Why So Many Counsellors Feel Behind (And What Imposter Syndrome Has To Do With It)

Transcript of episode 253: Who Decided You Were Behind? (And Why So Many Counsellors Feel That Way)
If you prefer to read or want to skim through what I've talked about, here’s the full transcript below.

Do you ever find yourself thinking, "I should have my website sorted by now," or, "I should be posting more on social media," or, "I should have more clients than this," or, "I should know what I'm doing by now"? If so, look, you are definitely not alone. The more counsellors I speak to, the more I realise that many of them aren't actually struggling with marketing.

That's not the real thing. What they're actually struggling with is the weight of expectation, because underneath many of those shoulds sits a much bigger fear: I should be further ahead by now, and that's what I'd like to explore in today's podcast

Hi, I'm Jane Travis, and welcome to the Grow Your Private Practice show, where I share honest, practical advice to help you grow a successful counselling business without burning out.

So whether you're here for mindset support, business tips, or just a gentle nudge in the right direction, you are in the right place

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back. And if this is your first time here, it's brilliant that you found us. I hope you're having a good day so far. Okay, so when I was still working as a counsellor, there were certain words that always made me curious and one of them was guilt. So clients would often talk about feeling guilty for things that just weren't their fault or where they hadn't actually done anything wrong.

So that always made a little red flag come up in my head. And another one was should. So it might be that a client would tell me that they, they should visit their mum more, or they should be happier than they are, or they shouldn't feel angry, or they should know what they want from life, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I'm sure that you hear a lot of this as well. And every time I used to hear that word, I found myself wanting to kind of slow down the conversation and have a little chat about it because the word should often seemed to be carrying something much bigger underneath it. So I'd usually ask something like, you know, "Who, who says you should?"

And that's when things got interesting. Sometimes the answer was obvious, so it could be like, oh, well it's a parent or a partner or society even, or a teacher or a boss or something like that. But often people didn't know, you know, "What, who says you should?" "I don't really know." So the rule could have been there for so long that it simply felt like it was true and they'd stopped seeing it as an option or an expectation and started to see it as a fact written in concrete. And that's the thing about shoulds. We can kind of collect them over time. You know, somebody might tell us what a good person does. Somebody else tells us what success looks like, and we absorb these messages about what responsible people do, what confident people do, what happy people do, what successful people do, and eventually those ideas become part of the background noise of our lives, and it's so familiar that we stop questioning them altogether.

And I still notice it now in conversations with counsellors about marketing and private practice. And in fact, I think that private practice might be one of the easiest places for shoulds to multiply because a counsellor tells me they should be posting more on social media. Somebody else says they should have their website sorted by now.

Somebody else said they should be writing blogs every week. Bit of a note there, you don't have to write a blog a week. A blog a month is fine. and somebody else says, "Well, you should have a clearer niche. You should have more enquiries. You should know what you're doing." And every time I hear it, I find myself wondering the same thing.

You know, who says you should? And it's not because there's anything wrong with those ideas. You know, they're probably going to be quite genuinely useful, but there's a big difference between choosing to do something because it aligns with your goals and your values and doing something because you feel guilty if you don't.

And the more I think about it, the more I realise that many of the counsellors that I speak to, they're not actually struggling with marketing at all. What they're struggling with is the weight of expectation, Because underneath almost every should is a comparison. You know, "I should be posting on social media," often means, "I can see other counsellors posting on social media, and it feels like I'm falling behind." "I should be making videos," can sometimes mean, "Other people seem confident enough to make videos, and I wonder if I'm missing out."

"I should have more clients by now," can sometimes mean, you know, "I thought I'd be further ahead than this." And I think that that is where the real ache sits, that real f- painful feeling. You know, it's not in the website. It's not in the blog. It's not in the fact that you haven't quite got your Google Business Profile sorted, even though it's been on your list so long, it might have its, might have its own pension plan now.

But the real ache is often this really subtle, heavy feeling of, "I should be further ahead by now." But further ahead than who? You know, further ahead than the counsellor down the road maybe? Further ahead than the person you trained with, who seems to have a full practice and is thriving? Or further ahead than the confident business owner that you imagined that you would become once you first started in private practice?

Because that imaginary version of you can become a very harsh person to be measured against. Because in your head, perhaps there's a version of you that is skilled and capable and, I don't know, successful and confident, and they know what they're doing. You know, they don't second-guess themselves. They write blogs consistently.

They update their website. They respond to inquiries with ease. You know, they never have a small wobble in the kitchen while wondering if actually they should, you know, retrain as, I don't know, a florist or something. And without realising it, you may be comparing your actual human, you know, tired, trying your best self with that imaginary version of you, the one that you imagined that you'd be as a therapist running a business.

And if that's the case, well, there's no wonder f- that you feel behind, because you're trying to keep up with someone who just doesn't exist. Now, I think many, many, many, many business owners do this. It's not just counsellors. We imagine there's gonna be a point when we finally become the person who feels like a proper business owner.

You know, the one who is confident all the time, the one who makes decisions without fear, the one who always knows what the next right step is going to be. But in my experience, that just isn't how business works. You know, you don't tend to wake up one morning and feel permanently sorted. You become a more experienced version of yourself.

You know, you learn things, you make mistakes, you recover from them, you try something, you try something again. It works a bit, then something changes and you need to adapt again. That's what it tends to look like. Confidence doesn't arrive as a shiny certificate that says, "Congratulations, you can stop doubting yourself now."

If, if only. But it grows through action, through evidence, through repetition, and even then it still has days off. Now, Like I say, I've been helping counsellors with their marketing for over a decade now, and I've looked at hundreds of counsellors' websites. I've spoken to counsellors at every stage of their private practice, and I've had countless conversations about visibility and confidence and getting found by the right clients, and I've noticed something.

The counsellors who are struggling the most often aren't the least skilled. In fact, quite often they're some of the most thoughtful, capable, and reflective people I meet. They just can't see themselves as clearly as other people can, And this is one of the reasons I can feel so frustrated sometimes. I mean, in the most caring way, of course. 'Cause when I see brilliant counsellors that dismiss themselves, and I can see how much they've already done, I can see the care and the skill and the courage and the persistence, and I can see the clients that they've helped and the conversations that they've had and the training that they've completed and all the steps they've taken when they're scared.

I can see all of this, but they can't. Can you? Can you see this? So they, or maybe you, are so busy looking at the gap between where they are and where they think they should be that they miss the ground they've already covered, and that's the danger of believing that you're behind. It doesn't just make you feel bad, it changes what you notice. You stop noticing the blog that you did write because you were so busy focusing on the three that you haven't written yet, and you stop noticing the inquiry that you handled really well because you're focused on the fact that you need inquiries.

Maybe you've stopped noticing that your website is clearer than it used to be because you're so focused on the fact that it still needs a bit more work. So every achievement can get swallowed by this next expectation, and the problem with feeling behind is that it turns every achievement into evidence that you should have done more.

You get your website live and you immediately think, "I should be blogging." You write a blog and you think to yourself, "I should be doing this every week." And no, you shouldn't. Monthly is absolutely fine. Or maybe you start posting on social media and think, "Well, I should be making videos." Or maybe you start getting more inquiries and you start thinking, "Well, I need more of the people that contact me to actually book and make an appointment."

So the finish line just keeps on moving, and if the finish line keeps moving, you never get to arrive. Because if a s- Let's just think about this for a moment. If a client came to you and they sat in front of you and they said something like, "Do you know? I've been making progress, but I should be much further along than I am," would you agree with them?

No, of course you wouldn't. You'd probably help them notice what they're overlooking. So you might help them question the rule that's hidden inside that word should. So you might help them to see that progress is often more subtle, more messy, and less dramatic than we think or than we expect even. But that doesn't mean it's not real.

Yet when it comes to your own private practice, you might offer yourself a much harsher deal, and this is where fear and imposter syndrome can be so sneaky. You know, they don't always arrive shouting. Sometimes they simply start editing the evidence that you have. So they'll highlight every unfinished task that you've got going on.

They'll underline every comparison. They'll put a big circle around every moment where you just didn't know what to do, and they'll hide the evidence that says that you are learning, that you are growing, that you are helping, that you are trying, that you are doing better than you think. It's like the prosecution's turned up with a huge folder of evidence, and the defence has gone out for a sandwich.

So perhaps what you need isn't another rule to follow. Perhaps what you need is a better record of the reality. And one thing, one small thing that you can do that can really be helpful is write down one positive thing that you do each day. Could be more, but try to do one. You know, it doesn't have to be 10 things.

It doesn't have to be a full journal entry. It doesn't have to be like a forced performance of positivity. They're not good, are they? But just maybe one thing. Could be that you've replied to an inquiry. Could be that you've published a blog. Could be that you've maybe made a decision that you've been putting off.

Or maybe you've rested instead of pushing yourself into the ground. Or maybe you've noticed your imposter syndrome spiralling, and you've chosen not to make a massive business decision while fear was sitting in the driving seat because that counts. That's massive. And the point is to start building up this evidence, so when you're feeling like that, you can have a look at it.

You can read these things and go, "Hang on a minute. Yes, I am doing all right actually. Thank you very much." Because if you're anything like me, your brain often won't remember the positives. Mine certainly doesn't always behave like a reliable witness. So having a simple record can help you to look back and see a fuller picture of what's gone on, and it doesn't have to be a perfect picture, but something that's a bit more full and a bit more accurate.

And I really think that this matters because imposter syndrome often convinces you that how you feel today is the whole truth of what's going on. And I know this one personally. You know, like I say, I've been doing this for a long time now, but I still regularly go through phases where imposter syndrome turns up with, like, a little clipboard, and it starts conducting an extremely unhelpful performance review of how I'm, how I'm managing.

And there are times, trust me with this- there are times when I question every single thing that I'm doing. I wonder whether I know anything, and I have moments where I think, "Oh my God, I just can't do this anymore." And yes, I know it's a bit dramatic, but it's also a really convincing thing. I really do believe that my imposter syndrome is telling me the absolute truth.

But what I've learned is that these phases pass. Now, that doesn't mean that I enjoy them. You know, I don't sit there thinking, "Oh, brilliant, a growth opportunity." You know, I'm not that evolved. But I have learned to recognise the pattern, and I know that when I feel like that, it's usually not the moment for me to make big decisions about my business, and it's not the moment for me to just scrap everything or rewrite my whole website or decide I'm a fraud who should go and hide in bed with snacks, you know?

What really it means is that it's a moment for self-care, and when I say self-care, I mean really robust self-care. So it's a moment to rest, to step back, to be kind to myself, and remember that I've felt this before many times. And I know that if I sit with this, if I look after myself, and if I don't treat all of these fearful ideas and thoughts as fact, then this feeling will change on its own.

And one day, I wake up and it's like there's a rainbow over the bed and my energy comes back, and I start getting all of my ideas again, and my confidence comes back. And it's not because I've become a different person overnight, but it's c- it's because that fog has lifted. Does that sound like something that happens to you?

And when that happens, I realise that that phase is thankfully over until the next time. And I think that that's an important distinction, because the goal isn't to become a business owner who never doubts themselves. The goal is to stop treating doubt as evidence that you're failing. That's the most important here. So the next time you hear yourself say, "I should be further ahead by now," perhaps don't just rush past that.

Maybe stop and think to yourself, "Well, that's interesting." And ask yourself, who says so? Further ahead than who? And what version of yourself are you comparing yourself with? What evidence are you ignoring? And who was it that decided that the business you're building now in real life with all its human mess and courage and effort, who decided that that doesn't really count? Because perhaps the question isn't how do I catch up? Perhaps the better question is who decided I was behind in the first place?

So if this resonated with you, I'd encourage you to explore the idea of creating something that keeps this documentary evidence for yourself. Keeping a simple record of your progress can be surprisingly powerful when imposter syndrome starts to rewrite the story, and I've written a blog about this.

I'll share it in the show notes. It's called From Self-Doubt to Self-Confidence: Eight Strategies for Therapists to Overcome Self-Doubt, to Overcome Imposter Syndrome. And that has lots of ways to help you to just overcome imposter syndrome. And if you'd like more practical ethical marketing support for your practice, maybe check out The Vault, which is my free library of resources for counsellors. Because remember, sometimes the most important thing isn't about learning more, sometimes it's recognising how much you already know Now, look, I know that there are thousands of podcasts that you could be listening to, so the fact that you've chosen to spend part of your day with me really does mean a lot.

Now, if you've found this podcast helpful and you'd like to support it, well, I've recently set up a Buy Me A Coffee page. It's completely optional, but if you'd like to make a contribution towards the running of the show, perhaps fund the occasional cappuccino while I'm planning future episodes, you'll find a link in the show notes.

So whether you buy me a coffee or not, really thank you so much for being here. And I just want to say keep going. Keep taking those small steps, and remember you don't have to have it all figured out before you take action. So take care and I'll see you next time. Bye.