Private Practice Success Newsletter

November 2006, by Lynn Grodzki, LCSW, MCC (Master Certified Coach)
www.privatepracticesuccess.com

Fear Itself

This whole year I have been discussing various practice-building strategies to help you overcome the disturbing trend, cited in the Psychotherapy Finances survey of 2006, reporting declining income for those of us in private practice.

Not surprisingly, I am hearing a lot of worry right now. Even senior therapists who have been in practice a long time are telling me that they are quite concerned about their long-term future.

If you are anxious about the state of your practice, you are certainly not alone. But just knowing that you are one of the crowd doesn’t really help to resolve concerns.

This month, let’s get down to basics and address something we all know a lot about – feelings. Just as in life, in business you need to cope with the inevitable fears and anxiety that owning a private practice elicits. With too much fear in the way, any proactive strategy will seem overwhelming to execute. So let’s look at calming feelings of fear.

I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. -- Bob Dylan

Being in business takes courage. It is not for the faint-hearted. Business will allow you to mature psychologically and move forward, or it can emotionally bankrupt you.

If you can accept and resolve the ways in which your fear, disappointment, or anxiety play out as you go about the process of building your practice, you can use this heightened capacity to become a better entrepreneur, and a stronger person.

Your relationship with your business mimics other relationships. Sondra Ray, personal growth guru from the ‘70s and author of a book called Loving Relationships, noted a difficult paradox about love.

Although most people have an idealistic view of how love should be, she found that when one is actually in an intimate, loving relationship, the day-to-day process of love feels pretty muddled.
Love brings up everything unlike itself, for the purpose of healing, she explains.

That same paradox occurs in regards to your feelings about your business. The day-to-day process of closely relating to your business will bring up everything—irrational thoughts, deeply held negative beliefs, areas of your vulnerability—everything and anything unlike the cool, rational, business-like attitude you would want to embody, for the purpose of your healing.

So just as with any relationship, you need to sort out what is a real concern that requires attention and action, from feelings that are flying about, unbidden. And then learn how to utilize the opportunity for healing yourself and maturing, that business ownership creates.

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.-- Louisa May Alcott

Small business ownership is an intense learning environment. If started your own business thinking it would offer you autonomy, a degree of self-esteem, and freedom, you are right, it will…except when it doesn’t!

In the course of building and operating a business, your business may also provoke a series of (sometimes irrational) feelings of anger, fear, disappointment, anxiety, constraint, and occasionally, failure.

On a spiritual level, you might understand the emotional process that small business ownership provokes as one of purification: like a boiling pot of water, your business will stir up any aspects of your personality that are immature and unresolved, and bring them up to the surface of your conscious awareness, for you to deal with.

You get a choice when this happens. You can learn how to accept the difficult feelings and release them, like steam, for purification or renewal, or they can float on the surface, creating ambiguity inside you and clogging the daily workings of your business.

For example, do you live with constant apprehension, independent of reality? Do you worry about impending poverty? “I feel like I am only one step away from being a bag lady on the street, even though my income is in the same range for the past few years," one therapist says. "I have money in savings. No amount of financial evidence completely eliminates this concern for me. I am just scared.”

Or do you feel like you always need to be doing something for your practice to stay solvent? “When I take a day off, I find it hard to relax," says another. "I keep thinking I am forgetting something I need to do at work. I feel tethered to my email and my phone, and get nervous when I leave the office for a whole day.”

When you are feeling irrationally fearful and anxious, try using a powerful metaphor to aid in calming yourself.

Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom. -- Marilyn Ferguson

Your Business Journey: Use the following exercise to develop a metaphor about following a path of your own making. Decipher it and then translate it to apply to your current business situation.

1. Close your eyes and imagine that you are taking a journey. It might be by foot, by horseback, or in a vehicle. You pick the terrain: on land, over water, in the mountains, through the forest, or across the desert. Imagine that you look forward to your journey; it is one of choice, a journey based on your desire to reach a great destination.

2. The journey is not dangerous, but it is challenging and you need to stay alert. Imagine how you use your existing strengths and inner resources to stay safe and enjoy the experience. What do you need to bring or have with you to make sure that you feel as calm and alert as possible? What is your mind-set? What helps you to take pleasure in the journey?

3. Now open your eyes and translate this imagery to your current business journey. For each item or resource in your imagined journey, find a correlation in your real business process. Use your imagination and creativity to generate resources that can make your business journey feel calmer and more enjoyable. Make a list of the resources currently at your disposal to smooth your journey.

4. What do you need to add to your life in terms of both tangible and intangible items to help you self-soothe and further reduce any generalized business anxiety? Create a plan for obtaining these items.

Upcoming Teleclasses and Presentations

Lynn’s Upcoming Workshops

November 10, 2006, Columbia, Maryland
“The Evolving Private Practice: Achieving Long-Term Business Success”
Sponsored by the Marworth Treatment Center
A Practice-Building Seminar for Mental Health Professionals
8:30 PM to 4:30 PM: Fee $50 (Such a deal! The fee includes breakfast, lunch and 6 CEU’s!! This is Marworth's way of giving back to the therapeutic community.) To register, contact Sabrina N'Diaye: sabrina.ndiaye@comcast.net / Ph: 1-800-929-6495

Enter Article Title

Replace this text with an article. Type your second article using plain text, either directly into the web form, or preferably into a word processing program.

Books by Lynn Grodzki, published by WW Norton. To order, click on each book.

	The Business and Practice of Coaching By Lynn Grodzki and Wendy Allen (2005) Reviewed by author Richard Leider as "Nothing less than a radical rethinking of the essentials of building a coaching practice. A must read for all coaches, master and novice alike." With 40,000 coaches in practice, you need a guide for staying viable. This book will answer your questions to help you know what, when, and how to build your coaching practice.
	Building Your Ideal Private Practice By Lynn Grodzki (2000) The best-selling guide to what you need to do and who you need to be in order to have a highly profitable, personally satisfying private practice. Often called the "private practice bible" this book has become a resource for tens of thousands of your colleagues.
	The New Private Practice:Therapist-Coaches Share Stories, Strategies and Advice Edited by Lynn Grodzki (2002) A groundbreaking look at the profession of coaching through the eyes of 16 successful therapist-coaches who tell you how to become a coach, what to charge, and show you how they coach their clients.
	12 Months to Your Ideal Private Practice: A Workbook By Lynn Grodzki (2003) This planned, motivational workbook will help you build the practice you desire. The workbook incorporates fresh ideas, new exercises, further skill sets and much more to give you a direct experience of being carefully coached by Lynn, month-by-month, for a full year.

More next time,

lynn@privatepracticesuccess.com
See the website for additional articles, information about individual coaching, and upcoming classes.