My Journey in Private Practice

Listen here or read below about my journey in private practice. 

I always knew that I wanted to end up in private practice. I've always been drawn to the independence of working for myself and having the flexibility to make my schedule what I need it to be throughout different phases of life. It always appealed to me to have a business where I can evolve my work life as things change in my personal life.

One of my first internship experiences in graduate school was with a woman who had a solo, private practice. That was the first time that I got to see behind the scenes, what it was like to run a practice. It really affirmed, yes, this is something that I want and something that I can do. 

Fast forward after graduation, I was working on my residency to get licensed and I was having a hard time finding a full-time counseling job that would count towards my hours.

So I started piecing together, different part-time jobs and they were kind of scattered all in different settings. One of these was at a small group private practice and I started running some therapy groups.

I was really fortunate that this experience led to many more opportunities to learn and grow in the group practice setting. I started seeing individual clients and running groups, and also started doing some administrative work for the practice too. And this eventually developed into a full-time position with my time being split between, clinical client work and then also doing administrative work for the practice.

I can confidently say, I have done pretty much every aspect of the administrative or business side of things that it takes to run a individual and group practice. The group practice that I was at was small when I started there, it was just a couple of therapists and, by the time I left, it had evolved into a really large six figure practice.

I have done payroll for therapists as 1099 Contractors. I implemented a shift, of taking the contractors to employees with benefits. I've done the credentialing process for therapist more times than I can even count. Both the process for credentialing a therapist who's not already on insurance, And then also the process of terminating the insurance contracts when a therapist doesn't want to take insurance anymore.

So I was in the group practice setting for several years. And then in 2019, I opened my solo private practice Sea Glass LLC in Richmond, Virginia.

Since I started my practice in 2019, it has been constantly evolving.  As soon as I started to get settled into a flow of things the 2020 Pandemic started. I shifted everything to 100% virtual services.

Then in 2021, I started experimenting with EMDR intensives, and I also added a therapist as a contractor to my practice.

As of June, 2022, I am at the tail end of terminating my last insurance contracts. And in July, I will be also completely transitioned into only offering EMDR intensives in my practice. So no more weekly ongoing therapy clients, I will be doing 100% intensive therapy.