What comes to mind for you when you hear the phrase vibrant therapist?
Would you consider yourself a vibrant therapist?
I believe that we are all vibrant therapists, but can become disconnected from the vibrancy at times.
In the earliest days of my private practice, I felt far from vibrant. I was exhausted, overwhelmed and pulled in a million directions as I worked on building my practice and caring for my family. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything good enough.
Fortunately, I realized it didn’t have to be this way. I reconnected with my vision and my “why”. I slowly and intentionally began to make changes in the way that I ran my practice and navigated the ebbs/flows of work and my life outside of the therapy office.
Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the qualities of a vibrant therapist and refining the strategies that I use to support myself and other therapists in reclaiming their vibrancy and/or maintaining this energy.
The following list includes the qualities that I often see in a vibrant therapist. I trust that you possess all of these qualities. You may just need to give yourself time, permission and space to allow your vibrant self to shine.
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s we navigate our journey as therapists, we have to continually monitor and adjust the ways in which we approach our work as we continue to grow and evolve.
Vibrant Therapists are…..
- Passionate about their work, but also passionate about life outside of the therapy office. Vibrant therapists establish solid boundaries around their work time and non-work time.
- Able to trust themselves and their professional paths, yet are also willing to evaluate areas for adjustment. Vibrant therapists give themselves time for reflection, visioning and planning. They have effective strategies to navigate periods of self doubt.
- Willing to implement systems and strategies to help them run their practices with more ease.
- Able to take risks and think outside of the box in order to create a way of practicing therapy that works best for them.
- Offer support to others, but also willingly ask for and accept support for themselves.
- Willing to prioritize their own well-being in order to avoid feeling depleted and burnt out.
- Knowledgeable about and accepting of their strengths and areas for growth.
- Joyful, purposeful and thoughtful, confident, curious, supported, engaged, at ease, inspired, evolving and more…..
If you think that I missed any qualities, please feel free to leave me a comment below with your thoughts.
Are you a vibrant therapist?
You are the only one who can really know if you feel vibrant in this moment or not. This is about your internal experiences, your goals and your dreams (inside and outside of the therapy office).
I believe that we are all truly vibrant therapists, but that there may be some tweaks that we need to make in order to allow our vibrant selves to shine more fully.
If you are struggling and do not consider yourself a vibrant therapist at this time; know that is ok. We all go through similar phases.
It may be helpful to take some time to reflect on changes that you’d like to make in order to feel more vibrant.
What would your world look & feel like if you felt more vibrant? Really dream into this vision. How can you work backwards from that vision to identify the incremental changes you need to implement to get there?
You may also like to check out the post: Don’t We All Want To Be Vibrant Therapists? for more ideas on how to move forward in your process of becoming more vibrant.
Take Care;
Sarah
If you are interested in taking a closer look at how you can become a more vibrant therapist, I’d love to talk to you. Sign up for a complimentary 20-minute Vibrant Therapist Clarity Call today.
Note: This post was originally written in June 2017 and updated in July 2019.