Developmentally appropriate, for once
A lot of my therapist friends can recite Erikson's eight developmental stages from memory. Trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame, all the way out to integrity versus despair. We built entire clinical frameworks on the premise that development isn't linear and we agree that a person is moving through a stage is as normal as can be.
It just hasn't been as obvious how developmental stages show up in our work lives.
There's a whole developmental arc to clinical life that nobody names so practitioners live through it, mostly assuming they're behind schedule. Stages I hear about often sound like:
A stage where you take every referral, because saying no brings up all the scarcity.
A stage where your calendar becomes something closer to a game of tetris and moving stuff around is so anxiety provoking. You might wonder how a waiting list would work for you or how you hire another clincian to help.
A stage where you wonder why you can't do seven appointments a day anymore and don't know what you'll do instead.
A stage where you stop performing a certainty you don't feel, and start telling people the truth instead: I don't know yet. Let's find out together.
A stage where "fully booked" stops sounding like an achievement and starts sounding like a cage you didn't really choose.
A stage when the field stops feeling like a safe place to be yourself.
A stage when you notice how much most of your clients just need to know they aren't alone. And since you can't match make, you might want to start a group.
I want you to embrace wherever you are in this without apology. It's easy to treat these choice points, these crossroads, as evidence that something's wrong with you, when really they're often just reminders of how you're evolving.
Almost nothing in the business advice practitioners get treats it that way, though. Most of it offers one fixed endpoint, full caseload, premium rates, some steady-state of thriving, and measures everyone against it regardless of where they actually are in the arc. A therapist eighteen months in gets the same advice, delivered with the same urgency, as one fifteen years in, as if there's a single correct developmental stage and everyone not currently in it is simply behind.
It's not only the advice. The clinical field itself doesn't have many built-in spaces for career advancement. You might end up supervising or mentoring, but usually because you sought it out on your own, not because there's an established path for how a clinician's work is supposed to shift developmentally over the course of a career. Installing those mechanisms for growth is often up to us.
Come meet others quietly navigating these stages at my workshop The Model You Inherited. We will hang out for 75 minutes, on Monday July 27 at 4:30pm PT. (Recording will be sent after.) You'll leave with a some concrete thoughts and possibilities, not just a feeling. It's $37, and if EMBER is your next move this fall, that $37 comes off tuition when you enroll in August.
Wherever you are in this, nothing is predestined. It's just the stage.
With care,
Hilary
