Mental Health

I have recently set up a new practice as a Psychotherapist which led to a discussion with my partner in the practice as to our fees. This in turn led to thoughts about how to value our work. My partner had listened to webinar on marketing that had discussed different types of customers and the importance of targeting one's business to a particular type of client. After this we decided that we were not targeting the budget segment but were most interested in the quality segment. The webinar was a marketing exercise for a marketing workshop that I subsequently attended. At this marketing workshop there was a section on valuing your work. As someone who grew up in a country that had universal health care I had certain beliefs about paying for health services. In my current country (Australia) there were for many years many health services with no fees. These were reinforced when I worked in a public hospital associated clinic where most services were provided without fee. Moving into private practice involved challenging my beliefs. The workshop presenter suggested that most psychologists do not value their services very highly. My thoughts are that for me this was due to these types of formative influences and my own issues around self esteem and self sacrifice. I follow the Schema Therapy model where there are two 'schemas' associated with self esteem, defectiveness and failure. Defectiveness operates at more of an unconscious level whereas people tend to be very aware of their beliefs that they are a failure. I think both of these are a challenge for me and although I have considerable insight into them they still have considerable influence on my feelings and behaviour. Most people in caring professions have a pattern of self sacrifice where they place their needs secondary to their clients. In order to be able to care for others one needs to take care of oneself. If I am tired I do not provide quality therapy. There was some discussion in the workshop of personal factors such as self esteem and self sacrifice and then another exercise. The exercise consisted of thinking about a client with a specific issue and imaging being that client and what their answer would be to "How much would you pay to make this problem go away?" There was discussion of the costs to the client of the problem and then the costs to others in that person's life including their employer or business. A day off work can be critical to some businesses and therefore quite expensive when missed.