Episode #626: Natural Disasters & Private Practice, feat. Dr. Julia Colangelo

Summary

Abundant Practice Podcast - Episode #626: Natural Disasters & Private Practice, feat. Dr. Julia Colangelo

Release Date: March 5, 2025

Hosts:

• Allison Puryear: Founder of Abundance Practice Building
• Dr. Julia Colangelo: Therapist, Coach, and Disaster Survivor

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1. Introduction

In Episode #626 of the Abundant Practice Podcast, host Allison Puryear welcomes Dr. Julia Colangelo to discuss the profound impact of natural disasters on private practices. Drawing from Julia's firsthand experience surviving the devastating Maui wildfires, the episode delves into the challenges faced by therapists in the wake of such catastrophes and offers invaluable insights into rebuilding both personally and professionally.

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2. Surviving the Maui Wildfires

a. The Disaster Unfolded

Dr. Julia Colangelo recounts the harrowing experience of the Maui wildfires, specifically the Lahaina fires, which erupted due to neglected electrical infrastructure exacerbated by strong winds. The fire swiftly engulfed the town, leaving destruction in its wake.

“Overnight I went from a small business owner with a successful steady business to losing almost all of my IP on electrical devices and different hard drives that I had and podcast equipment, everything.”
— Julia Colangelo [04:01]

b. Immediate Personal and Professional Losses

The wildfires led to the loss of Julia's home, car, and essential business equipment. With her two young daughters, aged 11 months and 4 years, Julia had to flee in a car, witnessing their home burn from a rooftop. This abrupt transition from stability to chaos had both emotional and logistical repercussions.

“It took us four hours to flee. What would have taken about 30 minutes to get to safety.”
— Julia Colangelo [05:39]

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3. Emotional and Psychological Impact

a. Trauma and Survivor’s Guilt

Julia opens up about the deep emotional scars left by the disaster, including survivor’s guilt and the struggle to reassure her children amidst her own fear and uncertainty.

“Building back the trust of thinking some everything's going to be okay. And then not because of what I did or didn't do. Things are still not okay.”
— Julia Colangelo [05:32]

b. The Prolonged Reality of Trauma

Unlike sudden crises, the aftermath of the wildfires presents an ongoing trauma. Five months post-disaster, Julia describes the persistent exposure to destruction as a form of continuous exposure therapy.

“Every day has been kind of exposure therapy over time... but it was already destroyed.”
— Julia Colangelo [07:19]

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4. Professional Challenges and Business Recovery

a. Impact on Private Practice

The destruction severely affected Julia's business, leading to substantial financial losses and a sudden need to refund services. This abrupt downturn made her question the very foundation of her practice's success.

“I refunded on my own accord, probably $20,000 worth of retreats, deposits that were folks planning to come to Maui.”
— Julia Colangelo [13:07]

b. Navigating Client Relationships Post-Disaster

Julia shares the difficulties in maintaining client relationships during the recovery phase, including clients requesting refunds and expressing a desire to pause services.

“Nothing could have prepared me for what the short, midterm, and then very long term effects would be on my sense of self as a business owner.”
— Julia Colangelo [14:15]

c. Strategic Rebuilding and Adaptation

In rebuilding her practice, Julia emphasizes the need for radical acceptance and adapting business models to accommodate the unpredictability of disasters. She highlights the importance of financial discipline and the willingness to pivot in the face of adversity.

“You will build something. It will just be different. It will be different, and there will be grief and layers in it, but you'll be able to build something.”
— Julia Colangelo [23:17]

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5. Personal Resilience and Healing

a. Physical Activity as Coping Mechanism

Julia found solace in manual labor, which helped her manage trauma and regain a sense of control. Engaging in physical tasks provided a flow state that was essential for her healing process.

“Moving my body helped so much... it felt so good.”
— Julia Colangelo [19:02]

b. Support Systems and Community Engagement

While the initial response to the disaster saw a surge in community support, Julia notes that sustained recovery requires ongoing effort and the cultivation of new support networks.

“Message us. We're open books and the resources that we can share that we wish we would have done differently or instead are available to you.”
— Julia Colangelo [24:15]

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6. Lessons Learned and Advice for Therapists

a. Accepting Vulnerability

Julia underscores the importance of acknowledging one's own trauma and vulnerability as a therapist. This self-awareness is crucial for authentic healing and effective client support.

“I had to have that radical acceptance and that practice within myself.”
— Julia Colangelo [23:49]

b. Financial Preparedness and Flexibility

Therapists are encouraged to develop flexible business models that can withstand unexpected disruptions. This includes financial planning, diversifying income streams, and being open to pro bono work when possible.

c. Building Resilient Communities

Creating strong support networks within the therapist community can provide mutual aid and shared resources during times of crisis.

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7. Conclusion

The conversation between Allison Puryear and Dr. Julia Colangelo offers a poignant exploration of the intersection between personal trauma and professional practice in the face of natural disasters. Julia's resilience, adaptability, and insights serve as a guiding beacon for therapists navigating similar challenges. The episode reinforces the message that while disasters can devastate, they also present opportunities for growth, rebuilding, and fostering deeper connections within the therapeutic community.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• “Overnight I went from a small business owner with a successful steady business to losing almost all of my IP...”
  — Julia Colangelo [04:01]

• “Building back the trust of thinking some everything's going to be okay.”
  — Julia Colangelo [05:32]

• “You will build something. It will just be different.”
  — Julia Colangelo [23:17]

• “Moving my body helped so much... it felt so good.”
  — Julia Colangelo [19:02]

• “I had to have that radical acceptance and that practice within myself.”
  — Julia Colangelo [23:49]

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For therapists seeking support in building a resilient private practice, resources are available at abundancepracticebuilding.com. Additionally, the Abundance Party membership program offers step-by-step guidance to enhance practice sustainability and personal well-being.

Transcript

[Alison Par]

Foreign.

[Alison]

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. Powbox 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 [e-mail] 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 [e-mail] with the coupon code Abundant.

[Alison Par]

Welcome back to the Abundant Practice Podcast. I'm your host, Alison Par, and I'm.

[Alison]

Here with Julia Colangelo.

[Alison Par]

And Julia and I have a long and storied history. She was in one of my practice building groups and built her practice beautifully and then shifted over to coaching and helps people with flow. So then she became my coach. I got to go out to Hawaii and, like, learn from her and be with her and work with her in a number of capacities. And so Julia has been both a student and a mentor of mine and was somebody that I reached out to a good bit after Helene, because as you will hear, Julia has been through hell with her own natural disaster. But thank you for being here, Julia. Thanks for coming.

[Julia Colangelo]

Thanks for having me. And I think this is such an important topic to discuss as practice, as practice owners and as clinicians and as disaster survivors.

[Alison Par]

Yeah, yeah. So can you do description of what happened in your disaster?

[Julia Colangelo]

Yeah. So over 18 months ago, we. It felt like before that I had some other issues that were just lingering from some chronic health stuff that became more acute. But we survived the Maui wildfires, specifically in Lahaina. There were three wildfires that day. Olinda, Kula, and Lahaina. Lahaina was the largest one. And the fires were caused by the neglect of the electrical in the whole town. And because of that and wind, this fire took out the entire town and neighborhoods surrounding Lahaina town, specifically. And so overnight I went from, you know, small business owner with a successful steady business to losing almost all of my IP on electrical devices and different hard drives that I had and podcast equipment, everything. Losing everything in an instant, very abruptly and unexpectedly, with no real preparation time and needing to have this short term, I would say midterm, and then now I would say I'm just entering the longer term recovery of what it looks like to try to build something differently after needing to face very abrupt, unexpected trauma, danger and loss.

[Alison Par]

Yeah. And it wasn't just your business affected. You lost your home, you lost your car. You and your two kids and your partner fled in a car.

[Julia Colangelo]

Oh, yes, we lost our home. We lost the schools. We fled in a car. We made it out. The New York Times stamp said that we were two minutes away from it. It was already. The fire was on our street, but the wind was blowing some down our street another direction. But it was on our street. And it took us four hours to flee. What would have taken about 30 minutes to get to safety. And, you know, I actually saw our home in flames from a rooftop in the neighborhood. But I still thought in what we do throughout trauma, oh, I'll just come back tomorrow. It's this can't be real. And they were not even one 11 months old and 4 years old at the time, our daughters. And of course I was the parent who promised and reassured that nothing would happen. So one of the long term things is building back the trust of thinking some everything's going to be okay. And then not because of what I did or didn't do. Things are still not okay. And that's something that I just never expected to have to deal with with children at such a young age and with owning a business and not having any real playbook for how much and how severely this would impact my ability to run a business.

[Alison Par]

Yeah, I'm in the. I guess late, early or early mid stage. So. Oh, I'm going to cry because that's what you do in this day.

[Julia Colangelo]

This can be part one of us feeling our feelings.

[Alison Par]

Yeah. And we're five months out, five months in two days of when we're recording this, we're five months out from Helene and the destruction's still everywhere, you know, like it's driving past the destruction. Every day has been kind of exposure therapy over time. Like I'm like, oh, yeah, there's a shell of those buildings and the buildings that are completely gone and that kind of thing. But everybody I know lost someone, lost a job or lost a business they owned. Everybody knows somebody, I should say, of course. So it's this ongoing interesting trauma that as a business owner and as somebody whose house had. We've got tens of thousands of dollars of damage, but it's like nothing compared to other people. There's the survivor's guilt.

[Julia Colangelo]

I was going to say. You have that added layer where it was almost. It was. It wasn't easier, but it was to know that it was a complete loss, gave the closure and shortened my sentences, which when I were. Was communicating, I could just say, yep, we lost it all. You know, it wasn't, well, we lost this, but not that, but this. Not that. It was. We. We got out with One of the cars and the beach umbrellas that were in the car, you know, by chance.

[Alison Par]

Yeah. Clothes on your back.

[Julia Colangelo]

Clothes on the back.

[Alison Par]

Yeah. Yeah. I reached out to you to do this podcast when the LA fires were still raging.

[Julia Colangelo]

Yeah.

[Alison Par]

And probably by the time this airs, it will be another disaster somewhere.

[Julia Colangelo]

Of course.

[Alison Par]

So I think it's. It's good for therapists to hear. You're not alone.

[Julia Colangelo]

No.

[Alison Par]

I reached out to some Katrina therapists back when I was like, I don't even know. How do I sit with people.

[Julia Colangelo]

Yeah.

[Alison Par]

When I can barely talk about it without crying.

[Julia Colangelo]

Yeah. You know, and I had to make the decision to stop sitting with people.

[Alison Par]

Yeah.

[Julia Colangelo]

Or in some ways it felt like the decision was made for me, that it was shocking. As someone who has learned from you for many, many years, you've instilled this, you know, vision of an ideal client, of having a niche, a focus. And I've done that successfully in multiple businesses and through different programs and approaches and roadmaps and to still have the cold shoulder happen from a few clients. You know, the week of the fires, I refunded on my own Accord, probably $20,000 worth of retreats, deposits that were folks planning to come to Maui. But then other people straight up requested a refund for other services that I was probably pretty well equipped to still deliver. And that was very dysregulating. And my confidence shrunk so much afterwards because it felt like I had set things up as well as possible. And yet nothing could have prepared me for what the. Again, short midterm, long term, and then very long term effects would be on my sense of self as a business owner surviving a public disaster that I literally couldn't hide or escape from. And then there were other clients who were saying things like, oh, keep the money, don't deliver the service. Let's put a pin in it, you know, or here, I don't need any service. Can I. How can I support you? So I think that as you've probably seen, the 5 month, 6 month to 8 month mark is when things get real, the world forgets, the world moves on. You cannot move on because physically and emotionally, you are impacted on a daily basis. And there isn't really a playbook that outlines what it does. Again, to those of us that are public faces or the creators or the owners of the business, we're used to showing up. We're used to showing up and being real. And when the real is so unbearably painful, you know, we. We have to take that step. Back. And that's what again, I had to just remove myself to self preserve and to take care of my basic needs and my family. But you can imagine, I mean, it shrunk my business so quickly that it made me question how successful was that business ever to begin with. Right. Just changed how I viewed myself. And that was one of the impacts I really didn't expect or to have to say the truth, which was I'm not okay. Things are still bad for such a long amount of time.

[Alison Par]

I keep thinking about the folks in LA that happened. I was actually right outside of LA.

[Julia Colangelo]

When it started, like last month.

[Alison Par]

So that was January. Yeah. And so there's this sweet period after any disaster where everybody comes together and supports each other.

[Julia Colangelo]

Yeah.

[Alison Par]

There is so much giving. There's like, I mean my, my heart broke open. Right. But that fades. People forget and yeah. The cohesion fades because people have to leave when they no longer have jobs and no longer have homes. They have to go elsewhere.

[Julia Colangelo]

Yeah.

[Alison Par]

And I know in places like where you and I live, it's certainly more expensive in Maui, but it's pretty expensive to live in Asheville. So so many people who lost their jobs but still had their apartment that they were renting or whatever couldn't afford it because nobody was hiring, nobody's open. So even the businesses that the building survived. A lot of the businesses inside of it didn't. Because when you don't have water for a month, so you can't really run your restaurant very easily.

[Julia Colangelo]

Yeah.

[Alison Par]

So we lost a lot of good businesses in addition to a lot of really beautiful places. And so having clients who were just fine financially. Yeah, it was not a problem. But they lost everything.

[Julia Colangelo]

Yeah.

[Alison Par]

And now, you know. So we're doing pro bono with those folks in the group practice. But it feels very similar to Covid, but like the volume turned way up of like you're going through the same thing as your clients. And a lot of people unfortunately can't step away from one on one because it's their whole business model and they can't pay their bills without it. I watched a lot of Asheville therapists be like, I'll do pro bono work with people like week one. And I was like, you can't.

[Alison]

You really can.

[Julia Colangelo]

You really can do that. And what I want to plant the seed is that you can do it down the road. And this disaster recovery is so long term that now and even six months ago I was able to come back to life and say, now I can give. Now things have restabilized in some ways, finally, not in always, but in some ways. But I, I'll never forget right after the fire, going to, you know, with the kids and with Chris, we went to volunteer. It was like three days after. And. But we also needed the clothing that they were handing out. Right? It was such. And I just froze and said, this actually isn't the time that for me to be the volunteer, this is in my nature, this is in my strength set that I can show up and I can help other people. And this is not the time. Right now I need to focus inward and with my inner circle and with our actual community and I need to let myself heal. And from a business perspective, it meant having a lot of very hard and abrupt conversations with my team saying, this is never what I would expect. I'd have to make these decisions and changes, but I have to. And although I think it's noble to say I'll pay them before me or I'll do this, when you're in a disaster recovery phase, that's not how it works. That's, that's not practical. You, you literally can't get by. We couldn't pay my. We couldn't pay our bills if we weren't carving out some of any revenue for ourselves. I don't know if you had this experience, but with the LA fires, I had this aha moment where it pained me so much because for over a year at that point I had thought, is this just because we're on an isolated island in a neighborhood that had 17 firemen and women fighting this? You know, if, if this had happened in California, this never would have happened. And to see it happen and happen worse, I was so shocked because this fantasy that my mind had created of if only I had chosen somewhere else with more resources available on the mainland, it would have been easier or different. But it also, seeing the pain and the just tragedy reminded me that I also actually had recovered and healed more than I gave myself credit because I was jarred, I was distraught, I was disoriented, but I was also able to function, able to be in my business. I was able to instill hope in friends and clients who lost everything and say, it is going to be really painful for at least a year. It will be great for about six weeks. It will be really tough as things set in from the three to six and nine month mark. And you cannot drive away or avoid seeing the visuals of destruction. And then now at the year and a half mark, there's gravel instead of the remnants of destruction. And honestly, I can speak from that place of every time we, we drive to Lahaina twice a week for baseball, we coach T ball and there's hope. Every, every week, every two days, every few days we are there. There's another layer of a house built up. There's another gravel lot that now has foundation laid. But it is a year and a half and that's a long time to think about when you're a business owner, when you are someone in the helping profession, when you are of service to others, that it really took, it took seeing a mirror example to say, wow, I see the way forward. I wish I had known this and now I get to be of service. Like I've been on so many consultation calls being able to say, wish I would have done this, should have done that. Was too proud at the time to do this. I think having been successful, I was too proud to ask for help. We never made a GoFundMe. We never made any of these things that probably we should have. But I was just so used to having steady recurring income based on my skill set and business model. Even though at that point it had been already half. Not service oriented, more product based. I wasn't prepared for the amount of money we would be spending to help ourselves, our community and others so abruptly. And it's sort of like I would tell people when they were spending money on their wedding. I'm like, it's gonna feel like a lot and then everything sort of levels out a year later. I remember telling that and talking about that with clients in therapy, like when there would just be this financial stress. It's similar to that in that it will eventually level out, but a disaster just derails things for much longer.

[Alison Par]

Yeah. And I, I did not want to work.

[Julia Colangelo]

Like I was traumatized, totally traumatized, absolutely.

[Alison Par]

I wanted to do manual labor. That's all I wanted to do. And that's what I did. I did a lot of hauling stuff and it felt so good. And I would bring my kids to the distribution centers and my little 8 year old would be handing me these 25 pound waters, you know, like as in the firemen chain or whatever, to move things. But moving my body helped so much and we didn't have communication for a few days after it happened. So it's like we didn't know if anybody knew, which was even scarier because there was no way in or out for a few days. And as you started to see the destruction, because it took us two days just to get off our street because there were about A hundred trees that came down on our street, which only has like 30 houses, that my identity as a business owner was so divorced from my experience. Like, I couldn't think about it. And I had the staff who's all my administrative staff is Asheville based. And so I had this staff who for a while I couldn't get in touch with. And then everybody deals with disaster differently. Yeah. And normally in the past I would say I'd been like, okay, well, let's just get going. Like, what's the next step? How do we. What do we do in this business to get it back? But I couldn't.

[Julia Colangelo]

Yeah, I just. Yeah. The motivation and discipline is gone because you don't even know what day of the week it is. You don't even know it's happening. And that's actually. I don't know if you feel this long term now with what all of the other world events. It's hard to be in touch with it all when we're still in the middle of our disaster recovery and the trauma of that.

[Alison]

Yeah.

[Julia Colangelo]

And so my motivation went completely. I mean, it just disappeared. And then I reminded myself that having anything that activated a flow state, manual labor is a great thing, a craft or something for me and you work related was an aid and it just had to be different. And so, yeah, I really look at, you know, they talk about before the fire and after the fire, before the disaster, after the disaster. And I look at my business as literally two different experiences and pathways because, yeah, I had to do things radically different. And it's not that I'm building everything in a way that's just in case it all burns down again, but I am doing it in a more disciplined way where I'm aware of what could potentially derail things and how tender I have to be with myself. And it's made me a better teacher and coach probably because I'm really tuned into how many variables and how abruptly they could disrupt or change someone's experience in day to day life even.

[Alison Par]

Yeah. It's interesting because when our storm happened, I thought of you immediately because you had been fairly open about your experience.

[Julia Colangelo]

Yeah.

[Alison Par]

And I remember when everything burned down, I was like, God, poor Julia. Yeah, here's some cash on Venmo.

[Julia Colangelo]

Yes.

[Alison Par]

Like, I did not get it. I didn't get it at all. I felt awful for you, but I didn't get it.

[Julia Colangelo]

Oh, no. But that helped. That made the difference. It was the asking. I don't know if you felt this. I could not ask. I could not Ask.

[Alison Par]

Oh, no.

[Julia Colangelo]

Someone said to me straight up, what's your Venmo? I didn't even think to ask why? Because I. I, like, I don't even know if I had a Venmo Elder Millennial. But I sent it, and then she started posting it, and then other people started posting it and sharing it. And then I was like, oh, this is what's happening. We're spending, like, I'm refunding massive amounts of money. We're spending. You know, I think we spent, like, $25,000 in two weeks because we didn't have slippers, we didn't have shoes, we didn't have underwear or, like, anything. We had to buy plane tickets because we couldn't find housing. We were staying with strangers who opened their door. Right. It was so chaotic that I was like, oh, cash direct to the people is actually super helpful. I was still too proud to do a GoFundMe. If you are surviving a disaster, please make one.

[Alison Par]

If your friends survive, do one for them.

[Julia Colangelo]

Just do one for them all the time. Exactly.

[Alison Par]

Yeah.

[Julia Colangelo]

And know that you will build something. It will just be different. That's. That's my main takeaway. You will build a different community. It will be different, and there will be grief and layers in it, but you'll be able to build something. It will just not. I think I had to remove the rebuilding, and now I'm like, I'm revitalizing my life with these different build in my business, in our community and our friendship groups. It's just like revitalizing it. Because unfortunately, what was lost is lost.

[Alison Par]

Yeah.

[Julia Colangelo]

And I had to have that radical acceptance and that practice within myself. Allison, thank you for inviting me on.

[Alison Par]

Yeah. I feel like we could talk about this for hours. There's so much that I didn't know. I didn't know until I went through it, that could be helpful for other people. But I guess just for anybody surviving a disaster right now or who has survived one, we get it.

[Julia Colangelo]

We get it and reach out. Alison and I get it.

[Alison]

Yeah.

[Julia Colangelo]

Message us. We're open books and the resources that we can share that we wish we would have done differently or instead are available to you. It's not too late.

[Alison Par]

Absolutely.

[Julia Colangelo]

Thanks for having me.

[Alison Par]

Awesome. Thank you so much, Julia. Bye.

[Alison]

Make sure your email is actually HIPAA compliant with pow Box use code abundant to get palbox for less than a hundred dollars your first [e-mail]. 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 a super newbie, 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 episode with a therapist friend. Let's help all our colleagues build what they want.