Self-Care & Development
This section emphasizes the importance of self-care and continuous professional development for psychotherapists. Discover resources and strategies to maintain personal well-being and foster growth throughout your career in psychotherapy.
132 articles found
The Dangers of “As Quiet As It’s Kept”
“As quiet as it’s kept” is a phrase packed with resiliency, pain, and generational trauma. I first heard this phrase when I was about 5 years old. The phrase lacked a visible impact on my life until my late teens. In my family and other families in the South, I heard this phrase used to […]
Brianca Smith, M.A.
November 12, 2019
Making the Leap From Group to Private Practice
It is so quiet in here this morning that I can hear the soft ticking of the clock in my bookcase. Some days it still feels odd not hearing colleagues in the hall, the click of keyboards in the billing office, or cheery receptionists answering calls out front. A steaming mug of coffee is at […]
Bethany Detwiler, Ph.D.
November 12, 2019
Self-care Together
In the hectic pace of being an early career psychologist (ECP) and junior faculty member, it is often more possible to extol the virtues of self-care rather than to authentically engage in it. In many cases, this challenge may partially stem from limited education and insufficient opportunity to develop effective self-care habits during doctoral training. […]
Dhara T. Meghani, Ph.D
October 30, 2019
Self-care for Psychotherapists of Color
Like other helping professions (e.g., physical health service providers), psychotherapists are expected to serve clients without expecting anything in return (Guy, 2000). Although the helping within psychotherapy is unidirectional, therapy involves a bidirectional flow in which the client and the therapist impact each other (Kottler, 2010). The role of a psychotherapist departs from other helping […]
Manijeh Badiee, Ph.D.
October 30, 2019
The Game of Strife
Psychology graduate students face many challenges, balancing academic demands, field placement requirements, often financial limitations, and the responsibilities of personal life. These competing obligations can often lead to burnout, defined by the Mayo Clinic as “a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity” […]
Salwa Chowdhury, Psy.D. + 1 more
September 5, 2019
Stifled
The creation of art is known to offer a variety of benefits for physical and mental well-being, but in our rush to categorize production of art as “self-care,” we may be overlooking the most essential piece. This article explores the idea that dismissing the work of passion as one more task to check off a […]
Meli Sarkissian, BA
September 2, 2019
Retirement Myths, Continued
In my last article I listed four retirement myths: It is easy to retire from an active professional life to a less active lifestyle; Retired people do not want to work; Retired people do not want to be paid; and Retired people have unlimited free time (Barrett, 2018). In that article I admitted to having […]
Thomas Barrett, Ph.D.
September 2, 2019
Asking for Help in Building My Private Practice
Let’s Start by Keeping It a Hundred I know it. You know it. Everybody who is a therapist knows it—we barely if at all get any training in how to build, run, and grow a private practice. For most of us we definitely did not have any courses in graduate school. Maybe when we were […]
Daniel Jose Gaztambide, Psy.D.
September 2, 2019
How to Set Up Your Private Pay Fees and No Show Policies with John Clarke
The Business of Private Practice The Professional Practice Committee of Division 29 recently had the opportunity to ask entrepreneur and psychotherapist John Clarke about his thoughts on setting your out-of-network fees and “no show” policies in private practice. In this video, he shares his perspective on how to balance the humanistic and business side of building a private […]
John Clarke, MA, EdS, NCC, LPCC, LPC + 1 more
August 30, 2019
Debunking Retirement Myths
In my last article I listed four retirement myths: It is easy to retire from an active professional life to a less active lifestyle; Retired people do not want to work; Retired people do not want to be paid; Retired people have unlimited free time In that article I admitted to having retired three times. […]
Thomas Barrett, Ph.D.
July 21, 2019
If You Give a Supervisor a Trainee
Supervision will be introduced to students in many graduate cohorts as an aspect of their training they will both enjoy and endure. Framing it this way inherently leads students to start to question what they want in a supervisor. Some will think of the worst and ponder what it would be like to have a […]
Hannah R. Saltzman, M.S. + 2 more
April 15, 2019
The Advocate
Advocacy and clinical psychology are inseparable. All good psychologists advocate for their clients’ overall well-being, effective treatment, and access to needed resources. Given that larger societal issues impact the mental health of the individual, it is important that this advocacy role generalizes beyond our therapy offices. Clients enter therapy shouldering an enormous load of struggles […]
Nimi Oduleye, M.A. + 3 more
April 15, 2019