The Modern Therapist's Survival Guide with Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy

In it for the Money?

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Curt and Katie talk about money. We look at the financial needs of therapists, the perspective of clients and the public that we charge too much OR that we should not want money; the common martyrdom expectation that can negatively impact therapists and the profession.       

It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

In this episode we talk about:

  • Controversy about therapists wanting money
  • What is expected of therapists - martyrdom and a vow of poverty?
  • Financial stability and needs of therapists
  • The consumer perspective – am I just a paycheck? Or do you really want to help me?
  • The importance of your WHY
  • The perspective of the profession based on how much money is charged by most professionals
  • Providing a social/relational service for money - Are we “emotional prostitutes?”
  • The difficulty in assigning monetary value on what we do
  • The goodness of our hearts and the sympathetic plea of our clients
  • The difficulty in demonstrating and describing the value of therapy
  • The challenge of fee setting in private practice
  • The dynamics of insurance or social service programs impacting the clinical relationship
  • The common questions – Am I just a paycheck? Am I important enough to help?
  • The danger of therapy becoming transactional, especially when you’re burned out and under compensated
  • Therapist perspective on making money, especially given the lower paid and unpaid work at the beginning of the career
  • How the profession’s current set up impacts therapists’ ability to make money
  • Comparison to other similar professions (like doctors) – both in their training and career trajectory, looking at why they end up making more
  • The sliding scale problem - Are we rescuing our clients?
  • The shame of having financial needs
  • Self-worth being conflated with fee-setting
  • Exercise of thinking/feeling into your fee vs practical fee setting based on financial needs
  • The need for therapists to figure this out, so they can become more comfortable with making sufficient money to sustain their careers!
    • ...more
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    The Modern Therapist's Survival Guide with Curt Widhalm and Katie VernoyBy Curt Widhalm, LMFT and Katie Vernoy, LMFT
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