00:00:03 Healing Through Private Practice
[00:00:03] Wendy Kendall: Hello, and welcome to season 2 of the inspiring psychologists podcast where we are breaking the mold of private practice. This season is focused on the topic of healing through private practice, and I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce this topic before we get into the episodes of the series to help you understand where I'm coming from in this series and why I would choose to focus on a topic like how our experience of private practice can also be a healing space for ourselves. We know that private practice can be challenging. Right? And so often we hear people talk about private practice because, and the challenges of private practice because, you know, we think that we're missing skills in terms of business, and, you know, we know that that can make private practice feel like a really destabilizing experience.
00:01:15 Challenges of Private Practice for Psychologists and Therapists
[00:01:15] Wendy Kendall: You know? Do we have the skills and competencies to do some of the basics? And I get that. You know? There are definitely things that we need to continue learning about running a private practice that are related to those business skills, that business know how.
[00:01:32] Wendy Kendall: But what I have experienced myself and what I've then witnessed many psychologists and therapists experience as well is that private practice can be one of the most emotionally confronting ways of working. And not just because of the kind of work that we do, not just because of the content of our work, but also, you know, fundamentally, when we think about private practice, what we end up realizing is the main person, if you like, getting in the way of success or whatever that success is for us is ourselves. You know, we are both the main enabler and and main kind of source of empowerment, but we're also the person that where, you know, we struggle with our own obstacles. And that in itself is very confronting and very frustrating and brings up lots of things. You know?
00:02:45 Healing and Growth in Private Practice
[00:02:45] Wendy Kendall: So I know that I went into private practice partly because I was getting away from toxic work experiences. And so private practice was a place for me to create an environment for myself so that I could start to feel safe, That I could balance my life. That I could live according to my values. And so you know I I kind of I imagined that it was probably just me who was doing that, you know, definitely 20 whatever years ago when I first started my private practice. I kind of felt alone in that, you know, I knew I wasn't going into business just because, I had some kind of amazing business idea, and it was got all going to be, you know, this this pure kind of course of of self actualization.
[00:03:46] Wendy Kendall: It was there to kind of fix some particular problems that I'd experienced in my work life. In order to kind of grow my practice, I know that I also then had to go on a big growth journey, and I think that continues. You know? I still find ways in which I'm healing from and overcoming past learning and past experiences. What took me a while to kind of recognize, though, was, when I started working with psychologists and therapists in private practice, and and because I worked with them over a long period of time, I think that's the other thing that kind of came into this mix.
[00:04:38] Wendy Kendall: You know, people come into our practice accelerator program for 10 months, and it's an extended period of time because initially, we started out at 6 months, and people were saying at 6 months, I'm not ready to leave. I I've still got so, much growing, and I still need this support to continue evolving. And so you could you could tell there was a deeper developmental and even healing process that was going on. And then, obviously, you know, people stay in our community long term. And so, you know, now we're coming up to people who are in the, Accelerator alumni community who've been there for 6 7 years.
[00:05:28] Wendy Kendall: And you continue to see how they are evolving and how they are growing and how they're uncovering aspects of their life and their learning and their own ways of seeing the world that have been, you know, that are kind of in IFS terminology, we would call them burdens. You know, they're still unpacking some of those burdens and letting go of some of those burdens and still kind of growing and evolving. So I realized that, the foundation of an inspiring practice is this healing process, this healing experience that we have when we create a place for ourselves in the world, when we come home to ourselves, create a sense of safety for ourselves, and create a place where we can continue to evolve, and we do that for ourselves as well as doing it for other people through our practices. So for me that's an ongoing journey. I think it comes back to also another aspect which is really important with something else that I've realized that, I think a lot of people don't talk about, which is that there is a fundamental difference between having a practice and having a business.
00:06:52 The Difference Between a Business Model and a Practice
[00:06:52] Wendy Kendall: A lot of our business models, a lot of business thinking, a lot of business learning is based on the premise that a business is separate from yourself, that it is, and that is also a legal entity that you might sell in future. So a lot of, you know, business models are based on creating this this business as ultimately a kind of product that you can sell on. And if we contrast that with a practice, you know, when we really come back to what it means to be to have a practice, to be a practitioner of a of the profession of psychology or, psychotherapy, There's a lot more about the development of our identity, the development of a series of practices. Yes. There are aspects of our profession being a vocation even though we're earning our living through it.
[00:07:54] Wendy Kendall: But, also, many of us do not have a mind that at some point, this is an entity that will be separate from us that we will ultimately sell. And so our private practices are actually lifelong spaces that we create for ourselves. And I want us I want to really kind of reflect on and and bring home how much of a fundamental difference that is. We are, creating a practice that is also an expression of ourselves and our life journey. So, yeah, there's a deeper connection with how we show up in the world through a practice versus a business where some of the underpinning assumptions and models are that the business would be created as something that could then be sold separately.
00:08:51 Exploring the Intersections of Healing and Shame in Private Practice
[00:08:51] Wendy Kendall: I also wanted to pick up on this topic of healing through practice because I have a very, illuminating conversation that I had with another psychologist and it really comes down to this this idea that, you know my experience was that I was alone in this experience, that I was alone in healing through my private practice. And then I, you know, started to see that in my colleagues and the people that I was working with through our practice. And then I ended up having a conversation about this with an eminent clinical psychologist and, you know, describing what I was seeing and and kind of sharing that with them. And they said to me and I was kind of anticipating a degree of surprise or a degree of, like, oh, yeah. Like, illumination, that light coming on or something.
[00:09:58] Wendy Kendall: But their response was even more surprising. They said, yes. But that's what we don't talk about. And I I was like, okay. What do you mean by that?
[00:10:11] Wendy Kendall: We don't talk about it. And, you know, they said to me, well, you know, the fundamental underpinning of our practice as a psychologist is that we are meant to be the ones doing the healing. Like, we're delivering the healing to other people and that means that acknowledging publicly and speaking publicly about our experience of healing through this practice of psychology can actually be a sign of weakness. Something you should be kind of fixing and getting away from, you know, is it why why are we talking about this as integral to the practice of being a psychologist? And that some of the teaching around that includes, therefore, our experiencing our own healing through our practices as being something that is a source of shame.
[00:11:13] Wendy Kendall: Like, you know, there is a there is an element of shame that comes into the experience of being a wounded healer and uncovering layers of that as we then go through our practices and find things that we still need to heal in ourselves. So there is a kind of culture of not talking about this, and I can't be doing that. That shame flourishes in darkness. You know, we we when we experience something that we feel as though we can't talk about, that is itself a source of shame. So it felt really important to me because of all of these aspects to really open up a conversation about the multiple facets of ways in which private practice can be emotionally confronting, the ways in which it challenges us, the ways in which it exposes the things that, you know, the areas where we have been wounded, where we have picked up burdens, where we have developed or or embodied extreme kind of beliefs about ourselves or our profession or about the world.
00:12:51 The Evolution of Private Practice: Healing, Purpose, and Courageous Leadership
[00:12:51] Wendy Kendall: No. Private practice has a way of kind of exposing or bringing to the surface or surfacing that, I guess, because it it becomes a space where we can also grow and therefore, you know, the healing and the growth maybe aren't going in. You know, it's not that we have to heal first before we grow, but that they're, simultaneous kind of processes. What I also notice is that when we go through this kind of healing process through our private practice, and we really connect with those experiences that have led us to a place of being able to, you know, create safety for ourselves and then find those wounds, find those parts of ourselves that have felt exiled, exposed, shamed, etcetera, and we can do some of our own or we experience some of our own healing. This starts to feed into developing a sense of purpose through our practice that our practice itself becomes more purpose driven.
[00:14:07] Wendy Kendall: And then what I see that evolving towards and what I observe in so many of the people that we work with is that, it leads to courageous leadership on a topic. You know, one of our practitioners said to me recently that they had been kind of reviewing and kind of getting an impression of who were the people that we work with and, you know, how have their practices evolved over time. And they made this really astute observation which I just love because, you know, sometimes being so close to the work you do with people, you don't always, kind of see these or make these insights. But they said to me, you know, what I noticed about everybody that works with you is that they are practitioners who have a social mission, they're practitioners who want to see a change in the world, they're practitioners who have clarity on what differences they want to make and why they want to make those differences. And that just it made so much sense to me then.
[00:15:18] Wendy Kendall: I you know, I know that there is a progression somehow in between or from healing through our practice, developing purpose, and then moving into that more courageous leadership space. And, you know, we we kind of built that into the accelerator program. And what that means for me is that when it comes to the topic of breaking the mold of private practice, we're not just doing it for the sake of it. We're not just there to be, you know, people who rock the boat for the sake of creating chaos. What what's happening is through that process, we are coming into connection with what needs to change in this world.
[00:16:05] Wendy Kendall: And, you know, there's there's a of course, there's a diversity of views on what needs to change in the world, but it's coming from a from a place of being rooted in our values. So, you know, our own healing as psychologists as as psychologists in private practice is part of is a fundamental part of and a foundation for making a meaningful difference in the world. And I think that's a really important message to get out there because there are so many questions that are raised about our motivation for private practice. Whether we're motivated by profit, whether we're motivated by, you know, fame and social media likes and engagement. And, actually, what I see is that we're often very motivated by creating safety for ourselves, and then we become very motivated by the change we want to see in the world.
00:17:05 Private Practice as a Place of Empowerment and Change
[00:17:05] Wendy Kendall: And we do that from a place with of of safety within our practices that we've created for ourselves. So, you know, that to me is that to me means that private practice can be a very, empowering and powerful place to be as well. Ultimately, what this leads to for me is the the conclusion that private practice can be a way of embodying the change that we want to see. If we want to see a world where there's less conflict. If we want to see a world where there is more peace and contentment.
[00:17:49] Wendy Kendall: If we want to see a world where there is safety for others, safety for people, where people can thrive, where they can flourish, where they can live meaningful balanced lives, where they can live in connection with community, where they can have their needs met. All of those things are what we can build into our private practice for ourselves first and as a safe base for us then to support people and communities and organizations and society around us in also having some of that. So in this series we have lots of people coming together to describe their own healing journeys, and I think they're they're tremendously courageous conversations for us to have. These conversations are meant to be a starting point. I've not tried to create the perfect answer in each of these conversations.
[00:18:58] Wendy Kendall: I've tried to create a conversation that is authentic, that isn't scripted, that is people sharing their authentic experiences and beliefs, about us trying to come to an understanding or shared understanding with some of our common experiences as well as what's different. And so I would encourage you to kind of maybe think about what people are saying and reflect on that in yourself, you know, where do you see similarities? Where do you see differences? And you know I hope that this, series can be a source of conversation between a wider community, maybe a community that crosses other borders that breaks across more silos and kind of inspires more people to think about private practice as, you know, a place that has that that kind of deeper expression of values as opposed to private practice being the place where people go when they wanna make a bunch of money. So I look forward to getting into the conversations with you, and I will see you in episode 1.
