ooooof the shame of the unread text

You know, one of my biggest pet peeves when I'm not able to see the world through a kinder lens and have compassion and empathy is when I reach out to a bunch of therapists on Psychology Today and I don't hear back. And you know, I've created these narratives of like, how could they not respond? And like, don't they know how important this is? Like, I'm high functioning, but what if it was someone that wasn't, et cetera. What I realize now is A, I have no idea what each of those clinicians are going through. And B, often it's not personal. It's a level of potential unmanageability and avoidance. And right, it's like, the shame that we feel when we leave texts unread for too long and unreplied, and then we just can't reply. It's all of that stuff. So I really want to invite you to look at that stuff, because all of that is going to play a role in what we bring into being a therapist, owning a private practice, owning a group practice.