Speaker A: Welcome to the Therapist Burnout podcast, episode 34. Hello. I’m talking with you today a little bit about imposter syndrome phenomenon and burnout. So in episode 33, I talked about imposter syndrome. I did a deep dive into that. I didn’t talk as much, much about the intersection of impostering and burnout. So today I’m going to dive into that. So I think what we don’t realize, and something I realized when I hit full burnout in the pandemic, it made me question everything, my career, my choices, my worth as a therapist. I told myself a story that I’d somehow gotten it all wrong, that it wasn’t cut out for this work. I honestly didn’t trust myself anymore. I have talked with my husband often about this time and how hard it was for him to see me struggle like that. So he tried to get me a job. Like, he, I would frequently tell him about his job, that I was jealous of his meetings. Like, oh, you get meetings, you have coworkers. That’s so nice. I would really love to have co workers again. He’s like, you could. You could get a different job doing something else. But it just didn’t seem available to me. Like, having the job working somewhere else in a different setting just did not seem available in my mind. I started a private practice. I worked so hard to get here. I started that practice when I, I had an infant after his heart surgery. How could I leave my practice, my clients, all the things that I had built? So when I. Well, I’m going to fast forward a little bit. So I decided to, I didn’t even apply for a job, actually. I knew somebody, my husband knew somebody at a district that I work out now as, as a contract worker. And they needed somebody, and I talked with somebody, and it was pretty quick, like, I got the job, and it was kind of like, well, that was easy. But my first thought that crossed my mind is, oh, I don’t have to do therapy anymore. And it was kind of like this permission that I needed to give myself, that I could stop working in my private practice, that I could close it down. So subsequently, and I, it was shortly thereafter that I decided to close my practice down after really floundering for a year of trying to change my practice, trying to make it work, trying to see if I can do what I can do to stay in my private practice. And I do recommend that. So part of my, I thought of changing, like, my, what I offer in coaching, I offer a, or consulting, whatever you want to call it. So my container for helping other therapists is called love it or leave it. And I’m like, if someone’s burnout, they don’t want to love their therapy practice anymore, right. They’re just. They. They probably want to leave it. But I would say you kind of need to love it even if you’re going to leave it, because you have to try to make it work long enough so that you can find your exit. Because most people, you can’t just leave a private practice overnight. Right? You have to, like, if you’re on panels, you have to leave those panels. You have to find places for your clients. You might have rented a space for me. I. You know, I had space. I had all the things to think about, an llc to kind of burn down, which I did. And so all those things take time. And so I think trying to find ways to love your practice, even if you are gonna. If you. If you know you’re gonna leave, is really helpful. Okay. When I decided to close my practice, so when I started that new job, I felt like an imposter. It’s like all those feelings, like, early in my training, come back. It reminded me a little bit of that time when I. I talked about this in the last episode. But when I went on postdoc, I had never. I didn’t have any training in neuropsychology, and I felt like, I don’t know, I just got lucky. They needed a person. I got this job, and it was kind of how I felt again when I started working in schools. It’s like I’d forgotten all my training, all my hard work, all my experience I’d accumulated over 20 years at a postdoc in neuropsychology, a certification at EMDR, training with the Virginia forensic service at UVA. I can go on and on and on. I bring up all that experience in this role. Like, oh, yeah, I worked residential. Oh, yeah. Well, I remember this one time I was working, da da da da da. I can just roll that stuff off of my tongue based on my experience. Yet. Yet I don’t have enough experience, right? In my mind, impostering comes up and tells me, well, you don’t know as much as this person on this thing. Well, of course I don’t. We don’t know everything. But I can’t lean into what I know with this 20 years of experience with knowing what I know now. And so sometimes I. I tell therapists, sometimes we have to be selfish. Okay? We have to. Sometimes I need you to be a little narcissistic. Okay. See what you’ve accomplished in your life. It’s not our default, especially for therapists who were used to caring for other people. We’re used to elevating other people, not ourselves. But that can be their detriment. I always like to think of the other side of our beautiful skills. Right. What is the Achilles heel of propping up other people, of constantly telling people, the goodness that you see is that you see the fault in yourself. So what I’ve come to realize is that imposter syndrome flares up when you’re burned out. It’s when you’re at your lowest. These negative stories feel most convincing. We have to realize that they’re stories. Our brain is giving us those stories to keep us safe. It’s like we’re ahead, you know, all the way back in the caveman days. We’re trying to stay in the pack. We don’t want to be seen as someone who doesn’t have enough skill to survive. And so we need to tell our brains that we are enough. We know enough. We can ask for help. And I think now that I’m talking about this today, I can see it with clarity. I couldn’t see it while I was there. And if you are in the thick of your burnout, you likely just need time. You need space. You need rest. You need some time to figure this all out. And so time and space can look, a lot of it can look different for a lot of people. I know some people that have taken, you know, months and years off of therapy, working as a therapist. I know some people that they took the weekend, they took a few weeks off to really just give themselves some space to figure out what their next steps were. But giving yourself that time is essential. What I hate to see for therapists is spending months and years stuck and feeling like you have no choices because you have choices. You can get yourself another job. You can get a job that’s outside of therapy. You can figure out how to relate your skills to things that you can, that you can make yourself marketable. But I think the fear that we have is, like, I have to do the things. I have to do it this way because I’ve always done it this way, and that’s just not true. So I hope you’ve gotten something out of this quick episode. I will look forward to talking with you more next week. I’m talking a little bit about termination. I have kind of a crossover episode with Felicia, the bad therapist. And if you need support, you know, navigating burnout isn’t easy. So if you need support, if you need one of the first steps that I needed to make after burnout was figuring out how much money I needed. You know, how much money do I need to make up? And so I’ve kind of developed that into a newly revised money guide. So it’s really how to replace your therapy income now, which is part of what I needed to do. So that’s even if, you know, it’s going to be like a year out or six months out to kind of figure that out and to start making plans to know how to make up that income without doing more one to one therapy. So if that’s you, grab that link below, and I hope to hear from you soon. 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.
