As an Introvert and Highly Sensitive Person, I understand the struggles of balancing self-care while supporting others. I want to help you reduce overwhelm and honor your Strengths as a Sensitive Therapist so you can feel fulfilled in your work again.
All tagged self-acceptance
There’s a correlation between caseload capacity and career length for HSTs. The longer they’ve been a therapist, the fewer clients you can see each day. If you’re highly sensitive and/or an empath, the weight of doing therapy could take an emotional and nervous system toll from vicarious trauma and the mere stress of supporting others.
Instead of looking outward at what every other therapist else is doing, build your practice on your own terms and at your own pace. Only you can define what a “full” practice is and what selection of services you want to offer.
Being a deeply feeling, empathetic therapist certainly has its struggles, but let’s not forget the bright spots that make this work special. When you can allow yourself permission to work in alignment with your needs, you get to bypass burnout and experience the best parts of being an HST while creating meaningful change for your clients.
Don’t measure time off by what everyone else is doing, instead take the time you need to maintain a sustainable practice and work-life balance. You can build your therapy practice around your bandwidth.
When you create a practice or therapeutic style that honors your needs, the work can feel more sustainable. When you feel supported, you can more easily support your clients. Making changes may make your services unavailable to some folks and that’s okay! You can’t help everyone, especially if your needs are ignored, but you can help some people in deeply profound ways.
What if stepping away to recharge and reconnect with yourself was part of the framework of being a therapist? Here I share my own experience of taking a sabbatical and what I discovered along the way.
After graduation, you’re searching for a counseling field placement that doesn’t leave you feeling burned out before you even get licensed and fully start your therapist career. All the usual places (agencies, hospitals, schools) come with demanding caseloads and productivity standards. Thinking outside the box on the path to complete your hours will be the key to sustainable work as a therapist now and in the future.
As a Sensitive Therapist, it’s important to think outside the box when setting up your practice. Don’t worry about what you should do or what everyone else is doing, but what would feel supportive and sustainable to you. This could include more phone sessions, fewer phone calls, scheduling boundaries, and dedicated self-care days.
Sensitive Therapists need time to process the impact of doing this work and to nurture yourself on client days. Just focusing on the administrative side of being a therapist and only getting self-care time on the weekends is not sustainable for someone who feels deeply and has a high level of empathy. Carve out moments to release, digest, and recharge as often as you can.
Sensitive Therapists seem more likely to get filled with self-doubt. You question whether or not you’re seeing enough clients, if you should trust your intuition to narrow your clinical focus, and whether or not you can follow your own path to licensure and beyond. You’ll also wonder how you’ll ever get enough self-care to feel okay with this heavy emotional work!
When you’re rushed between seeing clients and getting home, your nervous system can get easily overstimulated, creating feelings such as anxiety or irritability. This article includes four ways you can approach the transition from therapist self to personal life more intentionally.
Winter can bring specific challenges for the Sensitive Therapist such as overwhelm from holiday obligations, financial anxiety and irritability from changes in routine. It’s difficult to manage the expectations to support our clients, run our businesses and maintain family commitments, all at the same time.
