In this episode of The Practice of Therapy, we navigate the intricate terrain of imposter syndrome, delve into the raw reflections on authenticity and compassion in mental health training, and uncover the often-neglected reality of self-care in the profession. A seasoned therapist, Jim shares his invaluable insights on imposter syndrome, emphasizing its roots in the multifaceted journey of overcoming challenges. The narrative challenges misconceptions surrounding this phenomenon, shedding light on its universal nature that can manifest at various career stages.
Jim’s candid reflections on authenticity and compassion expose the pitfalls of conventional professional training, urging a shift towards a more genuine and compassionate approach for clinicians. As we conclude, Jim calls for fostering vulnerability within the mental health profession, emphasizing the pivotal role of supportive networks and honest dialogues in navigating the challenges of toxic work environments. This episode provides a holistic perspective, encouraging clinicians to embrace their identity, overcome challenges, and prioritize self-care for a fulfilling and resilient career in mental health.
Meet Jim LaPierre 
Jim LaPierre, LCSW, CCS, is a seasoned mental health clinician who specializes in recovery from trauma and substance use disorder. Jim identifies as a wounded healer and a work in progress. He spends his days with fellow social misfits, helping them transform their lives. Jim & his wife Brigitte own and operate an outpatient client in Brewer, Maine.
Navigating the Imposter Phenomenon: Embracing Identity and Overcoming Challenges
Imposter syndrome, that persistent feeling of inadequacy despite notable achievements, is a phenomenon rooted in the remarkable journey of overcoming challenges. Jim reflects on the fact that qualifying for imposter syndrome often involves navigating through the complexities of family dynamics, surviving school, earning degrees, and completing various milestones. The narrative challenges the misconception that imposter syndrome is exclusive to certain roles, emphasizing that it can manifest at different stages in one’s career. Teaching clinicians, Jim normalizes the initial fear and insecurity that accompany significant responsibilities, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging the feeling of being new to a role. The key to overcoming imposter syndrome, as suggested, lies not only in mastering the job but, more importantly, in making substantial investments in understanding oneself, embracing one’s identity, and continuously healing personal wounds. It’s a journey of self-compassion, patience, and resilience, recognizing that imposter feelings often originate long before entering professional fields. Ultimately, the path to overcoming imposter syndrome involves not just excelling at the job but finding comfort within oneself.
Candid Reflections on Authenticity and Compassion in Mental Health Training
Jim candidly reflects on his early years as a therapist, realizing that the first two years were marked by a sense of not knowing what he was doing. He challenges conventional views of graduate school and professional training, asserting that much of it seems geared towards safeguarding the employer’s liability rather than prioritizing the well-being of the clinician or even the client. Jim underscores the importance of self-exploration, urging aspiring clinicians to delve deep into their own biases and prejudices. He shares a personal experience of unintentionally causing harm due to a bias in favor of education, emphasizing the need for openness to diverse pathways of success. Jim criticizes the industry’s emphasis on professionalism, arguing that it often translates to being disingenuous, avoiding vulnerability, and suppressing one’s authenticity. He highlights the detrimental impact of self-critique on new clinicians, asserting that the pressure to conform to professional standards can perpetuate the imposter syndrome, creating a sense of being a bigger fraud. Ultimately, Jim advocates for a more authentic and compassionate approach to training clinicians, recognizing the value of vulnerability and genuine human connection in the therapeutic process.
Jim’s Journey to Uncover the True Essence of Self-Care in Mental Health
Jim’s candid admission delves into the often-neglected reality of self-care in the mental health profession. He emphasizes that the commonly uttered phrases about peer support, political supervision, and self-care often remain superficial, with a limited understanding of what self-care truly entails. For Jim, self-care was initially an idea he recognized as necessary but didn’t actively practice due to the demands of clients, volunteer activities, and ingrained conditioning prioritizing others’ needs over his own.
The continuous drain and burnout prompted a transformative realization. Leveraging his experience with individuals in recovery, Jim applied the principles of 12-step programs to his own life, reaching a point where he became “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” The pivotal shift occurred when he documented his commitments, expectations, and standards for self-care, turning it from an abstract idea into a tangible, scheduled practice. Jim’s acknowledgment of the need for explicit commitments to himself reflects a profound understanding that without such intentional efforts, self-care can easily fall by the wayside amidst the demands of a busy professional and personal life.
Fostering Vulnerability: Jim’s Call for Supportive Networks and Honest Dialogue in Mental Health Practice
Jim highlights the crucial need for a supportive and honest network in the mental health profession, especially when working in toxic environments that discourage vulnerability. Drawing from his early career experiences, he emphasizes the challenges of opening up in competitive workspaces that prioritize individual success over collaboration. In such environments, sharing personal struggles becomes a rarity, hindering the essential exchange of experiences and support among clinicians. Jim underlines the significance of having individuals in his life who not only hold space and show compassion but are willing to call him out on blind spots or areas he might be overlooking. He notes the necessity for both personal and professional security to address and rectify these blind spots openly. Reflecting on lessons learned from working with individuals in recovery from substance use disorder, Jim points out the addictive mind’s tendencies toward self-deception through minimization, rationalization, and justification. This insight led him to confront his own tendency to deceive himself with the common refrain of “I’m fine.” Acknowledging the difficulty of seeking such support early in his career, Jim expresses gratitude for having a supportive network today that values openness and accountability.
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Well, hello, everyone and welcome again to the podcast and I'm happy for you to get to know today's jam, gloppy air. Welcome, Jim.
Hello, thank you for having me. Yes.
So Jim is as an LCSW, and is located in Maine, and is really kind of his, his forte is working with other clinicians on impostor syndrome, which is something that comes up a lot for all of us, as we were just kind of chatting briefly about before we started recording, I know, it's something that I struggle with all the time. But jam as I start with everyone, why don't you tell folks a little bit more about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed?
Wow, how I landed here is a loaded question. And that's I think it is for all of you. But some helpers, I started out as a clinician to become the perfect, what has helped me as a child, as an adolescent, as an adult, I think we all obviously have personal reasons for going into these fields. But my bias is that a lot of us are so eager to help others that we don't necessarily fully attend to our own healing. And so that has certainly been, I think, starting out in therapy as a client, I found that my motivation for going and getting help for myself was that I was afraid, how I might unwittingly harm my clients. And I wish that I had done it just for myself. But that was not the case. And so the best thing about being a clinician, to me is that I hate being a hypocrite. All of the things that I preach, and attending to my own toward healing and growth has been the key to my success in every profession. Yeah. Yeah,
yeah, I could I fully agree. And I think as people have heard from me on this podcast, if we're not doing our own work, we're working on our own internal stuff. I know. For me, one of the best things I do every month is meet with my therapist. And so that's a, it's a, it's a good thing.
It's a necessary thing. And I think it takes a lot to come to acceptance of that. I went into the field, understanding what vicarious and secondary trauma were with compassion fatigue was, but honestly, I believed myself immune to all of those things. And of course, I tell my clients that I'm a slow learner with a high pain tolerance. So I mean, to learn the same lessons over and over again. And I burned out multiple times, in the early years of my career, I worked in very toxic community mental health settings, and had to come to terms with some very difficult things. But I my specialty throughout my career has been working with survivors of trauma. And the biggest adjustment that I had to make early on was recognizing that intuitively, the folks that I was working with, had the ability to read me like a book. And so they know, they knew I was getting advice that I don't take, and had to be dig deep. And look at the expectations and the standards that I held myself to and support but I wasn't seeking. And I've had a place where not only was that struggling with imposter syndrome, I was doing weight to business what was necessary. And it took me a long time to realize that what I was doing professionally was the same thing I did in my family of origin, I internalize the expectations of authority figures, and about and so it has taken a lot of painful lessons. But my goal, and doing clinical supervision in teaching and writing is familiar. Others can learn from every mistake ever.
Right? Right. Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that I've, you know, I've learned in working with clients, kind of, you know, you mentioned clients being able to see right through stuff. I think, what I've learned is, is that you go you're much more effective clinician when you can be a little bit vulnerable with clients a little bit of this self disclosure and letting them know that okay, yeah, I get it. I'm a struggle with some of the same things. And, and I think it just gives us more, more not not validation, but gives us more. I'm losing the word now, but gives us more credibility is what I'm the word I was looking for. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. So, yeah. So as you think about imposter syndrome, how do you define that and how do you see it because it's a kind of counter become a a buzz, kind of a buzz cliche or phrase that we throw around a lot, but I think a lot of people see it in different ways.
So the amazing thing to be about impostor syndrome is that you actually have to do a lot of really impressive things to qualify for it. So if your instance anything like mine, you had to survive your family of origin and all the traumas that went with it, you had to survive middle school high school, you had earned an undergraduate degree, do a bunch of internships, and complete graduate school, also that you could feel like a fraud. And I think that that is the norm. I think it's what everyone experiences, at least early on in their career. And so today, when I teach clinicians in training, one of the very first things I say to them is, if no one has told you yet, you're supposed to be terrified, it is absolutely normal. We are doing incredibly important and sacred work. And so to feel like you're somehow eminently qualified to do this is not reality, we need to give ourselves permission to be new to something we need to catch ourselves comparing, because when we're coming from a place of fear or insecurity, we tend to compare ourselves to others. And that comparison is always invalid. We also need to, we also need to recognize that impostor syndrome is not specific to a particular role. And that's the biggest misconception we have. So there's two parts to this. The first part is I experienced impostor syndrome, as a new clinician, but I also experienced it as a new program manager, as a new clinical supervisor, as a new executive director. Each time I experienced it for shorter periods of time, I came to be familiar with, okay, I'm in a new role. And I'm adjusting, and I need to give myself patience and grace. But every time there was a big change, I experienced the same thing. So what I've come to believe, is that the key to overcoming impostor syndrome is to huge investments in getting comfortable with ourselves in our identities, and continuing to heal our wounds. And I see those as the most important things we can do to overcome. Because all of the feelings of being a fraud or a chameleon, those existed for most of us long before we ever entered the fields professionally. So the key is, is not getting good at the job, the key is getting comfortable with yourself.
Right, right. You know, I'd say as you were saying that one of the things I was kind of reflecting on is I think there's this phenomenon in our education system. I mean, I'm speaking more specifically to graduate programs. And I'm not saying this all are like this, but one of the things, messages that I think gets handed to people, which I think is not a good message is is that until you've gotten a certain level of experience, you could probably do some harm to people. Now, I just don't know that that's true. I think, you know, like you GM working with, with people, supervising people through the licensure process, and that sort of thing. You know, that's, that is one of their big fears is that, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna mess this up, I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm not experienced enough, I'm not this enough or whatever, fill in the blank enough. But I think you're right. We're, we've all been there. And it is terrifying when you sit down with a sit down with clients for the first time, or you get faced with, you know, maybe a situation that you've not really dealt with before. But being able to boost that confidence that you do have what you need. And it's just a matter of accessing.
I think the first two years that I worked as a therapist that silent, like, please don't let them realize I have no idea what I'm doing. I honestly, I have a bias about most of what we think of in terms of graduate school and training to become a professional, which is that I think so much of what we do, is meant to safeguard the liability of the employer, not the clinician, not even necessarily the client. What we can do that would do harm to a client are things that we would never do and the things that we take advantage of ourselves, take advantage take for granted. If you were going to harm a client, you could do so by being homophobic by being racist by being sexist. And so, one of the most important things I think, to do in preparation of becoming a clinician is to really delve Have you learned about yourself? What are your biases? What are your prejudices, and maybe they're not at the extreme of any of the isms. But maybe they're things. Early in the earliest part of my career, I did a little bit of harm, because I was working with an adolescent who simply could not imagine graduating high school and wanted to drop out and study for a GED. My bias was the course each high school. And I didn't, did some harm there because I wasn't open to His pathway of success. Initially, I came around, but not knowing that I had a bias. In retrospect, it was obvious I have a bias in favor of education. Of course, I do have an educated person. And that was a disservice to my client. So am I going to harm a client? Because I said the wrong thing? No. And one of the worst things about being a new clinician, is that you critique yourself, and you play back each session in your head. And you think Well, should I have said that? Should I set it down? Should I have said it that way? That's a great way to drive yourself. Nuts. It's too much pressure. So the biggest disservice that we do in training clinicians is we hammer the idea of professionalism. And so much of what we call professionalism actually means be disingenuous, don't be vulnerable, don't be a real person. And that is, I think, the biggest harm that leads to because it perpetuates the feeling of bigger fraud.
Right, right. Yeah. And I think where we can go wrong, and I think what this is maybe, maybe the silver lining to imposter syndrome, because I think about the maybe the opposite of that is maybe a little bit of hubris, where a person is a little bit arrogant about their ability. And we've seen, you know, we've run into folks like that, and I think that's where people can be of more danger to folks, danger might be the strong, strong word that can be more harmful to folks and what we, what we do
100% agree, and my experience is that when folks are arrogant, it's almost always the case that they're overcompensating because they're scared, and they're hiding. Right? So I say better to be transparent that I practice therapy with a lot of vulnerability. And I really, if I was going to attribute my success as a therapist to anything, I would say it's my willingness to model, my willingness to be 100% in the moment with no plan, and making things up as we go. The idea that we're supposed to be an expert is something that I strenuously object to, is that cast your client in a passive role in which they're supposed to somehow benefit from my benevolent wisdom. And what I would prefer, in all cases, that therapy via a mutual process where we're doing this together, not just helping the client find their own truth, but actually defining the process together about what works.
Yeah, I think one of the, one of the greatest qualities that we can have as therapists is learning how to be just compassionately curious with clients, being able to really understand their world and approach it from a place of curiosity and caring, and being able to well to be able to, you know, be me being able to convey that with folks.
100% agree. And then I think the counterintuitive is, is to continue to be curious about ourselves. Because this word changes here. Yes, as you bear witness, especially in bearing witness to suffering, I realized a long time ago that because of my specialty, I was either gonna grow spiritually, or I was going to gradually lose my hope for humanity. It's gonna gradually find myself cynical and jaded. And I didn't want any of that. So learning about myself out doing this market, vaccinate, therapy is hard on a good day. This job was hard, long before COVID This job was hard, because it's, it's draining. It is the only place in the world where a completely non reciprocal relationship is still healthy. And I don't hear often people talk about the cost of doing this work and how the need to be replenished and rejuvenated, is ongoing. Right? We've typically only talked about that in terms of
your muted Jim.
Oh, sorry. Yeah. So yeah,
pink. You were talking about continuously need to something
continuously replenishing, rejuvenating, we give lip service to ideas like peer support and the value of clinical supervision. We talk about self care. And I think for most of us, our definition of what self care is, is very limited. So, self care was only an idea. It was never something that I practiced, it was something that I knew was important. But I had all of these clients and all volunteer activities and all of these people in my life. And everything about my conditioning growing up is that other people's needs are important in mind or not. And so I just continuously became drained, continuously burned out. And I have been very fortunate, I've worked with a lot of folks in recovery from substance use disorder. And I've been able to apply everything that 12 programs installed to my own life. And so I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. Then and only then that I actually put down on paper, okay, here are all the things that I'm doing. Here are my expectations and the standards I'm holding myself to. And this is insane, this can't be done. So self care became not only some thing that I missed, but it literally is scheduled in my my book every week, because I've proven over and over and over again that if I don't make commitments to myself, I never followed through. Right,
right. Yeah. And I know that that's something that most of us, at least I know, that's something that's constantly a work in progress for myself, is just being able to pay attention to that self care, in whatever form that takes, I think everybody has to kind of find their way as far as what, what self care looks like for them. But I think one of the things is being able to have had the off switch there. And other words, not always being on for people being able to set boundaries around your work. And yeah, and doing those things that recharges your batteries.
I always urge clinicians to have hobbies and interests that have absolutely nothing to do with what we do professionally. Because if you're not careful, there's always important advocacy work to be done. And there's always directives that I could be setting on or some volunteerism that would make an impact in my community therapy is, for me, it's progressively lifestyle, it has this ongoing effect on every relationship that I have. And so having outlets outside of the field has really been key for me to have things to look forward to to engage with. Really, I totally unrelated to what I do professionally. Right,
right. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that's something that's just being able to have. Yeah, you know, I think the other part of that is just having a community around you, where you're not isolating yourself with, with all the stuff that we get handed. I think, you know, one of the, I think one of the, the, you know, one of the cornerstones of the therapy world is, is confidentiality and being able to, you know, be able to hold things in confidence. But it's like you're carrying around all the secrets for people. But I think there comes a time. You know, going back to what you said earlier about vicarious trauma, there comes a time when you need to have a community where you can process those things, and talk about how it's affecting you. And I think it's, you know, even though I think a lot of times too, for those of us that are, you know, been doing it a while, and even though we've been licensed a while, doing supervision and having groups that you can talk to about those things is really important.
Absolutely. And it's so vital to have that. And in the early years of my career, I was working in particularly toxic workplaces. And there's nothing about that type of leadership or environment that's conducive to opening up and sharing with other clinicians here are the places that I'm struggling, because those types of environments foster competition, as opposed to collaboration. And you're never quite sure booth set up and share. Just like I'm really struggling with by carriers and secondary trauma. I've needed to have people who I appreciate that they hold space for me, I appreciate that they're compassionate. What I often need is somebody to call me out on my blind spots on things that I'm not able to see you're not willing to see me and my experiences you have to be fairly secure in yourself as person and as a clinician to have a willingness to call people out. It's it's one more lesson that I learned from working with people in recovery from substance use disorder is that so often, the addictive mind is, everything about it is it's self deception. Everything is minimization, rationalization and justification. And so I started learning about the ways in which we deceive ourselves. And of course, for people like me, the biggest lie tell ourselves is I'm fine. I'm okay. Right. So have visions in my in my life, who we just are, are very open about this and say, Look, if you see me struggling, if you see me getting defensive or not following through on the things that I need to be, please tell me in no uncertain terms. And I'm very fortunate to have a number of books like that in my life today. But early in my career, that was a hard thing to ask for. And it was a hard thing to find.
Yeah, yeah. Well, Jim, I've got to be respectful of our time here. But in your time, especially. And I want you to tell folks a little bit about your book on impostor syndrome. And, yeah, just tell us a little more about that. Overcoming
impostor syndrome for healers, and helpers, is actually my third book. And I am really at heart a storyteller, I don't have a lot of political jargon or anything analytical for you. What I have is my own experience, and specs that I've made along the way so that hopefully others can learn from them. And what I've presented is my experience of probably eight or nine of the clinicians that I worked with over the years and kind of sharing their journeys as well. And how each of us struggles in ways that are connected. And things that we struggle with that clinicians tend to be connected to things that we have struggled with personally, whether that's related to our own trauma, related to being an adult child of an alcoholic or addict, whatever the connection is, we have to find that and we have to continue to heal that wound. So that we can feel like so that we can feel whole, honestly, I've been too many of us feel that emptiness feel broken, and we're trying to help other people out of the same boat. And that all of that feels impostor syndrome, because our mind to be dispensing this advice, if I'm struggling, depression, if I'm struggling with anxiety. And so whenever I meet or teach, the very person that I want folks to know about me is that I identify as a wounded healer. And not in this field, because I'm so altruistic, but I can't get through a day without helping somebody, I have the joy of working with people who are very much like me, and people who are like me are people who live with mental illness or people who live with eating disorders or self harm or substance use disorders. And so in, in all of the work that I've done, I guess the point that I would stress the most is that I have made it a point to learn from every single person that I've served. And I'm happy to share those stories as well in my writing. And my hope is that anecdotally, folks can make some connections to themselves, they can recognize that so much of what we've been taught about how to do this work is is really not genuine, it's really not vulnerable. And my hope is that we continue to attend to our own growth and healing so that we become more effective. And I think that's the key. If it was only for my benefit, I might never have invested so heavily in further therapy for myself, and so many of the ways in which I've sought healing. But as soon as I realized that it was going to directly benefit my clients, then it wasn't just a nice idea. It was a responsibility, something that I needed to do. And I think it's one of the common themes amongst healers and helpers of all times is that no matter what our experience, all of us want to be optimally effective at the work that we do. And I suppose it's a bit counterintuitive, but the most important aspects of that, and the most important thing that you bring into therapy is yourself. So my hope is that folks will invest heavily in their continued healing. And I always welcome connection. So if folks are reading any of my stuff or seeing me on social media, please know that I would love to hear from you. counseling@roadrunner.com is the easiest way to do that by getting a resource I would love Absolutely.
Awesome. Awesome. And we'll have links in the show notes in the show summary for folks to be able to connect. And that way they can get in touch with you. Well, Jim, I'm so glad we had this conversation, because I think it's, it's something that even though, you know, I've talked about this topic a few times on the podcast, but I think it's always good to revisit and, you know, hopefully people that are listening might also find this a bit reassuring, and that the work that we do is, as counselors and therapists and social workers is, is very noble. And I like to even say, go out on a limb here and say it's holy work. And so yeah, and so I think it's important for us to continue to, to do what we need to do to take care of ourselves and really recognize that we do this this important work. Absolutely. So Well, thanks, Jim. And I hope we can have another conversation here soon.
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Overcoming Imposter Syndrome: for Healers & Helpers
A Guide for Wounded Healers
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