Let Them Love You Messily: Accountability for Therapist Entrepreneurs
As I sit in Maine at the Doubt Yourself Do It Anyway Summit, I keep hearing the same thing over and over:
Everything is hard, I just want to connect to people, I need help, and most importantly the future of small group and individual therapy practices lives in relationships.
And I keep thinking about what I see get in the way and to be honest y’all, some of us find it hard to be held accountable.
Accountability (when it comes to task completion) is hard, as much as it’s really useful for a lot of people it can also bring feelings of shame and guilt when we are faced with that we haven’t completed. This can lead to shutting down and importantly, closing out.
What happens when your business partner is also a friend? Do you just have to lose out on two important relationships because you can’t get out of your own head?
Maybe you keep friendship and business separate, maybe you don’t even work with anyone… But then, how do you even get the tasks done without accountability? Many ADHDers find it invaluable to have someone to bounce ideas off each other, to keep the motivation and excitement high, to be a “second memory”, and many more reasons.
If accountability shuts you down and shuts them out…how the absolute fuck are you supposed to?
I mean the answer is clear, gotta get better at accountability!
I do see a slight difference between accountability for harm done and accountability to a task, I also think learning to get better at one can impact the other.
Harm focused accountability means, well, someones been harmed! We have to attend to that first.
Task accountability is just logistics, its supportive to the person taking accountability.
The accountability we’re talking about today is when you show up to the meeting, are looked dead in your face and asked the dreaded question:
“Hey, did you finish that?”
Well fuck no you didn’t finish it, you ADHDed it, forgot to do it, and now you have to own up to that.
But am I thankful for the ask or flooded with shame and guilt?
I want to be thankful.
Building this skill, increasing your tolerance will help you build not just your business but your friendships too. When we don’t collapse in the face of accountability we become stronger safer friends.
Before building the skill you’ll need to do an inventory, understanding what happens for you internally when someone shows up and asks for the thing you committed to? How does that change when you’ve done it vs when you haven’t? Does it change based on who’s asking (when your employee asks does that feel different than when your business partner asks? When your friend asks how does that change it?
Can you name the shame?
For me, I often begin to feel overwhelmed and start trying to figure out if I can complete it basically right there on the spot. I feel shame about my inconsistency and especially the fact that I don’t have a good way to organize all the different little projects in my life. I feel guilty for the time and effort others took to do their share and I start questioning leisure time and rest time I used during the period when I was supposed to complete the item. Sometimes i compare myself to the other person and find myself lacking.
Here’s the thing, some of those thoughts and feelings fit the facts and some don’t. Some could fit if there was a change in intensity or duration.
All of them give me information.
Information about myself and the relationship that if I shut down I will lose the capacity to act on to strengthen myself as a community member and strengthen this relationship (not to mention my capacity to complete the project!!)
Once you’ve named the shame you can engage with it actively. Over and over we see that shame grows in isolated darkness. Held deep within ourselves we close off the options of others to support and reassure us.
In DBT the opposite action to shame is to share the secret with someone who will accept it and you.
Pause.
People see accept and think something way different than what is here. Your employee, your business partner, coach, therapist, friend, may still ask you for change or express hurt. Accept in this context is that they will not abandon you. They will not discard you. They will continue to believe in who you are and what you do. They will still see you.
Sometimes we work so hard to avoid causing people pain we don’t realize that the real pain is in the withdrawing.
Your accountabilibuddy wants the relationship more than they want that one work product perfectly done one time.
I’m a DBT therapist at heart so when faced with a probability of an emotional experience highjacking a relationship that’s important to me, I turn to Cope Ahead.
Figure out what the situation is that might bring up the emotion. Is it the being asked if you’ve completed something, seeing what others have completed, worry about judgement (if so, from someone else or from you?), etc.
What is the likelihood that thing will happen? How might you feel if it does?
What’s the worst case?
What will you need in that moment to get through it, to not shut down and close out?
Do you need the conversation to use specific language? Do you need it to happen through a specific medium (spoken, written, video etc)? What do you need to be able to ask follow ups instead of following the brain worms down the shame spiral?
You don’t have to do it alone.
This works best when you share with your accountabilibuddy! They literally WANT to help you! Ask for the supports you need, say when something doesn’t feel good, let them orient to your reality.
If you're reading this and thinking, 'This is great in theory, but I need someone to walk me through it,' I hear you. Learning this in isolation is exactly what we're trying to undo. I’m going to begin offering business communication and boundary coaching right here through RIC. Sign up for my newsletter to be the first to hear about it (and to get special offers).
The reason you connected with this person (or people) was because doing it alone wasn’t working! Let them be your teammate, let them have your back.
Let them love you messily.