Speaker A: Welcome to the Therapist Burnout podcast, episode 26. Hey, therapist. Welcome back to the program. I’m talking with you a little bit more about careers, about quitting being a therapist, and really how you can figure out what is the next thing that you can do besides therapy. So I’m going to go through a little bit of a mindset talk. Then we’re going to talk about what are therapists doing besides therapy in 2024, how you can kind of brainstorm around these ideas. All right, so let’s jump in. So I wanted to just give you some research. So study from 2019. This research article looked at therapists financial strain and turnover. And so this was a study done in community mental health, examine therapist turnover, or when a therapist voluntarily or involuntarily ends their tenure or place of employment. And so that’s estimated to be between 30 and 60%, and it was 39% in this particular study, the biggest reason for therapist turnover in a community setting was due to financial strain from the therapist. So I think many of us, number one, we have so much shame. You have your shame shawl all over you, because you’re leaving the field, or you’re thinking about leaving the field or leaving community mental health for an agency or your place of employment. But it’s normal. So if nearly half of therapists are leaving their jobs, it’s the system’s problem, not your own problem, that it’s causing that. I mean, it becomes your problem because you have to find a job or figure out what to do. But I think for those of you who aren’t in private practice, just to know that it’s really common that the turnover is high, the average stay for a therapist in any community setting, it’s typically one to two years from the research I’ve seen, so many of us actually work in private practice, and that works for a lot of folks and doesn’t work for some folks. So I am really answering the question today of what else can I do besides therapy with my job? And so it’s therapists who have made the decision to quit therapy. And I would say, I’m not doing this episode yet, but if you’re in private practice, I think there’s a middle step of fix your practice. You may or may not decide to leave your practice. I decided to leave my practice and quit my practice. However, I tried to fix it. I tried to do a lot of things to see if I could love my practice and stay in it. Ultimately, financially, also emotionally, administratively, I could not continue to put more chips in that boat and I really, you know, after it’s been nearly a year and a half, I think I really needed a break from entrepreneurship. Just having guaranteed income. I would. I’m going to do that episode of the middle step. Before you quit, let’s fix your practice if you’re in private practice, because we need to fix it whether or not we’re going to leave it or not. If a lot of people in the therapy space are just like, raise your fees and everything is going to be magically better. When you have been dealing with chronic burnout and you really have the symptoms of burnout, I feel like you need a break. Like, number one, first step. If you are in the throes of burnout, we need to find more ways for you to rest and replenish some of that depletion that has occurred. Because your body and your brain has been in chronic depletion. You might be dealing with depression, anxiety at this point, might be seeing a therapist at this point because of the way you are feeling in your body and in your mind from that chronic burnout, from the chronic giving without replenishing things. And I think the pandemic highlighted much of that. That was already going on before the pandemic happened. All right, what are the careers that you can do besides being a therapist? So I want to encapsulate these careers into a couple of categories. So one would be continuing to use your clinical license. So that would be a pivot, kind of a job pivot versus a complete 180, or I am doing something completely different. Right. And then I’m going to talk a little bit about maybe therapy adjacent, like using those therapy skills but using them in a different way, and then complete departures from the field. So let’s talk about that. So what I did, very unscientifically is look at different Facebook posts, what people are saying that they’re doing, or of jobs they have are moving to. So some of those jobs that, let’s just start out with using your therapy license but not doing therapy. So doing something that maybe is a little bit. So that’s what I did. So my first move out of private practice was to do assessment. So if you’re a psychologist or a therapist, you can do assessment only and not do one to one therapy. It’s a different modality. It takes different energy. For me, I’m constantly writing. I’m not in the middle of my school year. It’s in the middle of the summer in July. So I went to doing completely just assessment only. So I do testing throughout the school year and I do no therapy. I had one therapy client during the school year, which was, which was interesting. And I’m doing a group with a social worker at my district, which I’m excited about. Also, groups aren’t one to one therapy. I tried to launch groups in my private practice, just didn’t get it going. So assessment is number one. A lot of therapists talked about doing assessment for a hospital, so doing like intakes. One person was, I think, actually a few people talked about doing discharge planning at a hospital. I do consulting for a school. I also talked with someone I knew from my graduate program who works for an online IOP program. So intensive outpatient program. And they were going to hire me to do some groups, but didn’t work out because they were. I’m psy pact approved so I can do therapy in other states, but it just didn’t work out for the state that they were launching to, to start that for me, that’s also an idea. Like, could you work for an IOP program where people kind of go after a couple weeks, you’re not holding them for so long. I understand that might be some crisis work, but it is different. So it’s a pivot, but it’s not necessarily. I’m like walking the other direction. So thinking about, you know, those IOP programs. One person said that they worked for 988, so that’s the suicide national suicide hotline. So they were doing well. I’m just going to look on 988. What kind of jobs are we talking about right now? Okay, so I went to 988. I just put in Google 988 careers and they link to each different state. And then, so I clicked on my state. I live in Maine and there’s a lot of different jobs on one of the contracting agencies. So that was like in the state of maintenance, crisis and counseling centers. And there’s a crisis services clinical manager, a fee for service, mental health clinician. I’m just looking on this job to see what that you had to fill out so much. Okay, we’re not gonna look at that at the present moment. But, you know, they said they were the person where I saw the post, they were making more than they were making at their last job and they found it to be as depleting. So I think just going outside the box a little bit, if you’re wanting to stay clinical, just to see can I stay in the field, maybe it is changing the setting to a more supportive setting or maybe picking up some contract hours somewhere else so that you can kind of dabble a little bit instead of like, okay, I am going to be a. I don’t know, like I’m going to work in tech or something, which people do. Like I saw people on, you know, that burnout therapist Facebook group and they would talk about working in complete other fields this juncture. So that’s certainly an option. It looks like that was a lot of resources at that 988 for different jobs. A lot of people, interestingly enough, were making money on the side doing pet sitting. So I don’t know how much money there is in pet sitting, but something maybe to do to just to make ends meet could be something. Certainly pet sitting. A lot of therapists in that group were doing pet sitting. So something that I did for a long time. Okay, so part two is using your skills in a non clinical way. So we’re moving away from clinical going to non clinical ways. And one thing that I did for many, many years was teach adjunct courses. And so I’ve always been doing some kind of instruction probably. I don’t know, I guess I stopped doing that at some point in the pandemic where the school I was working for went under and I stopped doing that position, particular position. But that’s a choice. A lot of people pick up courses that they want to teach. I think starting with the university you came from is really a good way because you might have some relationships there and some folks that might be able to connect you to teaching some more adjunct classes or starting to teach adjunct classes. The pay is usually not particularly high, however, for adjuncting. So that’s always the hard part. But it’s not clinical, so it’s not going to burn you out the same way. It’s always something to consider. I’m going to go back to clinical real quick. And I didn’t put working in a school setting, so I currently work in a school setting. And while I know schools can stress you out and it does depend on your administration, I will say having those natural breaks in the school year, like having summers off, this is the first summer I’ve had off and I’m still podcasting. But whatever, it really does help because you’re like, I don’t have to go back for like ten weeks or it’s Christmas break, there’s two weeks off. I’m not working. So just to think of like a school setting can be really nice in some ways because you have the natural breaks and typically there’s great benefits. So just putting that out there as well. Okay. Going back to things that are adjacent. So I talked about teaching adjunct in classes. So, working as a director, some people have really loved doing more administrative roles. So, thinking about, do I want to lead? Do I want to be a director for a company or a mental health agency, for example? Again, I know that fit has to be right for you, but just. It’s a choice. Another thing that a lot of therapists say they’re doing is utilization review for insurance companies. So they either approve behavioral health care insurance claims. So that’s something they would review. Working for an insurance company. I know it’s going to the evil empire. However, if it gets you paid and you can work and go home and leave your job there, that’s great. So a lot of therapists are doing that kind of role. And I would say also thinking about working with therapists. So, thinking about supervision. So if you can provide supervision for your particular license. So, for me, that would be psychologists or. I think I can supervise counselors as well. In my state, I can’t supervise social work because they only supervise. I think social work only can supervise other social workers, I believe. I think that’s how that works. I don’t know. It’s not my license. So consider if that’s something you want to do. Sometimes agencies will contract. So I looked into that in the many jobs I considered working for a company where you provided supervision, and then they had conditionally licensed clinicians there. So that’s something as well to think about or to hang out your shingle as a supervisor. Another choice. Another thing is to think about consultation. So, I am EMDR certified. I’m nearly a consultant. I’m a. What is that thing? Cit. Now, I can’t remember acronyms because I’m talking to you. Consultant in training. That’s what it is. I just feel some time away about calling myself as a consultant in training. Just makes me sound like I’m an intern and I have a doctoral degree, but I won’t go there. Maybe something else. Could be something in training. I don’t know. I just don’t like the consultant in training thing. Or maybe just don’t call me anything. I’m a certified EMDR therapist, and then when I get the consultant, just call me that. I don’t know. I just. Yeah, I don’t like it. So you consider, you know, that consultation for something that you have a specialty in or you have a certification in, and there is some path to consulting. I know that people do that for ifs, for example, which is really hard to train in. So that’s certainly something that you could think about or other types of consultation. I have a specialty in brain injury, so people do consult with me, but I really haven’t gotten a lot of consultation jobs from that. More people who know me and want to like, can you do this training or can you do this other thing? So doing trainings is another way. So I think thinking of trainings, you know, can I provide trainings to a company or any kind of service like that? So from the specialty that you do, I have one friend who’s also a content reviewer for PESi, for example. So they review the different presentations that other clinicians will provide and make sure that they’re kind of up to, up to snuff, and they are well researched and evidence based. So considering, like, curriculum development, for example, could be something that you use your therapy skills for to do that kind of job. And I’m going to think of other ones while I continue to the last one. So our last category would be complete departures from the field. Right? And so when we think about a job that’s complete departure from being a therapist or doing therapy, I want you to think about all the skills that you’ve gained as a therapist. So for me, I’ve been working in mental health for 20 years, more than 20 years. When did I even start? It’s like 23, 22 years. So I started in a hospital, worked residential, did all the things, did crisis work some jobs. I even forgot. I’m like, oh, yeah, I do have experience with that. I hear a kid running down the stairs for good. Okay, so thinking about all those skills that you can bring to the table for a company. My brother has been in some kind of medical sales, and I’ve always toyed around telling him, because he makes a good amount of money, can you hook me up with that company so I can make that medical equipment money? Because that sounds pretty good. But I would think that getting into that would also work for a therapist because, you know, you’re personable, you can make connections easily, and you can be salesy without being salesy, like, not coming off as the salesy person. So considering that for yourself. Okay, so using all the skills, I forgot I had a minor in marketing, and so being on the interwebs more since 2021 when I launched a podcast, my first podcast. So I’ve developed a lot of marketing skills, and I have a minor in marketing, so I could choose to use that and kind of work in business, work in business if I really wanted to. So I want you to think about the transferable skills that you have. And from my, just my memory of marketing, like I was all of 22, so this was 20 years ago, more than you won’t say my age. It was a lot of psychology. So it was a lot of the knowledge that I have now that you need to be able to market to other people. Sure there’s technical things that you can, skills that you can gain and whatnot that can be helpful with that. But really thinking about what skills do I have that I can utilize and for my private practice books, you don’t think about all those years being an entrepreneur. So figuring out your marketing, figuring out billing, figuring out your EHR, those skills are really good skills to have. And so working like just generally within healthcare, I think can be a really good fit for a therapist because you already have some of those skills. So because many of us have been entrepreneurs, we also have a good deal of business acumen now. So if you’ve been a therapist for a while, you’ve figured out how to do a profit and loss statement. You know how to read those, you know what that looks like. You might know some basic bookkeeping. For example, you have figured out how systems work together. Okay. Like I used Google suite. I didn’t think that’s really a competency, but it’s something I know how to do. So I want you to think about all those things that you do know and that could be applied to another job. So what are some of those jobs that therapists have said that they do now? One of those, again is marketing. Someone said social media management. So they’re doing social media. They are a social media manager for another company. I didn’t hear sidebar. I saw one post of someone being a coach because all of the noise I think on ads. So if you’re scrolling Instagram or Facebook or whatever, you’ll get an ad. You know, if you’re in this kind of like what am I going to do? Should I launch an online program? That was me. I tried to do that many times and only one person in my non evidence based research, research said they were a coach. So we’ll take that with a grain of salt. Right? So let’s not choose coaching as our first one. I don’t want to burst anybody’s bubble though. Okay? We’re rocking it. I need to have a coach that’s rocking it on here. Someone said they are doing working for a tech company realtor. I’ve heard a couple people that are doing real estate now actually have a family background in real estate. So I thought about like, hey, maybe I could do real estate, that would be great. The home, the job market. Not the job market. The housing market though, scared me because I was, it’s just been a crazy housing market. I know that. Another few posts I saw was working in human resources. So some people had work and were working now in human resources. Again, a lot of people choosing to work and utilize utilization review or working, I think in project management. So again, using those business skills to be a project manager or to manage other people can be really great for a therapist because you do, you know people, you know relationships, you know how teams work. So thinking of those transferable skills can be really helpful and thinking of things you like to do. For example, when I decided to make the move to working for a school, I would tell my husband, he works as a school psychologist, I would tell him all the time that I was jealous of all his meetings. And I was like, that’s not normal that I like meetings. I miss meetings, I miss the collaboration, I miss the camaraderie because I think a lot of people would say on face value they don’t like meetings, but I do. I still like them. I have learned though that some meetings, especially IEP meetings, can be really contentious. So don’t love them all the time, but I do like them. So just to recap, thinking for therapists about first jobs that you could do that are clinical, right? There could be a pivot, but you’re changing your setting, you’re changing your type of work, you’re changing your modality, doing groups, doing intakes, doing different types of therapy. I didn’t really talk so much about doing different types of therapy. Like if you had been doing trauma therapy, maybe you choose to do like relational therapy or couples counseling, which is a completely different feel to therapy. So I just want you to think through that a little bit. Second would be therapy adjacent skills, so doing something like adjunct teaching, something like working on assessment, those types of things. And third would be completely changing the game. So looking at those skills and then looking at ways to apply those to a job on the open market. So I want you to think through those different choices again. If you’re in the throes of burnout, give yourself some time, give yourself an on ramp. So I would grab my money guide. I’m redoing this money guide hopefully in the next couple of weeks because I’m just thinking about it differently, but it’s still there. But I really want you to think of more of like what is my on ramp for getting this job. What is my quit number? Or the number that I need to quit the job that I’m in or my private practice so I have enough of an on ramp to do something else. So think through all of that. Grab my guide in the show notes. It’ll be right there and I’ll talk to you soon.
Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the joy after Burnout podcast. Be the first to hear new episodes by following the podcast in your podcast player. This is an informational podcast only. Any information expressed by the host or guest is not a substitute for legal, medical, or financial advice.
