We recently connected with Erica Thibodeaux and have shared our conversation below.
Erica, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.
As a clinical therapist, I specialize in intersectional mental health, ecology, and somatic technologies. The decision to open my own therapy practice was a life changing pivot that took courage. I am grateful every day that I made that choice.
As a new clinician, I initially worked long hours in a community mental health agency. The pay was terrible and the agency atmosphere felt like a contradiction to what I was teaching my clients to do to stay healthy. Agency jobs are often the norm for new therapy providers who still require supervision aren’t yet able to credential with insurance companies. Many new therapists feel like agency work is their only option.
When I became pregnant with my second child and chose to take an extended maternity leave, I saw an opportunity for a big change that felt terrifying yet vital to my life as a mother of young children working in a helping field.
I dreamed of a more humane way to practice therapy that matched my values and beliefs about work-life balance, but taking the leap into opening a business felt daunting. I was home with a new baby often breastfeeding and napping with him. I used this restful time to listen to interviews with therapists who had taken the leap into owning their own practice. I found guided meditations that walked me through setting my fees, discovering my niche, and even finding the right words to match my specialization with website copy.
In addition to the fear of opening my first business, I also had a slew of worries about the way I wanted to offer therapeutic services. I felt nervous about revealing my personal style of clinical work to colleagues in my field. I wondered if I’d be taken seriously. I worried that no one would want what I was offering. I spent a lot of time setting aside fear and focusing my attention my strengths and talents.
I was fortunate to have a supportive clinical supervisor during this time who offered encouragement to me each step of the way. Our styles are very different, which made the encouragement feel deeply supportive during the worst episodes of self-doubt. Each time I shared my ideas and hopes with her, she wondered with me about how I could make that happen. The time I spent at home with my son was full of contemplation and courage building, casting aside old and limiting beliefs, and stepping into what I now know are my own personal gifts as a clinician.
At 11 months postpartum, I saw my first private therapy client.
I started small, working in the evenings so that I could be home with my children during the day. Working outside of typical business hours allowed me to share an office with a colleague and keep overhead costs low. Learning how to operate a business was a lengthy process but the internet provided many free resources that allowed me to learn from others. I recently celebrated 8 years in private practice and since then I’ve helped and encouraged many other therapists to take the leap into starting their own practice.
Looking back, one thing I would do differently is to implement tools that make work easier sooner. In the beginning I was afraid to invest too much financially into this new endeavor because I wasn’t sure I’d like owning a business and was afraid to have large startup costs. Along the way, each time I’ve implemented a tool that helps my business to run more smoothly it’s brought huge relief. I’ve carefully chosen to implement tools that support me in doing my actual work, rather than being bogged down with administrative duties.
My encouragement for mental health clinicians who want to open their own practice is to first get past the fear and focus on what you uniquely bring to the field. We need you at your best. If you are depleted because of your work environment then your talents and gifts as a therapist aren’t accessible. There are creative ways to live and work that support you as a clinician, while you support your patients.
Erica, 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?
The road I’ve traveled to end up where I am professionally has been full of twists and turns. I didn’t start out wanting to become a clinical therapist. I began college with plans to become an architect. The architectural design program I studied in was rewarding and very demanding. The years I spent studying gave me skills that have continued to serve me professionally- graphic design, technical design, project management- but by the start of my final year I knew that the profession was not for me. I completed the program and graduated with a BA in Architecture and then decided to really do some soul searching before any career decisions.
The year after I graduated offered me many opportunities for growth, personal and professional. I’m originally from south Louisiana and the August before I graduated from college, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated my home state. A hundred miles east and west of me communities were wiped out, some still unrecognizable 20 years later. There was a great need for help from all sectors and federal grant programs were looking for outreach crisis counselors. A friend encouraged me to apply. At the same time, I began the application process for the Peace Corps. I had narrowed down a few things that were important to me: to help others, to learn and live with a culture different from my own, and to be self-supporting through my own efforts.
I spent a year as an outreach crisis counselor assisting hurricane survivors in south Louisiana before leaving to live in Ghana with the Dagara people as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Along the way every step I took prepared me for the next in ways I could never have planned. At this time, I still wasn’t planning on becoming a clinical therapist but something happened while working alongside licensed clinicians. I was struck by their presence with survivors. Clearly they’d been trained well and the outcome of their skills was inspiring.
As an outreach crisis counselor, I learned many skills that later enabled me to be a more present, conscientious, and intentional Peace Corps Volunteer. The time I spent living with the Dagara people has changed my life in too many ways to write about here. Two decades later, I am still integrating what I learned. When I returned from Ghana, I met my partner and we relocated to where I live now. It was then that I decided to go to graduate school to become a licensed clinician.
One major turning point that helped me to unlock my own gifts is that soon after returning to the States, I met and began working with my mentor, Dagara elder Malidoma Somé, who helped me to integrate the things I experienced while living in Ghana with my work as a clinical therapist.
Some of the values I bring into working with patients are that: the patient knows them self best, their body (somatics) hold the wisdom they need to heal, and that nature provides the experiences and metaphors that we need to change. I believe in the wisdom of ancestors and the animate wisdom of trees, rivers, stones, animals, insects, and the many aspects of nature I know and have yet to know.
I often work with the people on the banks of the Mississippi river just behind my office building. There we have been greeted by bald eagles, otter, a family of ducks, and countless stones, insects, and plants all who present opportunities for learning about ourselves and provide much needed support that goes far beyond the limits of a therapist helping a client.
The relationships that clients develop with the natural world go with them when they leave my office and continue long after they no longer need therapeutic support. These relationships last throughout their lifetime and become vital pillars of support on their journey.
I treat infants, children, and adults and specialize in supporting people with Autism Spectrum Disorder, anxiety, depression, complex PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and Bipolar disorder.
Over the years, elements of what Elder Malidoma taught me have shaped me as a clinician. I use the language of pathology as a tool but I do not view people through the pathology of diagnosis. It is far too limiting since we often call hundreds of things by one diagnostic name.
Outside of my clinical work, I produce a podcast, write, and offering free community-based rituals to my local community. My first and most important job is still being a mother. Owning my own practice allows me to make changes as needed to my schedule so that I can be present with the people who are most important to me.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Resilience for me meant prioritizing my role as a mother by sometimes saying “no” to opportunities that don’t support my current stage of life, setting aside big picture ambitions for a later time when my children are less vulnerable and less in need of my “on-demand” focus.
Part of my personal healing journey has required that I find and return lost, abandoned, and neglected parts of my younger self. This is not easy work, especially if abandoning yourself to the needs of others was rewarded in childhood. It’s tricky when you are healing your own childhood wounds and caring for children at the same time.
Children often show up and mirror to us where we are stuck developmentally. I had done tons of work on myself before I became a mom but there were things that couldn’t be uncovered until I was faced with a child in the same developmental stage of where I was still needing to heal. I have felt like I was one baby step ahead of my children in the most difficult moments but I have an incredible partner and a hardy support system and a thriving friend community, all of with make my life as a mom incredibly rich.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
One of the biggest lessons I’ve had to unlearn is around compensation. On one hand, I am fortunate to be doing work that I would do (and have done) for free. It’s in my bones to do this work. I love it beyond measure and often can’t believe that this is how I get to spend my working time. But I can’t afford to work without compensation.
In the beginning of owning my own therapy practice, I felt very uncomfortable taking money for my services. I kept my fees low and even then I still had a hard time telling people what I charge. Working without compensation is not sustainable, it takes resources away from my family, and gives them nothing in return.
I worked hard to heal my relationship with money. In examining my unconscious beliefs around money, I could see how guilty I felt receiving something in return for helping. I also had a hidden belief that others would benefit if I went without. I think that living in West Africa where communities thrive in relationship with each other and with nature impacted me in deep ways that made living in modernity difficult for me for many years.
My reality is that I live in a system that keeps track of services through money currency. As I made peace with that and even embraced how much easier life is when I have enough to meet my needs, collecting and receiving money for my services became easier and easier.
Sometimes I am asked if I barter for services. Once someone wanted to know if I’d barter therapy for blueberries, since they owned a fruit farm. I knew I’d come a long way in my relationship with money when I intuitively answered, “I only trade money for my services. I can’t pay my bills with blueberries.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ericathibodeaux.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ancientsoul_modernmind_podcast/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-thibodeaux-01107296/
- Other: https://insighttimer.com/ericathibodeaux/guided-meditations
Image Credits
Erica Thibodeaux, Sydney Swanson, Kristine Beck