Self Value Comes First
Discussing
our shares with the other members after a recent meeting gave me an answer that
might have saved my career as a family therapist more than fifteen years ago. I
had done coursework, training and supervision, obtained licensure, and had
worked in a number of agencies. I seemed effective working with clients and had
some quite notable successes. But I had not been successful working in the
agencies. Indeed, those failures were what led me into CoDA.
In
the meantime, my only alternative was private practice. So, I rented and
furnished an office and put my name out as available for appointments. But I
was uncomfortable charging for my work. Insurance was only beginning to pay for
talk therapy at that time, so it had to be cash or check. And given my still
weak self-esteem, I imposed on myself the expectation of impossible standards
of success before I could justify charging the fee I needed to continue
operating. I couldn’t manage it and soon gave up the effort.
As
an interesting aside, my CoDA meetings contributed to that decision. I had been
attracted to doing therapy because clients often brought a striving for honesty
to the sessions. And I experienced that nowhere else …. until I attended CoDA
meetings. There, I found that same honesty multiplied manyfold, week after
week. So that reason for doing therapy was gone as well.
Through
many years of CoDA meetings, I came to gain self-esteem. This after-meeting
discussion happened to be about the issue that had defeated my private
practice, what to tell people about the fee. And finally, I realized the
solution I needed to know way back then … I needed, first of all, to say what
my time was worth and if I could afford it, be open to negotiation. If I had
been able to think that way years ago, my life would have gone in a different
direction.
But
the direction it did go in has been very good for me, thanks to CoDA. And I can
occasionally share with others, in side conversations and elsewhere, the gifts
and skills learned back then. Less than perfect can still be sufficient.
JB
- 2/1/22
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