Modern Temptations for Christian Therapists

Camille McDaniel (00:01.938)
Welcome back to Christ in Private Practice. It’s wonderful to have you here. If you are new, welcome and I hope you stay for a long time. Today we are going to be talking about and diving right on into the topic of modern temptations for Christian therapists. Now, when I say temptations, I’m not talking about like scandal or, you know, any kind of like major failures of morality.

I’m really just talking about like the things that can look like success but quietly pull you off of your mission and the ambition that we kind of might have within us that actually goes way beyond the assignment that the Lord has given us or even comparison that that comparison that’ll really get us or even talking about comparison that can kind of

cloud our judgment, our clarity, it can cause some insecurity and doubt. And just having us kind of be confused a little bit about our real calling, kind of leaving us to build something in private practice that wasn’t necessarily God’s plan for us to build. So if you have ever found yourself overworking,

looking at what other clinicians happen to be doing on their social media and what they’re accomplishing and what they’re starting or what they’re stopping or asking yourself if you are even, you know, doing enough after you look at what they’re doing or if you find yourself saying yes to things that sound really good, but they don’t always bring you peace. And matter of fact, you’ve, you’ve possibly said yes to so many things that you even had to stop and ask yourself.

how did I get here? How do I back out? What was I supposed to be doing? Then this episode is for you. And let’s kind of start with ambition. Because ambition by itself is not wrong. I mean, ambition is what has gotten you to where you are in your practice or in your planning if you don’t have one but desire.

Camille McDaniel (02:27.822)
to be in private practice. So ambition in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. God does give us passions for the work and the assignment that he has placed in us, a purpose, know, right? And a lot of creativity. But ambition kind of turns a little dangerous when our drive starts to lead and it causes us to put

God quietly in the back seat and we’re not following what he has said and now he is basically in the rear view mirror. Essentially, that’s the only way that we are looking at what he is trying to tell us and we don’t want to do that. We want to make sure that we are not only aware of the interests that he has given us,

but we are actually putting it into place, not necessarily just looking at what we want to do. And that doesn’t mean that you can’t have goals, not at all. It just means that you’re going to keep your motives and keep your goals submitted to the Lord. And so in private practice, if it’s unchecked,

Ambition can look like expanding your team before you have systems or supervision support in place, before you have proper policies and procedures to organize a team of people, or it might be booking yourself solid to hit like income goals even though you know you are exhausted and your health is actually suffering.

launching new programs because everyone else seems to be scaling and this person seems to have gotten a corporate contract and this person happens to be doing a workshop and this person happens to have rented out a place for them to have some training and you’re looking at all of this and going, man, what am I not doing? Like how are they doing that? What are they, wait a minute, how do they get to the point of being able to offer that or?

Camille McDaniel (04:52.428)
be able to afford to do that. And yeah, I think a lot of us have been there. You know, matter of fact, I remember that the Lord told me once not to enlarge my private practice. I was, you know, kind of thinking, okay, what am I going to be doing for the next quarter, the next year, strategizing, planning?

trying to see what needed to happen or not happen and I’m thinking about expansion and growth and the Lord because I invite him into the conversation for sure. He has guided me in so many ways. I cannot even count how many times he has put me on the right path. He has turned me around. He has allowed me to see things that I couldn’t see in the natural and so I

I know he is absolutely invited into my personal conversations with myself about my planning. And he told me, don’t grow in that way. Don’t enlarge, don’t add any more people to your practice. That’s not going to be the direction that you go. And everything on paper or everything that I was saying to myself sounded good, but in my talk with him, he said no.

and that no will protect me and has protected me from burnout, from experiencing any more wrong fit people within my practice that just weren’t a part of his plan at all to begin with. That no that he gave me I trust is for my own good and for the good of the assignment that he has given me.

So if you’re feeling pressure to grow, to do something like really quick based on what you’re seeing, you want to actually do a bit of an audit this week. know, capacity versus your calling audit. And in that, you’re gonna ask yourself, what has God actually graced me to handle right now?

Camille McDaniel (07:14.594)
because outside of private practice, there are a lot of other things you’re handling. What has God actually graced you to handle right now? And what are you actually forcing out of fear that you are going to be falling behind? Like, what are you actually pushing yourself to do? Forcing yourself to try and, you know, implement and try and create because you’re afraid

that you’re gonna fall behind and you’re not going to be able to accomplish your goals for business building, for meeting your financial needs, for any other fears that might be coming into play. Here’s another one that you’re gonna ask yourself this week. Where do I need to pause and rebuild foundation before I even think about expansion? Because healthy ambition really builds at a pace.

I mean, it does not happen overnight. This stuff builds like building blocks one step at a time and unchecked ambition will burn you to the ground. It’ll burn out before any of the blessings arrive because you just, you won’t have capacity to receive a thing and not in a good way. We don’t want to burn out in our health. We don’t want to burn out in our relationships with people who we love dearly.

We don’t want to burn our business down because we are pushing so fast to keep up with some idea of what we should be doing and how well we should be doing that we take too many steps or make missteps that are very costly. So go ahead and this week, this week, you are going to go and do that audit, capacity versus calling audit and see what happens, what answers come up for you.

Okay, the next thing that I want to talk with you about is going to be temptation in comparison. The next temptation that we sometimes do struggle with that comes up for a lot of us is comparison. And this is like, you know, subtle sometimes because it can hide behind us just researching, quote unquote, I’m doing air quotes for those of us who are listening and not watching me on YouTube, you know, the

Camille McDaniel (09:43.202)
the subtle comparison, I’m just doing some research. I’m just trying to find out what’s going on out there and we can find ourselves getting inspired. Yes, we’re scrolling through social media, we’re looking at what other people are doing, we’re listening to other people’s information or watching it, but we end up feeling smaller, not better. We start comparing.

followers that other people have and views that other people had and we start looking at the way somebody’s designed their website and somebody has you know their social media laid out and all of a sudden, all of a sudden the calling that God gave us feels insufficient. Not enough, right? It’s a tricky one. We have to be careful.

In the book of Galatians chapter six, verse four through five, it says, let each one examine his own work and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another for each one shall bear his own load. And what Paul was saying in this is essentially run your own race. You should be looking at your own assignment.

and making sure that you are checking yourself against your assignment, not checking yourself against someone else’s assignment. And if you check yourself against your own God-given assignment and you have done what you’re supposed to do, you can feel great about that instead of looking at someone else’s assignment and looking at everything you haven’t done according to their assignment and then feeling like whoops.

God gave you to do is not enough. And so when we compare, we really, we honestly are just trading clarity for confusion. Cause we start mimicking other people instead of mastering the gifts and talents that we have been naturally given. So some common business potholes that comparison will create. Let’s talk about that.

Camille McDaniel (12:06.646)
So one pothole that comparison will create, and you’ll fall right on down this hole here, is copying another counselor’s niche or social media voice instead of developing your own. The reason why they are rocking and rolling with what they’re doing is because that’s just naturally what they do. So they’re operating in their gifts and in their talents.

When you might admire the way that they show up, you might really enjoy like how they present certain things or how, you know, artistic they are. And sometimes, let me just say, sometimes they are using someone else’s gifts and talents because they are hiring a team. So they’re not working only by themselves. They’re working in a group and everyone’s pulling all their gifts and talents together to make something awesome for the people.

But if you happen to be a party of one, that’s fine. You have a lot. Don’t look at someone else’s and think that the Lord cannot absolutely do a phenomenal work for the people he needs you to reach. You’re not necessarily reaching the people that this other person you’re comparing yourself to is supposed to reach. That person over there has their own people to reach.

you have your own people to reach. So that’s one thing, copying another counselor’s voice or their niche like you know instead of developing your own. Like another one, so setting your session rates because of what someone else charges, not necessarily because of the expenses that you have and the goals that you have and what seems to be

accepted in the areas that you operate in, you know, as far as whether you happen to be operating locally or whether you are state to state or whether you’re international. So you can’t really honestly look at things like that, but we do. We do. So we can’t set our rates just based on what someone else’s is charging. We have to know why. We got to know our own expenses, our own goals, and we have to know our own area that we operate in.

Camille McDaniel (14:28.298)
Another one is feeling pressure to create a course or a podcast or some kind of program just because other people are doing it. Other clinicians are doing it. Other clinicians are podcasting or are video casting or are vlogging and blogging and all of the different things. And let me stop and say, it is important for us to advertise.

If you remember in my last episode, I talked about us being a lighthouse and a lighthouse stands out because it emits such a light, it can’t be ignored by those who need the light that it has to offer. And so you are going to create something, but you’re not going to necessarily look at what your colleagues are doing and your neighbor is doing in order to say what you need to do.

you’re going to actually look at who you’re supposed to be serving and how they might show up, where they might show up, and you’re going to then develop your offering, whatever that may be, based on what they are likely to be receptive to. Because we want to choose things that are going to align with the target market that we are trying to serve. Comparison turns our calling into competition.

and we don’t want to go down that path. So what are some things that we can do today in order to not go down the competition hole? And so try what many may call kingdom analysis instead of competitor analysis. So in kingdom analysis, you’re going to ask yourself, who has God uniquely sent me to serve? And what pain point?

am I called to serve? Not what trend am I called to chase? What pain point am I called to serve? And the next thing you’re going to ask yourself is how can my content reflect stewardship? Not just striving for the next, you applause, not just striving for more followers, not just striving for more clicks and more views, but like, how am I supposed to steward?

Camille McDaniel (16:41.964)
his people. And if you need a reset, if you need a reset time to kind of like think this over, fall back a little bit, take a week off. know, don’t necessarily look at your social media metrics just for a little bit. I mean, it is important to kind of understand, are you reaching the person you’re supposed to be reaching? So metrics are very valuable. But if you feel very overwhelmed, take time off.

and pray and ask the Lord to help you to build impact and ask him to keep you so that you don’t get you know distracted by just applause and likes and clicks and views and but that you really are impacting those he has sent you to serve and then just notice how much more creative and peaceful your strategy becomes when you take some time to really

Be to yourself, be with the Lord, and allow him to really speak to your heart. It’s pretty cool, it’s pretty cool. So this next one that we’re going to talk about is having confusion in our calling. This is the next temptation. Building a vision and having confusion in our calling. This is kind of tricky, I think, sometimes because it often…

It oftentimes can look like obedience. It can look like obedience because sometimes God gives us a vision. We start editing it. We start tinkering with it to fit what we think will work better or work faster or what will be more professional or what will be acceptable. It’s like he gives us the vision.

and the way that we should do things and what we should do. And then it’s like, we say, but, you know, but what you don’t know is that I deal with these people or we’re in this particular season of life or in this day and time. And in this day and time, people aren’t gonna really accept it that way. So if I present it like this, and it’s like, goodness, right? When the God of the whole entire universe, right?

Camille McDaniel (19:02.174)
When he tells you how to do a thing and what to do and how to do it, don’t you think he has taken into account the seasons, the state of the world, the people you interact with and your profession? He doesn’t know that? Of course he does, right? Of course he does. So we start to build our vision based on our version of what he has said instead of staying.

within the limits of his vision. The book of Proverbs says it like so so perfectly right. The book of Proverbs in chapter 16 and verse 3 it says, your works to the Lord and your thoughts will be established. Right? So commit everything that you are doing to the Lord and he will give you the thoughts that he wants you to have about this.

So if you’re feeling constant confusion about your next steps, it might even mean that maybe you’re carrying something that was supposed to actually be committed, overturned over to him instead of you just carrying yourself. And so just a few signs that there might be some confusion in your calling and in your business is that you’re juggling too many projects and you can’t even tell.

what’s actually working. You’re doing so many different things. You don’t have a way to even assess what’s working and what’s not working. And you’re afraid to stop any of it because you are just spinning in circles. The other thing is you may even feel a sense of striving, like you’re feeling motivated even when things aren’t as successful.

So let’s just kind of stop ourselves and recognize what are we doing? What are we doing? And do we need to take that break? You might even sense that God is asking you to slow down, but you’re afraid. You’re afraid that if you do slow down, that lack of momentum that you had going and that creativity and those referrals and all of that will just die out.

Camille McDaniel (21:25.952)
And so that’s when we sometimes forget that the Lord can bring us referrals however and whenever he wants to because he’s God. And so we don’t have to be afraid if he tells us to slow down. Will he not allow us what we need in the time that he’s telling us to slow down? And will he not give us what we need so that we can ramp back up? So here’s some questions, just three questions that you

may want to ask yourself to just get clarity, to have better discernment about this. The first one is, does this idea serve the people God called me to or does it serve just my ego? Okay, does this idea serve the people God called me to or does it serve just my ego? The next one is,

Is it in line with my current season and capacity? Is this in line with my current season and capacity? And the last one is, would I still do this if nobody noticed but God? Would I still do this if nobody noticed but God? And if you can’t answer yes,

to all three of those questions, then take a pause. Take a pause, okay? So that you can then cut back and recommit where you need to commit so that you can have better impact in your business and in your calling. So.

What do we do when we realize that ambition and comparison or confusion in our calling has crept in? We are going to just practice a simple rhythm and we’re going to refocus. It’s going to be the three Rs. Okay, we had three questions, now we have three Rs. We’re going to refocus and we’re going to return back to our our mission statement.

Camille McDaniel (23:44.62)
And we’re going to read our mission statement out loud. Our mission statement is what the Lord has placed us to do on this earth at this time in our business. And you want to ask, does your work reflect what your mission is at this time in this season? And if not, what small shift in your business are you going to do in order to realign yourself?

The next R is going to be refine. We’re going to simply take one area of your business this month and we are going to simplify it. Maybe we’re going to reduce session loads. Maybe you’re going to pause on some kind of side project that you had started or you’re going to better streamline your offerings, your service offerings. Pruning is not only good for trees, pruning…

is a strategic move even within your business. So you’re going to refine what you’re doing by simplifying. And the last R is going to be to rededicate. You’re going to take some time weekly to pray over your business decisions. Pray solo, pray in a group, but you’re going to pray over your business decisions before you ever implement anything new.

or even some of the current things that you’re doing. Bring your calendar to God like an offering and literally ask him, where do I need to implement rest, Lord? And if there is any fear that comes up for you surrounding turning it over and implementing rest, you’re gonna offer that fear.

up to him for him to take and to totally destroy because it gets in the way of you allowing him to actually fully use you in this moment to be the person who is riding the as the as the the driver of the car as the captain of the ship. It stops him from being able to do that in your life because you won’t turn it over to him. So let’s

Camille McDaniel (26:00.692)
in in this way reflect on these things that we’ve talked about in this episode and really be intentional about how we’re going to implement this in our practice so that we can have the best results of reaching his people and that will also give us the best results in our private practices or in our private practice planning. So if if anything if any one thing if not all

the things in this message today, in this podcast episode today resonated with you, then I’m excited. I feel like we have done what we needed to do today here. And I want for you to have alignment in your practice. I don’t want for you to be scattered. I don’t want for you to be turning in circles all over the place. And so please, this episode

is not just for you, it’s for anybody that you know as well who can hear and needs to hear what is being said. And so please take this episode, whether you take a screenshot of, you know, of the podcast art or whether you actually share the link or whether you tag us, Christ in Private Practice, or if you’re online and you tag me, Camille McDaniel, then please share this with other.

Christ-centered clinicians who are in practice looking to build their practice because I would love for them to be able to be uplifted and empowered. And also, I love hearing messages, feedback from you, so you all can always feel free to message me at hello. I was gonna say healing. That’s my private practice. But for messaging me at Christ in private practice, that’s going to be hello at.

ChristinPrivatePractice.com. Again, that’s hello at ChristinPrivatePractice.com. And so stay tuned. We have more episodes in the future. We’re going to have more guests in the future. And we’re going to continue to bring you the information that will allow you to grow in your practice, in your faith integration over time. And so until next time.

Camille McDaniel (28:25.72)
God bless.