Healers Get Vulnerable

When you engage in your own healing, how does your work change?

Today I'm talking to Judy Hu.

They've created a group process to alchemize generational trauma, and in this episode she talks all about her own path to healing and finding this way of working.

They also guide me through an unexpected and powerful process during the interview.

Judy Hu is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor turned Boundary Coach based in Massachusetts. Judy is the author of bestselling book, The Boundary Revolution: Decolonize Your Relationships and Discover a New Path to Joy, which documents the framework Judy developed to guide her clients through their boundary healing.

They're also a Rebel Therapist grad.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Transitioning from therapist to boundary coach
• Developing a group process to alchemize ancestral trauma
• Bringing playfulness and creativity to their groups
• How a ketamine journey influenced her path
• Her big life changes and healing
• Collective healing and group dynamics
• Decolonizing our work
• Why the way Judy works now does not cause them to burn out

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/244

Before I share the replay of this open coaching call I want to tell you…

Wednesday, April 2nd is the last day to sign up for Create Your Program in 2025.

Do you have a sense of what having your own course or program could do for your career?

If you've been sitting on an idea for a while, I want to invite you to create your program with me.

This is the process where you take your incredible strengths as a therapist or healer and you create a signature program so that you can serve more people, make more money, and get your best ideas out of your head and into a unique container you'll be able to offer over and over.

We go through an 11 week process together step by step so that you are actually launching your program during our time together with my support.

I ran a free and open coaching call recently for everyone in our audience, including clients and listeners.

We had such great questions that I decided to share the recording with you.

Here are some of the questions I answered and expanded on:

• Can I create my first program with minimal tech?
• How can I carve out time to work on my program when I've got a full private practice?
• I have a few ideas for programs. How can I choose one?
• Is it best to wait to do CYP until I have a fully formed program idea, or do plenty of people figure it out along the way?
• How do you support therapists like me who are constantly taking courses and never creating?
• How far in advance of my course should I start promoting it?
• I sometimes think "I have no good ideas." How do I get past this and tap into an offer I feel clear and confident about?
• How do you support therapists in being visible. I'm worried how my therapy clients might react if I share more of my personal story in a newsletter.
• With the economy quickly changing, how do we factor that in as we choose which program to create?

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/243

Got shame? When shame shows up, it's overwhelming and contagious. My guest has created a process to help therapists transform shame with their clients.

You're about to hear how she created her program, how her process works, and how she transformed her own shame in the process of building her business.

Tatra De La Rosa is a therapist and educator with a private practice in Northern California where she provides supervision and training to associate therapists, and teaches graduate students on the path to becoming therapists. She's been working with clients in her private practice to heal shame at its source and is passionate about teaching other therapists how they can learn to do so as well.

She's also a recent grad of Create Your Program.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Why we get frustrated when we work with shame protectors
• How shame gets activated in the therapist, a.k.a. "I'm a terrible therapist!" or imposter syndrome
• Why shame is actually a misunderstanding
• The and modules of her program and how she teaches it
• Using a recorded session of her work as well as live group coaching to teach participants the method
• How she filled her pilot program

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/242

Sometimes you have to unexpectedly step away from your business.

When you return, it's really helpful to have a program you've created that you can dive back into.

Having your own program separate from your private practice gives you a way to serve people and make money from anywhere, and you don't lose that branch of your business, even if you move to a different part of the world.

That's the story of this week's guest.

Kate Ahl is a therapist and coach with over 20 years' experience of working with writers, researchers and academics, in the UK and the US. For many years she was an in-house therapist for faculty and staff at Cambridge University and in her private practice she continues to serve people who live by their brains, struggling with perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and creative block.

She's also a grad of Create Your Program and Rebel Therapist Marketing Intensive.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Helping people with restless, problem solving minds
• The challenges and fun parts of working with extremely brainy humans
• Diving back into her program after months away because of life issues AND a transatlantic move
• Her feeling of relief that her program was ready for her to pick up and run again
• Returning to the container and structure she learned in Rebel Therapist programs so she could stay out of overwhelm in her business
• Dripping curriculum out little by little so that participants don't get overwhelmed
• Offering asynchronous as well as live coaching during her program
• How she's marketing her program using content and guesting on podcasts

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/241

Pivoting to work beyond private practice usually means getting more visible. And getting more visible can bring up a lot of vulnerability for people, especially people who are therapists.

Today's guest is putting himself out there in new ways, and finding that while he grows his audience, he also finds there's a way it is contributing to his own healing.

Jose Aleman is a therapist-turned-coach with over 20 years of experience. As the creator of Loving Your Awkward Self, Jose offers confidence-boosting content tailored to queer, first-generation, and BIPOC individuals, while welcoming all. Passionate about authenticity and safe spaces, Jose is dedicated to helping people embrace their true selves and grow.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Creating "Loving Your Awkward Self" Reels as a resource to reach people in an accessible way AND to work on his own healing by being seen
• Working with people who tend to shut down emotionally, particularly BIPoC, first gen and queer folks
• Creating a group for queer, BIPoC men about increasing confidence
• Jose's step-by-step posting process
• Annie's advice about repurposing content
• Honing the skill of grabbing people's attention quickly (a necessity for social media)
• How he chooses his topics for posts
• Annie's suggestions for growing his audience

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/240

Here's a really cool idea: create a program that helps your write your book.

When you create a program you get to take your best ideas, turn them into a clear process, AND help a group of people in real time. You get feedback and make adjustments along the way so that your process gets even better.

Then you write your book knowing that you're writing something that really helps people.

Both your program and your book allow you to help more people and get known for your work.

That's what today's guest, Dr. Christen Mullane has been up to.

She's a clinical psychologist and certified meditation teacher. She is the owner of Ginkgo Leaf Health Services, a psychotherapy practice aimed at providing services for those who have experienced medical stress and trauma. She offers a therapy program called RISE, which specifically focuses on trauma-informed mindfulness within this population.

She's also the author of Medical Stress & Trauma.

I'm proud to say that she's a grad of Create Your Program.

Here's some of what we talked about on this week's podcast episode:

• The process Christen went through to publish her workbook and create her group program
• How running her program is different from her therapy sessions
• How she brought a trauma informed lens to her program and her book
• Annie and Christen's young parts showing up when they get more visible
• How Christen finds safe spaces to get honest, actionable feedback
• The lightbulb moment when Christen realized she needed to work in a new way
• Finding the uniqueness of her message while giving credit to all of her sources
• How she got participants for her program through networking, list building and SEO

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/239

We're out of balance with how much of our brain energy we give to certain numbers.

Like when this happens in my brain:

"How many likes did I get for that post?"

A few minutes later…"How about now?"

Not useful.

I want the numbers I track and encourage my clients and listeners to track to be highly meaningful and helpful in making real business decisions.

I never want those numbers to make us feel bad or to help us assess our worthiness. Fuck that.

Useful numbers help us make decisions and pay attention to what we care about.

Less useful numbers stress us out and distract us from what matters to us.

Most people I know don't like to spend much time tracking or analyzing numbers in their businesses.

I, on the other hand, can tend to OVER track and analyze.

I sometimes like to cope with my anxiety by pretending I have some control. Tracking and analyzing numbers on spreadsheets can sometimes feel soothing.

But as a company of one, NOT a huge corporation, I don't have time or energy to track every single number in my business.

Using my intuition AND useful numbers helps me resist some of the most damaging traps we tend to fall into when making decisions.

Useful numbers help me resist things like recency bias, confirmation bias, sunk cost fallacy, and shiny object syndrome.

In this week's podcast episode, I talk about the numbers I ALWAYS pay attention to, the numbers I pay attention to just during an experiment, and the numbers I try to ignore.

If you want to get my help creating your signature program beyond therapy sessions, head over to https://rebeltherapist.me/create. I'd love to support you.

People mentioned in this episode:

Podge Thomas https://smallbusinesscopilot.com/

Bari Tessler https://baritessler.com/

Thea Monyee https://theamonyee.com/

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/238

Today's guest is a grad of CYP. If you want this to be the year you finally launch your course or make a pivot to coaching, do what she did. Get my support in a step-by-step process to create and launch it. Head over to https://rebeltherapist.me/.

Don't know what your topic will be? No idea where to start? You'll be in good company. You do have a program in you.

As this is going live, you can still get into the cohort that's about to start. You'll be launching your course by a few months from now. If you're too late, get on the notification list for next time.

That's https://rebeltherapist.me/create

Now to today's conversation:

Dr. Jenn Kennedy is a clinical sexologist and licensed marriage and family therapist based in Santa Barbara. Dr. Jenn supports clients in the areas of relationships, sex, addiction and LGBT. In 2023, Dr. Jenn launched The Pleasure Project, which is dedicated to helping us all have a better sex life. Through this venture, Dr. Jenn hosts a podcast called Pleasure Project: Sex & Relationships and she offers small group intensives for women and couples. She is coming out with an asynchronous course in 2025. Dr. Jenn has been quoted in Redbook, Reader's Digest, Forbes Health, DailyOm, Shondaland, Parade, Allure, Yahoo!life and others. She is often tapped to discuss intimacy and sexuality for therapists and physicians.

And she's a grad of Create Your Program.

You're about to hear why she created a program called The Pleasure Circle, to help women who want to want sex more.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Creating a program for women 40 and over about desire
• Emotional barriers Dr. Jenn experienced in creating and sharing the program
• Getting feedback partway through and making adjustments each time
• How she handles sharing her personal stories (which she does more of in this program than in therapy).
• Being out as lesbian
• How she markets her program and brings in participants
• Annie coaches Dr. Jenn on a pain point around making sales calls

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/237

I met recently with a group of therapsits and healers who are getting ready to create high quality and life changing courses, workshops and programs.

Each of them has a beautiful and unique glimmer of what they will create and they've got so much love for the people they're creating for.

Each creator has great personal reasons for creating their offerings: preventing their own burnout, making money without more sessions, having an outlet for their creativity, and creating a body of work that can be shared beyond the privacy of therapy sessions.

I talked to them about how to get ready for this big project.

I shared what has worked for me and tons of other people accomplishing self-directed projects. When YOU are the boss of whether you do this thing or not, you need to set yourself up well!

I'm going to share that with you.

Whatever project you're getting ready for, this is good stuff.

And it is NOT about productivity as usual.

A project is something with a particular start and end point.

For example:

Creating and launching your course for the first time.

Launching a podcast.

Once you've launched your course once, you've completed that particular project.

Once you've launched the first episode of your podcast, you've completed that project.

We can each take on only one or two projects at a time, because we've got a lot of other things we're already busy with.

In this episode I talk about how to:

• Question productivity as usual, and and step into sovereignty instead
• Be the boss of your to do list rather than it's employee
• Make sovereign rather than default choices
• Identify something to quit so you can free up energy
• Identify something to do badly so you can free up energy
• Partner with your nervous system in this project
• Set aside blocks of time for your project

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/236

Join me for my annual free planning workshop: Plan Your Aligned Year.

December 10th 11 am to 12:30 pm PT

https://rebeltherapist.me/plan

I take therapists and healers through a process to create their own courses and programs. That's my whole job.

When I recently got inspired to create a program that's totally about healing and personal growth I took myself through my own process.

I want to share that experience with you as a case study.

In this episode, I share my process with you, both what steps I took and also what came up for me emotionally in that process.

I'm sharing this to make it easier for you to create and share YOUR program.

Estranged is a workshop for adults who are estranged or have disengaged from a parent or caregiver and who are working on building their most beautiful lives and relationships.

It's happening on Thursday, December 12th and Thursday, December 19th from 2 to 3:30 pm PT.

Learn about it here: https://rebeltherapist.me/estranged

I really could have used this workshop myself many times. I'm one of these people who is estranged from a parent.

I've also supported a ton of people through letting go of family members when I was a therapist for 20 years.

Too often the assumption is that whenever there is estrangement, the goal should be reconnection.

Spaces of mental health and personal growth often gets this wrong and do harm.

My strong belief is that we get to create the most beautiful and honest lives we are capable of. If a past relationship holds us back from that life, we have every right to let it go or to find the amount of distance that allows us to create that life.

I know that having distance from a parent can be an incredibly important part of healing. It has been for me and for so many people I've worked with.

I believe that every great program has a clear purpose.

The purpose of this workshop is to give folks who are estranged support in creating their most beautiful life and relationships.

I want participants to practice some tools that help with that process, and to hear from each other so they are reminded how NOT alone they are in their experience.

Here's some of what I talk about:

• Choosing the structure of the workshop
• Setting the price
• How I spread the word
• The mindset stuff that came up for me in creating this

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/235