Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Give yourself the
space to be the change in the
world that you want to see.
Because there is space foreveryone, despite potentially
what society might tell us.
Because I think if you lean witha mind that has diversity and
inclusion in it, you can seeyourself as a diverse person and
(00:20):
you can see yourself as a personthat needs to be included in the
conversation.
Live your life in a way thatallows you to be flexible and
move towards your goals and movetowards Welcome to Redefining
Us, where we explore sexuality,identity, motherhood, and mental
(00:43):
health to help women thriveauthentically.
Let's break free from roles thatlimit us and create a life where
you can truly be yourself.
Hi, everyone.
I'm back for another soloepisode.
Today, I want to talk aboutcareer and redefining career and
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what success and work lookslike.
It's so interesting, myexperience going into becoming a
therapist, because back, I wantto say it was my senior year of
college, so like 2009, I I wasreally struggling with what
direction am I going to take inmy career.
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I really had this mindset that Ineeded to pick one career, one
thing to do for the rest of mylife.
That's what I witnessed as achild.
My mom doing one career for herwhole career.
My dad doing one type of workfor his entire career.
And I think I had this sense ofurgency and this sense of
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pressure to pick just one thingto choose at, what was I, 20
years old that I was going to doat 20 for the rest of my life.
And let me tell you, that was ahuge stress.
I went to therapy.
I ended up doing careercounseling, did a career test to
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try to figure out what feltright based on my personality,
what my strengths were.
And It was such an interestingtime.
The recession was in the worksthe year that I was going
through this.
So I was really afraid of goinginto the workforce because
everyone that I spoke to, itseemed, kept telling me, just
stay in college.
There's nothing out there foryou right now.
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The market's crap.
You should go to grad school oryou should do the Peace Corps.
You should do something to delaygoing straight into the
workforce.
So in that career test that Itook, it gave me a few options
of what would suit best with mypersonality.
The only two that I remember offthe top of my head are becoming
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a dentist and becoming atherapist.
And obviously, we all know whichtrack that I chose is to be a
therapist.
I had been to therapy, like Imentioned, at that point, and I
really felt it to be this warmplace, this inspirational place.
And I wanted to, I guess, helpothers do that.
But I was still really uncertainabout just choosing one thing.
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And then I remember having thisconversation with the career
counselor specifically aboutthat.
And they said something to methat really stuck with me and
was like, you don't have tochoose something forever.
You just have to choosesomething for now.
There are so many options outthere.
You can get stuck in analysisparalysis.
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If you just choose one thing,you can always switch.
You can always take a turn.
And it was so timely because atthat time I was taking the
Spanish course in college andthere was a student in there who
happened to be a second careercollege student.
So I don't know.
I was like 20.
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So I thought they were old, butthey were probably only in their
40s.
And I had asked her, you know,why did you come back to school?
And she just said that she wasburnt out from her current
career and wanted a differentdirection.
And I was like, what?
You can do that?
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So interesting.
I never thought that was anoption.
And now suddenly that this wasan option, it made the...
choice of going to grad schoolto become a therapist less
daunting because it told me thatthere was an out.
It told me that I can make achange.
It told me that I wasn't lockedin forever.
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So I went to grad school and Istudied my butt off.
It was definitely not an easyfeat.
I went through tears ofpre-licensure, also not easy.
Getting paid dismal rates fordoing a lot of emotional labor,
which that could be a wholenother conversation of people's
value of emotional labor.
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But we're not going to get intothat today.
So I made a little prelude for afuture set.
I've had a future session.
Look, I'm still talking like atherapist.
Future recordings.
But yeah, I became a therapistand I did that.
For a long time, just being atherapist, like the daily grind
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of seeing clients, doingdocumentation, doing case
consultation, etc., etc.
So I graduated in 2013, and Iprimarily was only doing therapy
work for the first six years ofmy career.
I saw clients, traded every hourthat I worked.
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So every client I saw was money.
Every case I took on was myincome.
I worked at several differenttreatment centers in my time,
all from substance abuse tocrisis stabilization to doing
in-home therapy with familiesand children, all very different
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settings and taught me a lot inmy first six years.
But when I got to 2019 and I waskind of sitting there thinking,
gosh, I am really lonely andburnt out from doing this.
What can I do to help me feelre-inspired about being a
therapist or potentially pivot?
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And that was a reallyinteresting moment in my life.
career because I was so, so, so,so, so, so burnt out from doing
work at a crisis stabilizationunit.
The emotional labor of workingwith people who are chronically
in crisis or potentially just inthat moment are in crisis, but
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you're working with people incrisis every single day is very
taxing work.
And the environment that I wasin, unfortunately, also wasn't
very suited for employee slashclinician wellness.
And so I decided to make achange and leap into private
practice full time, which isactually closer to 2018 that I
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went to private practice fulltime.
And then I did that for about ayear.
And then I took a dive andstarted a group practice in
2019.
And I hired my first handful oftherapists and got a taste of
what it was like to manage abusiness in a very, very small
scale.
There were contractors workingfor me, but it did give me a
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little bit more community.
It did give me a little bit morefinancial freedom.
And it was nice to take on thisnew role and because going back
to the conversation that Imentioned, I really hated the
idea of only having one role orone career for the rest of my
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working life.
So this allowed me to put on adifferent hat of an employer.
And then in 2020, I reallystarted thinking in the The
pandemic really changed theworld about how I wanted to grow
my business and change things.
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So in early 2020, so January1st, I moved to a W-2 model and
was truly now an employer,having more quote-unquote
control over what was happeningwith the documentation, with the
types of client care.
Really setting in boundariesthat maybe I didn't have the
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ability to do when people werecontractors.
Really just shifted my wholeperspective.
And I put on a different hat, itfelt like, from a contractor
employer to a W-2 employer.
And I would say that since Istarted my group practice in
2019...
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The types of hats that I haveworn have just seemingly changed
every year.
I began taking on supervisees inlate 2020, became a clinical
supervisor, which was a new hatand a new role.
In 2022, my practice continuedto grow.
I was managing more and morepeople.
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In 2023, I developed aleadership team.
So I moved away from having alot of direct interactions with
all of my therapists and wearingall of the hats to delegating
and assigning other people rolessuch as outreach coordinator or
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compliance officer, marketingcoordinator, et cetera.
And then in late 2023, I becamea mom, which was a new role to
now balance amongst everythingelse.
And yeah, that was aninteresting journey.
I've already talked about that.
But then I decided when I cameback from maternity leave and
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had a little bit of more footingunderneath me, I was going to
reinvest in one of my truepassions, which is storytelling
and journalism and interviewing,which had been things that I had
considered doing previous tobecoming a therapist.
And yeah, I started a podcast.
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I did a workbook, startedwriting a longer work than I'm
excited about.
So I think I'm telling a storyto remind you that you can
redefine what your career is,who you want to be as a working
person at a lot of differentintervals in your life.
It may feel like you don't havethe space or the time to do
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that, but if it is somethingthat's truly calling for you to
do, I encourage you to figureout how you can do that because
it's so rewarding to dosomething that you really care
about every day.
rather than feeling like you'rejust treating your time for
money.
I realize that a lot of peopledo work in that way and that is
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satisfying to them and that'senough for them.
But as someone like myself whoreally wants to feel passionate
about what they're doing everyday, I say go for it because you
are only...
getting trapped in your ownlimiting beliefs when it comes
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to your ability to transition.
Sure, you might have financialthings that are restricting you,
or you might have a relationshipthat's restricting you, but
there probably is someflexibility that you're not
initially seeing.
There's probably some movementthat you can take towards your
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ultimate goal.
Even if it's taking a few hoursevery week to of your free time
potentially to start amanuscript or maybe dedicate two
hours a month to recording apodcast.
Or maybe it's you decided totake up Spanish because you
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really want to travel and be atranslator.
You know, I think it's all aboutwhat is your passion and how can
you fit it in.
Maybe something that reallyexcites you can become your
career.
Or maybe it's just a a hobbythat you decide to do to balance
out your nine to five that maybedoesn't bring you passion.
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But I think it's all about howcan you fill up your cup rather
than just empty it every day.
And if you can do that and getpaid to do it, why not?
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm just really passionate, Iguess, about this idea that you
don't have to wear any hatforever.
You can take any hat off at anypoint.
You can change your role at anypoint.
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You don't have to be stuck.
You can redefine who you are andwhere you want to go and what
you want to do.
I think I always also in thisconversation go back to this
quote that I read at thebeginning of grad school because
I was really getting intoBuddhism and yoga and all sorts
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of more things.
Eastern philosophies in thattime.
And Gandhi, of course, I'm sureeveryone knows who that is, has
this very famous quote of be thechange you want to see in the
world.
And that's really been myguiding principle when it comes
to what work lights me up, whatthings really excite me.
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I oftentimes can see this worldas a place that maybe doesn't
have a space for everybody in itor doesn't want to make space
for everybody in it.
Which is devastating for someonelike me, who's more of a highly
sensitive person.
There needs to be space foreverybody in the world.
There needs to be love foreveryone exactly as they are.
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And so I live my life by thatmotto of be the change I want to
see in the world and encouragepeople to find the light in dark
corners.
And if you really have a passionfor doing 3D printing because
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you want people to have accessto something that you can make
doing 3D printing, do that.
Be that change.
Give yourself the space to bethe change in the world that you
want to see.
Because there is space foreveryone, despite potentially
what society might tell ussometimes.
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Diversity and inclusion arereally important to me and
hopefully to you.
listener, because I think if youlean with a mind that has
diversity and inclusion in it,you can see yourself as a
diverse person and you can seeyourself as a person that needs
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to be included in theconversation and be included in
all areas of life and live yourlife in a way that allows you to
be flexible and move towardsyour goals and move towards
what's going to fill your cupand make you feel like you don't
have to stay stuck because youdon't need to.
All right.
(15:41):
Well, that was my story fortoday.
Hopefully that was helpful ormaybe you have more questions
about the topic that I talkedabout today or you want to
connect over the topic that Italked about today.
Really encourage you to respondby reaching out via email or
maybe leave something in thecomments.
I'd love to connect with thecommunity more.
(16:03):
So thank you so much forlistening.
Thank you for tuning in toRedefining Us once again and
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If you follow us or subscribe orleave a comment or review,
(16:24):
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just for me to get somefeedback.
What do you guys want to hear mesay?
What do you women care abouthearing?
I'm totally open to Thank you somuch for joining us.
(17:06):
So you can be in the know withall the things that are
happening in the Redefining Uscommunity.
Once again, thank you so muchfor listening and keep being
awesome.