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Creating a Therapy Practice
In order to create something, whether it’s a home, a relationship, a work of art or a therapy practice, there is a process of creation. This process brings us through a number of steps from original conception to realisation. There are many ways to describe these steps, and I’m sure you’ll have your own version. I put them like this:
• Inspiration: We are inspired to start something, for example, a therapy practice. Fresh from the training process, we are full of enthusiasm for our newly acquired skills, and eager to bring them to the aid of those in need. What better way to do this than through our own practice, where we can shape what and how we offer our services in a way that suits us.
• Visualisation: We begin to imagine what our own practice might look like. We have seen how others have done it, and we know what we like and don’t like. We begin to imagine the location we’d like, the clients we’d like, and how our life will be when all our visions turn to reality.
• Intention: As the picture of our future practice starts to clarify, we start to talk about our plan, and our goal and we start to make decisions. We make many small choices, about our location, our name, the colours of our logo, and each of these decisions bring us a little closer to the reality that will be our practice.
• Desire: As we move towards making our creation a reality, we feel our desire grow. We give our hearts to our creation, as a parent gives to their child, willingly and generously.
• Action: We take the actions we need to take to bring us closer to our goal, to make our vision a reality.
• Interaction (connections and relationships): We interact with the people we need to interact with, such as potential clients, referrers of clients, and providers of services. We begin to build relationships that will help us to achieve what we want to achieve.
• Manifestation: Each of the above will ultimately help us to bring into reality the practice which began as a thought or an idea.
I’ve set these out in a neat order, but of course, in practice it rarely unfolds as easily or neatly as this. We loop around the process several times. As we begin to realise our ideas, those ideas can change. Experience teaches us what we like and what doesn’t work for us. We make mistakes, or change our minds. Sometimes we interrupt or halt the process, perhaps not consciously, but because some part of us is not ready to move forward.
• Inspiration: We can interrupt the inspiration with negative thoughts, by telling ourselves it’s not safe, or it’s not 
the right time, or that there are too many therapy practices out there already. We can tell ourselves our ideas are silly or stupid, or won’t work, or that we can’t have what we want.
• Visualisation: We can overwhelm ourselves at the visualisation stage by opening too many options, and making our ideas so big that they become unrealistic, and we can then discard them. We can distort our vision through the lens of past failures or disappointments, limiting and restricting what we might wish for.
• Goal: We can interrupt the process at the goal stage by refusing to choose between the available options, or by rejecting all the options because they’re not perfect, or because you’ll never achieve them.
• Desire: We can allow our past disappointments to close our hearts to our creation, and withhold the nourishment it needs to grow in the early stages. We can judge ourselves and our wishes, our desires or our ideas and tell ourselves we don’t deserve what we want.
• Action: We can refuse to take the action necessary, or procrastinate by telling our selves, it’s not safe, or not the right time, or the circumstances aren’t ideal. Or we limit or sabotage our action, ensuring that the process is effectively halted.
• Interaction (connections and relationships): We can hold back from making the connections that would support us in the early growth stages, by holding back from people who might be able to support us, whether they are potential client, referrers or service providers.
• Manifestation: In short, there are many ways in which we can interrupt the creative process at any stage before it becomes a reality, and so effectively slow or prevent things happening.
The creative process can be like a delicate plant. If we squash it or tread on the small green shoot too soon, we may never allow it to grow as we want. But without it, our practices will never get off the ground!
If you find yourself interrupting your creative process, or find it hard to be creative about the business aspects of your practice, maybe I can help. Contact me here now to book an appointment, or browse my services here.