Isolation and Telemental Health Counseling
/Small business owners and individuals who work predominantly online - usually love all the perks and benefits that come with being a digital nomad, but what they might not be fully aware of or share about is how lonely they are during their workdays.
Digital work for most industries is “all” positives - we know this is not really true - but it sure feels like it when you talk to your friends who are in finance, marketing, etc. They get to engage when they want and turn their cameras off in meetings if they are not feeling up to it. They get to do their laundry during down time or while on a phone call, get to go for lunch with pals and talk about their work stresses and debrief before going back for the remainder of the day, etc.
But for mental health and wellness work the ethics and confidentiality dynamics get in the way of allowing us to do a lot of the above. Also the heavy stories and things we hear all day is really a recipe for burn out, isolation and loneliness. If left to its own devices - and if not met straight on with intentionality and self care it could be disastrous.
Because of the confidentiality mandates and HIPAA requirements that more mental health therapists and other wellness professionals abide by - if you are doing your work online from your home office - providers are typically only talking to their clients all day long. They sign off for the day and are not allowed to talk to their friends and loved ones about the specifics of their day and oftentimes just have to boil the intricacies of their day to “today was fine” - not allowing them to process and decompress.
UH! Talk about the real deal combo of isolation and disconnection and route to the land of burn out that so many healthcare professionals live in.
How to combat the isolation that comes with working solely or predominantly online with your mental wellness clientele:
Notice it and understand that it is part of the work you signed up to do
Now this doesn’t mean like you are destined to be miserable forever - but the awareness can assist in normalizing these struggles and also allow you to listen to and do something with them so they don’t take over and lead you to the land of burn out and hopelessness.
We know what this line of work requires and the information we are holding for our clients can be heavy at times - so this awareness will allow us to be intentional about the ways we structure our days and weeks to really create a plan that will work for you now and into the future.
Take breaks during your clinical days and engage with someone other then your clients
Be intentional about engaging with things other than clinical work throughout your day - can really make a difference in how our days work settles with us. Some days it may be a stranger at Kroger, others it may be a friend during your lunch break , or maybe a partner or roommate when they come home from their days happenings.
Remember that doing notes and connecting with our clients other providers is clinical work too - it is not just butt in seat session hours. So those of you who think that doing notes is a break - it is not! Get up and go for a walk around your building or office :)
So many of us come to private practice work from the agency/hospital productivity driven grind that we think we need to always be clinically engaged to be “working”. What a lot of mental health professionals don’t notice is that seeing 8 clients a day back to back is not the same as someone who is in 8 hrs of finance/marketing meetings back to back all day.
Think of it as every clinical session you have, is really two working hours. This may be because of notes, treatment planning, dealing with insurance or maybe just because the work we do it heavy and needs some built in decompression time around it. Having this mindset can assist in structuring your sessions in a way that allow for breaks and lessons the shame we feel around “not being booked all day long” or “working an 8 hour day”.
What this looks like in practice for me - setting my private pay rates accordingly so I can see 4 clients a day and 2-3 days a week and leave time to do marketing, expense tracking etc.
Join a like minded community
This may be centered around your clinical work - but also may be a community totally unrelated to mental health or wellness. Regardless - what we are aiming for is a supportive environment in which you can connect with others with similar interests and goals and do this with as little effort as possible (so it does not turn into another thing you committed too that you really don’t want to do). Goal is to add more to you and fill you up opposed to taking from and sucking your energy away.
Examples could be a book club, sports club, gym, spiritual group, general networking group like YPAL or maybe a specific community designed to support your business and clinical work like the b.mindful Louisville Community Membership plan.
Do extra curricular activities when you are off work
This ties a bit into the above - of getting around a community that supports you but with an added layer of - get some fun back in your life!
Not all that we do has to be work, family, or production focused. Maybe we just want to join a group that plays music together just for the fun of it. Think of this more as slowing down and seeing what you can add into your life that is FUN and not just another to do list item. Surely does not have to be group focused - can be individually done as well - but again - just focusing on the integration of FUN into our weeks is vital to staying in this field long term.
Going to the gym for some is fun - but for most of us it is something we “need” to do to stay sane, healthy, in good shape, etc. Not exactly something that is hitting the FUN buttons and filling us up all the time. So don’t try to spin something you already do into something fun - let yourself explore some new things or get back into doing the hobbies you did as a child.
Batch your clients or spread them out - figure out what works best for you
Give yourself the freedom to find a schedule that works best for you. Since you are doing your work online you do not have to factor a commute into the office - so maybe you start your work a little earlier then you work with office based clients or you see clients later. Allow yourself the permission to do what works for you.
I found it helpful to map it out on paper so I could visualize it before trying it out IRL. This helped me have more confidence in stating my availability to clients because I felt that I had intentionally and preventatively thought through a system and some of its implications.
I gave myself FULL permission to write down my IDEAL day to day schedule. This included not working Monday and Fridays so I could have an admin day and then a me day, raising my rates, seeing 3-4 clients a day 2-3 days a week, etc. Then I sorted through all the feelings I had around that schedule. Is that not enough hours? Should I have morning hours too? Are people really going to come if I dont have 5pm or after openings? Am I being selfish by not wanting to work Fridays? Maybe I should offer one more session each day…etc. Then I wrote down some non negotiables that needed to be added in because I do live in reality and not this ideal world I had written out where I have no child or responsibilities haha. Then I just kept tweaking and moving things around until I felt like this might just work for me.
Before I had a kid I worked early mornings, evenings and 3-4 days a week and that worked for me. Now that I have a kid and my life has shifted - I see less clients spread across 2-3 days and cannot see before 9am clients and don’t have a session scheduled past 4pm. I also figured out that it works for my brain and life better to batch my clients and see them back to back then to have an extended gap between same day clients. Where before I had a kid -I really hated back to back clients and would always schedule 30 or so minutes between each session. This works for me now - and it might not work for future me - so for now I will keep rolling with this with the permission to change it down the road if needed.
If you are a mental health or wellness provider in KY needing community and resources to assist you in growing your practice - you are in the right place! Check our our practice building blogs, resources and office rentals.