We recently connected with Vickey Easa and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Vickey thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with 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.

I have wanted to be a clinical therapist (mental health) since high school. In college, that dream became a bit more detailed to include “a therapist in private practice, working for myself.” Generally speaking, therapists in this country start out at a community mental health agency, earn enough hours to get fully licensed, and then some branch out on their own and some don’t. I was licensed and ready to start the process of branching out and I had no idea where to begin. This was before I was aware of Facebook Groups designed to assist new therapists with this concept. I found office space and was then wondering “How do I do both? How do I see my clients at the agency and not get overwhelmed by my private practice clients? How do I juggle my schedule?” My husband had this idea: for every client I take on privately, see one less client at the agency that week. This way, I would not be doubling my case-load. It actually worked! My agency clients started to diminish on their own, through no effort on my part (some moved, some graduated, etc). If I was working at the agency until 6pm, I would book a private client at 7pm to give me time to get to my other office. My private clients were always able to come at the exact time I needed them, luckily. My first private client was at 7pm, my next was at 6pm, etc. For every new client I took on privately, I left the agency an hour earlier that day. This all began in 2011. Then, in early January of 2014, I had enough private clients that losing time with transportation no longer made sense. Here is where I had to make the big decision: take the leap into private practice, while not being “full,” and having no idea for sure if my caseload would increase and if we could afford this; or keep doing both, and stay at the agency for the guaranteed income, although it was less income. Basically, do I pursue my dream of private practice and take the leap? Or do I play it safe and stagnate? As long as I stayed at the agency, there was no more time in the day to add private pay clients. I decided to take the leap. I still remember how scared I was when I gave my notice to my manager at the agency. That was literally 10yrs ago this month, and it has paid off. Sure, there have been seasons where my practice is more full than others. Yet I have never once looked back and regretted taking the leap when I did. I’ve also never regretted not taking the leap sooner than I did.

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.

I am a licensed mental health therapist and have been practicing for 17yrs now. I work with adults, both individually and in couples. I co-host a podcast and co-facilitate relationship workshops with my two business partners and close friends. In 2016, I stumbled upon the therapeutic model of Relational Life Therapy. This model was a game-changer for both my practice and my own marriage. It also started me on my own personal and professional growth path. I am not asking my clients to do any inner work that I am not also doing on my own (I even found my own therapist through RLT connections). I have seen drastic shifts in both how I relate to myself AND how I relate to my husband and children. I am a *relationship* therapist, not simply a couples or marriage therapist. The difference is, I also work with my clients on their relationship with themselves. The primary relationship we all have is to ourselves. It is amazing to me how we all function relatively well in this world, with how disconnected most of us are to ourselves (myself included, historically). I think the model most of us associate with therapy is “How do I change the way I feel or the way I act?” I love assisting my clients in finding the deeper meaning of “WHY do I feel and act this way?” I also love it when I, myself, uncover my own meanings. I call these “discoveries,” and they make the world make sense in new and exciting ways. This is why I named my business Unmess Your Mind. It is my honor and pleasure to assist my clients in making some sense out of what’s going on “up there,” – not just in their conscious mind, their unconscious as well. And as I said, I’m doing this work too. My clients all know some of my personal discoveries. Why? Because I do talk about myself in sessions. Not all of the time, and not every session. I do it when I believe it will be helpful and relevant for the client. Not only does it “normalize” the work we’re doing, it makes me human and relatable, AND often-times my stories trigger a client’s mind to a new understanding of their own stuff. We therapists were taught in grad school to never ever talk about ourselves. I do, and my clients have voiced appreciation for it.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The biggest pivot in my life (I’ll share the details) was in 2005 when I moved across the country, from Los Angeles to Boston. It was a change in geography, my career, and my personal life. The personal life is the short and easy description: I met a boy. Two kids and seventeen years of marriage later, I believe it was the right decision to make. The career shift was a little more challenging. I had earned my Masters in Social Work from California State University at Long Beach and I was working in a job with at risk families. I’d been in this job for two years when my relationship progressed and it was time to move. Job hunting from across the country is not an easy task. My then-boyfriend (now husband) had a grandmother in a nursing home. When I came out for Christmas with his family, I interviewed for a job there and was hired. I went home, gave notice, packed up all of my belongings, and moved within three weeks. The job transition from at risk families to a nursing home was not exactly seamless. The learning curve was steep, and I was often confused and overwhelmed by the medical information I was both surrounded by and expected to understand. I hung in, learned, and excelled (promotions). Three years later I transitioned into being a therapist at a community mental health agency. If you have read my answers to the above questions, you know that was my long-term goal.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

First, let me emphasize how important training is to being a skilled therapist. And I mean, continued trainings throughout your professional career. I’ve been a therapist for 17 years and I will still be in trainings 15, 20, 25 years from now. If a therapist is going to be in a solo private practice, I think some business knowledge/awareness is also helpful. I have always done my own billing and accepted payments from my clients; I never hired someone else to do that for me. There are many different theories out there about how to set your rates as a therapist; I had to ponder those on my own and see what worked best for me, my practice, and my family. My office is in my house, so I also need to have firm mental boundaries about how to walk out the door, join my family, and not be thinking about work 24/7. I think those mental boundaries are part of my business perspective. Payment, hours, etc, these are all business decisions. Many therapists leave private practice and join a group so that they do not have to make these decisions alone. Therapeutically, by the way, I think one of my personal skills is how relatable I am, as I mentioned in another answer. My clients have voiced many times how much they appreciate that I am, simply, human. When it is relevant for their treatment, I tell them both my success stories, and my non-success stories (like how I’m able to contain myself from yelling at my 11yr old son, and I can’t do the same with my 10yr old daughter – that always gets a giggle). Being relatable really is a skill, as there are many risks involved. If I share the wrong story, or at the wrong time (ie: it’s still too fresh and I get overwhelmed by telling it) then the client may start to take care of me in session, instead of me taking care of them. It is also possible to talk about yourself too much and accidentally take over the session. It’s also possible to share just the wrong information and now the client is (consciously or not) censoring themselves in session for fear of your reaction to their information. Yet, as I mentioned, if the therapist does it in little bits, carefully, it can be a huge connection of human-ness between the therapist and the client.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.unmessyourmind.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unmessyourmind/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yourdecisiondiva
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickey-easa-4338a8132/
• Youtube: youtube.com/@yourdecisiondiva