Curt and Katie talk about money. We look at the financial needs of therapists, the perspective of clients and the public that we charge too much OR that we should not want money; the common martyrdom expectation that can negatively impact therapists and the profession.
It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.
In this episode we talk about:
Controversy about therapists wanting money
What is expected of therapists - martyrdom and a vow of poverty?
Financial stability and needs of therapists
The consumer perspective – am I just a paycheck? Or do you really want to help me?
The importance of your WHY
The perspective of the profession based on how much money is charged by most professionals
Providing a social/relational service for money - Are we “emotional prostitutes?”
The difficulty in assigning monetary value on what we do
The goodness of our hearts and the sympathetic plea of our clients
The difficulty in demonstrating and describing the value of therapy
The challenge of fee setting in private practice
The dynamics of insurance or social service programs impacting the clinical relationship
The common questions – Am I just a paycheck? Am I important enough to help?
The danger of therapy becoming transactional, especially when you’re burned out and under compensated
Therapist perspective on making money, especially given the lower paid and unpaid work at the beginning of the career
How the profession’s current set up impacts therapists’ ability to make money
Comparison to other similar professions (like doctors) – both in their training and career trajectory, looking at why they end up making more
The sliding scale problem - Are we rescuing our clients?
The shame of having financial needs
Self-worth being conflated with fee-setting
Exercise of thinking/feeling into your fee vs practical fee setting based on financial needs
The need for therapists to figure this out, so they can become more comfortable with making sufficient money to sustain their careers!
