We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kim Fry a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kim, thanks for joining us today. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.
One of my defining moments in my professional career as a licensed therapist actually came from an “aha!” moment in my own personal therapy. I wholeheartedly believe that every single therapist needs to be consistently seeking their own mental health support – just because we have degrees, doesn’t make us any less susceptible to being human. Like I say to my team at least once a month, we can only do as much work with our clients as we ourselves have done.
Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t actually a therapist’s job to fix clients’ problems. While plenty of people who go to therapy do achieve some type of relief from presenting issues, the black-and-white narrative that therapy itself will make someone’s life better is actually not true. Our job isn’t to make clients feel better, it’s to develop a secure relationship with them so that they don’t have to feel alone when they show up vulnerably and they aren’t okay. While the majority of therapists – myself included – know this to be true, it can still be a challenge to manage expectations of ourselves, and our own therapists, when we or our clients are in crisis.
Which takes me back to my defining moment: I was sitting with my own therapist, and I was in crisis. I told her a story that stirred up feelings of discomfort, fear, sadness, and an incredible amount of shame for me, and then I waited. I waited for her to give me some enlightening words of wisdom, a tool to take away the shame, or the reassurance that it sounded as if all the awkwardness was in my head and it would all be okay. But she didn’t do any of that, she just nodded and said that my feelings made sense.
I’ve been in the therapy world personally and professionally long enough to know the immense value of being direct with my therapist about my feelings and needs. Desperately, I shared, “I’m noticing that a part of me wants you to tell me what to do next so I won’t feel the way that I do.” Instead of reacting with urgency or scrambling to find a fix for me, which is what I hoped she’d do, she said, “I can’t offer anything more than validation. You’ve done all you can in this situation to reconcile and align with your values, your discomfort is a result of others’ not doing their own work, not a reflection of you not doing enough.”
So, she wasn’t going to make me feel better. For a moment, I felt helpless and frustrated – the one person who my brain told me was supposed to help me feel better had essentially left me in the middle of the ocean without a life raft.
After a few minutes of disappointed, anxious silence, I realized that she had actually given me an incredible opportunity. In that brief exchange, she reminded me that: 1. I could do everything I thought was “right,” and that didn’t guarantee the situation would work out the way I fantasized it should and 2. I needed to connect with my feelings of grief about the loss of my idealized outcome for this situation. By not providing me with an instant recommendation or opinion on what she thought was best, she also empowered me to take accountability for my own feelings and decision making in similar situations moving forward.
As therapists, we can repeat the words, “Sit with your feelings,” over and over again like a script. It wasn’t truly until this experience of having to actually sit with my feelings in my own therapy, without any type of immediate fix or relief, that I understood the ways in which I was limiting myself. I showed up attempting to avoid my feelings by only focusing on how I wanted to feel (and how she “should” know how to get me there), instead of meeting myself where I actually was. I was abandoning myself mentally and emotionally, and expecting her to magically make it better.
This moment transformed the way that I’ve been able to show up for myself, which transformed the work that I’m now able to do with my own clients. When I had been unknowingly avoiding my own feelings, I was undoubtedly encouraging my clients to do the same. When I expected my therapist to have the answers, I was encouraging my clients to look to me as an all-knowing expert in our sessions.
While therapists do get an abundance of education, clients are always the experts on themselves. There is nobody that will ever be capable of knowing you better than you know yourself and your experiences. By consistently showing up to practice emotional acknowledgement, autonomy, and accountability in my personal life, I’m much more aware of moments when I can slow down and support my clients in developing awareness and resiliency to do the same — both in session and out on their own.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Supervisor, and I’m the Founder of a group therapy practice in Austin, TX — Autonomy Therapy. I received my graduate education at Northwestern University, and then quickly moved to Austin for much more pleasant winters.
Autonomy Therapy is a Health At Every Size-informed group therapy practice specializing in – but not limited to – the treatment of eating disorders, body image issues, compulsive exercise, grief, trauma, anxiety, and depression. Our clinicians work with individuals, couples, and families, and can offer virtual or in-person therapy depending on client preference. Our mission is to support clients, clinicians, and our greater ATX community in developing an authentic mind-body connection, with the intention to truly learn how to separate self-worth from body size or shape.
We’re one of the only eating disorder group practices in Austin to ensure all staff have thorough and nuanced education in eating disorder fundamentals, intuitive movement, diet culture, intuitive eating, and the importance of social justice advocacy prior to meeting with clients for the first time. We prioritize hiring passionate, motivated clinicians who can not only offer a range of accessible pricing options – from student therapists, to associates, fully licensed clinicians, and supervisory services – but can offer more informed and inclusive services to existing and prospective clients as well.
If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?
No, I truly believe that I’m doing what I was meant to do. Being an active part of the mental health community encourages me to show up more intentionally in my own life, so I can be the most authentic, self-aware, compassionate, and growth-oriented version of myself. I’m grateful to be a part of a specialized community that values connection with Self and others in such a nuanced way, and challenges harmful beliefs about what it means to be “healthy” to truly affect systemic change. Being a therapist certainly comes with its own set of challenges, but I love to watch the work that we do have such positive impacts in a world that desperately needs more compassion, self-awareness, and authentic connection.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
As therapists, we don’t get any kind of education in marketing, so going into private practice can be a daunting task. We’re basically the product, so it can feel incredibly uncomfortable at first to try and convince others to invest in “us.” What I found to be the most authentic, helpful tool was one that I use every day in sessions anyway: Build relationships. I don’t attempt to actively sell anything, or convince prospective clients / referral sources that we’re good at what we do. My team and I prioritize building connections and getting to know our community and its needs best. By cultivating relationships, we can trust that our community “knows us” better than any presentation or marketing pitch could ever convince someone of.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.autonomytherapyatx.com
- Instagram: @autonomytherapyatx
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimgfry/