(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to Ask Allison. Y'all ask the questions about having a fun and thriving practice and I answer them. We have a worksheet for you today so you can bring this answer into your life. You can access that at abundancepracticebuilding.com slash links, where you'll also be able to ask any questions you have for Ask Allison. If you want more support, we've got some free trainings in there too.
If you can't get enough Ask Allison, check out our YouTube channel for our entire Ask Allison library. Welcome back to Ask Allison. Here's today's question. My business, not clinical boundaries have gotten a little lax. I'm not on top of things like I used to be. I'm doing too much and I'm overwhelmed most of the time. How do I get back on track? So before I answer this awesome question, I want to thank Therapy Notes for sponsoring Ask Allison. I've talked about them for years.
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Okay, so for those of you who've worked in toxic agencies, do you remember the Sunday scaries? It's that sinking feeling that you get as the weekend winds down. You may be lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, mentally preparing for the work week ahead of you. Maybe you've even skipped brunch or avoided hanging out with friends on Sundays just to mentally brace yourself for the upcoming days. It's a familiar anxiety and you're kind of wondering how you're going to make it through another week.
You might even have found yourself clocking out on Friday only to spend the whole weekend dreading Monday. It's that dread, the emotional and the mental burden that led me to private practice. The idea of leaving a toxic workplace behind, of having more control over my schedule, being able to do the kinds of work that really matters to me. But private practice, while it offers autonomy, can also quickly become just as stressful and just as overwhelming if you are not careful.
So you might have left an agency job in search of freedom and fulfillment, but without some careful planning, you can really find yourself recreating the same toxic work environment that you tried to escape from.
That's why it's really important to take a step back and to make sure that you are intentionally building a practice that works for you, because otherwise you risk finding yourself burned out, you're stretched too thin, you're feeling like stuck in this cycle, overworked and underappreciation. So I want to dive into the signs that you have unintentionally built yourself another agency job in private practice, and more importantly, how to course correct.
So sign number one, you feel like you can't say no. You might have seen it before, maybe in a colleague or even in yourself, this constant inability to say no. It really starts pretty innocently, like maybe you're taking on one extra client or agreeing to stay late to finish paperwork, but then it ends up snowballing and you're saying yes to more clients, even though your schedule is already full.
You're taking on clients that aren't a great fit for you, clients that don't feel aligned, or you don't do your best to work with. Maybe you're saying yes to everything else, the constant stream of insurance requirements, your landlord's demands, or colleagues requests for consultation and help. Then before you know it, you've built a practice where your boundaries are non-existent and your schedule is completely out of control.
Your lunch breaks become non-existent as you're like hunched over your computer trying to showcase notes, answer emails, deal with billing while you're eating a rushed snack. You might be sitting at your desk at 7pm wondering how you ended up back in the same place you were when you were working at that toxic agency, only it's a different boss, it's you, and you suck as bad as your last boss did at being a boss. So let's talk about what to do about it.
The very first step is to pause, take a breath, give yourself permission to take a break from saying yes to everything. I suggest setting aside 30 minutes to really reflect on what your practice does for you, not just what you do for your clients. It's really easy to get caught up in people pleasing, maybe some codependency, especially when you're a therapist.
We are trained to care for others, to show up for them, and to help, but if your practice is only serving your clients and not you, you are going to dayburn out. So get clear on your priorities. What do you want your practice to give you? So for example, I've found that I want my practice to offer meaningful connection with clients, moments of really great personal fulfillment, opportunities to laugh, to feel appreciated.
If I take on clients that aren't the right fit for me or they push me past my limits, I'll not experience the kind of joy or satisfaction that is important to me in my business. I also want to feel seen and valued for my expertise. If I'm not maintaining my boundaries, I end up resenting work and it takes away from the very reasons that I got into this to begin with. So take a hard look at your schedule, like right now, like hit pause and look at it.
Go to your calendar and carve out some time for yourself, whether it's for admin work, for rest, even just to get outside, you deserve it. And once you've made that space, the next time a potential client reaches out, if they don't fit into the slots that you've set aside, don't hesitate to refer them to a colleague. It is really, really okay and important to say no. Sign number two, you have a lot of tasks that you dread.
When you first started your private practice, it was all about freedom, right? You were going to be in charge of your schedule. You're going to work with the clients you loved. You're going to finally have control over your day. But then the reality of being a solopreneur sets in, you realize that running a business isn't just about seeing clients. It's about handling your case notes, dealing with insurance companies.
If you take insurance, managing your social media presence, following up on unpaid claims, dealing with phone calls, responding to emails, all these tasky things. And these have nothing to do with the passion for therapy. And as those build up, they can take over your time and your energy. So some days it can feel like you're running a full-on administrative office rather than a private practice. The thought of doing more stuff in that realm might make you throw your computer out the window.
So you can feel drained by these tasks that feel completely disconnected from your actual work with clients. And I want you to know what to do about it. Some of those tasks are always going to be there. As a private practice owner, you are responsible for every aspect of the business. It's essential to recognize that you don't have to do everything yourself. So the key here is to find ways to automate, delegate, and to eliminate the things that you hate or you don't have time for.
Let's start with automation. Tools like online scheduling can eliminate the back and forth coordination of appointment times. Practice management systems automate billing pretty well, or at least make them so easy. It's just a few clicks. And that's whether you take insurance or you don't.
Practice management systems can also send reminders to clients about their payments, which can save you a lot of time spent on trying to track down money if you're not charging every single session, which you should be, and making sure that people know when their appointments are. So I'm going to recommend therapy notes, which I've already mentioned, but therapy notes does a lot of the things that you need, probably everything you need done in your practice.
You can also outsource, hiring a virtual assistant to handle some of the less critical but time-consuming kinds of tasks. That could be answering phones. It could be responding to emails. It could be handling some of your marketing, managing your calendar. You might not enjoy some of those tasks, but feel like for some reason you're supposed to be doing it. But there are people out there who love that stuff. You can hire somebody to do it for you. And that can be a great opportunity for you.
Let's look at number three, you're burned out. If you are feeling like you're on the edge of burnout, you are not alone. Private practice was kind of supposed to be your solution to burnout, probably not the cause of it. But when we don't build our practice with intention, it can really turn into that never -ending stress cycle with exhaustion and overwhelm in the mix.
So at first it might seem like you're thriving, you're seeing clients, you're making money, you're feeling that freedom that you longed for. But as the months go by, and I see this with our full folks a fair amount. In fact, we have a whole program just for people who are full and in this circumstance. As the months go by, you notice like your energy levels are dropping, you're emotionally drained after every session, you're rushing from one client to the next without taking adequate breaks.
You're working evenings and skipping lunch, and you're just neglecting the things that you need to do for your own self-care basically, all in the name of staying on top of things and getting ahead. So then you're burned out. And while you're making much more money than you made in agency life, you're probably not significantly happier. So my goal is for you to be happy. The first step is to stop, like just pause.
It's easy to get caught up in the momentum of running your practice, but you've got to step back and you've got to assess what's going on. And if you're burned out, it's a sign that you've been pushing yourself too hard for too long without taking proper breaks. So this person's talking about their boundaries. I want you to look at what you actually want for your practice. This is so important. I want you to just take a little bit of time to think about that.
The free worksheet today is going to be a business burnout check-in that is going to help you with this, but I want you to think about, are you working the days and the hours that you want to work? Are you charging the fee that you want and need to charge? Sometimes what we want and what we need is different. Often therapists need to charge a higher fee than they're actually charging because there are lots of expenses in this life, and you need to save for retirement.
So look at these boundaries, look at how you're ending sessions, making sure that you're doing that on time so that you can run to the bathroom, eat a snack, finish your note, press the button to charge, whatever you need to do in between sessions. But if you're not doing those things, you're not going to be able to get yourself out of burnout if you're in this cycle. Get some support, go to therapy about it. There are a lot of therapists in therapy right now about burnout. Take a real vacation.
I mean, maybe leave your phone on airplane mode the whole time. Stay away from anything work-related. Really take some time, and this doesn't have to be something expensive if you can't just jet away to Europe for the summer, but take some time in a cabin nearby. Take a staycation, but have real true set time off so that you can think and get out of the cycle you're in. I want you to say no to everything.
Everybody who wants you to do an extra thing, I want you to just say, oh, I'm not able to do that right now. It's fine. It's loving. It's kind. No is fine. Reconnect with your why. There's a reason that we all became therapists. A lot of those reasons are deeply personal for us, and getting reconnected with that can really help during these harder times. So if any of these sound familiar, please don't feel bad. It's so common in private practice.
Like I said, we have a whole program just for therapists who have kind of built the wrong practice. They need to make some big changes. If you want or need support through that program, send me a message that says limitless, and we'll talk through whether or not it makes sense to book a Zoom call to then go further into whether it's a good fit. We only let folks in that program that we are 100% sure we can help reach their goals.
Like I said, this week's free worksheet is business burnout check-in. If you DM me the word sheets, I will send it right to you. And you also have access to all the other free worksheets that we have when you do that. All right. I hope that you say no and take good care of yourself. And I will talk to you later. If you're ready for a much easier practice, TherapyNotes is the way to go. Go to therapynotes.com and use the promo code abundant for two months free. I hope that helped.
If you have questions for Ask Allison, or you want to get your hands on the worksheet for this episode, go to abundancepracticebuilding.com slash links.