We were lucky to catch up with Jasmine Gonzalez recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jasmine, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.
I first decided early on in my graduate training that one day I would set out with the intention to own a clinical counseling private practice. I knew I had a long road ahead of me, not only growing my skills as a psychotherapist, but also discovering what I needed to get started along that journey. For many of us as therapists, we are highly skilled and trained in providing clinical counseling services. As far as the business aspect of owning a counseling practice, not so much. Early on my career, I decided to focus on trying to build a reputation within the local community providing services to those in need of mental healthcare. This is a mission very near and dear to my heart. I was lucky enough to have great mentors along the way. As the years followed and I gained more experience, I learned quickly just how much hard work would be needed to build a successful business. I learned that one of the most important attributes of creating something always leads to community support. I am firm believer that we can’t do everything ourselves. We need others to help lift us up. I also realized that my expertise as a therapist was limited in the business realm and presented key challenges. I knew virtually nothing about business laws, taxes, medical billing, etc. Consulting with business coaches and other professionals in the field, I was able to hire other professionals skilled in these areas and outsource help where I could. Establishing my practice and going through these learning curves fueled me with the passion to give back to our community of therapists through mentorship within our group practice.
Knowing what I know now, if there was one thing I could have changed, I would have spent a lot less energy living up to other people’s opinions. Although I was fortunate enough to gain priceless advice and support from mentors, the opinions of a lot of other people along the way shouldn’t have mattered. My thinking has never been too conventional. I think I have probably always gone against the grain since I was born. Becoming an entrepreneur means having to build something unconventional and stray away from the path. It’s easy for others to criticize something they have never built. Their opinions shouldn’t matter. If I could have done it differently, I would have certainly stood up for my vision much sooner in order to build a counseling practice that could embody shared values through a community of therapists while also providing our communities with better access to mental health care.
For young professionals who might be thinking about starting their own therapy practice, my top piece of advice would be to work on substantiating a niche early on that aligns with your values as a clinician. Specializing in a specific area may seem like it could limit potential clients, but it actually serves to set you apart. Most of us can’t be good at treating everything. Most importantly, it provides the opportunity for people who have that specific issue to be able to gain access to good quality care from a highly skilled professional in that subject matter.
Jasmine, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Most people know me as Jas in the community. I am the owner and clinical director of The Affirming Space, a premier telehealth clinic providing virtual counseling services across the state of Texas and Florida. I am a board certified and licensed professional counselor in Dallas, Texas. I entered the counseling field in 2011 supporting the initiative to provide counseling to military service members and their families. I was inspired to join this field during my own military service. In addition to my doctoral research and clinical practice throughout the years, I have gained extensive experience counseling children, adolescents, adults, and couples in a multitude of different settings including counseling private practice, community mental healthcare, and the government setting. Treating and interacting with people from all walks of life and cultural backgrounds has fueled my passion to work with the many diverse characteristics that my clients bring.
My mission in creating my practice, The Affirming Space, started as an effort to address the growing need within our local communities to provide easy and accessible care for our diverse clientele. Our purpose is to provide a warm and affirming space to empower our clients towards their goals. What I am most proud of is our goal to understand our clients in an all-inclusive manner within the perspective of their worldview as it relates to a person’s culture, race, and religious background as well as their socioeconomic situation, ability, gender, and sexual identity. Personally, I identify as a multiethnic woman and I am bilingual in Spanish. I am passionate about working with those who feel they don’t always fit into the “right” categories. I also have personal and professional experience in working with individuals from various cultural backgrounds, the LGBTQ+ community, as well as military veterans. These experiences have allowed me to gain a profound empathy for the human experience and a great respect for the multitude of difficulties that people are facing.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
The services we provide ultimately impact our reputations within our communities. I believe the work of mental health professionals make profound impacts on their communities and the world at large. As a clinical therapist, I help people to navigate many difficult life situations. I have worked with clients of all ages and backgrounds including individuals, adolescents, and couples. I do identify as multicultural and believe that as our communities grow more diverse, it is imperative that our mental health professionals become more representative of the communities, cultures, and populations they service. The work I do incorporates multicultural and intersectional counseling that considers the effects of factors such as race, ethnicity, and other types of minorities, as well as how discrimination and oppression can affect one’s mental health. I use a variety of different techniques to adhere to the unique situation of my clients such as talk therapy, trauma/PTSD processing techniques, mindfulness, and cognitive behavioral therapy. Counselors help to alleviate mental health issues on a large scale. Mental health professionals remain vital to the health of our communities and ending the adverse effects of events that have taken place within these communities such as the global Covid pandemic, political and social justice movements, inaccessible health care, as well as other widespread tragedies.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
I wish it weren’t the case, but there are dark sides to the therapy business like any other. Somethings I began realizing early on, are how many business models are set to exploit those that work for them. My advice in starting a group practice, if your business model cannot sustain itself without the exploitation of others, find a new route. Being a therapist is hard enough. Many of us have spent years in school obtaining masters and doctorate degrees, years of clinical training, and countless efforts pouring our hearts into the work we do. Aside from providing our communities with access to mental health care, it is my personal mission to grow a community of therapists who feel empowered not only to practice with us, but with the goal of mentoring therapists so they may go on to create amazing counseling practices of their own. I stand close to my value system as a humanist to offer those that I manage humanity and an equal ground to share ideas and decision making within the company itself. It is good work to give to others. It is even more meaningful to show others their worth and just how much they matter.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theaffirmingspace.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theaffirming_space/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theaffirmingspace/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-affirming-space-pllc
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