When the Success You Thought You Wanted Doesn't Feel Like Success
And discovering one's own success
For many, many years I had the aspiration to be a therapist in private practice. The thought first came to me in my early 20s when I was sitting in the waiting room of a therapist I was seeing and I thought You know, this seems like it’d be a cool job. Creating your own office with a soothing and grounding ambiance, setting your own hours (hey I don’t need to work mornings if I really don’t want to!), and sitting with a variety of different people to hear all kinds of stories and learn so much about the human experience and what makes us all tick.
For years I had this idea that the perfect routine would be to do yoga every morning and see clients in the afternoon. The plan sounded incredibly grounding and almost blissful to me. It felt right.
And so, after many years of taking many different avenues, I went to grad school to become a therapist. After 7 years of schooling and clinical work, I got there.
I passed my clinical exam. I started private practice. I had my office setup just the way I wanted it — with colors of various shades of blue with a water theme that felt intimate, deep and calming to me (just what I was going for), with various plants to bring in plenty of nature into the space.
I received the copy of my license in the mail on March 17, 2020.
As we all know, the shutdowns of COVID-19 began in March 2020. On March 16 the shutdown started where I am here in California. Literally on Day 2 of the shutdown was the day that I went to my very quiet office to check my mail and get the hard copy of my license.
At the time, I had already gotten a frame and put it on my office wall — not knowing how this whole pandemic thing would turn out and that the shutdown restrictions and mask requirements would be present for many, many months. Ultimately, the overhead cost of keeping the office didn’t make sense anymore given how the year went for my family, so when the lease came up for renewal I decided to let it go.
Had I known then what I know now, I wish I hadn’t jumped on the office as quickly as I did. And yet, in hindsight, I have compassion and feel a bit of sadness for my 3-years-younger-self who was so excited to turn this long-time dream a reality, but it was spun upside down due to a global pandemic.
I have to be honest — being a therapist in 2020 was hard. We were all in a shutdown, not knowing what was going on, and stressed out due to everything being uprooted so suddenly.
When you’re a therapist, there are inevitably going to be times where you’re going through the same thing as your clients. It’s what we call a “parallel process”. It can feel a bit like the blind leading the blind to some extent, but it can also be some of the best sessions where a lot of growth can happen because of the potential for growth for both parties.
But 2020… that was a total year of the blind leading the blind, because literally everyone felt uprooted and was dealing with relational and communication problems.
But, somehow, I got through it and despite the various setbacks and challenges due to the pandemic, my practice eventually grew quite well. And not only that, but I was feeling really good about my work. Really, really good actually. By the time I became pregnant in late 2021, I was enjoying my work with my clients, I was witnessing their progress, and I was continuing to learn and grown my skills as a therapist.
At that point, I was having far more days where I felt “on” than days where I felt like everything was “clunky” and off. By early 2022, I was starting to get so many referrals I could barely keep up. There were moments where I had to start turning people away because I simply didn’t have the energy for it.
My practice was full… and though on paper it maybe didn’t look “full” to some, it felt very, very full to me. The amount of mental and emotional capacity I needed to do the work and still take care of myself and function outside of work, was maxed out. I had to be a bit particular I who I said “yes” to and who I said “no” to. And at this point, I felt comfortable doing this, as I experienced this “maxed out” feeling a few other times — once in 2019 just before the pandemic hit and in early 2021 when everyone seemed to be reaching out for therapy one year into the pandemic. I had learned from these earlier experiences what my capacity was, how I needed to operate my business so it worked for me and my capacity, and how to set boundaries around my capacity. I felt like this time around I was doing this far more effectively.
So at this point, one would naturally think Everything’s great! Right?! Practice is booming and everything looks good on paper. Clients are making progress. I was feeling really good about the work I was doing. I was setting boundaries as needed and saying “yes” when it felt right and “no” when it didn’t.
But the truth is… is that despite all of these things going well… I had this lingering feeling that I needed something more...something else.
I love doing therapy, and I continue to have my practice to this day. But the truth is that I have felt the need to spend less time in client sessions and more time focusing my energy on other things.
The truth is… I’ve felt like I want to do something else. And not eliminate my practice entirely and move on to something else 100%, but to do something else in addition. Something else that allows me to utilize skills that I have that I cannot express and utilize in the therapy room.
The truth is that just seeing clients isn’t super fulfilling. Working only on the level of helping individuals isn’t super fulfilling anymore. I need something more. Something else. And it’s a bit hard to say that out loud cause the guilt comes in that so many in “helper” roles experience when they say that don’t want to do the “helping work” in the same way anymore.
But the truth is that I haven’t been really feeling the “success” that I long thought I would. When I finally got what I long wanted, my experience wasn’t what I thought it would be. It wasn’t quite as fulfilling as I thought it would be.
At this point, I got some really good tastes of what it would be like for me to run a full-time private practice. And the truth is… that alone isn’t enough for me.
Now, what that something else is exactly, I have grappled with for a very long time.
I’ve been writing for years. In fact, I started out college with my Bachelor’s in Journalism before I changed my major about 3 times. I’ve always loved writing, but from a fairly young age I had ideas instilled in me of what my writing needs to be like in order to be deemed “valuable”.
Your writing is only going to be worth something if you write for someone else.
Your writing is only going to be worth something if one or a few people in positions of authority decide that it is “good”.
Your writing is only going to be valuable if you write within these very specific perimeters that someone else has laid out for you.
There’s no money in writing about what you want to write about and in a way that you want to write it. Which became internalized as… What you want to most write about isn’t valuable or worth anything.
The only way your writing will be valuable is if you do it to sell something else, like a service or product. Which became internalized as… Your writing isn’t valuable.
And so on.
What these ideas instilled in me was fear. Fear that if I did what I really wanted to do by writing what I enjoy, that I will fail. Fear that I won’t be successful. Fear that I will, essentially, be rejected.
Those can be some hard realities to face, so I’ve danced around this for years… never really giving myself permission to really fully do what I felt compelled to do. Just to try it out. Just to build the muscle. Just to experiment. To try it on, mess it up, create new things, tear it down… just to see if I will potentially feel successful in doing what I want rather than continue to rely on this idea of finding success based on other people’s preconceived beliefs.
Which leads me to this moment. Where, just this week, I’ve started working on changing up my Instagram persona to something that feels more in alignment with where I am right now and where I’d like to be.
One big change is moving away from identifying so heavily on being a therapist and instead calling myself a writer.
Though being a therapist is something that I’ve been trained to do and it has definitely shaped my worldview, it is not the entirety who I am. It is one of many things that I’ve studied. It is something that I’ve been trained to do. It’s one of the jobs I’ve done for income.
Beyond that, I’m a human being.
At this point in my life, I just want the freedom to just be a human being who is free to think, share and express what is true for me without fear.
At this point in my life, I want the freedom to just be me rather than feel the need to constantly commodify myself.
At this point in my life, I just want to allow my own creative expression to flow without pressure to reach certain goals or perform a certain way.
At this point in my life, I just want to live in the way that feels most true for me.
Things I’ve found nourishing this week:
Naps… definitely naps
Moving slowly
My weighted blanket
Tacos
Tumeric Ginger Lattes
Morning walks
The fresh morning air
Witnessing the clouds clear in the morning as the sun rises
Taking many breaks to write
Baby hugs
Spring flowers