Navigating Imposter Syndrome

I had done my undergraduate at Goucher College, which is a tiny liberal arts school in Maryland. Graduated in 2012. And I had all these ideas of what I wanted to do and what that would look like and how I would feel, as I'm sure some of you can relate to. And I have this on gallery view so I can just look at who's joining. And some people from my life are joining that are not therapists, which is nice.

Welcome.

So I really wanted to talk about barriers to succeeding as a therapist. And I am a younger therapist. And I was just telling Joe before before I got on that ironically, or maybe not so ironically, I was experiencing so much imposter syndrome right before this started. And I think that's great. And I want to essentially just lean into that and talk about the experience of imposter syndrome, especially in the field of therapy, as well as gratitude shaming, which is a term that I had coined, not officially by any means, a couple years ago. After I'd gotten my master's, I had been working in the field for a bit, and I'm also in recovery. I'm in 12-step fellowships, and in recovery, this idea of gratitude and an attitude of gratitude is so grounding and so life-saving. But I've also seen it used inadvertently, shamingly— that's a word. We'll just make— it just says Hannah Rose joined, which is interesting because I'm here, so I'm having a little bit of a weird experience there. So gratitude shaming and imposter So a little bit about my experience. So after I graduated from Hopkins, I never wanted to work in the addiction field. As someone in recovery myself, I thought that would be working far too close to home. But of course, the universe had other ideas, and my practicum and then my internship were both at substance use treatment centers. And first it was IOPs, intensive outpatient, and then I switched to an inpatient treatment center here in Maryland, which I worked at for about 4 and a half years. And burnout was so real for me. And I really want to talk about burnout. And a lot of us know, you know, what those burnout characteristics feel like. You know, for me, it's compassion fatigue first and foremost. When I'm sitting in a session face-to-face or virtually with a client or in group counseling, and I'm struggling to tap into genuine, authentic compassion, and I may even be experiencing internal eye rolls, that is not coming from my authentic self. That is that is coming from burnout, that is coming from working myself too hard. And after a few years of being in one of the most high-intensity environments clinically, where there was so much death, both personally and professionally, like I mentioned, being in recovery and working in recovery and treatment centers was so much, and I found myself shutting down. And there were 3 things that I learned in graduate school that really stuck with me. Really it was one thing, but three factors. And I had a professor say what makes a phenomenal and effective therapist more than anything else, more than training, even sometimes more than experience in the field, are three factors: the ability to have empathy, the ability to be authentic, and the ability to have unconditional positive regard. And for me, I didn't, I didn't quite think about the authenticity piece at first. I thought about empathy and unconditional positive regard. So for me, with burnout, not being able to feel that unconditional positive regard was a piece of it. And that eventually led me to leave that secure, stable, safe job and take the leap into private practice in 2019, which was terrifying. And that's where my imposter syndrome really took off. And, and for those of you that are unfamiliar with the term, although I doubt many of you are, most people at some point in their lives feel like, wow, if someone really knew me, they wouldn't trust me with this. Or wow, why are people letting me have these responsibilities? Right? Like, who let me do this? And it's almost this feeling of being a fraud. And the more and more I've talked openly about that and connected with other people about that, the more I've realized so many of us experience imposter syndrome. And in the field of mental health, it's interesting because for me it felt magnified. Now, I had felt it a bit in school, like, who let me into Johns Hopkins? Who Who said I was good enough, right? There were all these shame narratives that I wasn't quite aware of. And for mental health practitioners, when we are in the business of ideally not giving advice, but being on the front row of someone's most personal experiences and stories and traumas and vulnerabilities, and they're looking to us to help them, right? To guide them, to ask the right questions if those exist. And I felt like If my life isn't perfect, which if you've been in this field for a while, you may laugh at that. Who am I to be able to be a therapist, right? Who am I to essentially be in the position to be trusted with someone's innermost experiences? And I think that's a huge barrier to clinicians starting their own private practices. And so for me, Hannah Rose. Jeez. That is not Hannah Rose. That is a friend that is on Zoom right now. For me, it was noticing imposter syndrome, identifying it for what it was— fear based in shame, shame narratives all being rooted in scarcity. I'm not old enough was a big one for me. Successful enough, experienced enough. I don't have enough letters after my name. I only have a master's and not a PhD. I mean, we can do this within our field, right? Look at the accolades of other clinicians and Notice the imposter syndrome and say, wow, this is really uncomfortable. This is rooted in fear, and I'm going to take this leap anyway. The other piece, going back to that graduate school experience, was being authentic. And for me, there were so many barriers also rooted in shame and fear of being authentic. How can I be an authentic therapist if I don't— not only know who I am, but I'm comfortable enough to be myself without fear of what anyone is going to think of me? And that was terrifying. So we've talked a bit about imposter syndrome. Joe told me I have until 5 minutes after the hour. And as you can probably already tell, I have so many things to say all of the time that I'm just trying to condense it. I also actively didn't plan one thing for this. And I'd love to say that's because I wanted to speak from my heart, and maybe that's part of it. And another part of it was fear. And I don't love planning. And so I was like, all right, I have these general topics that I'm so passionate about. I'm just going to start speaking and see where that goes and answer questions. So imposter syndrome, navigating that. I think for newer clinicians or more experienced clinicians who are venturing into a new part of their career or starting a private practice, in my opinion and experience, almost welcoming, oh, imposter syndrome, there you are, right? I would feel so not human if I didn't experience that very human fear and use it to connect with others rather than have maybe an inauthentic air of professionality. I'm not sure if that's a word. Pretend to be something that I'm not. You know, I joked as soon as this started, you know, there are Star Wars puzzles in the back. I have all this stuff going on. When I first started private practice, my background was very sterile with my diploma, and that was partially because I was uncomfortable being myself. And myself is loud and energetic and really passionate about things. And what I found is that the more I started to let myself be, me who I am, the more I started connecting with clients. And in that, word of mouth really got through. Um, I didn't do a ton of marketing, but my caseload became full pretty quickly. And about a year and a half into being in solo private practice, I decided I would take on a therapist or two so that I didn't have to keep putting people on a waitlist. And again, imposter syndrome came right back. Imposter syndrome said, you can't run a group practice, you can't manage other people. Well, who are you to do this? And again, going back to— I really love Brené Brown, just her writings and teachings on shame, fear, and vulnerability. And instead of saying, yeah, who am I to do this? I said, I'm a person and I'm going to try. And the worst possible case scenario here is that I experience rejection, I experience failure, all things I've experienced before, both personally and professionally. And they've strengthened me. Not maybe in the moment, they felt like absolute garbage. I'm gonna not swear. And so I started hiring people, and now it's been, you know, 2019 was solo group practice. End of 2021, I rebranded to Rose Wellness and started hiring therapists. And now we have 13 clinicians, not including myself. And it just keeps growing. And I have found that the biggest barrier along the way is my own self-talk. It's my own, this is what it should this is what others expect of me, or if I'm this far into my career or this early into my career, I should have it together. And these shoulds, I think it was Albert Ellis who originally said, don't should on yourself, which I love. These shoulds really just keep me stuck. And so to me, that goes hand in hand with gratitude shaming. Now, like I said, being in recovery, gratitude is huge, right? An attitude of gratitude. I can easily, easily fall into fulfillment trap, you know, when when I get this, then I'll feel this way. If I manage to do this, then I will feel better. It's very my state of being, being contingent on something external. And any and all things that I have received or accomplished, the fulfillment trap is still there. There's always more. And so what I've found is that gratitude can really help with that. You know, I'm grateful for what I have today. I'm grateful for where I am today, even if it's not exactly my plan. Now, gratitude shaming, which I don't think is spoken about about too often is when we inadvertently use gratitude to shame someone out of their emotional experience. And what that looks like is this: I'm really stressed about work. I have a lot on my plate, and I'm feeling like I can't handle this. A gratitude shaming comment would be, well, you should be grateful you have a job. Oof. How many of you, just show of hands, how many of you have ever been told something like that, or even said something like that? I know I have. Oh, you should be grateful, XYZ. You should be grateful. Yes. You know, I recently, and I believe I can legally speak about this now. Caleb, can I legally speak about the thing that, you know, I'm going to speak about right now? I can. Maybe. So recently this year, I got the yes, you can from one of my trusted friends, Brando. Talk about imposter syndrome. Oh, wow. So many of them are here. You know, I just— like, I didn't really plan for this. I needed a show during COVID to take my mind away from work and work stress and life stress. And I started watching Survivor. I decided to apply kind of as a joke, not expecting anything of it. And long story short, I went on— I went to Fiji for a month this year and competed on the reality show Survivor. And it airs on Wednesday. And what that did did was give me a lot of opportunities to look at, A, imposter syndrome. Who am I to compete on some really hardcore show? B, gratitude shaming. Well, you should be grateful you got this opportunity. The level of stress that I experienced— it was very cool. Yeah, and a lot of the people from the cast are here because they are my new family. Um, but what that did— hey, hey, friends— what that did was really kick my butt into gear of needing to delegate responsibilities of the practice. Up until earlier this year, I was running back of house, admin, and insurance billing. That's what I told everyone on the cast I did for a living. I said, oh, I'm in— I'm a medical biller because I know everything about insurance codes. I see you laughing because if you're in practice and you don't have a medical biller, it takes up a lot of time. And so I was doing everything myself, and I had one month notice to say, okay, in a month I'm going to be out of the country for a month with no contact with the outside world. How will this group practice with 13 clinicians run? Because I won't be there. And I felt like, well, I should be grateful for this opportunity, and I should be grateful that I'm self-employed. But the stress was so real. And barring Survivor and that whole experience, I think this notion of I shouldn't feel pain, or I shouldn't feel stress, or I shouldn't feel fear because I should feel grateful is shaming and damaging. Because what it does is leads us to minimize our emotional experience instead of say, wow, this is really valid that I'm experiencing this. And also it completely eclipses the fact that we can feel numerous things at once. I can be both stressed as all hell and very grateful for the opportunity to do what I do, and I don't have to feel badly Now, if the first wound is feeling that stress or pain or fear, the second wound, which is almost always self-inflicted, is how we judge ourselves for feeling what we're feeling. And there have been many times where I have been in some level of emotional pain and I've said to myself, "Oh my, you're just ungrateful." And in hindsight, I'm able to look at that and say, "That's not true. It's not all one thing." Right? We don't experience one emotion. And that's it, and it gets rid of everything else. So bringing it back to therapy and therapeutic experience, what I have found is that to have this license to be able to help others, or to start a group practice and then hire people to help others, it allows us to really lean into all of our own imperfections because we can see where we are falling short. And I don't know if any of you have had this experience, especially in the mental health field, but there are times where I'm going through something and then a client just happens to be gone through the same thing, and I will hear the words come out of my mouth, and I'll think to myself, it's actually really insightful. I should do that. I should apply that. And so it's like putting this magnifying glass on our own imperfections and humanity. And for me, I think as a, as a therapist and as someone who has felt extremely isolated in that experience, connecting with other people in the field and then just connecting with other humans is huge. In recovery circles, I think this notion that connection is the antidote to so much is massive. And for me, I think noticing— again, going back to imposter syndrome, really the first step of this process is identifying what activates that imposter syndrome. And for me, it's very much— or it used to be when I felt condescended. I used to say, like, my biggest trigger is narcissists or people who talk down to me. And I realized over time that they have nothing to do with it. Own insecurities and things that I don't feel grounded in, when those things are potentially brought to the surface, I immediately would get defensive and say, oh, it's about that person. And the more I was able to really identify what are my emotional triggers and then really dive deeper into where that comes from, the less anything external has the capacity to rock my foundation of of self. Now, that's true for clients. That's true in terms of how clients feel about me, or if they drop out of therapy. It's true for other therapists. It's true for friends. It's true for family. It's true for the 10 million people that are going to watch Survivor and judge me, just because that's what people do with reality shows, is that all I can do is what feels right in my gut. And sometimes it's not going to be a popular thing, and sometimes that means is when someone says to me, well, you should just be grateful. I don't have to say that's gratitude shaming and here's why that's really unhelpful. I can just— I see where they're coming from. I can have my generous assumptions of others that people mean well. I choose to believe that. But I can make a mental note: is it because I'm ungrateful? No, it's not. It's because I'm human and I'm having this very human experience. So I'm all over the place because I just thought I could go with it. Um, so coming back to what the topics of the this whole thing was, gratitude shaming and imposter syndrome. So with gratitude shaming, I really invite everyone that's listening, whether you're on Facebook Live or on Zoom or you're going to watch this later, to try to notice where you may experience that or inadvertently bring that into your relationships with others. And it was really tough for me to look at how often I would choose gratitude shaming or sympathy over empathy. Like, mm, but at least you are employable. At least you got this opportunity. Brené Brown says in one of her short videos, um, any sentence that begins with 'at least' is not rooted in empathy. And what we do is we try to silver line each other's experiences. Now I'm just ripping off Brené Brown at this point, but I'll put my own spin on it. She says holding space for someone else's pain is inherently vulnerable. It's so vulnerable, and vulnerability is uncomfortable. And so many of us go to this place of, well, let me make you feel better. You know, and how often in our interpersonal relationships do we say, or are we told, I don't want you to fix it, I just want you to listen, right? And as therapists and people in the mental health field, we know that active listening, holding space, you know, can you imagine a client saying something really painful to you and you saying, well, you know, at least you're in therapy now. And listen, maybe you would say that. I'm sorry if this is offensive to you in any way, but I personally would never say that. Like, well, let's just look at the bright side. Like, no, let's acknowledge the complete array of human emotion, and we can acknowledge strength and resilience and protective mechanisms, but also create space to feel that pain, that fear, that anger. Now, I don't know if you're anything like this, but especially the first few years of my therapeutic practice, both being in therapy and being a therapist, I noticed such discrepancies in the ways that I was able to have empathy and compassion for my clients but how that differed in my interpersonal relationships and how I may not hold the same space. And I may jump to gratitude shaming. I may jump to silver lining someone's experience. And it was really humbling to look at what lessons can I learn from the therapeutic experience, not therapizing friends and family by any means, but where am I not practicing what I preach? And that cognitive dissonance really fueled imposter syndrome for me. And so going back to authenticity, I am, and I think anyone that knows me personally, whether you were on a Fijian island without food and water with me, or you are a colleague, or you are a friend who's just supporting me, my affect is pretty much the same in all of those situations. And for me personally, this is what has worked. I have found that the more barriers that I can deconstruct in between me and how I really feel, who I really am, the more I'm able to live my life in a state of congruence. Now, obviously boundaries are incredibly important and having boundaries with clients and different boundaries in different scenarios without a doubt. But if the person that I am at work is inherently different in all ways than the person I am in my relationship at home, that's going to throw me into a state of cognitive dissonance. You know, my, my essence, my vibe is essentially the same wherever I go. And that's something I really, really try to hold on to no matter what. And it helps to limit imposter syndrome. With imposter syndrome, also noticing that almost everything comes back to shame. And shame, just a quick recap, shame, where guilt is, I feel badly about this, and it can actually be motivating for growth and change. Shame is, I I am bad. I am not enough. Shame is rooted in scarcity. So I am not blank enough. That's shame. And for me, identifying my shame narratives is huge because those shame narratives will manifest in all areas of my life. Whenever I do, um, like corporate trainings— okay, I've done like 3, but still— when I have done corporate trainings for a clinical team at a treatment center Often I go in and I— it's almost like pulling the rug out from under them, which is kind of messed up. Um, a lot of times, I, I, you know, let's say the topic is like emotional sobriety. Most clinicians think I'm going to be talking about better ways to treat their clients and modalities and techniques, and I always flip the script and I'm like, no, we're going to be focusing on you all. And I think keeping the focus on the therapist, the person that is providing the treatment in any capacity, is huge because I was taught If I don't heal and start to heal and begin that process of healing my own wounds, I will experience countertransference in a way that can be potentially harmful to my clients. I will project and leak out all of my own stuff onto my clients. I need to take care of me first. And we all know, right, like the airplane, put the oxygen mask on yourself before putting it on anyone else. And that's what led me to essentially quit quit again my very secure treatment center job because I couldn't keep working in the addiction field full-time. I wanted to work for myself. A really big piece of me starting my own private practice was so that I could sleep later. I think I'm not gonna lie. And I remember feeling imposter syndrome about that, like, like, I should just be a morning person. And at a certain point, I was like, or, you know, I'm going to change my situation. And it, it has helped. But like, listening to that, as silly and trivial as it sounds, like I'm still not a morning person. I mean, I did wake up around 8 today, which I will consider a win. But instead of trying to force myself to be something that I'm not, can I find ways to leap into— 8's definitely early. Thank you, Eric. Thank you. Can I find ways to lean into my authentic self? And I feel very privileged and lucky to be able to do that. But as people point out to me all the time, and this is the last thing I'll say about gratitude shaming and imposter syndrome, I often feel not undeserving to an extent, but I can feel guilty that I have my own practice, that I'm able to sleep late, that my quality of life is where it is. And I'm constantly reminded by my therapist— special shout out, I don't think she'll ever watch this because she has like boundaries— um, and friends and my fiancé that, Hannah, you have gotten to where you are today because of the work that you have put And it's hard for me to accept sometimes when I see so many colleagues who are overworked, underpaid, completely burnt out. And I feel like, why do I get to have a quality of life that I love? That I love. My friend called it the slow life. The slow life? Asia, what do you call it? The soft life? Okay. Well, I think she called it the soft life. And that is what I choose to live. And, you know, I would never tell someone you should stick it out. Um, if you want to prove something to yourself, all— by all means, go for it. But for me, can I listen to my gut and can I be grateful for what I have and who I am? And that doesn't mean I'm not going to feel pain today. And so if you are working at an agency and you're burnt out, I've been there, I hear you, I'm happy to talk to you about that. If you're in your own private practice, you're killing it and you love it, awesome. I don't know if any of you have struggled with feeling like again, it's not fully undeserving, but I do think there's remnants of shame there for me where it's, it's almost survivor's guilt, no pun intended, of why do I get to have this life that I truly want to be a part of? Um, and for me, I think seeking outside sources, like again, when I found Brené Brown, that was pretty life-changing in 2015. And when I struggle with setting boundaries, I read the book Set Boundaries, Find Peace, and it was life-changing. And when I struggled with being addicted to my smartphone, I read How to You wake up with your phone, and I think there are so many resources available to us. And just noticing whatever guilt you may feel, shame you may feel, fear you may feel, it is normal. You are not alone. I don't really know what I said for the last half an hour, but I do know that when this is over, I'm not going to be in my head thinking about what I said, how I sounded, if you liked it. I know that I showed up with my whole heart and spoke from my heart, and that's really all that I can do. And I will say a lot of that work came from therapy. And so for me, last really great piece of advice I ever got was, hey, if you're going to be a therapist, you best be in your own therapy. Um, and I truly believe that it's unethical to be a therapist and not have done your own therapeutic work. And that's a hot take by Hannah Rose. So it's 3 o'clock and it says that there are 13 chats, so I'm gonna look at them and I will answer questions and/or Joe will moderate. I have no idea what happens next.

All right, well, let me add my spotlight in here. That was, that was killer. I'm gonna talk a little bit about our membership communities and then we're gonna dive into questions. So get those questions coming in. If you want to talk back and forth, maybe you have a question where you want to dig in a little bit more, we're gonna have plenty of time for that. So just virtually raise your hand. That tells us that you want us to bring you on screen and go back and forth. If you just have a quick question like some of you do in the chat, that, just drop that in there. But again, if you want to dig in and, uh, have a little bit of back and forth, we had that earlier today in our very first session. We were talking about some money shame issues and had some laser coaching. It was incredible. The individual that did that was just like so awesome. And those of you that have to take off, thank you so much for hanging out. Um, Hannah's going to be answering questions in just a couple minutes here. Um, but you know, one of the reasons that we do this is we want to make sure that in a very short period of time we help you level up. We want to help you just like get to that next level as fast as humanly possible. But maybe you're confused where to start in regards to your leveling up. So if you're ready to level up but you're confused where to start, our communities are the place for you to come to. We help therapists at every phase of their private practice. We have enough people applying to work with us that we don't have to squeeze you into anything. Last week alone, I did 15 pre-consulting calls with people, uh, and I'm honest with them. If I'm like, honestly, like right now consulting's not a great time for you, like I tell them, hey, pause a little bit, in a few months come back, let's see how it goes. That's something that I want to make sure that I do on a regular basis just so that people know, like, we're here for you at your phase and the speed you want to go and with, you know, where you're going to get the best ROI. So one thing I think about whenever I sign up for something is what have these people done? Like, what has this organization done? What are they known for? Have they been around for a bit? Are they a new flash in the pan that I don't know if they're going to be here in a year? You know, we started in 2012 and the podcast started in 2013. 900 podcast episodes. We're gonna hit our 1,000th episode probably in quarter 2 of the next year. Uh, we've helped over 2,000 therapists through our programs and online communities to start and grow their private practices. So we have a proven track record over the last 15 years of when I was running a private practice. Uh, I sold that in 2019, so I have helped other people sell their practices. I've also helped them negotiate, uh, multi-seven-figure exits from it where people people sold their practices for millions of dollars or sold their websites for millions of dollars. In retrospect, I should have not charged hourly. I should have charged as a percentage of the final sale. But you know, you learn some things along the way. Um, we've been recognized and won 9 top therapy podcast, website, and consultant awards. And when we conservatively look at and survey our members, they've collected over $200 million in sales. To me, that's the most conservative. We don't hear back from everybody and we don't want to overinflate it, but every single one of those dollars is an insurance payment, a private pay payment. It's someone that started a podcast and they're making money now off that podcast from a therapeutic lens. It's leveling up in some way. And it actually connects to the actual heart of saying, you're a therapist, please help me. I will pay you money to help me. And us being able to say, thank you for valuing my skills. And thank you to myself for valuing my skills. I'm working on being less of an imposter. And I'm learning that in community with other people. So, the way it works is we have 4 different memberships and it's based on your phase of practice. So, you would never be in more than one of these memberships at a time. So, in Next Level Practice, that's aimed at people that have solo practices. So, when you're in solo practice, it's just you. You may have an assistant or someone else, but it's just solo practice. You're trying to optimize your practice, learn all those good things. We have a weekly meeting that's in Next Level Practice that's live. You come, you ask questions, we do different teachings, we bring in experts. We also have 2 groups per month that are facilitated through our accountability coach. Then when you start to fill up, usually at about 50% full, that's when most people will level up into Group Practice Launch. Uh, because if you wait till you're full, you've waited too long. We wanna start to get that other person full while you're getting full. And when you're at 50%, that's really when we wanna have you get into Group Practice Launch. Even if it's adding just 1 or 2 clinicians part-time can be a huge game changer where you're scaling outside of your own time. You no longer have a job, but you actually have a business. And so that's gonna be over a 6-month period of time. We have e-learning that you watch, and then you come to live events and ask questions around that. As well, we have those small groups, and you also get access to all of Next Level Practice as part of this. You don't give anything up when you level up. Next, we have Group Practice Boss. So once you've made that first hire, which we guarantee that you'll do in those 6 months, and if you don't, then you can come back through the program. Also with Next Level Practice, if you're not getting the results you want in the first 3 months, we have a 90-day money-back guarantee. We've never had to give money back for someone not getting the results. It's always been, oh my gosh, something in my life exploded. I need to pause this. Can I get a refund? Of course. Like if your life explodes, we want to be here for you. And then when you're ready to come back, come back. The same way with Hannah Rose, you know, if she's doing this whole Survivor thing, let's ride the coattails of that before we put a whole bunch of time and money into consulting or memberships or things like that. Go ride that wave, see where that takes you. And then if you still want to work on your practice, come back to us, you know, when that wave is done or has changed and you know where you've landed. So Group Practice Boss, that's $149 a month, has all the same components as Next Level Practice except it's from a group practice perspective. We have group practice owners that get together, we do trainings every single Tuesday, and you also get access to all the rest of those communities too. Lastly, we have Audience Building Academy, and that's for people that really want to level up and go national. They want to be influencers, they want to start podcasts, they want to have e-courses and books or keynotes or TED Talks, that they want to level up in a way that they get guidance from people who have written traditionally published books through HarperCollins, who has a TEDx talk, who has been able to create income outside of my private practice and actually leave that. And so, we work together over 6 months where you have milestones every single month, exactly what you're going to work on. We give you the e-learning that you go through outside of the session and then come and we have an hour session twice month. And you also get full access to all of the memberships as well. So, um, we went throughout this time— I know a bunch of you have heard, you know, us talking about our memberships. So Jessica, she joined our group practice programs and is killing it in group practice. Uh, we had one of our members on Tuesday in the group practice panel who just joined during our last Level Up Week. She made her first hire in July, and now she has 5 clinicians already within less than 6 months. I mean, I mean, we see these results over and over again. Brian Cooper filled up his practice through Next Level Practice. We have Marta Hamilton who launched Tele Wellness Hub, which is now a competitor to Psychology Today, but is aimed at tele wellness and beyond just the therapy space. They're actually one of our biggest sponsors giving away a $17,000 prize. So she's obviously killing it. She was part of our Audience Building Academy. And Ellen, who's been with us quite a bit this week, has been in almost every one of our programs and just raves about it and continues to level up.

Up.

For me, whenever I look at any of this, when I talk in pre-consulting calls with people on Monday, when I'm doing those calls with folks, um, that are on the fence deciding on their membership, the big thing I think of is what's the ROI on your time? You know, you can go listen to a bunch of podcasts. We have that podcast that you can listen to. You can bootstrap it, try it yourself, or you can learn from other people who have done this before you and can help you implement faster. To me, that information age, like the That's over. We can get so much information everywhere, but we end up more confused than just knowing what to do next. We are in the implementation age, and that's why we have so many guarantees, is because we know you're going to implement. Over and over, when we have people that join our programs, they just say to us, I don't know why I didn't join sooner. You know, I came to all these webinars, I'd hear you talk about them, but I just didn't believe it. And then they'll get in these programs and say, oh my gosh, in 4 months my practice is exploding, and now I'm ready for a group practice. Practice. That wasn't even on my radar. And we see it work over and over. And the biggest barrier is that decision of joining the first membership together. We want you to work with the experts so that we can help you grow. We have a Circle community. Circle is a platform that is specific for membership communities like this. So we invest thousands of dollars into this platform. It's part Facebook group where you have the conversations around specific topics. We also then have e-learning within it where the, all of the programs that you go through are within that system. And then also all of our meetings similar to Zoom are in that as well. So it's all in one place for you to go to, for you to watch the recordings and for you to engage with the community. We have a bunch of bonuses that we're offering during this launch. These all close out next Thursday at 5 PM Eastern. We're doing a 90-day money-back guarantee. We've never done 90 days before. We've done 30 days. Uh, but honestly, we just don't have to give the money back because people see the results. You get your exclusive welcome party with your membership community. And if you're joining Audience Building Academy, you get the 2-day intensive here with me and other audience builders in Northern Michigan. If you can't make it in October, because I know that's less than a month away, you can defer to April when we offer that again. You get full access to Next Level Practice no matter what phase you're at. The things below you, you get access to. And then also next Thursday, we're doing that drawing for Tele Wellness Hub. So they offer free 3 CTV ads. So CTV ads are those ads that play when you watch Hulu or other online streaming services. You can be highly targeted with it. You can say, like, you know, if you're a therapist in Michigan like myself, I could say I want people ages 30 to 55 that make over $100,000 a year and have kids, and I want to have this ad run specifically to them. And you run that over a month or two, and then you are on TV all over the place. We've been featured now on CNN, MSNBC, Food Network, a number of different places. Through our CTV ads. Also, the first 50 people get logo design, email signature, and a one-sheet. A one-sheet is what you need if you're going to be doing any podcast interviews. So you want to have that if you're going to be leveling up. That's, I think, $561 value, if I recall correctly. But that's only— excuse me— for the first 50 people. We have about 20 spots left from this launch. So make sure you sign up. Remember, we have that money-back guarantee. If you meet with me on Monday and you're like, okay, I decide this isn't for me, me, great, we'll just refund you. But I would say make sure you secure that spot so that you can get one of those 50 spots of the, the logos. To me, the question is, what if you don't sign up? Like, what's the downside of it? Well, who's gonna support you? You've put in all this time to come to Level Up Week. Many of you have signed up for multiple different webinars. You listen to great speakers or come to panels or heard me do different presentations. But what are you going to do with this information? How are you going to implement it? How are you going to stay accountable? How are you going to know exactly what to do next to save your time? Uh, to me, I often think of when this is successful, what's that look like? So say you're looking at starting a group practice and eventually, you know, after 6 months you're making $1,000 a month. Every month you wait, say you waited for another cohort and you're 6 months behind where you could have been, that's $6,000 right there you lost in opportunity costs. And so taking that action and moving forward and say, I'm going to get things done. That's the next step. So please join one of our communities. You're going to get solid teachings. You're going to get that community that's going to support you and the tools of the trade to move forward. Keep those questions coming in for Hannah. Head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/membership. You can read about all the communities. You can dig in and say, okay, I think this is where I'm at. If you have any questions on Monday morning at 11 AM Eastern and at 1 o'clock PM Eastern, I'm going to be offering those Q&As. If you're still on the fence Monday, we're going to be sending you emails just to make sure that nothing falls through the We've had a ton of people sign up for our membership. Just make sure you grab your spot before those freebies disappear from you. All right, Hannah, we've got some chat things coming in right here. Let's see. I saw some of the top that we didn't cover. How would you say is best to help new therapists or employees that have imposter syndrome?

Great question. Elisa. Yeah, great question. I feel like a lot of times people don't necessarily have or know that it's okay to use that kind of vocabulary, especially in a work setting. And using that language and broaching it before your employees or colleagues bring it up, I think is super helpful normalizing, right? And so if you have employees or therapists that you've hired or colleagues that you either assume might be experiencing that, or you just want to broach it and say, hey, I know this is something I've experienced or something I still experience today. Hey, have you experienced that at all? Where does that come up for you? Now I'm a licensed clinical supervisor and I provide supervision to the LGPCs, the licensed graduate professional counselors, the provisionally licensed counselors at my practice. And I broached that with them. And oftentimes the response is, oh my God, I'm so glad you brought that up. I didn't want to, cause I don't want you to think I don't know what I'm doing, et cetera. And so there's often fear and shame blocking us from even talking about imposter syndrome. And so as an employer or a manager, I think bringing it up first and just knowing, hey, this Safe on the table. To me, clinical supervision is not just about let's very rote go through your cases. It's let's talk about how you're doing with them, how you're feeling about being a therapist. What is this like for you? And I love that. I live for that.

Oh, so awesome. Next question. When imposter syndrome comes up internally, what are some good practices to combat that?

Hmm. So first and foremost, identifying it, right? Not just running with it. If, if any of you are familiar with Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, you know, REBT, again, throw it back to Albert L. Ellis. Is think knowing there's the activating event, and then it feels like the belief comes really quickly thereafter. So it goes activating event, belief, consequence. And if the activating event is a client drops out of therapy or says, hey, I don't think this is a good fit, the belief is I'm a bad therapist, I have no idea what I'm doing. The consequence is then likely going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, fear, imposter syndrome, etc. So according to Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, we you can dispute that core irrational belief. Imposter syndrome is a core irrational belief. So identifying that it's there, noticing it, validating and normalizing your own experience, and ideally talking with other people about it. That's as succinct as I can make that answer.

Ah, so good. Now for you personally, um, do you have any habits that help you stay grounded and realize, well, I'm overthinking this? And so sure, we have like psychological symptoms, but are are there systems? Are there things that you think, man, for me, I just need to like make a smoothie or like, like things like that?

Yes. Yes. I actually just did this podcast and someone asked me the same thing. He said, the host, he said, how do you essentially take care of yourself? And to me, dealing with imposter syndrome, fear, et cetera, is all wrapped into taking care of myself. Moderating what media I consume is number one. I'm not gonna get on my soapbox about social media. Social media and how— and like, I don't have Instagram. I can't. I've tried. Um, just me personally. I understand for business it's really, um, integral at times. But so I love reading, right? But I can't always be reading nonfiction, like really heavy therapy stuff or self-help. I go back and forth. So I read like smutty fantasy books, and then I listen to nonfiction or domestic thrillers. And I kind of— you know what, if I'm watching a show— someone just asked me, oh, have you seen Sick, and have you seen Painkiller? And these shows are phenomenal about drug addiction and recovery and the Sackler family. And I have to check in with myself before watching that kind of media. I have to check in with myself before watching things that are going to essentially drain my cup as opposed to fill it.

I'm with you. I feel like, especially when I was practicing therapy, I could not watch shows that reminded me of therapy. It's like the closest I could get was like Extreme Home Makeover. Over. It's like you'd hear their sappy story, I'd be crying in the first 5 minutes. But, uh, yeah, I feel like consuming media, I think, is something that oftentimes we don't talk about in therapy or as therapists. And even just, you know, going into Level Up Week, you know, every morning, you know, I walk my daughter to school, you know, I'm home by 9:00, 9:05. I'm not a morning person either. I'm with you. I'm like a teenager still. Like, given a lack of an alarm, I will sleep until like 11:00 every day, even if I go to bed at a simple time. But it's like, I'm home and each morning it was a 10:00 AM kickoff for Level Up Week. So, I made sure I gave myself extra time. I didn't want to be scrambling and kickoff at 9:30. Did meditation each morning. And then, I didn't check the news because it drives me bonkers what's going on. And, we all have our political perspectives, but it's like there's a lot that's hitting the fan right now. And, I don't check my co-parenting app with my ex because because if I go into a webinar all pissed off, it's gonna, it's not gonna help anything. And so that idea of protecting your brain when you're doing things that are really important, I think is so key to making sure that we show up with our best selves and don't overthink all of it.

Absolutely. And I think we have to be vigilant about that. Again, I'm speaking to mental health professionals, but I think this is true for all humans. But again, if we're showing up for others in this really vulnerable space, maybe even more so for us is vigilant. I wanna be as vigilant about protecting myself. Setting boundaries where they need to be set, right? Saying no to things. Saying no to things is like my favorite. I mean, I'm, I'm a very extroverted introvert, so love my alone time. Being mindful about the media that I'm consuming, being mindful about what I'm consuming, period, right? Like this morning, um, I was like, you know what, I don't want to make breakfast, I'm going to order a bagel and a muffin. And it was like, yes. And then I felt like my body was like shutting down after. It was like rejecting everything I ate. And like, I'm not gonna shame hating myself for eating— I love bagels. However, being mindful and making intentional choices, even if that means signing up for those consequences intentionally. And so really going from almost a mindless autopilot of living life as a passive recipient to being much more awake and attuned, looking at our choices and how they impact us.

So awesome. Well, we've torn through all the questions. Just a reminder to everyone, our memberships are open till next Thursday at 5 PM. So just about a week from now. Monday is the only time that we're doing the Q&As, so come at 11 AM or 1 PM Eastern Standard Time. You can register for those over at practiceofthepractice.com/levelup. And then if you want to join one of our communities, that's just practiceofthepractice.com/membership. So you can check out all of that there. Again, we have that 90-day money-back guarantee. We have all those bonuses that we're giving. It's filling up. Make sure you grab your spot. And Hannah, I wanna give the final word to you. So what encouragement, what mindset things, what activities, what would you leave people with?

Oof, oh my gosh, I have so many things all the time. So I'm like, how do I condense it? And I always wanna be like, just be yourself, but it's not that easy, right? I would say going back to my favorite quote in the world, which is the poet Rumi, he has a quote that it says, your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. And if you replace the word love with anything else, literally anything— peace, serenity, friendship, connection, a partner, whatever— your task is not to go out and find that thing. Your task is to look internally and say, what barriers have I built or have been built in me? Whoa.

How did that happen?

I don't know how that just happened. It keeps happening on my Zoom. Whoa.

It must be on the— the live.

So weird. So, um, so yeah, so, so look inward. That's my parting words. And we have— there are so many tools to deconstruct our own internal barriers, but everything you're looking for is in you already. I believe that to be true.

So awesome. Thank you everyone that came to this final session of Level Up Week. I couldn't think of a better way to land it, you know, just being grounded in who we are, allowing ourselves to feel that that to step into not just better business, but just better humanity, better life, creating the life that we want while still serving the people that really need our help. I couldn't think of a better way to end it. Hannah, thank you so much for being with us. I sent all those links out. You'll be getting emails. We'll be doing surveys. Thank you so much for attending Level Up Week. You are leveling up while other people are giving up. Thank you for letting us into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing rest of your week and weekend, everybody. And thanks again, Hannah, for being a part