The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer
Okay, when you're ready, you can do the little blurb

Alyse Freda-Colon
Hi, my name is Elise Frieda cologne. I am a therapist in New York and I am thrilled to be a guest on the practice of the therapy Podcast. Today we'll be talking about my journey in my private practice, and my recent transition into coaching and how I manage all that. Maintaining some semblance of a work life balance.

Gordon Brewer
Well, hello, everyone, and welcome again to the podcasts and I'm really happy for you to get to know Elise Fredo cologne. Hi Freda. I mean, let me start over.

Alyse Freda-Colon
You thought you were doing so well. Yeah, I

Gordon Brewer
thought I was let

Alyse Freda-Colon
me start over names and your defense.

Gordon Brewer
I guess I know in my Maslow's southern tongue. So I mean, just all right. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome again to the podcast, and I'm so happy for you to get to know. Elise Frieda cologne. Welcome, Elise. How are you?

Alyse Freda-Colon
I'm great. Thank you so much for having me on.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah. So Elise, 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?

Alyse Freda-Colon
Okay. Um, so, interestingly, I've wanted to be a therapist, since I really as long as I can remember, I'm 13. I actually still have one of my notebooks. They used to have these denim notebooks and like binders that you would put all your stuff in, and my friends would write on the outside with these fun markers. And I wrote on their future therapist have problems call me with my phone. And I still have that to this day, this fun, junior high school. So this is my true color.

Gordon Brewer
That's great. I never really ever deviated

Alyse Freda-Colon
it was this was what I wanted to do, and just plowed straight ahead. And I've been in private practice since probably 22,006. Maybe around. And I have a fantastic practice with fantastic clients. And it's just the greatest career in the entire world.

Gordon Brewer
Well, yeah, yeah, I would agree. It's some. It's It's interesting how we all land in the careers that we do. You know, people have heard this story from before, but what inspired me to go into becoming a therapist was the movie, ordinary people? Oh, yeah. I'm dating myself with that movie. But there was. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So but that was what inspired me to go into it because of a scene in there. So

Alyse Freda-Colon
yeah. Oh, wow. That's so cool.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, so So, uh, Lee, Elise, I know one of the things that you and I were just chatting about, we've made kind of the transition from going from kind of the traditional therapist model to doing more life coaching. And I know that there's probably a whole story behind that for you. So do you mind sharing that?

Alyse Freda-Colon
Absolutely. So interesting, kind of a little bit of a backstory, my private practice, you know how it is, you know, especially people, let's say, an older generation, and those of us who got into it, a while back, it's so much trial and error. And so much of the stuff we need to know is never taught, we find out by asking a colleague like so what do I do about this? Or how do I do? You know, it's, it's really lacking, or it had been in terms of how do you create a business that's sustainable. And so you just kind of did what other people did or what you kind of learned in the agency you worked in. So when I started my practice, I got on insurance panels, because that's what I thought you were supposed to do. And, you know, while that was a nice way to grow a practice, it became really unsustainable. As someone who doesn't have any admin, trying to keep up with the paperwork and the inexplicable denials, and all the folks, it just became too arduous. So I could do a whole evolution of getting off insurance panels and say, No, I'm just going to do this self pay I'm not going to deal with with any kind of outside agency. So that was a whole process that turned out to be fantastic. When, you know, I'm not beholden to anyone making rules or telling me what I can and can't do. So I got my practice to this great place yet. I still wasn't satisfied. Like what is what's next that I can do? And one of the programs that I have written hope I can say this, it's yeah, sure, stop dating assholes, um, came about because what I found over the years was that so many women were complaining about the same things, and, in my estimation, making the same mistakes in their dating journey. And I got to the point where I almost wanted to make a brochure or a little booklet like, okay, here, you're going into, take this book with you and consulted. And here are some pitfalls you can avoid. And here are some things you want to be really aware that you're doing or not doing. And that's kind of how it came about where when I found that it was like, oh, all of these women are having the same issues, how am I able to, to get this information out on a larger scale? Much more so than I could ever do? One to one in a private practice. Because as you know, the hours are limited. There's only so many hours, you can sit in that chair. Right? So I started looking into coaching. And what's interesting is that as a therapist, I tend to work very much like a coach, I'm very present day focused, goal oriented, solution oriented. So it seems like a kind of a seamless, a kind of a seamless transition. And I'm just you know, it's kind of at the beginning of it. I've written two courses, another one for called, are you mad at me, which is for people pleasing women who lie awake at night worrying about all the things that they said wrong that day, and all the people who are angry or disappointed in them, and trying to help them to sort of turn off that voice? kind of stepped into their power?

Gordon Brewer
Yes, yes. And isn't it interesting how I think for most of us, when we when we create our niche and practice, we see the same things coming up over and over again. And I think part of the part of the I'm just kind of thinking out loud here, part of the kind of quote unquote burnout that we've experienced, if we've been doing it a while, is that we're we're going over the same things with people over and over again. And so why not take that from, as I like to say, from a one to one model to one to many model and put it in a in a format that can resonate with more people.

Alyse Freda-Colon
Absolutely. And in terms of the under the licensure rules are different state to state, but for me, and my degree, I'm only licensed to practice in the state of New York, being able to bring this to ideally, a larger audience, people anywhere in the country in the world, really, that idea is so exciting to me, because you're not limited to well, they have to be standing in the state while I deliver this information. And idea, you know, one to one versus one to many is really I think what the appeal of coaching is, you know, to be able to to, ideally bring this to a group of people at a time as opposed to just one it just, it it. It just sort of opens the world. And I love I love the idea of it.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think the other thing, too, that we talked kinda kind of hit on a little bit is really making sure that what you're doing is it's a term that I've heard recently, and a shout out to Casey Compton, who is a friend, she, she used the term lifestyle congruence with your business. And so I love that. And so thinking about, you know, like you said, we can, we can only spend so much time button chair and being able to work with people, whereas there's a lot of opportunities to work with people and other ways that are probably just as just as effective, if not more effective sometimes.

Alyse Freda-Colon
Absolutely. And, you know, when I when I went through this whole evolution with my practice, and sort of changed up the way I was doing it and got home the fee structure. Remember, a friend said to me, wait a minute, you're going to do something else aren't? Why aren't you happy? I thought you got your practice exactly where you want and how come that's not enough? And I'm like, I don't know. It's, it's not there's this drive, like, I got to do more. And maybe that's just my own idiosyncrasy, but it feels like it can be bigger, you know?

Gordon Brewer
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So do you mind sharing with us a little bit about kind of your evolution in that and how you how you made those transitions?

Alyse Freda-Colon
So far, Shin from

Gordon Brewer
Yeah. So from being kind of moving into more coaching and then the other thing you mentioned that the people might be interested in as, you know, just making the decision to get off of insurance panels and go more, I guess assuming cash pay. Yeah,

Alyse Freda-Colon
that was that was tremendous, because I, for a long time, told myself the story that nobody would pay out of pocket for therapy, I really did. And I believed it. And it was a culmination of many, many, many frustrating situations of hours and hours and hours of lost time trying to call if you've ever tried to call an insurance company to find out why a claim was denied, you understand what I mean. And I didn't have the I'm a very organized person, I didn't have the time or resources to be able to do that. And still, it was taking away. And I was getting frustrated. And I remember, I came to work one day and I got, I got a letter, you know, what the insurance companies would do? One of the insurance companies would send me a letter and say, Oh, two years ago, we overpaid you by X number of dollars, write us a check. And if you didn't send them a check, they would just take it out of someone else's account. I mean, the staff accounting nightmares, but one week, I got a letter that two of the people I had worked to clients, they said we're denying all claims from this period to this period, because we don't think it was clinically necessary. I said, That's it, I'm out. I'm out. And as is my nature, I sat down and I wrote a letter to every single insurance company and said, I'm out. I'm no longer a provider. They gave me every one of them gave me my date that I've disenrolled Do you know that I was disenrolled? From my last insurance company? I'm gonna say March 11, of 2020.

So I get up every now and then hmm, shuts down. I'm like, Oh, my God, what did I do?

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, so how has it changed your practice? I mean, to do that, I mean, what are you finding that you're, obviously you're not having to spend all the time on filing claims and follow up and all of that sort of thing? So yeah. So how have you found the ability to get clients and the ability to bring in referrals and that kind of thing?

Alyse Freda-Colon
It is the, one of the best decisions I ever made for my practice. It changing that, that mindset, telling myself you stories about what people can and can't do. That was all my own stuff that I had to work through. If found it to be so fabulous on so many levels, clinically. I'm much more willing to talk about things that let's say in the past, like money was always a weird thing, you know, to talk about, and I heard someone recently say, Well, we have a secretary who takes the money because you never want to bring money into a therapy room. And I was like, what you do? Of course you do. And you need to be talking about this. So to me, that was kind of eye opening? And also, I don't know, I find that when people are investing in therapy. They seem to take it they're very committed seem to take it really seriously. So I have very few cancellations, almost zero no shows people are in it. Not that they're not necessarily in it when their insurance base, but they're, I think that there's almost a an added layer of investment. Yes. And what I also find is interesting is that as therapists sometimes you can get resentful, I mean, whether or not therapists want to admit it. If you're slaving away and seeing a ton of clients and hardly getting by and your clients are coming in paying you a $5 copay talking about their their trip around the world. Sometimes it's like, you know, yeah, why can't I do this? So I just in the idea that I make the rules about my practice, and it works for my life is freeing and wonderful. Yeah, I think people the biggest fear that I think everybody has when they either get into a self pay practice, or they transition to a self pay, is that all my clients will leave. But the truth is, and some did leave and and you know, I did wonderful work with some people. And that was the end of our journey. But the truth is that if you have a practice where you are making a living, that works for you, you don't need to have 50 people on your caseload. You shouldn't anyway, because there's too many people to say, right?

Gordon Brewer
Right. Right. That's too much. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. Well, it's um, yeah. So the, what was your process in starting your course and and finding that niche. Yeah.

Alyse Freda-Colon
So again, as I said, I got my practice to this great place and said, Okay, now what? And I started hearing about people doing coaching, who were therapists. And, you know, I think a lot of us have that bias, like, just sort of, sort of, like a therapist want to be or someone trying to do our work without any of the credentials or education. I know that that, that that feelings kind of persist out there. But when you realize the flexibility are the things that a coach is allowed to do without all of the same rules and regulations? Why wouldn't we want to kind of jump on that and be able to, to, to do our work on a larger scale, if that's what we want to do. And again, the way that I practice is very much in line with the idea of coaching. So it seemed like a perfect fit. So I took a course about how to write for therapists who want to move beyond private practice and how to write a program step by step, which I did. And it's been a long process, though, you know, yeah. I hired a social media team. And so there's been a huge learning curve. But it's been super fun to see what has kind of come out of that.

Gordon Brewer
Yes, yes. And so in your mind, how do you, for you? How do you differentiate between the difference between therapy and coaching?

Alyse Freda-Colon
The difference I would say, is in coaching. My goal is to focus on a particular issue. So let's say for the dating one, it's really, we're not talking about a whole bunch of stuff. We're talking about dating. And we're trying to how I'm trying to help women to date in the most systematic and strategic way possible, keeping in mind what is what is their ultimate goal? And how do we get them there in a more seamless way? Or from the overthinking woman? That's what we're focusing on. So it's in therapy, it can be whatever, you know, whatever thickness were to bring to the table. But in coaching, it's going to be much more specific to that particular issue. Hmm, that makes sense. Yeah. Does

Gordon Brewer
it does? And so, yeah, so I bet there's some people that are curious with this whole dating thing? What are the common themes that you've seen as you've put your course together?

Alyse Freda-Colon
So many, and so much of what I have written in this curriculum is really born out of things that I've heard women say over and over and over again, in one form or another, over the last 20 years. Things like going into a, you know, going to meet someone with a with a preconceived idea about how you want it to go, where it's almost like you go in with an agenda like, well, Oh, me, he'll be the one. So then you can start to filter out important information that might present itself that doesn't necessarily fit with that. So almost going blinders on. As opposed to what I call data collection. You know, if I'll, let's say I'll talk to a woman and she'll say, oh, oh, my gosh, I want to date with this guy. He's perfect. He's not perfect. You don't know him? You met him once, right? You're collecting data? So let's What do you know about him? Right? And, and don't jump ahead of yourself? Because there's no way you could know someone after one thing, you know, the things he's shared with you, and you know what you noticed about him, but you can't make an assessment that he's wonderful. You don't know that yet. So, being more cognizant of that, that I'm getting to know this person and paying attention to what he says what he doesn't say. Does he follow through on what he says he'll do? Is he a reliable person you have to pay attention to and I also, I also have a like a freebie that you I guess you go to the link in my bio, and it's the freebie is a checklist that I have often used with women, where I have them get very clear about what is it you want in a partner, I want you to list qualities. And then I have them put them in order, right of the most important things in this person. And I have them bring it in and we go through it and really get clear on what's most important. What's what's the next most important thing and then have them do the same thing with a list of deal breakers things I will absolutely not accept. And it can be really interesting how, how a woman might struggle with that never really having thought about it. Mm. or they have much more superficial things on the list about the way the person looks or, you know, their, their height or their job or their whatever. But I always say when you when you weigh height, against trustworthiness, which one is more important to you? And if you had to choose? Yeah,

Gordon Brewer
yeah, that's a Yeah. You know, I think one of the things for people to recognize, and I think this ties in well, with what you've done with the dating course, is there's so many so much stuff that we do as therapists day in and day out. We have, in many ways, the curse of knowledge, and that we know this stuff so well, that we take it for granted that everybody else knows that too. And so like this, the things that you're pointing out, might seem like common sense to people, but in reality, they just don't know those things.

Alyse Freda-Colon
Absolutely. You would think it's common sense. And I did for a while until it was woman after woman after woman a second. Our women just kind of amazed on these apps just sweat like no swiping. Nope, nope, nope. Wait a second. Those are people what? Why are you so quick to go through them? Right? And that you're that you're stopping on? What is it? Is it a nice picture? Is it a photogenic guy? Does he have a nice smile? What else is there? That's important. So if you've decided to go online and do these dating apps, I encourage women to be as strategic as possible with what it is that you're looking for. Give people a chance, maybe the guy who's not six feet tall is fantastic. But you'll never know if you've already ruled him out or for something he has no control over, right? Mm hmm. The other thing that I find happens a lot is making excuses. So let's say a woman goes out with a guy and I'll I'll call you and we'll get together next week. And then she doesn't hear from him. And then she starts with the excuses of okay, what but he said he was really busy with work, or maybe, you know, that expression, everything after it's bullshit. It's like, we he said he was gonna call but he got really, really busy. So I wasn't able to see him this week, and to not just make excuses for behavior. If it's, she said he would do something and he didn't do it. That's important information. And you can't filter that out. Because it's inconvenience to your view of what you want this relationship to ultimately be. Right? That makes sense.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah. Does it does? Yeah. So what one of the things that's probably I'm guessing, for some of our listeners that are starting to think about, okay, what is something comparable that I could do in my own practice, or that particular issues? What was kind of your starting point in trying to in pulling all this together, around this particular niche?

Alyse Freda-Colon
I started to, as I said, notice that the same themes kept coming up with women, and particularly around dating, so I started jotting down some of the themes that I would see. And I found I was repeating myself a lot, like, Don't make excuses, you know, watch his behavior, do not pay attention to the words are inconsequential. If the behavior doesn't match, I don't care what somebody promises you. What does he do? What is what was actions show? And that that is always going to be much more importance than what he says, right? And if he tells you something that sounds like complete BS, it's probably complete BS, right? Don't excuses for it. Because now I gotta start again, that's the other thing I see a lot is the interaction more. So I tend to work with more women. So my perception could be skewed in that way. But women also have the whole kind of biological clock thing. And I can't count the number of women who have said, I'm 32 What am I supposed to do start over again and find somebody else and I wanted to be married by now when I wanted to have kids by now we'll make it and what if I don't meet anybody at that? And it's like, the pressure of the rest of their lives is riding on it, this guy makes the cut. So you can see where it would be difficult to to do a real clear analysis, because that they might not like the answer that they find.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so it's you So you started taking these ideas and pulling them together? And is your your course tell us about the course itself that you put together?

Alyse Freda-Colon
Sure. It's a small group six week coaching program. We meet the Zoom once a week. I have assignments that I asked you to do in between to kind of reinforce some of what we're doing. And we have accountability calls, and then they have access to me a few times a week via video. And again, it's in the beginning stages. So I know that I will tweak this as we go on. But my goal is to be able to, to kind of bring this to a larger audience and to and to help women to feel much more empowered and that they are going into dating with a clear objective as opposed to shrug the shoulders let's let's see, who knows. You treat it, you treat it with the seriousness to whatever degree that is that it deserves in your life. And if you want to meet a partner, I think you need to go in with a strategy.

Gordon Brewer
Mm hmm. Yeah, that's good. Well, Elisa, I've got to be respectful of your time. And I'm really have enjoyed our conversation. tell folks how they can get in touch with you if they want to find out more about your coaching and about the stuff that you're doing and how you can help them.

Alyse Freda-Colon
Okay, people can find me at se coaching with Elise, a LSA on Instagram and Facebook, and there is a link in my bio where you can grab that freebie, which if I say so myself is pretty cool. website, I'm all over the place. alone.ca at AFC therapy.com. You can find me anywhere.

Gordon Brewer
All right, and we'll have links here in the show notes in the show summary for this. Well, any parting thoughts that you have a lease around all of these things that we've talked about?

Alyse Freda-Colon
The intention women who are dating be intentional. Grab my freebie there that there's a place to start if you haven't seriously sat down and thought about these things in terms of what your deal breakers and must haves are. I implore you do that as your starting points, and kind of get some clarity around that. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks, Elise. Thank you so much.