Stop Therapist Burnout In Private Practice
Today we are going to show you our secrets to stopping therapist burnout before it destroys your life.
Therapist burnout can happen to anyone in the field and without taking precautions it can turn into serious physical and mental health concerns.
So what is therapist burnout?
Below, we used a collection of studies in the PMC, we have the link here if you would like to read the entire study.
Burnout is a little different from how most people expect it to feel. It tends to be a slide of one thing after another until you are completely burnt out from your job.
Once this happens most of the parts of your life are going to take a hard hit and you will likely not be feeling any joy from all aspects of your life.
Even if you seem to only slightly be feeling some of the signs of burnout you should take those seriously and start to treat the issues before it gets bigger than something you can handle.
The study clearly correlates working too much is a high cause of burnout. This chance gets raised even higher if you are a new therapist. So if you have been in the field for a long time your chances of burning out drop a good bit lower.
We found a fun test that measures your quality of life, take it, and see where you land on that scale. We have it linked here.
Therefore, if you do happen to be feeling some of the symptoms of therapist burnout we are going to try to help you with these tips.
1. Seek therapy for therapist burnout
Yes, you are still a human, and in tough times, like when you are feeling to be burnt out you need to seek professional help as well.
Teach good values by practicing them yourself. Just because you know everything there is about mental health doesn’t put you above the need for it.
That is like saying because you are a doctor you never have to go to the doctor… Absurd… right?
2. Raise your rates
If you are working a full schedule and you believe that has a lot to do with the way you are feeling then this is something you need to give some serious consideration.
Deciding to raise your rates is something that can allow you to work fewer hours and can seriously benefit your mental health. Your clients are going to then receive the best version of you that you can offer.
3. See lower needs clients
Try to keep some of these on your schedule so you get a break every week from the ones that emotionally drain you every session. Keeping a steady balance of high and low need clients eases a lot of the burden you feel from your clients.
4. Breaks are your friend
I mean vacations, breaks in between sessions and having weekends. These all give your mental health a moment to recharge from all the healing you are trying to offer.
Don’t feel the need to be available for your clients 24/7. You should be teaching them tools for when you are not around, and that is the perfect way to ensure that they are using them.
You are human just like them, and it’s toxic for anyone to work all the time.
5. Consider a change
Whether it be in the niche you have chosen or your career as a whole. Make sure this is something you that still brings you an intense amount of joy, and if it doesn’t change it.
We hope you found these tips helpful when you are feeling overwhelmed by your job or life in general.
Leave us comments with other techniques you may know about to help recover from burnout.
