My Business Helped Me Heal from Divorce
I'm preparing to do a podcast interview with the wonderful owners of Zynnyme.
I want to talk about how starting a private practice can be incredibly healing, and in my case it helped me heal from a painful divorce.
In preparation I've been delving into the past, into the realms of a painful relationship. I don't want to go back there in my mind, but I do want to more deeply understand how starting a private practice was such an incredibly transformative process for me, and how it might be for you, too.
In order to have healing, there needs to be a wound or a pain point. For me, some of the main ways I was hurt showed up in my thinking and beliefs. At the time, I grappled with negative self-referencing questions, and some basic global questions, like:
Am I making bad things happen?
Will things ever be good again?
Am I safe?
Who am I now?
Can I trust myself/can others trust me?
Am I worthy of good things happening?
Which boundaries do I set?
Will life ever feel in control?
Luckily, within the (virtual) walls of my practice, I found answers.
In building a website, I found a sense of creativity and control.
In creating contracts and policies I found boundaries.
In generating my own income I found some safety.
In building relationships with clients, I found myself trustworthy.
In registering a business, I found I could make good things happen.
. . .and so much more was discovered and healed in doing a photo shoot, creating business cards, pitching myself to universities, reserving office spaces, setting fees, starting a Facebook group, seeking clinical mentorship, doing solid documentation, finding a business mentor, starting a business bank account, and on and on. Except paying taxes- no healing has come from that (yet). :)
I'm not saying we should always rely on accomplishments or outward achievement to restore us, but I guess I am saying that healing comes in all kinds of weird, unpredictable ways, and for some of us, it comes in the process of building a business.
So if you're building or growing a private practice, or just thinking about getting started, I hope you know that healing is a possibility.