And I meant it. But I also thought I wouldn’t need to worry about it.
During lockdown I was frantic to give up my practice. I was completely burned out and couldn’t imagine ever not feeling the way that I felt.
I’ll write about that eventually, I think, but not right now. Just know that many therapists fled the field then. So many people retired early because it was just awful.
Anyway. That’s why I started my child anxiety work; the plan was to 86 counseling as soon as I could and I’d fantasize about giving up my license.
Fast forward to today when I’m in a much better place physically emotionally, and mentally (despite, you know, all of THAT) and I no longer want to give up my license.
The mental health field is changing really quickly — another thing I want to write about — and if I hadn’t moved it really woudn’t have impacted me much but moving certainly derailed my practice and I still need my child anxiety work to step up to make up the difference but I’m not looking for it to replace my day job anymore.
It was weird when I realized I wasn’t burned out anymore because I was so used to feeling dread and grief around my practice and it became sort of a habit. Like it was a knee jerk reaction I’d have and it took me a minute to look around and find I was looking forward to clients again.
It’s still messy, mind you. I miss seeing people in person (but do not want to get my Pennsylvania license because this is SUCH a small town that dual relationships would be everywhere) and I miss my play therapy room but even before lockdown I knew my days working with kids were numbered. Even then I wanted to shift to parenting work because I think it’s much more effective and so I felt like saying I worked with kids was sort of setting it up wrong. Because even when I told parents, “YOU will have to do the changing” most of them didn’t believe me because seeing the kids created an expectation for kid changing. It was just built into the system if you see what I’m saying.
(This particularly has to do with little kids, who were also my favorite to work with. I love me a preschooler!!!)
It’s a relief to love my time with clients again. My license is up in a little more than a year and I’m trying to decide what continuing education to get to fill in the rest of my requirements. I am thinking of giving up my supervision designation but I’ll decide for sure when I look at which CEUs are available for it.
It’s nice to be on the other side of burn out because my gosh, that was a terrible terrible terrible place to be and to try to work from. I was so scared of harming my clients with my burn out and that made the burn out even worse. Ugh. Thinking about it makes my throat close up.
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