Year of Growth & Opportunity

Happy 1st Birthday NDWE!

Can you believe it has been a year since New Directions With Erica (NDWE) has opened it’s doors?! This year has brought about not only personal growth but also tremendous growth in my clients. I wanted to talk about growth and the stages that propelled me to successful sessions with my clients.

Growth

Growth can come in stages, all at once or with time. Growth signifies we have progressed from where we once were to a new landing-place. Growth can cause pain or discomfort and joy or elation simultaneously. Growth can be an unwelcome guest when you are comfortable in your routine and not looking to change. This year, I have witnessed incredible growth in myself and my clients. My clients have continued to come to session, explore their challenges and grown in the process of therapy. This is one of the best parts of my job…witnessing progress (growth) in each of my clients! My clients get back what they put into the process and I am so proud them. Therapy is hard work and yet they continue to persevere.

Exploring Change

As many of you know, I was part of a group practice before launching my private practice. The possibility of starting my own business seemed daunting and scary while also feeling exciting and invigorating…all in the same breath! What was I to do with such incongruent feelings? As a therapist, I work with clients to recognize these incongruences and help them sift through how to address them. Here I was doing the same exact work! Starting to explore change took an open minded approach with patience, faith, trust and planning.

Patience

I needed to see if I could have patience not only with myself but also with the process. This was not an overnight adventure. It took some time to think about and put everything into fruition. Opening up the practice was an opportunity to see if I could weather through the storm of uncertainty. Uncertainty can be so uncomfortable! Nevertheless it was a piece that helped my growth. Being patient on days when I was still setting up shop was trying, to say the least. I learned about areas where I needed to continue exercising patience over the pieces I could not control. That’s where faith stepped in.

Faith

One of my core values is faith. To me faith is not only part of my spiritual practice but it also infiltrates every aspect of me as a human. I feel that faith can be synonymous with the word belief. Faith and belief have significantly impacted my life. Faith has helped me have an increased level of hope. This increased level of hope continues to titrate into my work with clients who may not feel any hope when they come into my office. Here are some of my beliefs that help me grow:

I believe in my clients and their ability to thrive!
I believe in myself along with the gifts I have been given to be a therapist.
I believe I have a purpose in this world to help others.
I believe in God. A God that loves not only me but also my clients. A God that allows me the opportunity to sit with hurting people week after week. A God that has given me a heart of compassion and love to connect with those that need it.

Trust

While I have faith, I also have trust. Trust in knowing that I have been chosen by each of my clients to hear their truth. Building the practice, I needed to trust my intuition that I was doing the right thing. I needed to trust that stepping out on my own would provide the most benefit to my clients. In fact, private practice continues to allow me to take my experiences, education and intuition into sessions with clients without following the direction of another person’s theory or approach to therapy. My group practice experience was not wrong but just different. Different because executing treatment plans and fully trusting my direction with clients had to run through the group lens rather than my own. Private practice was another opportunity to embrace trusting myself and to grow personally and professionally.

Planning

As I began the process to open up the practice, there were so many pieces that were never covered in grad school. It was like planning without blueprints! I had to do a lot of research and connect with other people that had been through this experience. With planning, I learned a lot about the need for flexibility in place of rigidity. Flexibility in place of rigidity is another concept I cover with many clients during sessions. Rigidity can lead to disappointment, frustration and lack of spontaneity which can impact your quality of life. Learning the importance of ambiguity (uncertainty) and that I did not have complete control over if clients would come to my practice or not was trivial. I could plan all day long but again making room for flexibility with the process would remain important. I leaned into my values as much as possible during the planning stages. It was rewarding to see growth even through my planning stages.

“All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination” -Earl Nightengale

Following Through

Once I had blueprints of my plan, it was time to follow through. In therapy we often talk through plans or goals for measuring growth. The follow-through can often be more challenging than scribbling down some action plans. For most people taking action can be challenging because of a lack of having support from loved ones, doubt in themselves, being uncomfortable with change and being scared of the unknown. I typically ask my clients in one way or another, if they are ready to follow-through, to take action and commit to change. Most clients say, “that’s why I’m here” while others are more skeptical of the ability to change. Wherever my clients are on this spectrum, I validate their position. I have been on that same “change-spectrum” and appreciate the differing viewpoints. I too had to access my readiness to change while mulling over building a private practice. I wavered back and forth recognizing the point when I was ready to change. When I was ready, I followed through! And a private practice, New Directions With Erica, was born!

Attitude of Gratitude

My heart is full to the brim as I write this. My eyes are filled with tears of joy. I am full of gratitude, awe and astonishment. My dream has come true…I am living my purpose. Growth has produced opportunities which have fueled my attitude of gratitude. My gratitudes include:

God: for leading clients to me, resources, talents and support to have my practice flourish.
My husband: who has loved, supported and encouraged me from day one to pursue my dream. I cannot imagine doing life with any other human!
My family: for their love, support and belief in my vision.
My clients: for trusting me with your most sacred stories, for allowing me the opportunity to sit alongside you during the most challenging of times and for doing the work! You make my heart full to watch your progress and to bear witness to your resilience! I am honored to be your therapist and fellow traveler!

Cheers to a year of growth and opportunity! Here’s to many more years of New Directions With Erica!

All My Love,

Erica