Guilt Is Not A Sustainable Motivator!
I’ve started saying this to people quite a bit lately (including myself). I was excited when I came up with a concise way to express such an important concept.
Guilt is everywhere in the therapist world. I’ve seen therapists express guilt over just about everything:
Referring a client out
Saying they’re full
Setting rates
Raising rates
Taking payments
Going on vacation
Taking a sick day
Quitting their job
Not taking insurance
Limiting their work hours
The list could go on and on. Somewhere along the lines, therapists have gotten the idea that these things don’t have to happen. They look at it as a personal choice they make for themselves, which in turn hurts another person. But really, these are just parts of the job. They’re parts of most jobs. And in my experience, doing/not doing something out of guilt is usually not a good reason.
Why is guilt not a sustainable motivator? Because it’s a temporary one. Let’s say you have a client who needs a 6pm appointment every week, but you don’t work that late. Or a client who needs a $50 sliding fee, when your rate is no less than $120. You feel for them, and you feel guilty when you think about saying no. So you agree to it. It puts a band-aid over that guilt in the moment. Cool, right?
But what’s going to be your motivator the rest of the time? Are you really going to sit across from them every week out of guilt? When you look at your schedule that goes late into the evening, or your sparse bank account, is that guilt going to be enough to keep you going? Or once the guilt wears off, will it lead to regret and resentment?
Speaking from experience, I can tell you that it’s usually the latter. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve made decisions in my job based on guilt. Sometimes it’s based on guilt and not much else. And I can tell you that every time, it did not work out very well for me. Which ultimately meant that it also didn’t work out well for my clients.
We may think we’re doing right by our clients when we make decisions like this, but we really aren’t. We don’t cross our own boundaries like this just to help them. We do it to try and save ourselves from feeling bad. By trying not to hurt our clients, we hurt ourselves instead. And that kind of sucks.
If someone came to you and said they were only in a relationship because they felt obligated to be, or because they had no one else, or because they felt bad for them, would you see that as healthy? Probably not. It’s not fair to our clients if we disregard our own boundaries just because we feel bad about having them. They deserve a therapist who is practicing authentically and respectfully to themselves. They deserve the version of you that is attentive and fulfilled, not wearing yourself thin because you’re afraid to say no.
There will always be a need for late appointments, low cost services, and mental health care in general. There are WAY more clients out there than there are therapists. But it’s not our job to single-handedly fulfill these needs or fix these problems. The system and its flaws are so much bigger than us. We cannot compensate for all the issues in this field by stretching ourselves too thin, or working in a way that isn’t best for us. We’re not that powerful. If we keep doing this, there will only be less of us over time. And that is truly not what’s best for anyone.
So when you feel that pang of guilt when saying no or holding a boundary, please remember: Guilt is temporary. You can tolerate it, just like they can tolerate your boundary. Guilt is not a lasting feeling, and definitely not a sustainable reason to make a business decision.