It continues to bring up things that, like doctor Jackson was saying, really do require what you be in your own work, like that you have a space to process those things. One of the reasons that I like being a DBT therapist so much is that there is a little bit of room, well, there is lots of room in the model to be more self disclosing because in DBT, a lot of times people have experienced invalidating environments and that's where they learned a lot of the ways that they are coping with the world, and so it's important to be genuine and appropriate ways. And so then I really like being able to be genuine and expecting that the type of relationships I build, people will call out what seems like it's therapy interfering and give me that chance to process it, but that I don't have to put on certain types of language or put on a front to be a certain thing that I'm not. But yeah, you really do learn a lot of treatment paradigms say, you know, practice the skills on yourself, and it's all kinds of things like practicing skills of self compassion, emotion regulation. I can't come into work tired, not having eating and yet I have these realities, right, I have two kids at home, I have all of these things that I'm doing in the community, and so really have to practice the skills to be able to do what I'm doing on a daily basis and then to be able to share that with clients. When we're working with skills, it's like, man, you might want to call BS on a lot of this because the implementation is difficult and I'm doing it like we're doing it together. So yeah, you really do learn so much more from. 00:19:56 Speaker 1: Our conversation after the break, but first a quick snip of what's to come next week on TBG. I'll say this, I was so scared that I would be recognized. And actually every semester I did get recognized by one person in each class, but they wouldn't say anything until like maybe the middle of the semester or at the very end. One classmate wore the Reds T shirt like wore our merch and I was like, Okay, you ain't have to do that, you ain't have to do that. But the people who did recognize me were very low key about it, very cool. Even at graduation, a girl came up to me and was like congrats, and I was like, I just need you to not tell nobody. Just don't tell nobody until the ceremony is over, because I really wanted to do this program anonymously. This July Therapy for Black Girls is bringing our yearly Minority Mental Health Month celebration in person to Atlanta, Georgia when us Thursday July eighteenth and Friday July nineteenth, as we shine a light on mental health professionals and all those who dedicated their careers to holding space for others. Our inaugural holding space for

Healers Therapists Summit will gather some of our favorite voices in the field for workshops, seminars, and opportunities to connect. You don't want to miss this, so secure your ticket to wellness by visiting Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash Healers. We don't traditionally think of therapists as business owners, but deciding to begin your own practice is indeed starting a business. It isn't easy trying to navigate the world of social media, marketing and financial planning. So I'm glad that my colleague could join me to discuss some best practices and advice around this topic. Here's a clip. So you both have thriving private practices and so this, I know, is the thing that nobody teaches us in grad school. The surprise, I feel like more schools are adding in some of these kind of business like or opening up a practice, but for a very long time, there has been no instruction on what to do after your actually licensed. Like there's lots of preparation about how to seek clients, but nobody teaches you how to actually run a practice. And so some of the comments that we got online so real. Nicole wrote the business side of having your own practice. If you desire to have your own practice, learn about business, engage with console groups, get connected with local counseling groups and the state board, and then sharing Moseley at the fit Talk road. You need to understand the business side, not just therapy, which I think both of you would agree with. So talk to me a little bit about how you actually learned how to have a business and what suggestions you would offer two sisters who are interested in opening a practice. 00:22:49 Speaker 3: I found that it is not only important to learn the knowledge for yourself, but also know who are the experts of the things that you don't know. So, for example, I have an incredible bookkeeper and an incredible attorney who I turn to and I say, hey, I don't know how this works, so help me figure out how it works. I don't think that owning a business is about being the expert of everything. I think owning a business is about knowing who to ask for help in the things that you are not an expert in. I focus on the therapy, I focus on the consulting, I focus on the curriculum, writing, and all those things that I was trained in. But when I'm able to extend and ask for that help. That also prevents burnout from me. I think another piece of running a private practice is trial and error. Knowing that there is a huge part of knowing that things that you try in the beginning don't necessarily have to be what you stick with in the long haul. Like if you want to see twenty clients a week and you change your mind, you say you want to say fifteen clients a week, and the math maths up, then do it if you realize, okay, I have capacity to see more, Like no one in private practice should feel like just because they started doing something one way, they have to continue doing it that way. Like the way that I run a private practice now being an LCSW is not going to be the way I run a private practice when I'm in a doctoral program, which we'd love to talk to you all about mentorship boom. It's a thing right in the moment, and the way that I do it after I have a PhD is going to be very different. So knowing that as we grow and evolve as humans, our needs are naturally going to change and that's okay. And knowing who the experts are. There are tons of folks even on Instagram, on Facebook, on TikTok, who know and share a lot of knowledge of things that we can prevent if we look out for the resources. And as business owners, it's important to know that answers are not going to come to us. We have to go and find them. 00:25:08 Speaker 1: I know you got a lot to say. They're doctor Will. 00:25:12 Speaker 4: Doctor Jetta Robinson. I joined at the time it was called Private Practice Academy, and. 00:25:19 Speaker 2: I learned what I needed to learn right there. It had a built in community feel. 00:25:23 Speaker 4: She was already an expert right with like seven or eight figure private practice. 00:25:30 Speaker 2: Who else finn to teach you? 00:25:31 Speaker 4: And the way that she teaches, she thinks about what it takes for you to actually learn this information and for you to do this in a way that is going to be sustainable in. 00:25:41 Speaker 2: The long run. 00:25:42 Speaker 4: Because let's be real, some of these private practices out here that sprung up in COVID are not private practices. They are a therapists who just happened to practice privately. Your business is not a business boo. It's not a business boo. And looking like some people are running around here, not ANLC to be seen. Just the name and the money is depositive into their private account while they don't have any insurance. 00:26:06 Speaker 2: And I'm just like, all this is gonna. 00:26:08 Speaker 4: Take is one client one to suit you and they get to take everything out your bank account because you don't have a business account. I'm saying those basic business things. These are not things that grew up just knowing. 00:26:20 Speaker 2: Nor is it just. 00:26:21 Speaker 4: Things that we just got out of our social work or mental health counseling programs. 00:26:27 Speaker 2: They didn't teach us how to be business owners. They taught us how to do therapy. 00:26:31 Speaker 4: And remembering that you still need someone that has expertise that is different from yours means that you go find the people who have business acumen. Don't just be asking you know your friend who also don't have an LLC and who is putting money in their bank account or telling their clients to just cash at me. Look, I done heard and sink some things right. So I found that being a part of the Private Practice Academy really helped me to number one, get my foundations right, so that when I decided I was going from a solo practice to a. 00:27:06 Speaker 2: Group practice, it one no thing. 00:27:09 Speaker 4: And I definitely

agreed with what Justpine said. I have people who know what they are doing, so my accountant knows what she is doing. They focus on private practices actually, so I've been able to just be like, all right, cool, this is what I want to do next. They're like, well, if you want to hire this thing, you're gonna need to figure out this thing first. I'm like, bebbee, you ain't said nothing but what I'm gonna figure that out and I'm gonna talk to an expert so that i can do what I need to do. So, if you're having a business, you're gonna reinvest into your business the same way that you invested into the knowledge base that you have to be a great therapist. Don't be shy about that money coming out that account when it's time to learn his business stuff. I'm not saying you have to go get an MBA, but certainly you have to be willing to put up more than fifty dollars a month to get the thing that you needed from these other people who have an expertise too. I had found that people be wanting something for nothing. They don't want to put time in, and they don't want to put money in, but they still want to be able to reap all the benefits and get where they want to go. But I will say that I feel like I got my money back from what I invested with doctor Jetta and her crew simply because of the way that they sort of outlined everything. That's what really worked for me. Now, I had tried some other ones. I'm not going to name them because you know, and try to hurt nobody's feelings. But I did try some other ones, and for me, those were I call that lesson learned money as and I learned me some lessons. I learned that you're not the one for me, that your approach does not work with what I need, and I needed to do a better job of vetting according to what I knew about me and not just what I know about this program. And I will say that this is lifelong learning. As your business grows and changes, you have to be willing to continue to invest in that way. So right now I'm a part of two men or minds that are focused on business. I'm also in one that is focused on marketing. This is how I am learning so that I can continue to pour into my practice in a way that doesn't take things away from me. If you want your business to be a business and. 00:29:14 Speaker 2: Not a hobby and be gone by. I mean what they say we in a recession. 00:29:18 Speaker 4: Recession proofing yourself also requires you to have some business acumen, and that means that you're gonna have to put some money up or you're gonna have to shut up. 00:29:25 Speaker 1: So I feel like it's a running refrain when I talk with other therapists about this, like there's so much we don't learn in grad school about like actually either operating a practice or even being in private practice. I know there's probably so many things, but what is one thing that you feel like you did not learn in grad school about either being in a private practice or owning your private practice that you would love to share with other people that you've been able to kind of figure out on. 00:29:50 Speaker 5: Your own establishing a business plan. And I can't even say that I figured that out on my own. I'm blessed to be married to a man who has an MBA Harvest did that knowledge from him, and he's also in finance. But there's so much about stepping into the space of running your own practice that you have to be knowledgeable about business plan and marketing strategies and marketing analyzes and slide analysis, so that you can recognize what it is that you want to do, how it aligns with your values, but also how it makes business sense. Right, So I hear doctor Applewhite saying that it just didn't make good businesses and the systems not working for all parties. I absolutely agree with her on that. And so having a solid business plan, understanding your business model, identifying how you can work into your business plan, these alternative streams of income so you're not grasping at straws. I think it's so important, and it's not something that a lot of academic programs are offering. So once clinicians get out into the space of establishing their own practices, a lot of times we're like clueless and don't even know where to start. And then once we get a little bit of taste of that information is very overwhelming in terms of of all the things that need to be accomplished and the boxes that need to be checked. So I would say establishing a solid business plan is necessary to know. 00:31:08 Speaker 6: I hope that people coming through grad school now the training is different, but I feel like the importance of technology was under emphasized in school, and of course in this pandemic and post pandemic world, it's become more important than ever to be flexible to the needs of clients and use technology. The older I get, and you know, I'm thirty four, but I try to see teaen clients and I don't know what's going on with them, because like technology has just advanced. And you know, I tell people I had kids in graduate school, so my knowledge of pop culture is kind of limited and perhaps dead. It's limited to like the time my first kid was born, Like all of my music knowledge is mainly from before twenty fourteen, Like. 00:31:54 Speaker 4: It's just dead. 00:31:54 Speaker 6: But then when you're working with clients, like there is a need to stay relevant and stay connected to what people are talking about. Like it's come up that TikTok has advanced or I don't know if you call it advanced, it certainly has put out there a lot of talk about mental health. Some of it is accurate, some of it is effective, some of it is not. You got kids run around thinking they have DD and they're like, what D ideas only in like I don't zer point five percent of the population or something like what's the prevalence of that? Or you know, people say, ADHD is this ADHD is that, And I'm like, maybe you've got some other things going on, like maybe you needed an evaluation. But as long as we're kind

of constrained to offices and not regularly engaging with technology, then we won't be prepared. Then the next pandemic or that kind of event will come around, then you won't know what to do. Like doctor Jackson was doing telehealth before telehealth was cool in essence, before that, you know, all kinds of shape was like, oh, yeah, telehealth didn't work as well, even though the evidence was there that it did, or like, oh, you're gonna be disconnected from this, that, and the other if you go tell health. And then we all had to do it. So some of us were able to like continue to grow and develop that being connected to technology. And sometimes I think we can pull ourselves into thinking we only have to be connected to the work, but the work is technology. We'll get left behind if we're not keeping up. 00:33:21 Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. So one of the questions that we have not been able to get to that I really want to spend some time talking about is the idea of marketing yourself as a private practice therapist or even if you're not in private practice, you still want a caseload, right, And this is definitely one of those things that they did not teach us in grad school. I don't know if grad schools are teaching this now, but definitely when I graduated, there was no marketing, like how do you even get your first client? So what did you do or what are you currently doing to market yourself? And what would you like other therapists to know about different avenues or different opportunities they might have to market themselves as a therapist. 00:33:57 Speaker 2: One thing I. 00:33:57 Speaker 4: Used with social media, especially when I was getting started, I needed people to understand what it was exactly that I was doing as a therapist that may not meet whatever they think a therapist is supposed to do, right, So as a sex and relationship therapist, but with a focus on colorism and texturism. 00:34:18 Speaker 2: A lot of the work that I was. 00:34:19 Speaker 4: Doing is let me educate you about what this thing is and why you might need this thing. So educating from that perspective in social media was a really great help because it opened the door for people to understand exactly what it was I was doing, why I was doing, and why they might. 00:34:40 Speaker 2: Want to come and see me. 00:34:41 Speaker 4: Specifically, because despite what they say profile on psychology today, therapy for black girls and whatever, a plethora of other spaces is not enough. That's more passive, and I wanted to be more active. So in addition to that type of marketing, I talked to therapists in this area, like, who are the people who see my people who might at some point be on overflow and need somebody to service backup? 00:35:07 Speaker 2: Like me, pick me, choose me, love me. So that's what I was, especially when I started. 00:35:15 Speaker 6: I feel like so many of those points were so wise, Doctor Donna, because I was just talking to somebody on the phone before

I got on here. So my background is in child psychology, but I don't do a lot of assessments now, so I'll pretty much only do them for BIPOD clients or when one of my black clindician's colleagues refers them to me, because I really do not like report writing. 00:35:36 Speaker 2: It's like anti marketing. 00:35:37 Speaker 6: But I was telling this parrot because they were talking about how hard it is to find black therapists, especially here in Utah, where I'm based, and I'm like, I think we've got this underground railroad situation where we know who will do what and so I do think it's so wise to talk to other therapists in the area. It may seem like competition, but because we're all doing kind of different things, even if we have the same focus on audiences, we might have a different flavor, different priorities, and so it's not competition. And I would love to decolonize competition, like I think there's enough for all of us if we're working together. And so I really just value a lot of what you said, and also just the value of social media. That was something that I was taught on one of my post fellowships that was public health emphasized. Like all of the doctors, all of the fellows, they were all on social media. And that's how a lot of times you get to see what's going on in the world, what other people are saying, to exchange ideas, and then that becomes it's own marketing across the country, especially for psychologists who have siepacked capability if you apply for sypack, which means that you can see people in many states over thirty states, So people who were just limiting their marketing to their state. I also have just looked at how being careful about how I am describing myself. Our company takes lera client. Salaria is a third party contractor. It works with a lot of employee assistance programs. But for like pretty expansive companies, and on those platforms, you only get so much space to describe who you are, and so then it's important that how you communicate things has the flavor of who you are too, and not just what you do. Because I work at an evidence based place, that's how it markets itself. Then my first profile sound a little bit like an evidence based robot, like I do I do, and I'm like I read them all recently. I'm like, this is not even who I am anymore, Like I'm just a therapist. You could kick it. And so just being able to communicate that stuff in your language, I think is important if you're going to go those traditional marketing routes, because you are still a brand, like even if you're fresh out of school, you're a brand. 00:37:52 Speaker 7: Like doctor Donna said, people who already have the audience that you're looking for. And if I'm looking to work with black women's that I'm gonna be talking to hairstylists about what it is that I do and how I can offer support to them and to their clientele, because you know, we've said in this the Larne chair and we get to talking and people will talk about their problems and does the lat is not always a place to get the skills and the resources. So just being a walking marketing opportunity for yourself talking to anyone who might have your clientele as a captive audience, I think would. 00:38:27 Speaker 3: Be I think that there's so much good that has been said. What I would add is that even though there are all of these traditional sort of ways of marketing, like social media or I guess social media is becoming a bit more traditional, talking to other therapists, talking to other doctors. I have personally found that working with other agencies that are full and overflowing has been a really great way to also get in the door. And I find that talking to many different folks who are not necessarily in the mental health world or connected to the mental health world tend to really not have a strong understanding of what we do. So I find myself even there was a time at the airport not too long ago, or ended up like explaining what it means to be a trauma therapist, and it opened up this whole conversation. I was even able to get a referral from that, So I think it's really important to remember that our referrals can come from even very obscure and peculiar places. 00:39:29 Speaker 1: More from our conversation after the break. It's a therapists entire job, the whole space for the feelings of others, but doing that work can take an emotional toll. And let's be real, not all of us are practicing what we preach when it comes to making time for our own self care as therapists. So if you're looking to find more ways to take care of yourself outside of your work as a therapist and aren't sure where at to start, here's some guidance from Josephine and doctor Oriowo. You talked about it a little bit, doctor oriwell in terms of the toll of like just trying to keep track of all of this stuff. But I think the other thing is the mental health told of just being a therapist, right, So again, I think that's a lot. We don't always know what we're getting into when we become therapists, and a part of training is like teaching you how to like undergo these difficult conversations with clients and like how to not take it home and like all of these different kinds of things. Though some of our social media comments included so asked Bianca Sig wrote how exhausting it can be and that sometimes I just don't want to talk, which I think is a very real you hear a lot of therapists say stuff like that. Kindly beat It also wrote I didn't expect to have so much counter transference and to feel the pain as I've struggled with compartmentalization. So I think it is important to remember, you know, we are actual humans who are operating as therapists. We're not like therapeuticals. And so some of the times stuff that our clients say like we may have personally experienced with right, And it really is a process of kind of learning how to separate your stuff from your clients stuff so that you can be there to support them. Doctor

Orriowell, can you talk a little bit about some of the mental health impact and like what kinds of things future therapists need to be aware of how to take care of themselves as they also hold space for clients. 00:41:23 Speaker 4: I am a person that believes that proper self care comes with great self knowledge. 00:41:29 Speaker 2: If you don't know yourself, it. 00:41:31 Speaker 4: Is very difficult to take care of yourself because you don't know you well enough to know what you need. Sometimes we learn by trial and error, but sometimes you know, they say no, better, but we don't do better. Right, We know better, but we don't change up what we're doing. So one thing that I learned is that I had to cap how many clients I was actually seeing in a day and in a week. There was a magic number where I felt good about what I was doing and not overtaxed. I had to get some better bouts. I was not emailing or looking at stuff, and had a quiet time at the time that I needed it. I don't like seeing morning clients first thing in the morning. 00:42:10 Speaker 2: I'm looking line. 00:42:10 Speaker 4: I'm not trying to talk to nobody at seven and eight am, And yet some of these therapists out here they be doing that. I'm like, that's your ministry, that's not my ministry. So for me and for mine, the day started at noon until recently, because now I'm like, oh, I like a nine am every other Monday, not every single Monday. But I use that knowledge of myself to create a schedule that felt good for me and so that I wasn't drained, And I definitely agree with what you said. I'm a person first, so some of that has been making sure that I'm actually properly fed and hydrated. Some of it is making sure I'm appropriately rested, and sometimes looking at the chaos. If there is chaos in my life, I have to determine am I really in the best position to be doing the work that I'm doing right now to in this moment? 00:43:01 Speaker 2: Do I need to reschedule people? Do I need to move people? 00:43:05 Speaker 4: So for me, I like seeing clients on Monday, and I'm at a point in my practice now where I only see Monday clients. I don't do therapy the rest of the week. I cap my day at seven. Once I start getting into that eight nine territory, don't feel good no more. And after every two to three clients, I have an hour break. So yeah, it might take me the entire day to do the therapy day, but I'm taking regular breaks for my mental and emotional wellbeing. I talk to black women, so if something touches me a little extra close, I modulate what I'm going to say next, and I have to ask myself is this for. 00:43:45 Speaker 2: You or is it for them? 00:43:47 Speaker 4: I ask that question and that helps me every single time. But I would also say that another way to simply just modulate, And I'll give it with a baby story. Back when I first started private practice, I took any client that would have me. So I was seeing children, I was seeing adults, I was seeing people of color, I saw black people, I saw white people, right, I was seeing everybody. And it wasn't until I niched that I stopped feeling so drained. Because the point is I didn't like working with kids. The kids were not the problem. I didn't like that they came with parents. Didn't like working with their parents because it required extra work and extra energy that was often not paid for right, and it felt like there was no real return other than to say, hey, you keep. 00:44:32 Speaker 2: Undoing the work that I do in the therapy room with. 00:44:34 Speaker 4: Your kid, like, please stop. So I stopped seeing kids because I knew that wasn't my ministry. I did not want to spend an abundance of my day seeing white folk and trying to get them to understand that you saying the N word to me might lead to us having to fight, right, Because in that moment I am a therapist. I'm not your therapist. We go, we could get down with the get down, call me a in one more time. So I had to realize that I needed to niche in. This is unpopular opinion in some way, but I believe that my clients also pour into me as I pour into them. I believe that there is reciprocity there, and that the reciprocity does not come with the payment, but it comes with how they show up and see you as a person and you are seeing them as a person. Right, the therapeutic relationship should be a reciprocal relationship. It should still be mostly heavy sided on one end, but it shouldn't feel like I'm a dumping ground either. I do not do dumping ground therapy. I am not your place to lay all your stuff and leave. I'm a processing center, as in, you put it down, We're gonna process it, but I'm gonna give it back. That stuff is not mine and having to make sure that I remember that it is not mine. But niching down helped me to also feel a lot less strained in doing this work. 00:45:50 Speaker 1: Thank you for that. What about you, Josephine. 00:45:53 Speaker 2: This is a. 00:45:53 Speaker 3: Lesson that I am learning as I'm going along, because I think that with getting all of these hours done, I wanted to get them done as quickly as possible. I did not want to be working on these hours for years and years and years on end. So I burned myself out getting those hours done. Colorado is one of the few states where you can open a private practice before you're fully licensed, as long as you have a supervisor. So I was working in my private practice, working in a bunch of different environments, seeing anyone, well mostly anyone who would come in the door, because I wanted to get those hours done. I highly recommend that that not be the process, because once I got to the LCSW, I was barely able to enjoy it because I was so tired from what I had put myself through in those last two years. So I think in terms of not burning out or being able to make sure, I definitely agree with doctor Donna that niching is so important, and also knowing that just because someone else's client load looks one way does not

mean that it has to look that way for you, especially in. 00:47:13 Speaker 2: The environment that I am in. 00:47:16 Speaker 3: I see some white clients, but they have to be a really good fit for me, like they have to really be feeding into the work that I do. And I say straight up to my clients, if you say anything racist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islam, if there's a phobic or an ism at the end, you are not going to work out because I have to protect my energy and I have to protect my well being as a therapist in order to be able to serve everyone else that's on my caseload along with you. So I think for black women who are coming into being therapists, there is nothing wrong if you just want to see black women. Frankly, if I could go back and do it all over again, that's probably the way I would go back and do it. I also think that there's a lot of worth in being able to learn how to say no, not only say no in terms of clients, being able to say no. If you're working in an agency, or if you're in a training and there's something that is actually harmful or another professional says something that actually is more harmful than helpful, being able to say that is not okay with me. So I think that's how I protect a lot of my energy now is by learning how to say no and being able to hold that space and really prioritize what's important to me. I find that teaching brings me a lot of joy. Before being a therapist, that was a teacher. So coming back in and teaching at the graduate level, I find that brings me a lot of peace and a lot of joy. So I'm going to put more time into that then to put my time into trying to fill up my caseload. So I would say, especially if folks are working toward hours, like the hours can't come before the mental health and the well being. If it takes you two and a half years rather than it taking two years, it takes you four years rather than two years, that's fine because the hope is that you're able to get to the finish line in one piece and able to continue doing the work after you've finished the hours. Because if you get to that point where you're so burned out that you can't even continue after the out, then what was then what was the point of doing the thing? So I find that a lot of times I have to remind myself that it's not okay for me to burn myself out and I'm worth taking care of to the point now where I stick almost pretty strictly to fifty five minute sessions, so that I have five minutes to go to the restroom, grab a bite to eat, stand outside for a few seconds before I come back in because I know as a person I have to replenish myself. I can do eight in a row. That's not a big problem for me, but I need that forty minutes that is comprised into those five minutes to be able to decompress, breathe before I go into the next one. 00:50:28 Speaker 1: I want to think Josephine, doctor Apple White, doctor Jackson, and doctor Oriole will once again for joining me for these episodes. To learn more about the work that they're doing, be sure to visit our show notes at Therapy for Blackgirls dot Com Session three sixty six, and don't forget to text this episode to two of your girls right now and tell them to check it out. If you're looking for a therapist in your area, visit our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash directory. And if you want to continue digging into this topic or just be a community with others, come on over and join us in the Sister Circle. It's our cozy corner of the Internet design just for Black women. You can join us at community dot Therapy for Blackgirls dot com and if you want to check out all the other programming we have in store for Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, visit the website at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash mm HM. This episode was produced by Alice Ellis and Zaria Taylor. Editing was done by Dennison Bradford. Thank y'all so much for joining me again this week. I look forward to continuing this conversation with you all real soon. Take good care. 00:51:40 Speaker 2: What's