Why You Didn't Become a Therapist for Money Is Toxic AF

Ready to stop feeling guilty about wanting financial success as a therapist? In this episode, I'm getting real about the toxic money messages keeping us broke and burned out—and how to rewrite them. 

We talk about: 

💸 Why "you didn't become a therapist to make money" is toxic AF (and hurting the profession) 

💸 How I shifted from broke helper to profitable healer without losing my integrity 💸 The guilt that creeps in when you want more—multiple income streams, fair rates, creative freedom 

💸 Building a sustainable therapy practice that pays your bills AND feeds your soul 

This is for therapists, coaches, and healers who are ready to stop choosing between service and financial stability. We're talking money mindset shifts, pricing psychology, and creating a practice that supports your life—not drains it. If you've ever wrestled with the 'noble poverty' myth in helping professions—this permission slip is for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to All Our Parts. Welcome to All Our Parts. If you're new here, I'm your host, Jasmine. I will be releasing two episodes a week now. Tuesdays will be solo episodes and then Fridays will be my usual guest episodes. Today, I'm going to be talking shop. So grab a journal, grab a pen. We're going to be talking about money wounds, nervous system, and building a sustainable business from a grounded place. I have a lot of folks here who are entrepreneurs especially therapist entrepreneurs wellness entrepreneurs as well as reflecting on my own journey and where I am now the messaging around money in this field is a bit insane show of hands if you went to grad school and they said you won't be making a ton of money so don't expect it Or if they said you shouldn't be in it for the money, raise your hand. I raised my hand and I'm sure most of you also raised your hand. That's like insane messaging because doctors don't even go to med school and get the message. You shouldn't be a doctor for the money. Like most doctors go to med school to make money and help people at the same time. And yet there is this altruistic self-sacrificial messaging that therapists get in grad school and so many of us went through internship completely unpaid balancing a part-time job maybe a full-time job and then being expected to work under supervision for less than ideal pay and I really hope and what I do see is a lot of therapists changing that narrative. Did I become a therapist to make money? Not necessarily. But do I need to abandon financial stability to be a therapist? No. And I also don't need to work in conditions that are not aligned with my values in order to just make ends meet I've worked in residential twice I've worked in quasi government I've worked in a couple of different settings yes I prefer private practice and that comes with its own kind of lead work and you don't get the benefits that you would get in a typical like agency setting but it's very hard for me to work in conditions that do not align or support with the clinical care that I want to give but that's not the point today we're not talking about clinical care we're talking about therapists getting paid their worth therapists charging their worth and feeling okay with making money and that isn't necessarily a grad school messaging piece that is also a nervous system thing like being able to receive money being able to stand firm on our prices if you are a therapist exploring private pay transitioning from insurance you get to do that and you also get to find ways to be accessible I have been fortunate enough where I have not needed to explore the insurance route and frankly I have no desire I have no desire of bartering with big pharma on people's care. And that's just plain and simple. I would rather find ways to make the clinical work that I do accessible. Key word there is clinical work. And this has come with exploring different ventures within the clinical space, being an entrepreneur and looking at where I can leverage my skills and offer different services, the only space that morally feels good for me to be accessible is in clinical one-to-one work. And people that want to work with you will pay your rate. people that want to work with you will pay your rate I'm going to say it a third time and I want you to let it sit with your nervous system people that want to work with you will pay your rate I want us to get out of the space where we are looking at our work as this sacrificial gift to society and You have paid your dues already. You have grad school student loans potentially that are looking at you and saying, hey, this is not volunteer work. And that's okay. You are allowed to set financial goals for yourself. You're allowed to explore other avenues that make it feasible to make a living to plan for retirement even without putting yourself in a position where you have to rely on one-to-one direct clinical care to achieve that because we also work in a field where our job is to work people out of one-to-one services people move people terminate their own care people graduate therapy they need to reduce their cadence in therapy like all of those things happen and so relying on that to be a sustainable income is one-stop shop to burnout I believe that we can make therapeutic services clinical services accessible but we have to put our own oxygen masks on first and Like we cannot support society if we are not taking care of our own needs. And I'm thinking of this from like a Maslow's hierarchy, basic bottom level needs. When we think about food, shelter, clothing, safety, reliable transportation. If you don't live in a city that has reliable public transportation, being able to pay your bills, being able to breathe and have some savings set aside for emergencies if we do not take into account those things first we are never going to be able to fully give in the clinical therapy one-to-one space because we're going to grow resentful of the work we're going to start placing a our money needs and scarcity on our clients, which is going to create a contentious relationship with the work. I want to sustain myself in this field for as long as I can. I would like to be a therapist for as long as I can. And in order for me to do that, part of that is creating not only the clinical relationship, but my own business relationship to the work. I have been in a huge transition with myself, like being forced to essentially transition fully into private practice earlier this year. and a lot of my external practices outside of therapy are growing and evolving and I've had to do some real self-reflection I've had to do some real reflection on what this means for me what this means for my future and I have really struggled with the it's not imposter syndrome but tying my worth to the productivity and how much I'm doing in this space I would sob in supervision like oh my gosh I used to be able to maintain like 18 people on my caseload and now 10 feels good to me and that and in this field that feels like a failure because we are conditioned to believe that we need to see 25 to 30 clients to make a living and if clinical work is your primary source of income that is typically true but I get to want more than that and my worth gets to be tied to something more than my work or what I'm producing I get to want to offer quality care to people and that's not determined by the number on my caseload and those two things weren't always true for me at the same time I think same with money I used to remove myself so far from the financial process of being a therapist and a business owner and that just wasn't wasn't sustainable and it wasn't building a healthy relationship with money it was just creating this avoidance and again we go to grad school and we hear you're not going to make a lot of money you shouldn't be in it for the money which isn't sustainable which doesn't create a healthy relationship to not only money but to also the work and I don't think that's fair I really want us to stop that narrative that we are not here to make a living I think there's a better way to phrase that I also think that we should be supporting students in creating multiple streams of income or being honest about why a lot of our professors have multiple streams of income I don't know a single one of my professors who strictly does clinical work just be honest like it's not sustainable to do one-to-one work and we can build a healthy nuanced relationship to being a therapist if we're honest about the investment the emotional investment that comes with being a therapist and how we can preserve ourselves in the long run we see so many people who burn the midnight oil who see 25 30 clients and then in the next five or six years they are looking at transition out of clinical work because it has burned them out I do not want that to be me I don't want to be fully licensed and be like shit I'm tired I'm done this was fun I'm gonna go do something else I would like to explore what this field has to offer and I would want to be able to do it from an energized interested engaged place not fucking resenting the work all together and in order to do that we have to make sure we're building healthy relationships with the work we cannot tie our worth to how many people we're seeing in a day we can't tie our worth to being the most accessible laying our lives down i don't even have the words for it we cannot pride ourselves on being the most accessible cost-free therapists in the room and i get it i get it the world is on fire and people deserve care and people get frustrated that their therapists charge what they charge who don't accept insurance but we need to turn that anger to the people that have created this system don't turn it to the therapist who is trying to live in the same system that you are turn it to the insurance companies that don't get people their reimbursements on time who don't pay their full reimbursement fee turn it to big pharma who is going to venture capitalists and tech companies to outsource mental health care so that they don't have to pay therapists their living wage turn the anger over to your elected officials who continue to cut public mental health care who continue to cut funding to these places where you are seeing higher turnover where you're seeing higher staff burnout where they're seeing 30 40 plus clients a week and are getting paid to see maybe a fraction of that turn your anger to the people who believe that mental health care isn't as important as it is therapists are trying to survive in the same system that you all are in and I understand that we can be scapegoats in that sense where because we are a person we are a name that you can put to the system you project that out onto us and I get it I have also been in a position where I could not afford my therapist and rather than getting mad at my therapist I sit down and recognize that we are in a system that does not want people to heal that does not want people to move forward or do better so the least that I can do with this platform with this space is encourage therapists to create sustainable business systems to use your voice to use your degree like you didn't get a degree to be a therapist yes that is the larger goal but you have a fucking master's degree own it use it use those skills that you learned in grad school you get to want more out of your life and you get to allow yourself to build a sustainable financial future you get to set financial goals for yourself I think that's all I have for you all today let me know what you think of this episode I would love to hear your thoughts my plan is to start using my long form platform for more nuanced honest conversations things that I think about and short form just isn't the space for that short form is definitely not the space to get all of And I'm rather than forcing it, I'm just going to save it for long form. So let me know what you think. I'm going to make another episode specifically about nervous system work around receiving money, receiving opportunity, because I think that's a really important aspect. I think what I covered mostly in this episode is how we can just start to be aware of the messaging around money. as mental health practitioners and how we are deserving of wanting more for ourselves and setting ourselves up for a more stable future thank you so much for tuning in as always I appreciate your comments I appreciate every rating it allows the show to grow it allows the show to reach a broader audience and I'll see you on Friday.