Burn Your Therapy License With Annie Schuessler

It's just you and me again today. I've already talked to some of you about this episode. You've probably already seen the title. Burn your therapy license. Let me explain. Before you decide I've taken this all WAY too far. I'm talking about symbolically burning your therapy license. As an exercise. It may seem extreme, but over these years of helping therapists expand beyond private practice, I've discovered that THIS is sometimes your biggest obstacle. If you're not a licensed therapist, you may wonder what the hell I'm talking about. You're about to dip into the internal world of the licensed therapist. (Or you may decide to skip this one because it's luckily one obstacle you don't have. ) In fact, now that I've got a good number of non-therapists in my groups, I find that they really help us therapists see how we're holding ourselves back. When I talk to therapists about their most liberated and exciting vision for their businesses, what they want to accomplish and how they want to work, they talk about: Wanting to work in ways that involve less 1:1 sessions. Some folks feel limited by the constraints of private practice, and want to expand in a new direction. Feeling burned out or out of balance and on their WAY to burnout. Feeling frustrated that they've hit or are approaching an income ceiling with therapy sessions. Loving their private practices, but not wanting to grow beyond 10 or 15 sessions per week while wanting to do something in addition to private practice. With this constellation of issues, you start exploring the possibility of making money in new ways. You start to dream into the idea of creating innovative programs and collaborating with different kinds of healers. You may even want to help lead movements (and if you're like...that's not me...it really might be. You just might not know it yet.) Then within a few minutes, you start worrying about your therapy license. Perhaps you say: "What if I do something to mess up my therapy license? I could lose it." "What will my colleagues think?" "If I call myself a coach, will people think I'm cheesy?" Those concerns are enough to stop some of you before you even get to dream into a new vision. The possibility is shut off within 5 minutes. Here's my prescription: BURN YOUR THERAPY LICENSE. A reminder: My suggestion that you burn your therapy license is a symbolic one. If you've got a therapy license, you may want to keep it! You may not. Either choice is fine. Your therapy license is one important tool. Symbolically, take a moment to burn it or otherwise let it go, just in your imagination, and just for a moment, so that you can fully explore the next possibility. Now you're likely to freak out. Here's how I want you to handle your fears about losing or harming your license: Write them down. Write down every single concern or fear you've got. It's like a voice that will probably get louder if you ignore it. By writing it down, you're telling that voice that you're listening and that you will address those concerns. Once you've calmed those fears and concerns by giving them a place, get back to burning your therapy license. Ask yourself this: In what ways is your fear of losing your license holding you back from serving in the ways you are meant to serve? Inside that question is an even bigger and more important question: How ARE you meant to serve now? Now allow yourself to explore. I'll share a bit about my own journey with burning my therapy license. I closed my therapy practice this past spring of 2020. It was a bittersweet transition. It was the right time for me to simplify and double down on Rebel Therapist. Letting my private practice go also freed up space to co-create a second podcast. This new podcast is not for business. It's a personal project that's really important to me. With my cohost Katelyn Dixon, I released season one of Listening to Adoptees this past fall. We feature adult adoptees and foster alum talking about their experiences. I'm an adoptive parent, and Katelyn is an adult adoptee. We bring both of our points of view to these interviews. If you're part of an adoption or foster constellation or you're a professional who works with folks in adoption or foster care, please check it out. I LOVED my therapy clients, but closing my practice was the right next step for me. Probably the hardest obstacle to ending my therapy practice was sunk cost fallacy. Sunk cost fallacy is the idea that if you've invested time, money or energy into something, then it is inherently valuable and you've got to hold onto it to prevent losing that investment. Without sunk cost fallacy, when you're thinking clearly and in a future focused way, you're considering what makes sense from here to get what you want. To get around sunk cost fallacy you can ask yourself, "What would I do to get this thing NOW if I didn't already have it?" If you wouldn't do anything to attain it now, it may not be valuable to you. If you think I'm telling you that the ultimate path is to let go of your private practice, please know that is absolutely not true. Most of the therapists I work with choose to keep their therapy licenses at least for a long time or indefinitely. Some don't. Either choice is great if it's for the right reasons. Here are a few examples of folks who are building businesses beyond private practice: I love sharing examples because they give you a sense of what's possible when you let yourself think about what you actually want. Ayrielle Williams created Heal So You Can Live, a course to help heal after an abusive relationship. Bart Hatler created a program for singles who want to unblock barriers to finding romantic love. Debbie Schwartz created Comfort For Caregivers, a program for overwhelmed caregivers to take care of themselves while protecting the health of another. Carissa Karner created the joyful business course, a program for entrepreneurs who want to create and grow joyful businesses. Rachel Fusco created The geek guild, a program for high school juniors to walk through the college application process with sanity. Maureen Cotton (an interspiritual minister, not a therapist) created a program to help couples plan unique and powerful ceremonies. I got to work with these smart and innovative people in Create Your Program. Learn more and join me next time here: https://rebeltherapist.me/create. The first time I shared the concept of burning your therapy license was with my email list. I got more responses than I've ever gotten to an email. You told me about what your fear of losing your license might be holding you back from. Here are some themes that came up over and over: I want to serve people outside of the state where I'm licensed. I want to use effective interventions that don't fall strictly within my therapy license. I want to be more authentic and I worry about disclosing anything in my marketing that could damage my reputation or my license. I want to serve people in a decolonized way and that vision for me falls outside of my therapy license. I want to work in a way that aligns with my values, which my therapy license in some ways doesn't. I'm ready to give up my license so I can work in all the ways I'm meant to. I'm excited about an idea for a program that doesn't fall within my therapy license. My practice is full and I want to do more without adding to it. I'm feeling boxed in, and the idea of symbolically burning my license is giving me the freedom to think differently. I have already symbolically burned my license even though I am maintaining it as a useful tool. There's no one right answer to what you'll do once you've given yourself the freedom to dream about your possibilities. What about you? When you allow yourself to symbolically burn your therapy license, what possibilities arise for you? How are you meant to serve next? I'd love to know. Email me at [email protected] Write your message or record a voice memo for me. I'd love to share your thoughts in your voice. Show notes at http://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/141