← Abundant Practice Podcast
Abundant Practice Podcast
Episode #622: BURNOUT!! with Joe Sanok
00:31:44
Allison and special guest discuss recent shifts in business models, the trend of hiring salaried positions, and the increasing concern of burnout among professionals. They also share their personal experiences and strategies for managing burnout,...
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- [00:00]
Alison Parir
Foreign hi, welcome to the Abundant Practice Podcast. I'm Alison from Abundance Practice Building. I have a nearly diagnosable obsession with helping therapists build sustainable, joy filled private practices, just like I've done for tens of thousands of therapists across the world. I'm excited to help you too. If you want to fill your practice with ideal clients, we have loads of free resources and paid support. Go to abundance practicebuilding.com Links all right, onto the show. Some of y'all aren't sending HIPAA compliant email and it's a problem. Even if you're paying for a business Google Workspace account and have a signed BAA, your emails still aren't 100% compliant. That's where Palbox comes in. You can connect Palbox to your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 email one time and you're completely covered. No one has to sign into portals. It sends and it shows up like any other email behind the scenes. Palbox soft checks the security settings of the recipient and ensures that the email is sent properly so you're not violating HIPAA in the ways you may accidentally be. Now, I know HIPAA isn't sexy, but we don't avoid compliance in an Abundant practice. We check the boxes we need to check and this is the easiest way to do that with email. Check out my friends@powbox.com that's P A U B O X Use Code abundant to get $250 off your first year of powbox. That makes it less than $100 for your first year. Again, that's P A U B O X.com use code ABUNDANT so I've talked about TherapyNotes on here for years. I could talk about the features and the benefits in my sleep. But there are a couple things I want you to know about therapynotes that doesn't typically make it into an ad script. First is that they actually care if you like their platform. They don't only make themselves available on the phone to troubleshoot so you don't pull your hair out when you get stuck. They also take member suggestions and implement those that there's client demand for, like Therapy Search, an included listing service that helps clients find you internal and external secure messaging clinical outcome measures to keep an eye on how your clients are progressing. A super smooth super bill process, real time eligibility to check on your client's insurance. In my conversations with the employees there at all levels, they all really believe in their product and they want you to love it too. Second, they are proudly independently owned. Why should you care about that because as soon as venture capital becomes involved, the focus shifts from making customers happy to making investors happy. Prices go way up, innovation plateaus. Making more money with as little output as possible becomes the number one focus. With over 100,000 therapists using their platform, they've been able to stay incredibly successful. And they don't have to sacrifice your experience to stay there. You can try two months free@therapynotes.com with the coupon code Abundant. Welcome back to the Abundant Practice Podcast. I'm your host, Alison Parir. I'm here with my friend Joe Sanock. Y'all know Jo from Practice of the Practice. We have been on each other's podcast numerous times, and so we're doing it again because I haven't talked to Joe in a while. So we're talking about something that most of y'all are feeling on some level, and that's like burnout. Some existential what am I doing with my life? Some things that, whether you're new or you're seasoned, whether you're in agency right now or you're in private practice, this is something we're hearing lots of people grappling with, so we figured we'd just talk about it. So thanks for being here, Joe.
- [03:35]
Joe Sanock
Oh, thanks for having me. I always love being on your show and having you on my show.
- [03:38]
Alison Parir
Yeah. So tell me some of what you're hearing in the burnout realm from the folks that you are consulting with.
- [03:47]
Joe Sanock
Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of it just starts personally for me. You know, in fall of 2022, we hosted this event in Cancun called Killing It Camp. And I came back with salmonella, which usually super treatable. And through the last two and a half years, I've still been dealing with surgeries around this salmonella that kicked off two years ago. And. And I think that sort of thing for me forced me to slow down and really examine, like, what am I doing in my business? What am I doing in my life? Like, what are the essential things? Like, I just Talked to Greg McEwen, who wrote Essentialism on the podcast, and one of his things is, like, what distill those essential things? And, you know, the health crises as, you know, with your own family or, you know, as, you know, we both have dealt with. It's like that forces you to do what you probably should have been doing anyway. So I think some of the elements that we're seeing is, you know, just discussions around. And this is with my friend group as well, probably your friend group of, like, how much do we engage politically right now. You know, how much news can I take in? So just personally, I want to be an aware citizen. I want to be socially active. And I also can't take a lot of this.
- [04:54]
Alison Parir
Yeah.
- [04:55]
Joe Sanock
You know, so it's like. So just even just core questions of, like, what can my brain take? And I think if we start there, instead of, like, what are all the tips to be more, like, productive at work or whatever, if we just start with, like, what can your brain take? Right now? Let's be gentle. We're living in a crazy time. There's a lot going on. There's a lot. I mean, even just like, looking at the Asheville area with the hurricane, and people don't know up from down in a lot of areas. So let's just start with that. Let's take a breath and say, what can my brain take? So if I start with that personally and with our community, it's okay if I just break down a couple domains, it's like, how much can I work and what kind of work can I do? So what kind of clients can you take on? You may have been super into EMDR for years and spent years training to do that, and you may leave EMDR sessions way more drained than when it's kids. You know, maybe kids just light you up and something shifted. There's this thing called the Sunk Cost fallacy where, like, you know, the idea of someone goes through law school, it's the last year they're about to become an attorney, but they're like, I don't want to freaking be an attorney. And they're like, but I've done all this work, I should do it. We're allowed to change our minds. So I think looking at, you know, how do we work, when do we work, what type of work do we do? I think, you know, looking at even just within our own personal lives, like, where are we spending that time? So I think those kind of big picture categories is where I'm seeing a lot of conversation right now around burnout.
- [06:23]
Alison Parir
Yeah, it's interesting. So my clients that are currently in agency work, right. Everybody's really clear. It's not the clients, it's the structure and systems. It's the leadership. It's working that many hours and having a family on top of everything else, on top of social media, sucking in our time and our energy and our hope. And for my clients who are in private practice, we have a whole program just for therapists who are full and miserable is kind of our shorthand for it, right? Like they've, they've built the wrong practice and now they need to make some big changes to make it sustainable. And for the people when they're starting in that program, it's this sense of, I, I put in so much work to build this thing that I thought I wanted and now it is like, it is not what I wanted. And I'm so scared of the golden handcuffs I have, my financial life falling apart. It's scary to make this big change to either get off insurance or increase your rate significantly or change niches like these kinds of big changes. And it's almost like they are before they join, they're trying to decide whether or not the burnout is worth it. I think a position many of us have been in in different areas of our lives before getting to that essentialism. And you and I have both had health stuff, we both have had kids, have really significant health stuff. And you're right, it just boils it right down. But then when things get better, it's like you forget, you just take, you.
- [07:53]
Joe Sanock
Just go back to it.
- [07:55]
Alison Parir
Yeah.
- [07:55]
Joe Sanock
Yes. Well. And I, I think that that idea of like, I've built the wrong thing, sometimes we, What I hear, and you probably hear this too, is it's like, I just want to blow the whole thing up or I want to leave the industry. And it's like, you can do that, or we can also do some experimenting and just say we don't have to just leave all insurances. We could say, like, what if we left Medicaid? That's really stressful for me. You know, I'm going to leave that for a year. I'm sure they'll take you back if you're like, that was a bad decision.
- [08:23]
Alison Parir
Right.
- [08:24]
Joe Sanock
We can experiment with these things to say, like, how can we do this just a little bit different? And I think that's also like a big shift from how the industrialists taught us. You know, the industrialists taught us, you plug it in, you have an assembly line, the other side of car comes out. Like, that mindset is just embedded in business and life and schooling. And we're in a post industrialist world where we recognize the diversity. We recognize that individuals change their minds in their careers. We recognize like that things shift and that we need a menu, not a prescription. And so something that worked for me one week might not work for me the next week. And so having that agility in that toolbox that we need to build, I think then helps us address that burnout and move away from that kind of all or Nothing thinking that we get sucked into.
- [09:09]
Alison Parir
Yeah, absolutely. I think about your, your original question of like, what can our brains take? And when it just kind of happened naturally that when I became a therapist, I stopped watching dramas. If it was nominated for an Oscar in the last 20 years, I haven't seen it. I don't know. It's all comedies and superhero flicks and lighter, easier, fantastical things for my entertain. And same with the books I read. I used to be a big Jodi Picol fan and it's like all this like ethical, heart wrenching. Do you choose one child over the other if one's going to die? You know, like that kind of thing. And as soon as I became a therapist, I was like, no, give me some fairies. Give me some like, yeah, I get.
- [09:49]
Joe Sanock
Enough of that in my regular counseling. Yeah.
- [09:51]
Alison Parir
And I, I think with social media, we don't get a break from it in the same way because at least my feeds are feeding me the things I look at. Right. Which is like doom scroll type stuff, activism, things like you like. I also want to be informed and I also can't spend every break at work in between things being reminded that the world is falling apart in some way.
- [10:19]
Joe Sanock
Yeah. Well, and that's. I'm feeling that same thing where it's like my TikTok algorithm, because I am involved with politics and stuff, has given me a lot of politics and I just want to go on there and look at watercolor paintings. But there's not like a mute politics.
- [10:32]
Alison Parir
Right.
- [10:33]
Joe Sanock
And so I've had to just say, okay, just there's certain platforms that for right now I have to say, what are the boundaries around that? Like, when will I look at that? For me, listening to All Things Considered or some sort of news roundup that is just here's the news of what's happening not just in, you know, U.S. politics, but around the world. Like, I want to be informed, but also I don't want as much of the. Like, man, I'm so pissed off because of fill in the blank.
- [10:57]
Alison Parir
Right.
- [10:58]
Joe Sanock
And I think also just setting like hard and soft boundaries for myself around specific things of. You know what? I would define a soft boundary as something I'm testing or trying out to see if it resonates. And hard boundaries are like, I'm not going to do it. You know, I wrote a book about not working on Friday. So if I have a consulting client that only will meet on Friday, like, I'm never going to work with them. Right. Whereas if some crisis happens in my business on A Friday. I'm not going to let it burn for the weekend. You know, so and so, even in my own life, just saying, okay, like, what are the things that my brain needs every Tuesday? I need to be at Improv. I have to go to Improv. I have to laugh with those people. I need that. I need regular walks. I need, you know, times with my partner Claire to, like, go out and have time away from the kids. And I want to have game nights with my kids. It's not just screen based. So it's like once you start to put those building blocks in of this is the stuff that helps my brain, then there's less time and less energy to put into other bs, you know, because I've already said, here's the things that matter most. And of course, we have to recognize that there's a certain affluence, there's privilege that plays into that. That even, like, you're talking about people working at agencies. I mean, inflation alone, you know, and the cost of goods is insane. Like the cost of housing for millennials. They may never own homes. Whereas you and I got in when we could have regular jobs and get a regular size home. Like, that's just so. There's so many factors there, too, that just are societal things that, of course, you feel burned out.
- [12:24]
Alison Parir
Right, Right. Every. I feel like everybody is pedaling as hard as they can.
- [12:28]
Joe Sanock
Yeah.
- [12:28]
Alison Parir
And there are times we don't have to be pedaling. Like, we're going downhill, we don't have to pedal, but we're so used to pedaling that we continue, which just furthers our burnout.
- [12:38]
Joe Sanock
Yeah. I was just interviewing this lady who's, I don't know, written 20 books on, like, Buddhist meditation. And she was talking about this moment when she was going through a really hard divorce, and things were really hitting the fan, and there was a lot to think about, and she was just so overwhelmed that she had taken her trash out to the curb for. For that. And she sat down between the trash and the recycling and just, like, sat there and was just, like, in a terrible spot. But she realized in that moment, anyone that's been in mindfulness, you know, has heard something like this where there was nothing hurting her at that moment. She's sitting between two trash cans. There's nothing physically hurting her. It's only her own pain that she's expecting out of the divorce or the financial ruin that she's expecting out of the divorce that was causing the pain. And that. That, for me, is like a. Okay, right now I Am safe right now. I am. It's a lot in my brain, things that probably will happen, but. But, like, I have the skills that when those things happen, I can address them in that moment. And to me, I'm not good at that. But that's a great reminder to go back to of, like, okay, right now I'm safe.
- [13:43]
Alison Parir
Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting. So I think about, like, you were asking before we were recording about how are things in Asheville? And I was so proud of the way I was handling the hurricane and the immediate destruction afterwards. Right. Because we tell our clients all the time, and I have been told by my therapist all the time, feel your feelings as they're coming. And then, like, if you just feel them, they don't last that long if you feel them when they come. And so I would just be, you know, in my dark house straightening something up, and all of a sudden just start crying. And it would be 30 seconds, maybe a minute of crying, and then it would just stop on its own. So I felt like I was really modeling so well for my kids. My kid goes to therapy once everything is back, and her therapist tells me, she's like, well, how did your parents do during, you know, what was it like for your family? And she's like, oh, my mom cried a lot. No, my daughter's in middle school now, so this is part for the course. She's like, oh, you know, what was that like for you? And she's like, I mean, it was kind of annoying. And I just. I love that. I felt like I was doing such a good job modeling for them and modeling for myself. Like, oh, this works. And then the instant humility of having this information, that my daughter found it annoying. Like, I feel like, look, that's the world right there.
- [15:01]
Joe Sanock
Like, that's like, that is the world right there for sure. I think that there's also these narratives that we think of what we're supposed to do. You know, it's like, you know, after grad school, you're supposed to work at an agency and then a group practice, and then you start a practice like that there's this, like, relationship ladder in our professional world, you know, in the same way, there's these relationship ladders that, you know, are in the romantic world. And I. For me, it's been really freeing, you know, for myself and with other people to just identify, where does that come from?
- [15:30]
Alison Parir
Yeah.
- [15:31]
Joe Sanock
Why are we working so hard and saying we have to live this type of life now? We need to know our actual needs. Like, I Need to know my finances. I need to know for the Sank family to survive. This is what I need. But oftentimes that number is much smaller than our perception of what we need.
- [15:47]
Alison Parir
Right.
- [15:47]
Joe Sanock
And so when there's a gap there, that's a great opportunity to say, okay, do I want to work this hard or do I want to put that time into my own healing my own trauma, my own burnout, you know, going to yoga, more like whatever your things are. And that's where I think that like the functional side of our brains and the artistic side, like often don't talk to each other when it's like, I'm an analytical person, but it's like, okay, but like we need some of that art side. So when we, when we look at that functional, just like, what is your budget? And do you need to work this hard? And maybe you do and then that's a different discussion then. Oh, I don't.
- [16:23]
Alison Parir
Right.
- [16:24]
Joe Sanock
Do we have financial goals for the next five years that we do need to bring in an extra 10 grand? Okay. That's a decision then that feels more empowering than like the world is making me work. So I burn out.
- [16:35]
Alison Parir
Right? Yeah. I love people have these very round numbers that are their goals. Right. But when you ask them why that number, like, where did that number come from? What are you going to use that money for? What percentage goes where most people are kind of like, I don't know, just. I like the number. It sounded, it sounded good to me. But if it means you're getting closer to burnout or you are staying stuck in burnout to reach that number, then what's it for? Because you're not going to be able to vacation your way out of burnout. It doesn't work.
- [17:05]
Joe Sanock
No. And I think that it's just one of those things where as you dig in and open things up, it gets momentum. We have this plus one, minus one exercise that we do with our clients and it's based on that kind of menu idea. So whether you have half a day weekends or four day weekends, like you can use this during your time off. And the plus one is just building a menu of things you can add in that help you recuperate. And so, you know, I'm going to try reading a fairy book this weekend while drinking green tea for half an hour. Kids like, unless you are dying, leave me alone. So you're communicating with the people, you're trying it out. Okay. That didn't really light me up like I thought it would. Okay, I'm going to Try something else next weekend. So we're building our plus ones over time and then we're building our minus ones, which are things we're taking off of our plate. And so for me, I don't love grocery shopping. I do it because I'm usually out running errands and I buy us food. But there are weekends where I'm like, I just do not feel like doing this. So I get groceries delivered. My driveway has a really weird angle. It's not that big, but it takes like over an hour to snow blow to get all the the snow off of it. But it's like not that big. And literally for $30 per plow, maybe 300 a season, I can get back probably 20 hours of time to be with my kids in the evening. So I'm not in the dark doing this at 4:30 in the afternoon. And so finding those minus one things. And for me, that's personally been just helpful because then it's like, okay, I have a couple things I can go to when I feel off and they're not like, I've got to blow everything up. It's okay. I know I need to drink matcha before I drink espresso every day or I feel crappy.
- [18:47]
Alison Parir
Yeah, I know I have to move my body a certain amount. Right? I also, Tuesday night is my improv night too. And so, like, knowing that as I've gotten older, I've had to have things added to my life intentionally for joy and pleasure and fun and just maintenance, you know, like, no, I don't want to walk every day, but I know my joints as I'm getting older, like, they're not happy if I don't move my body. But as our lives get busier, it's really hard to subtract things. So I think a lot of people get caught in that trap of adding all the things they're supposed to do without subtracting. My problem is stubbornness with it. Like, I'm like, I should be able to do it all. So I, my. One of my coaches actually had me write down a list of like, things that make me feel taken care of that I don't have to do. So, like, my husband handles girl Scouts. Joel handles all the girl Scout stuff. It's cookie season. I don't have to do anything. Thank God, right? So that makes me feel taken care of. And if I can frame it of, like, this is how someone I love is taking care of me instead of, I should be helping with this. I should be at the cookie stand. I Should. Whatever. I'm able to allow myself to be taken care of, because that's another goal I'm working on.
- [20:09]
Joe Sanock
Mm. I love that. I want to do that.
- [20:12]
Alison Parir
Yeah.
- [20:13]
Joe Sanock
I'm gonna make a list of stuff that makes me feel taken care of. I like that.
- [20:16]
Alison Parir
And it's great to share with your partner, like, if you both make your list, because there are things on Joel's list that I wouldn't have thought of, and it helped me be able to show my appreciation to him of, look, you taking June to Girl Scouts isn't just parenting. It's like you taking care of me while parenting. And I really appreciate it. So. Yeah.
- [20:36]
Joe Sanock
Yeah. And I think that, you know, oftentimes it's like, people want to help, and, you know, it's not as big a deal for them to do that thing as often we think it is.
- [20:46]
Alison Parir
Right.
- [20:46]
Joe Sanock
I'm wondering when people are, like, super stressed out. Like, I'm picturing, like, you were talking about, like, agency people that maybe even want to start a side gig counseling practice. And just what are you seeing work in regards to burnout when they're just, like, in the thick of it?
- [21:01]
Alison Parir
Scheduling, really holding fidelity to your schedule. Because what I see makes everything worse is, like, if you say after work on Thursday, you're gonna do X, Y, and Z for marketing, and then you don't because you're tired, then it's not done. So you haven't moved forward on your goals, and now you feel guilty, and so just start stacking up. So hold it. Like, making a very realistic calendar. Because somebody who's working full time is not gonna be able to devote so much time as somebody who, you know, is maybe in an agency part time. So being realistic about what you can actually do on the front end, holding fidelity to that, and being gentle with yourself, if something comes up, you know, your kid's sick, don't do it. God, don't do it. Take care of your kids. Sit and watch TV with them.
- [21:47]
Joe Sanock
Yeah.
- [21:48]
Alison Parir
But always making some sort of patterned amount of time, like a certain frequency of work towards what you're moving towards, so that you're always moving forward, even if it's not at the speed any of us would want. We always slower than we want. Right.
- [22:03]
Joe Sanock
So, yeah, I think that that whole kind of. Whether it's improv or, you know, learning new ways to just think through handing things off to our partner. For me, learning new things or trying new things does something different in my brain to disrupt than just kind of being stuck in, like, the average and for me that's been like watercolor, you know, recently over the last couple years. Where for me I love it because it's like you're painting but then when it dries you have no idea how it's going to really look and there's just like a letting go of that and, and because I'm not trying to be a professional or anything, it's like, okay, that was something I don't like I'm gonna just recycle it.
- [22:43]
Alison Parir
So.
- [22:45]
Joe Sanock
So I think that, that to me just even having five minutes between things where I'm like I'm gonna just go do a little watercolor and then go into something else that it doesn't have to be this big thing, it's just like a little micro moment instead of being on social media.
- [22:57]
Alison Parir
Yeah. Which is what most people do in those little five minute blocks which I think is making life worse for all of us ultimately. I'm curious for your people who are, maybe they're in their own practice already and they need to make some changes in order for it to be what they want and need it to be. Like how are you seeing them balance burnout and fear?
- [23:20]
Joe Sanock
Yeah, I think when they have a solid solo practice so they're past the startup and they're just have created something that they. I just literally like right before you was talking to a lady that's going to do consulting that has built that she's got 30 referrals a month coming in that she can't handle and she has to make a decision. And so first it's like, do I want to just be a sustainable solo practice? And if so we need to make some decisions on leaving certain insurances, increasing your private pay, improving your website to attract higher end clients, positioning yourself in the media differently. If that's the direction you're going, then we need to do some strategy around you need to make more money and work fewer hours because you can't reach any goals beyond just sustaining you're going to be the same as you are if you don't do something else.
- [24:05]
Alison Parir
Right.
- [24:05]
Joe Sanock
Or do we want to do a group practice? And some people think that has to be this huge endeavor. It literally can be one person that sees 10 extra clients a week. I mean there's ways you can structure it that it doesn't become this big burden. You know, like when I had my group practice we had 13 people and I probably worked on it half an hour a week. And it's like you can do these things. If you say here's how I'm going to make it so that if it's my lifestyle instead of I should do it all these other ways.
- [24:33]
Alison Parir
Right.
- [24:34]
Joe Sanock
And so I do think that some relief around moving into group practice oftentimes can help. Assuming it aligns in your lifestyle and the you find good people. Usually your first couple hires are like not great. You hire a friend or someone you knew from CMH or whatever and then you realize that doesn't maybe align with your niche. But I think that that gives the action side. I don't think that that addresses, you know, the fear that you asked about. To me that just an ongoing letting go of as many outcomes but also recognizing that you need to know if you're sinking, you know, you need to know that it's time to plug the holes in the boat. But to say I have to hire this many people by this date and have them this full, like that's you're creating an expectation for yourself that it's not, if it's not just a hope or like, hey, this is where we're headed. We want to have a direction, but we don't need to have an expectation. So I would say that fear is best addressed when, when there's more of that letting go of the outcome.
- [25:34]
Alison Parir
It's interesting because in the business world, in the online business world, there's this idea of a bhag. I'm blanking on.
- [25:41]
Joe Sanock
Big, hairy, audacious goal.
- [25:42]
Alison Parir
Yeah, big hairy, audacious goal. And like we are encouraged to set goals that are maybe even impossible.
- [25:49]
Joe Sanock
Yeah.
- [25:49]
Alison Parir
And I've always had what I call like an okay, a great and a shit your pants goal. That's my BHAG name and so I like that better. Yeah, so I have like all three for any, you know, anything that we're doing launch wise or you know, goals for the year, things like that. And I had to create these other ones because I kept feeling like a failure when I wasn't hitting my bhag. And I don't know, a lot of my business friends don't have that problem. They're like, well, you're not, you're not supposed to. You're just, you get closer to it than you would have otherwise because it was there. You didn't have a ceiling really. And that's the beauty of it. And I don't know if it's like personality. I don't know if it's something about the way that we're raised up as therapists that has us just wanting to like hit every goal, be as effective as humanly possible every single moment. I don't know. Are you good at setting goals that you know you might not reach? And then when you don't reach them, being like, all right, cool, I've gotten better.
- [26:55]
Joe Sanock
I think I'm probably more like, you are. Where it's like, I can see the potential of what this could be, and it's this huge dream of, this could impact people, this could make money, this could do whatever. And that definitely motivates me. But then when it's like, if we have a launch that is good by any standards, like, I just met with my accountant and the percentage that were up last year over the year before, people would die for. And it's like, throughout the year, I'm like, oh, we're not hitting the goals that I wanted to hit, but it's like, we grew by a massive amount. And it's like, that should be celebrated. And so that's. That's my own, I think, work to be like, why do I keep moving the goal posts? And instead of saying, okay, here's the thing. That is what I'm shooting for. So that's. I'm. I'm not good at it, actually. As I. As I verbally process this, I think I was. I was hoping that I would be like, no, I'm pretty good. But I do think that. But I think that there's also. When people are dreamers and innovators, and then you add on top of that therapist, we see the potential in someone's same marriage that's falling apart. They had the worst affair you've ever heard of. And, like, you've seen people come back together or you've seen them break up and become the best version of themselves because they broke up. We see change unlike any other career, I might venture to say, because of that. We see the potential in all sorts of crap that we probably shouldn't see potential in. It was hard for me. I. You know, my marriage of 17 years ended, and I was a Gottman certified therapist. And it's like, I see people change. I see the potential when people put time into it, and the person I was married to didn't put time into herself. We weren't a good fit from the beginning, and. And now I'm happier than ever. And I think that that therapy side also, like, got in the way of being able to see that I could leave.
- [28:39]
Alison Parir
I love this. I mean, I. You know, we've talked about that situation, and I hate that situation for you during the.
- [28:45]
Joe Sanock
Quite a situation.
- [28:47]
Alison Parir
But I love that perspective. That, like, we're almost inherently more hopeful because we're therapists and we see the resilience and the change. Okay, I'm going to look at life through those eyes for a little while. That's. I appreciate that. And I think about this with therapists, too, as they're starting, whether they're starting their practice or they're shifting their practice significantly, there's this sense of, I wanted this to happen yesterday. I needed this to happen yesterday. Like, why am I not full in two weeks? Kind of unrealistic expectations. Because in agencies, they were fed clients, so they were full just as fast as they could be. And perhaps this hope plays into it as well. Of. I know if I work hard, I'll, you know, see the benefits of that, which is true. It's just not that timeline that we're all wishing. Yeah.
- [29:42]
Joe Sanock
Well. And I think that's why communities like yours or ours are so important for people to find their people to be able to show up and be like, okay, this just happened. Is this normal or is this insane? Yeah, give me some feedback here. I don't know up from down.
- [29:56]
Alison Parir
Right.
- [29:57]
Joe Sanock
And so being in communities, to me, it's just like the support that you feel, the normalization of things, the outcry. I remember I had an event here at my house for some of my consulting clients, and this one lady who had been working with me for a while, she had a clinician, she had a larger group practice that was nine months behind on her progress. Oh, yeah. And I kept being like, you, this is not good. And the group was just like. They were just. There was outcry and like, you need to fire this person. And it turned into this crazy thing where the lady filed something with the state and all these just stuff happened. But she then had a community of people that were with her from, you gotta let this woman go. Just that joining together in often a very lonely field, I think is just so important for anyone's, like, success moving forward.
- [30:47]
Alison Parir
Absolutely. Yeah. Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Joe. I appreciate you talking with me today.
- [30:53]
Joe Sanock
Allison, thank you so much for having me.
- [30:55]
Alison Parir
I will talk with you soon, I hope.
- [30:56]
Joe Sanock
Sounds good.
- [30:59]
Alison Parir
Make sure your email is actually HIPAA compliant with Powell Box. Use code Abundant to get Palbox for less than $100 your first year@paubox.com. if you're ready for a much easier practice, therapy notes is the way to go. Go to therapynotes.com and use the promo code abundant for two months free. If you're listening, you probably need some support building your practice. If you're grab our free checklist using the link in the show notes. I'd love for you to follow rate and review, but I really want you to share this episode with a therapist friend. Let's help all our colleagues build what they want.