We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Pamela Caceres. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Pamela below.
Hi Pamela, thanks for joining us today. When you’ve been a professional in an industry for long enough, you’ll experience moments when the entire field takes a U-Turn, an instance where the consensus completely flips upside down or where the “best practices” completely change. If you’ve experienced such a U-Turn over the course of your professional career, we’d love to hear about it.
POV: It’s June 2020 and people have been stuck at home with their families, no job, no routine, no structure, just feelings and many subjective opinions on how to go about the chaos being felt in the home. These were things that avoidance and busy schedules had always saved us from and now we had to confront. We had to confront our surroundings and most importantly, we had to confront ourselves. No wonder mental health took a crazy turn during the COVID pandemic! The ironic thing was that as people started gravitating towards the mental health industry, I began pulling away. At this point, I had just completed my Masters degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and had been fortunate to work hands-on in the field for 6 years since graduating with my Bachelors in 2014. It was in 2020 that I began my first “big girl,” “grown up,” “master’s level” clinician job and I was so excited to level up in my industry and to serve my clients on a deeper level. Sadly, it was also in 2020 that our industry began to feel more like a business rather than a healing journey for the client.
I never understood how a provider having to squeeze tens to sometimes hundreds of clients in their caseload could be deemed appropriate and mentally well for either party (the client or the provider). Yes, it was no surprise that the demand in mental health grew significantly during the COVID pandemic and there was much stress for providers having to figure out “Telehealth” which was, to my understanding, a fairly newer method for services being implemented in healthcare workplaces at the time. However, I felt that no great need of one person should ever surpass the well-being of the other and vice versa, especially during a time that EVERYONE was struggling mentally, including providers. I was surprised to see that instead of feeling like we were coming together as an industry, I felt no sense of community within the field and no sense of direction, just everyone packing on as many clients as they could to provide care to as many people as possible. Although, the great intention was there, I felt like we were actually creating more damage. There were many times I had to cut sessions short on clients that needed to feel validated and heard a little longer, but my overwhelming back-to-back schedule did not allow me to. It felt like we were breaking someone (exploiting providers) in order to “somewhat” repair another person (one 30-45-minute session that needed to be cut short) because the full repair was interrupted by the need of yet another person (7 more back to back sessions to complete in the day). Therefore, my question was, who actually really ended up feeling fully supported? All I could think about was, “What really mattered?” Was it the quantity of people being seen or the quality of the service for both the healer and those looking to heal the most important? The industry took a turn for me in a way that made me feel like a salesperson rather than a healer, mental health provider, a therapist and most importantly, a listener, to many that already felt disregarded, rushed, and invalidated in every other space they were a part of.
As I strive to continue spreading mental health awareness today, I’ve heard many people tell me that they have had a disappointing experience with therapy because they felt cut off, rushed, not really listened to, etc and a lot of it has to do with providers feeling overwhelmed themselves with no way out because we’re the ones having to “keep it together.” I recall a key turning point in my career that made me feel like my purpose and calling in this field needed a different route than the one I had initially planned when I made my decision to become a therapist. There was a situation where I did open up with my management team, at the time, about how overwhelmed I was feeling, especially this being a time where my personal life had also been falling apart in front of me during this season. What I thought would be a safe space where I could feel supported, validated and potentially given resources (given the nature of my field), quickly turned into a place that I felt saw me as a liability because shortly after, I was terminated. To be honest, what hurt me the most was not being terminated since I had just placed my one-month resignation notice that same day I was fired. What hurt me was building rapport with vulnerable clients that I was never able to say goodbye to. That will forever stick with me. That’s when I realized this field had made a turn in front of my eyes that I was not prepared for during my training. In my eyes, my well-being and the well-being of my clients were not of importance and that’s when I had to take a much-needed break to heal wounds and create a path where I wouldn’t have to give up my purpose while also prioritizing my health and the health of those who had already built up courage to find help and were already in a vulnerable place. That was the beginning of “Turning the Page with Pam, LLC.”
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Hey everyone! I am a music lover, a mental health advocate and an “aesthetics” guru, meaning I love putting things that look good together whether that’s an event, a space or an outfit!
I began the habit of starting to introduce myself with my personal interests because I always heard that someone will always remember you by how you made them feel rather than what you said and knowing that I made you “feel” something based on something that I learned about myself rather than something that was imposed on me or expected of me is MAJOR KEY. What I mean by this is that we tend to introduce ourselves by our roles (I’m a mom, I’m a teacher, I’m a sister, etc.). We learn to see ourselves through a lens of how we serve others and lose focus on who we ACTUALLY are. My passions helped me build my business! It allowed me to see a concept that was out of the ordinary but that made sense to me based on the positive effects my passions have in my life. Let me explain further…
When I launched my coaching program in February 2023, my goal was to help people manifest their ideal life by matching their mental work with the spaces they were putting work in; too many times I saw clients doing such amazing work in the therapy room and then head over to toxic work/home/social environments that didn’t match the work being done. Therefore, the results weren’t giving what they needed to give. I based my program off a method I like to call “Declutter, Gutter and Butter it Up.” Through this method, I teach my clients how to review the system by laying everything out on the table, including your day to day behaviors, habits, routines etc (declutter), restructure the system by breaking down what you want to keep and what is no longer serving you in this new season (gutter) and redesign the system by using the things you want to keep and structuring them in a way that compliments the goals you want to reach (butter)! But wait…this is my favorite part. We then use the SAME method on your space and BOY does that make a difference in achieving AND maintaining this lifestyle you want for yourself!
Although this concept is very new and quite difficult to grasp when thinking about our mental health, I’ve definitely seen the difference it can make based on the progress I’ve seen with my clients since launching my program. It’s something I can see shifting the mental health field into a more position direction because it creates more long-term driven results!
Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?
Well, this question really speaks to me right now because I am a little over my 6-month mark since launching my business and whew, has it been a journey full of learning lessons! I have yet to find my rhythm, but I am so much closer, and the most ironic thing of it all is that the direction I feel like I need to head in at this point is the direction that requires the least amount of thinking. Hear me out…forget about the sales strategies, the investments, the branding materials, etc for now. It is crucial and essential to show your public that you live by what you’re preaching. I was so busy showing the work that I was doing with others that I totally forgot to realize that I created my program off of my own pain which was the true beauty and power in it to begin with. I hadn’t checked in with myself in the past two years since building my program in 2021! Do you know how many versions of me have come and go in two years? The more I thought about it, the more I understood that the work I did on myself through my program two years ago no longer worked for this version of me. That version of me was a single, heartbroken woman living far away from her support system trying to find her authenticity again post loss of a relationship, a job and an apartment. This version of me is a newly engaged, successful entrepreneur and mental health professional living in the place of her dreams, owning the car of her dreams and planning for more alignment and growth in her business. A true level up hunny! Therefore, I needed to declutter, gutter and butter it up with this new version of myself and THAT was my key to selling my program because if it works for me over and over agin, I know for a fact that my program works. That in itself is the sales technique I had that I didn’t know I needed. Nothing sells like your vulnerability, your process and your story. There’s power in that that. Don’t let it go to waste.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
When managing a team, I see it as managing any relationship. A college professor once said that all relationships have the same dance and that made so much sense to me, more so now, that I’ve been guiding clients through understanding themselves, their habits, their behaviors “in relationship,” meaning what they give and what they take in any connection or association with another entity in a deeper level than what meets the eye. I’ve helped my clients realize that the dance is the same and what changes is the rhythm, the intensity, the pace, the coordination, etc of the steps within the dance. I’ll put it like this. Once a people pleaser, always a people pleaser. With your mom, you might allow her to put you down because she “doesn’t know better,” while at work you won’t allow the “nasty” talk but you allow the overload of work because you can see your boss is so overwhelmed and you NEED to help, while in your romantic relationship you may demand help around the house and not allow nasty talk, however, you allow your partner to control who you can and cannot talk to because “they’ve been hurt many times before and you don’t want to cause any more potential pain to them.” These are all examples of people pleasing and they all look different, but some may seem more acceptable than others depending on the person you’re sharing that information with.
Therefore, it is important for you to have a clear understanding of where you stand in relationship to know what would complement your team. Essentially, you want to build a well-rounded team that fill holes in one place where they lack in another place. That’s why I also offer my coaching to small businesses looking to expand. It’s not just about creating mission statements and values, it’s also about taking your time to truly understand the need of your company and the strengths and weaknesses of your team members which always begins with you as the CEO/Founder, so that you don’t set your company or your future team members up for failure. Listen people. Happiness is contagious. Have you ever noticed that when you randomly smile at a stranger, they automatically smile back? Therefore, happy, satisfied employees make happy, satisfied customers. Too many times I’ve heard so much emphasis being put on pleasing the customers when the one selling your service/product should be your priority. One customer is exactly that; ONE customer. An employee is a multitude of customers because they show up every day and interact with multiple people on your company’s behalf. Therefore, wouldn’t you want to prioritize them before anything else? This brings to my final point on not only building a healthy relationship with your team by getting to know their needs, strengths, and weaknesses, but also maintaining the relationship. If you don’t water your plants, they will die. At the end of the day, water is a lot cheaper than having to buy new plants over and over because you didn’t apply yourself enough to just give them the simple treatment they needed to stay alive. I’ll let that marinate…
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.turningwithpam.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turningwithpam/
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/pam-caceres-mft-51666b100
Image Credits
Ashley Guzman – Amg7 Photography . Melanin Musing – http://www.melaninmusing.com, Alexandra Mahairas – http://www.alexandramahairas.com/