If you're a therapist seeking to find your therapy niche and make a greater impact, today's podcast episode is for you! I invited April Snow, a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in working with highly sensitive people (HSPs), to share her personal journey of becoming a therapist and the challenges she’s encountered along the way. April shares how she broke the good therapist rules by choosing a therapy niche very early in her career, went directly into private therapy practice, and faced pushback from therapists she didn't even know.

We discuss what inspired April to choose her therapy niche as a pre-licensed therapist, the various benefits of niching down in therapy, how to overcome the fear of "leaving people out" when you decide to niche down, and practical tips on finding a therapy niche that aligns with your personal experiences and passions, rather than solely focusing on what is currently popular or in demand.

More about April Snow:

April Snow, LMFT is a licensed psychotherapist, author, and consultant in California. She specializes in working with highly sensitive introverts and therapists to help calm the storm of overwhelm, anxiety, and self-doubt to allow their innate sensitive strengths to shine through. Deeply committed to changing the narrative of what it means to be highly sensitive, April has created and led HSP workshops all over the country as well as online through her Sensitive School. In addition to Find Your Strength: A Workbook for the Highly Sensitive Person, she has written the Mindfulness Workbook for Stress Relief and The Empowered Highly Sensitive Person's Self-Care Journal.

Topics covered on Choosing a Therapy Niche:

• April explains what it means to be an HSP (highly sensitive person).
• The gifts and challenges associated with being an HSP.
• April's personal journey of discovering her own HSP traits during grad school and her passion for working with HSP therapy clients.
• April's decision to focus on HSP clients and challenges she faced due to deciding on a therapy niche early in her career.
• How to create your path as a therapist, avoid burnout, and allow space for building therapy practices based on what you want
• What services you can offer as a therapist before you are licensed 
• Traits to look for in your supervisor if you don't want to follow the traditional therapy model.
• The common misperception about therapy niching
• Different benefits of choosing a specific therapy niche
• Tips on deciding what should be your therapy niche

Connect with Felicia:

• Instagram: @the_bad_therapist
• Website: www.thebadtherapist.coach
• Membership: Liberated Business
• Facebook group: Healing Money

Connect with April:

• Website: www.aprilsnowconsulting.com 
• Instagram: @sensitivestrengths
• Free Sensitive Self-Care Workshop
• Find Your Strength: A Workbook for the Highly Sensitive Person

Resources from this episode:

• The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You by Elaine N. Aron 
• Ep 4 How to Pick a Therapy Niche That Makes You Happy

Quote:

“There's so many different ways to be a therapist. We don't have to repeat the same hardships that previous generations of therapists have gone through.” - April Snow