The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer:
Well. Hello everyone and welcome again to the practice of therapy podcast. And I'm so happy to have my good friend Jane with me today. Jane Carter, who was another fellow consultant in this space and Jane has been on the podcast, I know at least two times before may, may well if you count the the round table we did. Yeah. That's three times saying, yeah, that's all right. Yeah, that's great. So Jane, how are you?
Jane Carter:
I'm doing really well. I mean it's, I'm in the middle of this, like all of us, this really weird time, but all things considered I'm doing really well.
Gordon Brewer:
Well, good, good. Yeah. And so, you know, I, I, I wanted to reach out to Jane because she is such a calm presence with people and she's just one of those people that just, I think makes everyone feel at ease. And she just has a lot of wisdom on mindset and being able to think through problems in different ways and really getting our heads around things. And I thought this was be a great time for her to talk about some of the work she's doing right now with other, other therapists and counselors just in some of the things that they're running up against in their practices. So, Jane, as I start with everyone, so for folks that maybe don't know who you are, tell, tell folks about yourself and a little bit about your private practice journey and what you do.
Jane Carter:
Okay. so I am Jane Carter. I have Jane Carter coaching which is a coaching practice where I love helping solar preneurs, especially therapists to have more fun and money and freedom in their businesses. And I really like to do that by focusing on strategy and mindset. I'm a, I'm a pretty mindset coach. And I, I call it stealth therapy because there's so much overlap. I also have a private practice, a counseling practice here in Asheville, and you know, our businesses, they are here to grow us. And as I'm walking people through growing their private practices, there's so many parallels to our life challenges and struggles and growth areas. And so I love the work. It's just, it's just a different way to help people become who they're meant to be.
Gordon Brewer:
Right. Right. And I the thing I love about your approach is that we, we all bring our own stuff and our own crap to, to all of this. And I think a lot of us, you know, get got into this profession because we had a lot of self work to do to begin with. And so that carries over into thinking about our business and our mindset.
Jane Carter:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I said, you know, we, we've all got the crap and my job is to help you turn it into fertilizer, which is the work of what all of these therapists are doing. Right. And and, and what's so cool is that, you know, if you, if you're intentional about it, the way you grow your business can be very healing of some of that deeper stuff without you even realizing it. I mean, sometimes, you know, and sometimes it just, you go, Oh, wait a second, I'm, I'm really confident because of all these steps I've taken in my business. So yeah, it's really fun. I love, I mean, it just feeds my soul to do this work. As I know you experienced that. It's fun to be with people on this journey. Yes. So you've put together a checklist. I know you and I were talking about that, so why don't you just tell folks about that and kind of the very things that you were, we were talking about before we started recording?
Jane Carter:
Yeah. Well, so my motto is imperfect action. So everything I do, I'm like hashtag and perfect action. And in sort of, I think a lot of us experienced, like right now we're recording this podcast during the current virus crisis where we're in lockdown, where it home. I think a lot of people experienced this kind of sudden, Oh, this is a major crisis and okay, what am I going to do? You know, I jumped into action. The adrenaline, adrenaline rush came. I was like, how can I help people? How can I be using this moment? And and so I put together a video series and I was like, Hey, I'm going to put it everywhere. And then I was looking at it later and I said, you know, Hey, I'm exhausted. I know other people are exhausted. The adrenaline is starting to wear off.
Jane Carter:
I this, this, this V people don't have time to watch videos. They're, they're trying to homeschool their kids and pivot their practices. So I just need to make a nice little checklist that's going to be helpful for people to go, all right, here's my mindset checklist and here are my short term strategies and here are my longterm strategies. And I'll share it with your listeners and we can talk about how to do that, you know, at the end of the recording. But even as I typed it up, I said, Oh gosh, I hope people don't take this as you've got to do all of these things, because I think a lot of people are feeling overwhelmed in this moment. So really my hope is that people mostly focus on their mindset right now. Because how we deal with this, I mean, this is a crisis obviously, but we all have crises and problems that arise in our businesses. I can't remember which marketing guru it was. He said, Oh, to be in business is just to constantly be dealing with the problems that come up. So, so yeah. So today I really thought in addition to know some of the things on this checklist list address mindset, it just kind of relax and reframe and use this moment. And some of it's to do stuff, but I really wanted to focus on sort of some of the bigger picture stuff right now. Yeah,
Gordon Brewer:
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, as a is that think about mindset. I think one of the things that happens is we in, I tell this to my clients, I think this whole time is just filled with anxiety and anxiety has a way of tricking us into thinking we can't handle things. And so I love the, this idea of we're not going to get it perfect. And our tendency, I think is we want, like you said, check all the boxes and make sure we do it correctly. But I think it's more important just to have movement, even if it's small movement. Yeah. So you want to, you don't want to say more about that.
Jane Carter:
Yeah. I mean anxiety and fear kind of makes us want to contract and get small and kind of maybe literally hide under the covers but sort of emotionally contract and it's like our world becomes very small. It's hard to see beyond what am I going to do today, what am I going to do tomorrow? And sometimes we can get into that very reactive place. So the mindset piece and the piece I'm trying to keep in mind and that I'm trying to remind people of is to expand their view to so, so when I was thinking about the three main points I wanted to make today, one was let's look at the big picture. The next one was let's be intentional about this time. And the third one is to see the expansion in this time. Cause again, fear and anxiety wants us to contract and it's quite possible that this time wants to expand us, that some really amazing things could come out of this time.
Jane Carter:
Not to minimize that it's really challenging or that there are really bad things happening. But more, you know, at the same time that we're facing these problems and that some bad things are happening, how can we see an expansion in this moment? And it's kind of funny, I was talking to Alison career back in February, I, we were talking about an upcoming upcoming episode I was going to do of her podcast and we were brainstorming what to talk about. And I said, I kind of want to talk about private practice as a tool for spiritual growth. And then we were like, ah, that's a little too woo woo and big picture. And here we are. And I'm like, Oh, here we are. How we deal with our private practice in this moment really could be a tool for our spiritual growth in, in, in deepening who we are as people.
Gordon Brewer:
Right. So say more about that. Yeah.
Jane Carter:
Yeah. So, so for instance, you know, that first point I made that we need to look at the big picture. Back in the day, I was a history major and I was like, well, what am I doing? I'm never going to find a job. What was I thinking? But I'm, I've been so glad that I was a history major because it's really helped me to look at the big picture and say, you know, for most of human history there have been a kind of collective community-wide existential crises every 20 years or so. And we've just been spoiled that we haven't really, you know, even our Wars have been far, far away. And so even going, Oh, this is going to pass, you know, right now for us it just feels like, Oh, this is the worst thing and what am I going to do right now?
Jane Carter:
And, and you know, that that contraction makes us just want to look at the now. The big picture is this will pass. Every challenge throughout history has passed. This will pass, we are going to get through this. And so even just keeping that long view helps us to look at it kind of from a distance and go, okay, so what is my sense of purpose? You know, why, who am I in this? Who do I want to be in this crisis? When I look back on this moment in a couple of years or in 10 years or 30 years, how do I want to say that I handled it or handled myself? And I think that's a spiritual thing. You know, who, what kind of person do I want to be? Do I want to be a helper or do I want to be the person knocking people out of the way to get the toilet paper? The other piece of that is do I want to make decisions from a place of love or from a place of fear?
Gordon Brewer:
[Inaudible] Yes. [inaudible] go ahead. Yeah, no, I was just, as you were saying that I'm reminded of Victor Frankl in man's search for meaning and just the importance of finding meaning and purpose in life is really the key to really the key to happiness. If you will, or the key to contentment in life. And you know, that's a theme that has resonated for me with clients. And just thinking, you know what there was a quote I'm going to, I'm paraphrasing the quote by Vic Frankel, and that is as if we, if we, if we don't have meaning in our life, we will substitute pleasure and pleasure is good, but it's also empty. So we need to have those, those meaningful things in our life and brings us purpose.
Jane Carter:
Absolutely. And you know, when we're looking at the, the small picture and fear and all of that, we, it's easy to get into those thoughts of, well, how am I gonna get money? How am I gonna get clients? Is everyone going away? When we look at the big picture, it gives us space to go, what is the meaning of this work in my life? How can I be serving people? What's the best way to serve my clients right now? Why did I, you know, there's a quote somewhere and I can't remember what it's from, but I said, you know, there's a reason that you were born a human and not a chair, that that, you know, on a spiritual level, we are here to fulfill our deepest purpose. And so when we go through a crisis where everything, you know, our snowglobe of life has just gotten shaken up, it's a really great opportunity to go, you know, what's my why? Oh, that brings in, it not only reduces anxiety when you come from that place but gosh, what a gift to recommit and realign with why you're doing this.
Gordon Brewer:
Yes, yes. That's something that's has resonated for me lightly. I was telling Jane before we started recording I, I'm a big I, I like Michael Hyatts plant planner. I use the full focus planner that, that he produces and it's divided up into quarters. And so one of the things that you do with that planner is you do like a quarter quarterly review and you start into this new quarter. And so I've changed planners have started a new planner and I'm thinking it was just thinking back how different this quarter is and just the fact that my priorities have changed because of the circumstances, but it's also caused me to go back, like you said, Jane, and look at my why and really kind of get more grounded in that. Because all this stuff that's happening now just feels like chaos and it's hard to, hard to make sense out of and just get into survival mode. And so big picture.
Jane Carter:
Yup. We've got to calm those limbic systems. And something occurred to me as you were talking too. I think another piece of this that really hits on kind of a deeper, we can call it spiritual. I know spiritual is that it's such a triggering word for a lot of people, but, but again, we're not robots. And this is a really good moment to remember that is that as a society we've gotten so used to having control and, and you know, being able to get any piece of information instantly at our fingertips with our technology. And there are a lot of unknowns with this moment, just like with anyone in private practice, you know, again, in, in other types of problem or crisis situations, you're sitting there facing unknowns and we don't necessarily have a lot of tolerance for that. And one of the kind of silver linings I would say of this is that my hope is that it's going to develop our tolerance for, and for having those, that moment of realizing, okay, I'm not fully in control of everything and, and who do I want to be in the face of that and can I tolerate some mystery and maybe even celebrate that there are unknowns out there and that that's okay.
Jane Carter:
And isn't that something that we're trying to help our clients do, you know, is to sit with unknown and not being able to control everything.
Gordon Brewer:
Oh, right, right. And really, yeah, it's a, I'm reminded of a client I had earlier this month or whatever, and you know, just a, a person that was struggling with anxiety and, you know what I saw them doing was just trying to control stuff that was totally out of their control. Right. And yeah, you know, all we can do is, you know, do what they say. I associate socially isolate, wash our hands and
Jane Carter:
Figuring out the things we can control. And then, and then the flip side, and again, this is for our clients as well as for us therapists, is learning to just be with those feelings, to learn to be with the lack of control, to learn to be present with our grief and our fear, and just kind of allow it and wear it like a backpack and just kinda, okay, you're here and then I don't have to fight it so hard. And, and that kind of leads me into my next point, which is I want to encourage people to be intentional in this time. And what that means is, you know, again, figuring out how do I wanna use this time, who do I want to be in this time? And that doesn't necessarily mean being super productive. I think at first I was like, we all have to use this time and there's so much you can do and there is so much you can do and if you want to go into productive mode, great. And if you want to, you know, look at the checklist and start checking things off great. But you can also be intentional about, you know, my goal for this time is to catch up on my reading and do nothing. You know, I want to rest, I want to go easy on myself, you know, I want, it might be, you know, your mission statement for this crisis is I want to get through this without yelling at my kids every day.
Jane Carter:
So having an intention, it doesn't necessarily mean a kind of frenetic goal setting. It might be my intention is to get a balance between doing some work and cooking food and going on walks and kind of reconnecting with the people in my life. It can be anything. But, but it's really good to be intentional about it. So you're not in that reactive space of this has happened to me and now I'm having to just learn how to. Right. Yeah. And so I'm wondering too, just about what you were talking about the expansion piece in terms of being able to expand what we're doing. Yeah. So you know, on a, I'm going to, I'm going to zoom out and then I'm going to zoom in. So zooming out, I'm, I'm really in the big picture stuff today. But so, so the big picture questions are things like you know, just giving yourself to creatively ask the question, what if it's possible that this is the greatest thing from my private practice?
Jane Carter:
What if it's possible? But just some amazing things come out of this. Opening that question then allows you to start seeing that. And I encourage people to even get out a piece of paper, kind of get your inner critic and naysayer, put them away and just play with it. Like, yeah, what, what's possible? What if it's possible that really great things are going to come out of this. Some Congress create ways to actually have good things come out of this. You know, just with your practice, this is a really great opportunity to do some of the things that you maybe haven't had time to do. Now, again, assuming you're not trying to homeschool three kids while cooking, while you know, seeing all your clients it's a really great time to develop relationships and reconnect with your colleagues, with your referral sources to reach out to your clients and just let them know that you care and that you're thinking about them.
Jane Carter:
So, so this extended period of being at home, it really could be a time to deepen our relationships so that when things do come back to normal, our practices could go gangbusters later. You know? It's a really great time to do the learning that you've wanted to do. And maybe haven't had time for, you know, I have stacks of books all over my house, so that's kind of, I love being surrounded by books, but I have books that I bought two years ago that I haven't read to become a better clinician. You know, there are webinars, there are all kinds of cool courses outright. Now. I'm just using this time to be intentional about learning, you know, and and, and this can be a time to create content ahead of time so that later on when you, you know, if you're someone who blogs, you know, gosh, you could have all your blog posts pre-written for the next six months to a year and you know so, so I mean really there are just some concrete ways to use this time.
Jane Carter:
But again, I don't want to, that's not the same as me saying. You've got to just ring every bit out of this time as you possibly can. The expansion in this might be, you know, if you are intentionally taking more time to reflect and go on walks, you might have some clarity of things you want to let go of in your practice. You know, Oh, I've been tolerated in this too much. I was talking to a client yesterday who said, you know, because we're doing a video calls, I'm realizing that, and everyone's stuck at home. I've been seeing clients during the day who normally insisted on having evening appointments and she said, I don't like evening appointments and I'm not going to do them anymore after this. That's right. Well, yay. So this is what a silver lining of this crisis?
Gordon Brewer:
Well, it's a, you know, I think all of this is it's forcing, maybe forces a little strict, too strong of a word, but it's maybe allowing us to be creative with things. Oh yeah. We've had to absolutely think beyond the borders, outside the box to use that cliche. Just in and it, and what's what's been fun to me is just there was something I saw on the today show that it's kind of my morning routine, drinking my coffee and, you know, just settling into the day. And there was a guy that had made this video and he was sitting next to a dryer and it looked like an airplane thing and he had a screen in the dryer and he was, you know, that pans back and you say you'd said dryer, but he was just imagining flying on a plane.
Gordon Brewer:
So it was just, it was just hilarious and just but yeah, just being creative in those ways. And I think a lot of times we, I think we can get so stuck to doing it the correct way to do it the right way that we don't give ourselves permission to, to think outside the box. Yeah. And I love you know, one of the things too that I think is good to do every so often is do what I call a brain dump, where we take all the ideas you've gotten, all the stuff that you've been thinking about that you want to do or have dreamed of doing or whatever, and just just writing it down and that way you can. And I think as you know, and as again, this is, I'm a big PR, I know Jane is this way too, but I mean I'm a big a big fan of journaling and just being able to write things out because I think it takes what is internal and puts it in a, out in an external way and it gives us a totally new perspective of it.
Jane Carter:
Absolutely. There's so much creativity coming out of this already. And I'm sure a lot of people have seen that on social media. Just in general. I mean, there's a saying that creativity is born out of limitation and we are in the ultimate moment of limitation. And, and there's so, so for what that might look like in a private practice I have a client who kind of as a side thing on her business where she specializes in body acceptance. She had a group going where people would come and kind of take the class and have some group processing with this crisis. She said, I kinda need to make this the center piece of the work I'm doing. So we kind of talked through how to package that and sell that and have it be at a more, an accessible price point for some of the people who couldn't do individual therapy.
Jane Carter:
And she said, Jane, I love this. This is my favorite part of my practice. You know, so, so I really see that after this, this is going to continue being the center point of her practice. And even for myself, I, and my initial kind of the anthill has just been kicked over. I'm scrambling a little bit. In that moment I was like, well, I have a, an online mastermind for my current clients. What if I made that kind of a centerpiece and made that into a membership program and I've been playing with that and I'm really excited about it and I don't, you know, we'll see. But it was one, it was kind of an initially I would say a bit of a fear based decision, which the more I'm focusing on it, the more excited I am about it. So there's so many examples of creativity coming out of limitations.
Jane Carter:
One, this is a totally non therapy related one, but it's my favorite example of that. The movie jaws [inaudible] so the, the machine kept breaking down the, the, the shark, the mechanical shark was breaking down the whole time. They were filming up until the end. So Steven Spielberg had their kind of rework everything and they would just do these kind of shark side view shots, you know, and they would just show the fin and it was basically a couple of guys under water with fins. And so you didn't see the shark until the end. And when once the, the actual shark worked and they were able to show it, you know, all this buildup had happened. And so the audience is just lost their minds and it became the blockbuster hit of the summer because of the problem. Had people seeing the shark from the beginning, it wouldn't have been as scary or mysterious. So you just don't know what good things are going to cover. The annoying, horrible parts of this. Right? Yeah. Most pay, a lot of people have heard this, you know, the, that Chinese symbol of of crisis is, is a combination of danger and opportunity.
Jane Carter:
And so, yeah, it's a dangerous, dangerous opportunity. It is a dangerous opportunity. And as people who in general, you know, we have a lot of privilege in our lives where we don't experience danger regularly. It's probably good for our souls to get a little jolt of that. The, the danger, the mystery again, but the opportunity and the, the, the ways that that can expand us as professionals, as people, hopefully as our, as family members this is a really important and special time.
Gordon Brewer:
Well, it's been a, it's been a total wake up call for most people to really examine what matters most in our lives.
Jane Carter:
I know you and I both know Brian Cole, who's the Bishop of East Tennessee and he were both you're friends with him. And the first time I encountered him, he was doing a sermon on this was when the the gas shortage happened, I don't know, 10 years ago or something. And I walked to the closest church, which happened to be his church and I still go there. But anyway, he said he was talking about the word apocalypse and that it means the lifting of avail and, and so in a lot of ways what we're going through right now in a kind of quote unquote current apocalypse is the veil is being lifted. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Again, it's kind of that awareness of our vulnerabilities. And that can be good. You know, Viktor Frankl, like existential crises are a good thing. They get us real line. And, and again, it's an opportunity for us to go, okay, well what are, what am I tolerating too much of how of how do I need to get realigned with my original purpose and with who, who I am and who I'm bringing into my business into, who am I bringing to my clients? So yeah, apocalypse isn't necessarily bad. Yeah. That's my quote of that's gotta be my tee shirt in addition to imperfect action. Yes, absolutely.
Gordon Brewer:
You know, [inaudible] thank you. It brings us full circle around to just the thing you mentioned at the beginning here, Jan was just really focus again on your why and your meaning and your purpose and your why and, and just really taking this time to kind of realign everything that you do with that value, that purpose, those, those things.
Jane Carter:
And the caveat I'll add to that is do your why while moving forward. Well, while taking imperfect action, cause I think even the danger of saying get clear on your why is that people can sort of get frozen in the navel gazing. And first I have to figure that out perfectly. And then I'll figure, you know, take steps. But the forward movement, it gains our confidence. It increases our confidence. It it helps us feel less despair when we're actually like moving forward, taking action, doing something our why evolves over time. Absolutely. Totally does. No,
Gordon Brewer:
So, well, Jane, I want to be respectful of your time and I'm so glad we had this conversation now. I knew it'd be a good one.
Jane Carter:
We got, we got into the juicy stuff today.
Gordon Brewer:
Yeah, we did. We did. We got big, which is good. That's good. So tell folks how they can get in touch with you and and how they can get a, maybe check out your checklist and yeah, and that sort of thing.
Jane Carter:
Well, my website is www.janecartercoaching.com. I really would invite people to just email me directly to get the checklist. I haven't uploaded it yet on a landing page and all of that. So so feel free. Let's see. Email me with the subject line imperfect action. And and I will send you a copy of my checklist and and just, I just really appreciate the work that everyone's doing right now. If anything, I hope that this is a reminder that therapists are doing such important work and the world needs your work more than ever. So
Gordon Brewer:
Good. That's exactly what I said. And in the email I sent out yesterday to folks on my email as is right now we're needed. What we do is needed more than ever. And so I think that's hard work and it's sacred work. It really is. It really is. That, that could get [inaudible]
Jane Carter:
We all find a whole other team. Well, everyone, everyone Pat yourself on the back right now where ever you are driving, raise your right hand, turn it backwards and Pat yourself on the back. You're working really hard. Good work. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well folks,
Gordon Brewer:
Jane's stuff in the show summary and show notes. So be easy to find and Jane, so great to to connect again, even if it's just virtually and we just need that. We need to spend a day together.
Jane Carter:
Yeah. We need to eat at about 10 Asheville restaurants once they open up again cause there's so much good food. We'll just vitalize the local economy between the two of us talking my language.
Gordon Brewer:
Well Jane, take care and I'm sure folks, you'll be hearing from Jane Jane again here on the podcast. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.