It started a long time ago…

When I was a little girl, I had a favourite dress. It was white and red and blue, and the fabric was crisp and smooth. I loved it. But little girls grow into bigger girls, and one day, my mother told me it was time to give my favourite dress to my younger (and smaller) sister. I was really cross about that, and my mother wasn’t too impressed with my reaction. She told me to grow up and stop crying about a dress that no longer fitted, and to be grateful that it meant I could have new dresses. So, I did the pragmatic thing, and put my feelings aside. But, I discovered this week, clearly I hadn’t forgotten it.

This last week, I was tapping with a colleague about jealousy, my jealousy, of something that someone else had that I wanted. Now, for most of my life I denied I had any jealous feelings at all, because as a child I learned that it was one of those seven deadly sins that takes you on a fast track to HELL!
Anyway, my colleague asked me did my feelings remind me of anything, and lo and behold, what popped into my head? Yes, the blue and red dress. And then she asked me a really interesting question: did I make any decisions that day?

What did I decide?

Sitting with that for a while, I realised I had made two decisions that day:

1. I couldn’t trust my mother to take my part over my sister’s, and
2. I would never let her know how much she hurt me by taking MY dress and giving it to my sister. Jealous, Moi?

Then, I promptly forgot those decisions. But they kept running in the background of my mind, long after their usefulness was past.
And so, at the ripe old age of 3 or 4, I established a defensive pattern that continues today. I don’t want people to know how much things can mean to me, so I hide my feelings. Sometimes I hide them so well, that even I don’t know I feel them. (On a side note, this is probably part of why I didn’t know for so long that I felt jealousy!)

What’s the point, Jude?

What, I imagine you asking, has this got to do with running a therapy practice? I’m glad you asked!!
To be self-employed, to have a business of any sort, I need to be whole-hearted about it. To promote my services effectively, I need to be enthusiastic about my work, and be able to convey that. 
My decision to hide from my mother (and myself) how much that dress really meant to me, now translates into me finding it hard to say I am passionate about helping people. I feel the passion when I am with my clients; it’s real. But I find it ridiculously hard to openly express that passion in any other context.

How do I speak about my work?

If you’ve been to one of my starting or marketing a practice workshops, you’ll know that I ask you to talk about your work. I ask you to use the follow structure:

• I show (these people)…
• Who are struggling with (these problems)…
• How to find (these changes)…

(This is sometimes known as an elevator pitch. You can find out more about it here…)
As a profession we prefer talking about our qualifications, or our modality. We use jargon and theoretical labels, but we rarely say, I feel passionate about helping someone to heal. I’m afraid to say it in case someone takes it away. Like my beloved dress. How about you? What do you say about what you do?
So, I’m outing myself. What do I do? My name is Jude, and I love my job, because I show gifted, loving therapists (that’s you by the way!) who are burned out and frustrated from striving to create their private practices, how to feel excited about developing their businesses, fall in love with their practices and so allow themselves and their clients to flourish.
And if you’d like a bit of that in your practice, why don’t we talk. Maybe I can help you. Contact me here if you’d like to talk about your passion for your work, and what’s not working for you.