We recently connected with August Perez and have shared our conversation below.
August, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
Becoming a therapist and deciding to open my own practice did not feel as much as starting a new job or career as it did in answering a calling. But even with this direct clarity, the risk of leaning into this calling and creating a business model around it is always present in a world that shifts and changes so rapidly.
The “therapeutic business” model is one unlike others, in that the “customer” is a person’s nervous system and psyche that is needing some kind of growth, healing, or containment, and the product this client is buying is the therapist’s nervous system and psyche. As a therapist, I am essentially modeling my own education and nervous system regulation to my customer/client and teaching how they themselves can accomplish this type of healing on their own. Because of this unique exchange of services, the prioritization of the human component of the business is imperative. Myself and my clients are messy, imperfect people, trying to find coping skills to deal with the stresses of life. I have created a practice that gives flexibility to schedule changes, financial support needs, and understanding for when life throws us the unexpected curve balls that inevitably come our way. Some of the rigid boundaries business experts talk about do not translate to this kind of dynamic business model that focuses on the human and not the bottom dollar.
There aren’t a lot of tools that support this type of unique business model, so part of the risk has been creating a model for myself that works for the pragmatic, life-sustaining part of the business, as well for the human aspect of the work. What I have found most helpful is creating a structure that weaves in flexibility and accounts for the movement and unpredictability of clients and their financial schedules. Maintaining a more mindful awareness of the “pulse” of where my practice is each month has been a component that once again helps me maintain the stability of my business while allowing for the flexibility my clients need.
Having a business that brings in the spiritual and humanistic aspect as a major guiding force and not just the bottom dollar feels like a huge risk in a capitalistic market. But having measured success in living a comfortable and fulfilling life is possible while managing a business that is centered on the spiritual and human experience. If I take care of my clients’ needs through my business, my needs are also met. If I can be aware that people will not be consistent and will cancel sessions or leave my practice or change their payment schedule, then those things won’t come as a shock, and the business will be able to grow organically alongside the growth of my clients.
August, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
When you think about your most formative and important relationships, what comes to mind? Do you think about your parents? Your first romantic partner? Your childhood best friend? The relationship you have with your siblings? Yourself? Taking this thought experiment further, what were the qualities of these relationships that helped shape who you are? Perhaps love, acceptance, understanding, and connection were present in these dynamics?
Human beings are social creatures. We need one another. We rely on our families, communities, and social ties to keep us progressing through life from the moment we enter into this world. We need physical touch, intellectual stimulation, and emotional safety to show up as ourselves fully. But just as relationships can help individuals evolve and progress, relationships can also cause distress, pain, danger, and trauma.
I founded my private practice five years ago, with the vision of providing excellent quality therapy to as many people as I could reach, with the specific focus of healing relationship trauma. If trauma can happen in relationship, then the healing that it needs also happens in relationship. This kind of therapeutic work begins with the relationship we have to ourselves, how we think about ourselves, how we judge and abuse ourselves, and how we continue to act out the trauma of relationship dynamics within ourselves. A great way to practice how you relate to yourself is to listen to the internal voice(s) when you make a mistake. Do you yell at yourself? Do you beat yourself up and shame yourself? Do these voices sound like a parent or disciplinary figure from sometime in your life?
What sets my practice apart from other trauma-focused therapies is the relationship my clients form with me as their therapist and how it starts to inform them about their relationships with themselves and with others. Whatever my clients are dealing with outside the therapy room eventually shows up in the therapy room with me. For example, a client who is wanting to work on their relationship trauma of abandonment will eventually feel at some point “abandoned” by me as the therapist, like an unpredicted scheduling change, giving me the chance to show them in real time what is happening, and then giving them space to explore how they might start addressing and healing their abandonment in a safe and contained way.
My practice as a contemplative psychotherapist is a union of Eastern-Buddhist philosophy and traditional Western psychotherapy to bring clients into a space of safety, compassion, and unconditional-understanding so that they can work through the major psychological and emotional challenges they present with. I put more time and energy into “customizing” my therapeutic container to each individual, so that I can give the best experience of a healthy relationship dynamic to folks trying to heal relationship and attachment-based wounds. I commit to building rapport with each client in order to know the best tools and techniques to bring in to help my clients achieve successful and happy relationships with themselves and others.
Relationships are messy and complex, but they can also be deeply fulfilling and enlivening. It is my calling in life to help others achieve what they want in the dynamics they have with themselves and the world around them. My hope is that the more healing people can bring to themselves and their immediate relationships, suffering and relationship trauma will lessen, allowing more access to peace, unity, and compassion in relationship.
Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?
In Buddhist philosophy, there is the illustration of “two wings of a bird,” meaning that in order for us to move through life in a helpful way, we need to have the balance of both compassion and wisdom. If we only have compassion, then we are just emotional, nebulous, blobs of emotions that have no action. If we have only wisdom, then we become unfeeling, intellectualized, and divorced from the heart. To be a balanced human, we need to have both.
Being a therapist feels like a constant balance between these two wings. On one hand, education, trainings, research, and practical applications are imperative for any therapist to hold the seat of expert and to have the confidence to hold a container for people working through deep trauma and suffering. But on the other hand, being able to find things that are like-able, connecting, funny, and touching in the therapeutic alliance are just as important in creating a healing space where clients find success.
When I first started my journey as a therapist, I really wanted to “get it right,” for my clients, so they could see that I knew what I was doing and knew how I could help them. This desire to be correct and to be expert ultimately held me back from being my authentic self in session with clients, ultimately keeping me from fully connecting to their experience. I had a teacher give me the advice to, “be more stupid,” when I entered the room with my clients, even clients I knew well and worked with for a long time. This advice has stayed with me and helped me loosen up the image I had to be the “perfect therapist.” Instead now, I try to be the “helpful” therapist, the therapist who might not have all the answers, but isn’t afraid to be in that unknown space. This, I find, has been the most helpful perspective to lead my clients to the success they are seeking.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
The most significant impact to my therapeutic practice has come from the Buddhist philosophy of the Eight-Fold Path; the set of guidelines that Buddhists follow to lead a fulfilling and helpful life. I was introduced to this philosophy through the educational training program I received from Naropa University, a Buddhist-based university that uses a contemplative educational model to train therapists. This Eight-Fold Path highlights how we conduct ourselves through life, in our speech, our physical bodies, our minds, and our relationships to others in a way that brings peace and healing into this world.
This path has become a template of how I conduct myself and my practice. It helps me look at the ethics and integrity behind the decisions I make and how that will impact my clients. Meditation is a key aspect of working with ourselves to stay on an integral path, which has also been infallible in working with my own mind and helping my clients work with themselves. The basic tenant that I take away from this is that my work, my calling, my path, is not separate from how I conduct all other aspects of my life. My meditation informs my work, my work informs my relationship with myself, my relationship with myself informs my clients of the relationship with themselves, continuing on into the inter-connectedness of all life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.aeppsychotherapy.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/august.e.perez.psychotherapy/?igsh=NGl4NGRybnB0ZHUx&utm_source=qr
Image Credits
Ben Fields