*I actually wrote this all the way back in September, but I’m only getting the chance to post it today*
You may have noticed me being quiet of late. You see, I’ve had a seismic shift in my priorities and I couldn’t be happier about it.
My wife is having a baby! (our first one). Since then, this blog and everything around it has become a whole lot less important. What now matters to me most now, is being with and there for my wife, while attending to my own needs too. Given these priorities, I don’t have space for this blog or any of other professional projects, including the book I softly announced in my previous post.
I tried, I really did, to keep my work going, but I’ve come to learn that I can’t obsess over two things at once (let alone five things), so I’m choosing to obsess on what matters most.
This means that this blog, alongside all my other projects, are now on indefinite pause.
While I could keep going – I just don’t want to put a book together now, or a workshop or a YouTube channel. Because while investing in these things could still be within my capacity (with some adjustments), I know sustaining them down the line will only become more difficult. I don’t want to risk it. I don’t want to feel overstretched in my life any longer (and especially not as our child gets older), so this is my line in the sand. I don’t want to look back in the future and regret my decision to keep all these work projects going, when I could have spent the extra time with the people that matter most to me.
If I have space for all this extra work again one day, that’s great. If not, that’s ok too, because at least I put all the time I could into what matters most.
In saying all that. I’ll still be doing Deliberate Practice coaching and my own DP efforts won’t stop either. So please don’t hesitate to reach out if you want to talk about Deliberate Practice.
So here we are, while I entered this journey a perfectionistic therapist with an insatiable imposter syndrome, I am now signing off, as a soon-to-be dad and a much happier neurodivergent therapist. Thank you to all of you for reading through my fumblings and findings over the last four years. You have been a crucial part of my journey. The gratitude and feedback I have received will always be with me.
I’ll see you on the other side, my friends.
I will leave you with a Facebook post I wrote, which perfectly sums up where I landed after almost four years. After that post, I needed nothing more. My urge to write about therapy had dropped massively:
“Here’s one that has hit me before in smaller pieces, but the whole picture came over me like a tonne of bricks this week (in a good way) – as a way of summing up my last 4 years.
I keep reflecting on this in different ways, in order to strengthen it and see more of the picture at once. Here goes…
In order to become super at my job, I had to find myself, in order to be myself.
Being myself has been integral to improved relationships with my clients and therefore better outcomes (e.g. this year I’ve so far hit 72% clinical change rate using the outcome rating scale).
Clients don’t want to connect to a therapists mask – they want to connect to the human beneath.
I’ve discovered this by doing the opposite of what my training/early career personally taught me – which was that in order to be a great therapist, I needed to build a great therapist mask.
(FYI: Right now, I don’t believe in completely unmasking being workable, because I see doing so as selfish. But having it mostly off -pulled back- is optimal).
The magic of unmasking is that it allowed me to finally find the clients I work with best (client matching) – which are neurodivergent clients.
Pulling back my mask has been the most wonderful discovery and subsequent domino effect of my career.
Through that I’ve also found that I can’t be a supershrink for everyone, but landing here has helped me realise that’s ok – “I don’t have to be everything to everyone”.
It’s not about mastering all therapy, but just how I do therapy.
I know not everyone shares my experience of how I got here (including the conclusions I’ve made along the way), but that’s the point. Heading towards mastery means you will go on your own journey to finding yourself. But the key is that only you can make the decision to start that journey and to not assume you’re already on the path.
To spin off of Milhouse: “I’m through the looking glass, people”.
Deliberate Practice Psych 
2 responses to “I’m Signing Off”
Great honesty!
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Congratulations!!
Nice tack!!
Write on when want
Ride on as much as you really want!!
Giddiup!!
New births even when he’s now 55! Me and 83 and 7 years cancer they say no one gotten this far before.
My son Kieran and I have made some huge breakthroughs. This program
helped along the way, but much more him completing a 41 day fast, losing
35 pounds, and getting access, and expressing some powerful emotions,
and love, and getting thru, and access to what blocked. He came to my
men’s group this week, and when we were walking yesterday said how
talking about some sleep issues, for example, is helping. We are both
celebrating our results as indicated by my elevated tumor marker
measures. He is really helping on my diet, and I’m up 14 pounds
from my lowest point.
Yes Shari, tear down from my right eye. I have had 5 sessions of music
therapy, and 2 sessions of art therapy, free w my cancer treatment. New records of
Kleenex, and a moment I so enjoyed w tidal wave tear about to spill
over my lower eyelid 👁️ ! Lots more to report. The three days of steroids
Dan 😍
PS: 👻 Dan-sing.🕺
“I was heading for the fantastic lights. Destiny was looking right at me. I made a bargain with it and I’m holding up my end. It’s like a ghost
is writing a song like that, it gives you the song and it goes away. You don’t know [and can often discover] what it means.”
—Bob Dylan
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