I went into private practice with an exceptional colleague after 3 rubbish experiences for context. I’m a mental health therapist.
- My first job out of grad school was community mental health. Seriously underpaid, yelled at for mistakes, once was asked to go march with the company for the pride parade because “you’re…. You know. Gay right?”
Had my curriculums I designed for groups stolen, forced to do trainings we didn’t need to, never allowed to do trainings I did, taught to treat people like numbers to rack up for making so many billable hours. Once got trained on working with a serious case but not informed of the fact this human tends to throw actual human feces at people(I had to duck a few times) Only thing I can say is, my direct managers always were looking for ways to make it work. My team lead made me
Get fired instead of quitting and classified my firing as a certain type of termination to get me unemployment. Homie also made them give me severance and just gives the glowingest reviews.
- A better position… ish came after about a year. I took on two jobs. This clinic is basically like “we contract you to see people and help
You build a business.” Pay money for a business license, im like their 4th person they bring on. Then two months in they inform me that money I spent on a business license was useless as they had to hire me as a w2 employee. I swallow it and just ask them to pay the license fee back. They don’t.
They start to suck, I left the other job. I try to give them more time, don’t get new clients, get absolutely DRESSED down verbally by both owners for not telling them I’m taking unemployment and for having the audacity to apply for it in the first place. They offer stipends for tech during pandemic, they belittle me for wanting to use mine on headphones that enable me to hear better. They subtley insinuate I’m just trying to get “nice gaming headphones.”
So I quit again!!
- Another small team, basically a medical provider who wanted mental health on hand, then just NEVER stopped to learn how our field work and how to make our teams work together well.
February he tells us he’s NOT firing us.
March he tells me he’s firing me and the person who would go onto be my business partner.
We start a practice and boy has it been better.
While the capitalist hellparty(autocorrects doing. Keeping it) is still raging, running my own shop is THOUSANDS of times more rewarding.
Here are things I’ve learned
- I get the freedom to see people who can’t afford help and say “fuck it, pay it whenever”
AND PEOPLE DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THAT. I see enough people that I can plenty often just swallow a session. A family with bad state insurance wasn’t having to pay and when they found out the bad state insurance wasn’t paying me, they offered to go to the shit free equivalent in the area. It’s weirdly enough job number one from earlier. People get weirded out sometimes if you take care of them. A seperate person has a high deductible so I said “we’ll bill your insurance to help you meet deductible. Then just pay us as little or as much as you can each month.”
She said it was the first time anyone had offered that.
- Others still feel like they are your boss even when they REALLY ARENT. Parents who are like “we don’t have good proof you billed us wrong, but we kinda feel like it. So you do the work of checking for us.”
- People don’t allow themselves prioritizing, like I so often get emails that are like “im sorry I didn’t handle this sooner” and I often have to think, “bro I forgot you existed till this email reminded me we needed to do this thing, thanks for taking it seriously though!”
- Fuck you I work the hours I want. Job 2 and 1 both had really annoying expectations about arbitrary Friday nights you have to have open or weekends you needed to ensure you were there. In particular, job 2 scheduled me out of my availability and played on the emotional heart strings of “you wouldn’t want to leave this person without care would you?” Running my own shop. If someone says “hey can see you see my kid late on a Friday at like 8pm, I get to say no.”
- If you take care of others, they will take care of you. It takes practice and involves allowing yourself to set the right boundaries, but the thing I’ve learned the most is that all you really have to do to have a stable foothold in this business is to be a good clinician, make sure that clients put some effort into compensating you fairly, and the rest will take care of itself.
My business partner and I are considering employees, second locations, expanding, interns, and these experiences. As well as this sub, have made me strong in my commitment to NEVER being a shit boss. IF I ever an email employer, I’ll never stop being vigilant to not be any of the assholes I’ve experienced or y’all have experienced.
Thanks y’all!