Tiana Leeds, LMFT, is a Santa Barbara-based therapist for individuals and groups. She sees clients across California online and by phone. While she focuses primarily on working with women in their 20s and 30s and highly sensitive people, she welcomes clients of all ages, genders, and backgrounds.
A Love Letter to My Fellow Therapists
The truth about being a therapist…
is that we bear witness to the most heart-wrenching, real, and beautiful parts of humanity. And it affects us. We come into this work with great big hearts. We long to give our clients a soft landing place to feel what has been stuffed down, to move forward when they feel stuck, to feel connection and safety when they've become all too familiar with fearul isolation.
Many times we are successful. We see our clients make massive shifts in their lives - learn to navigate their anxiety with more ease, change jobs, recommit to their marriage, leave a relationship that no longer serves them, accept themselves more fully.
Sometimes, we are less successful. We are but one piece of the equation and are mere mortals, not wizards. Sometimes we have to make peace with the fact that it just isn’t a fit after all, that our client isn’t ready to implement change, or that life has thrown them a curveball greater than the coping tools we’ve imparted.
“Trust the process” is just as true for us as therapists as it is for our clients. We have to trust that all will unfold as it needs to, whether it ends in a celebratory closing session, a gentle hand-off to a specialist, or even being ghosted. Sometimes it doesn’t end with a pretty little bow tying everything together. Even when it does, it’s almost impossible to ever really know the full impact of our work with a given client. The truth is this impact reaches out into our clients’ families, communities, and even generations to come. What we do matters.
Because of this, we have to become our own best champions. Being a therapist, especially a therapist in private practice, is a job with very little feedback. It can feel freeing to no longer have quarterly reviews or to submit video and audiotapes of sessions to supervisors as we did as associates, but it can also feel like diving into the abyss. How do we know we’re doing it “right”? Especially when there is no “right” to begin with? Sometimes clients give us the type of thank yous that make us well up with love and gratitude. Sometimes clients end therapy prematurely, and it can be easy to make this mean all sorts of things about ourselves. To a very large extent though, we’re on our own to determine how we’re doing. It can be so easy to slip into self-doubt in the absence of expert feedback - feedback we were trained to depend on as associates and that rarely comes as private practitioners.
This self-doubt can creep into so many aspects of our work - how we feel as we choose which interventions to use, what type of clients we decide to work with, or the decision to take yet another expensive, intensive training not because we’re excited but as a bandaid for our own professional insecurities.
One of the places our professional self-criticism often plagues us most is the financial side of our practice. When you question the value you’re providing, it becomes difficult to honor your expertise as a therapist by charging a fee that sustains your wellbeing. This challenge can be compounded by the fact that very few of us are taught about private practice finances or business in grad school or pre-licensure. It can feel like the part of our work we’re not supposed to talk about…or even want. And yet it is integral, both clinically and practically, to our work as therapists.
When we don’t charge the fee we deserve, the exchange quickly becomes lopsided. We are giving more than we receive which makes us vulnerable to feeling depleted, burned out, and resentful. It compromises the integrity of the therapeutic container. If we don’t charge a healthy fee, eventually we are likely to choose to leave private practice, if not the field entirely. Even worse, we are likely to develop symptoms of chronic stress or even chronic illness.
I am thankful to say that I have learned to create a healthy relationship with the financial side of my private practice. I am not hesitant or ashamed to state my fee to clients. I feel proud of my ability to create a strong financial container in my practice. There is harmony between what I give and what I receive from my clients. I am able to practice in a way that feels clean and resentment-free. What I mean by this is that when I sense a client is ready to reduce or stop sessions or might be better served by a therapist with a different specialty, I bring it up. My relationship with my clients is not compromised by financial pressure to retain someone if it’s no longer serving them. In fact, I come to my sessions feeling grounded in the belief that my income is not dependent on any specific client. I am able to act in my clients’ best interest without hesitation.
It has taken me years to cultivate my financial confidence as a private practice owner. Mental health is one of the most financially disempowered professional fields and it can be easy to buy into the “noble poverty” vow that pervades our industry. One of the main pieces of my own journey to financial empowerment as a therapist was working on my limiting beliefs when it comes to money. I invite you to learn more about your own limiting money stories with my free guide or through booking a free 15-30 minute initial consultation session with me to see if we might be a fit for working together on your relationship money.
There are many aspects of our work that we cannot control. A client may choose to stay with an abusive partner or in a dysfunctional job, or may decide to end therapy before they’ve reached their goals. I believe we have a duty to protect our intrinsic desire to continue to show up for clients in the beautiful heartfelt way that we do despite these challenges. I also believe one of our most powerful tools for protecting our instinct to heal is through cultivating financial boundaries and opportunities within our private practices. Learning what is blocking you from your fullest financial expression as a therapist is the first step in this journey.
With love,
Tiana
P.S. If you would like to explore your relationship with your finances and shift into a place of greater financial well-being, please reach out to me. I love helping others - both therapists and non-therapists - who are on their journey to financial peace and expansion.