So, Now What?

10- Navigating the Seasonal Therapy Drought: Overcoming Self-Doubt When Client Numbers Drop

• angela tam

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Ever felt that sinking feeling when your client calendar starts emptying out as summer approaches? You're not alone. In this deeply personal exploration of the "summer slump," I pull back the curtain on a phenomenon that affects countless therapists but rarely gets discussed openly.

The summer slump isn't just about fewer billable hours—it's about the profound self-doubt that creeps in when clients take vacations, downgrade their sessions, or reallocate their budgets toward summer expenses. Drawing from my own experiences, including the particularly challenging summer after the birth of my third child, I share how these seasonal downturns can trigger our deepest insecurities about competence, worthiness, and financial stability.

Most therapists respond to the summer slump through protective strategies: frantic marketing, lowering fees, taking on ill-fitting clients, or simply shutting down through avoidance and procrastination. But these approaches only address the surface problem. What if there's a deeper conversation happening beneath all this anxiety? What if our response to seasonal practice fluctuations actually connects to our core wounds around conditional acceptance, worthiness, and scarcity?

This episode offers a compassionate framework for understanding why the summer slump affects us so deeply and outlines a healing approach that goes beyond mere logistics. By mapping our protective mechanisms, identifying our vulnerable feelings, and extending self-compassion to these exiled parts, we can transform our relationship with these predictable business cycles. The result isn't just greater resilience during slow periods—it's a more authentic and sustainable approach to our entire practice.

Ready to explore what lies beneath your summer slump experience? Connect with me for a free consultation and sign up for my newsletter to continue this important conversation about therapist well-being and practice sustainability.

Come follow me on instagram @heyangelatam and subscribe to my newsletter here. Looking forward to adventuring with you!

Speaker 1:

Hey y'all, this is Angela Tam for the. So Now, what? Podcast? I'm so happy to bring you this new podcast episode about working through the summer slump and the self-doubt that comes with the summer slump. This is a topic that's really near and dear to my heart. I'm speaking to all the mental health therapists out there that are in a position where, first of all, I know that this is the northern hemisphere centered, because I am in a northern hemisphere, I know that a lot of folks in the southern hemisphere are not in the summer slump they're probably just entering the summer. But I'd like to take this opportunity to bring light to this theme of how self-doubt can creep in as a result of not getting in clients or clients not really flowing in as a result of people being on vacations or people downgrading their sessions or people reallotting their budgets to summer projects or daycare expenses related to the summer. And in the Western Hemisphere, the fall here signifies an uptick in new client referrals and new client intakes, which is something that brings a lot of joy to therapists, because that means that it's a sign that our businesses are more active and we can have more activity and also billable hours.

Speaker 1:

The summer slump refers to a seasonal dip in client volume and income that might be experienced during the summer months, and it's not just anecdotal, it is a common phenomenon in many helping professions. Summer can be like a winter. For our profession, it's a dormant season where referrals quiet down or activity lessens, and there is a grief that's tied to clients leaving or the mourning of the death of the therapeutic relationship. For a lot of folks historically, and for myself included, I have said goodbye to clients in the early springtime, reading up to the summer, and it is really heartbreaking sometimes because I've worked with some of these clients for a long time and, although I'm really glad to have them phase out in terms of not needing their relationship anymore, it's really bittersweet because I do grieve a lot of my long-term relationships with my clients and they're leaving my practice. As a result. I'm not seeing them anymore because we can't really be friends with folks that graduate our practice, and so summer can carry the opposite expectations. Especially when you have school-age kids.

Speaker 1:

Summer can bring the energy of abundance, brightness, activity, and parts of you might say you should be out there thriving like everyone else. At least that's a message that sometimes comes up in my head, with some of my inner critics and, at the same time, other parts of me feel the contraction and wintering and the dormancy of this season in my practice In the summertime for me, it is true, sometimes referrals do lessen overall, but it is traditionally a season of dormancy for a lot of therapists, except, I guess, if you accept insurance or if you're working in a group practice and there's an internship program where you get a lot of lower fee clients. I imagine that it can still be very busy for folks in the summer. So why does this happen? The theory is that there's a lot of vacations and travels that people take off and school breaks and there's other seasonal priorities, and also there is the phenomenon where the amazon of mental health companies, like alma better help headway and other companies I don't even know the name of create less opportunities for smaller businesses like the solo practitioner to not get the hits online from their internet sites and the directories that are turning into the Amazon for mental health therapists that people are looking for and solo practitioners that are working apart from those companies and apart from insurance that are just taking cash pay are noticing a general downturn. So that is a real thing too.

Speaker 1:

So what is the impact of the summer slump for therapists and helpers. One of the biggest ones is the financial stress and strain. When we work with billable hours and there aren't many billable hours coming in, we have less income. And whenever there's less income there's sometimes financial instability if you haven't buffered that into your general budget. And then questions about worthiness come up or self-doubt come up around, feelings of being unwanted or unneeded and how that ties to our sense of value or worth. And also the other real impact is a disrupted rhythm For me. I thrive on routine. I have a pretty set routine where I am going into work Monday to Wednesday to see clients and whenever I have gaps in my schedule it can feel really off or it means my routine has shifted. And even though I welcome the free turn, if it's a surprise or something that I didn't budget for, it can throw me off energetically. I want to dive more into the emotional impact of the summer slump related to self-doubt Because I feel like this piece is such a personal piece for me, like I have struggled with this as a younger therapist for many years and I've gone unmentored in this area for a long time because I just didn't feel like there was a space that I could be real about this for a long time. That's no longer the case, but I feel like this is such an important topic that a lot of us therapists struggle with.

Speaker 1:

Even if we are contracted with insurance and with these bigger companies that bring in referrals for us, that bring in referrals for us, there is still sometimes a creeping message underneath of you aren't a good enough therapist if you aren't getting these referrals in a streamlined way, or if your clients don't feel like they're being helped, or if they're downgrading their frequency. If they're downgrading their frequency, the message you are not good enough can really feel very intense. And then there's another part that might come up that says you need to do more, you need to market, you need to lower your fees, you need to take more trainings, you need to say yes to everyone. This comparison critic that says look at this other colleague of yours, their practice is completely full. Or look, they have so many cash pay clients and they seem to be paying their bills okay. They seem to have a full schedule, which is pretty much what all therapists are going for. And this other part that says if you have less income, you just need to take every client, even if they drain the heck out of you.

Speaker 1:

And then another dynamic that comes in, that's the discomfort of being in such so much self-doubt is so unbearable, it's so uncomfortable. The only option is to escape through avoidance, through procrastination, through scrolling, through seeing my friends and being distracted by having fun. And then there's a guilt that comes with that, with the prolonged scrolling, the late nights that you stay up watching Netflix and the social disconnection that you might feel where you don't feel like gosh. I'm steeped into so much of my self-doubt that I'm going to be such a Debbie Downer to hang out with so I'm going to isolate. And those parts, those voices and those behaviors are really common and they're really personal to me. I have experienced that, especially how sometimes a summer slump has coincided with the summers that I just gave birth to my third child. They came into this world in December.

Speaker 1:

I came back from maternity leave in March and my husband actually quit his job around March. So at that point I was in the position of bringing the majority of the income into our family income into our family and I felt extremely uncertain about how that was going to happen and felt extremely pressured. Nobody was giving me any pressure, like she was not giving me pressure. In fact it was like fine, and we were, fine, we had. He had reassured me that there was enough of a financial buffer where I didn't need to increase my client load. But I just felt this internal pressure to really put the pedal on the metal and get more clients. Or I just felt so doubtful of myself more clients, or I just felt so doubtful of myself, especially as a third time parent, whereas not getting much sleep and feeling so inadequate to juggle three kids and at that time breastfeeding was really difficult, so I didn't feel very encouraged at that time. And so I remember this feeling of self-doubt creeping in for me, even as recent as the end of my maternal leave with my third child, and that was a few years ago.

Speaker 1:

These voices that are coming up are repeat voices. They might be stronger and more intense during my postpartum for my third child, but they were always there during my postpartum for my third child, but they were always there. And I remember feeling self-conscious around my practice and I was very vigilant around clients shifting their frequency of seeing me or not, or falling out of my practice entirely or graduating, and I just noticed these behaviors come up or doing more marketing or changing my website up or making more programs and that I noticed came from a place of fear and despair, and I want to invite you to notice if any of these parts of my story feel relevant to you or resonant to you. You might not have any children or you might not have been in my same circumstance where you're the sole person supporting your family financially, but there might be similar themes of messages that come up that push you to do more or push you to compare yourself to your colleagues or tell you that you're not good enough, that downplay your skills, downplay your experiences, downplay your gifts, and I want to invite you to start to notice what are some of the things that they fear, that would be underneath if they didn't cause you to compare or be more productive or notice areas where you need more growth, around competency, around competency. And one of the things that I want to shed light on is the dynamic of vulnerability that comes up with self-doubt Underneath the self-doubt and the protective strategies that come up with self-doubt related to the summer slump which I just spoke about, which is comparison, inner criticism, productivity, being over-responsible and even scrolling, avoidance, over-consuming food or procrastination those are all protective strategies.

Speaker 1:

Anything that is a protective strategy always has a vulnerability, and what I mean by that is when we start to notice our protective strategies or defense mechanisms let's say, comparison, criticism, over-productivity, or even numbing and scrolling underneath those protective strategies. If they were to stop, they would cause us to feel, hmm, and in this case, with self-doubt. Underneath the protective strategy of marketing, creating more programs, being productive, and even the inner criticism, these protective strategies shield us from feeling incompetent, from feeling the scarcity of financial instability. Those are just two examples of the vulnerable parts underneath our protective strategies that I want to shed light on. This is a conversation beneath the conversation of the summer slump. What do I mean by that? The summer slump brings up a lot of behaviors that we're familiar with Comparison, marketing over accommodating our clients, and then collapse, shutdown, depression. What's underneath all that? What is the pain that we are really trying to avoid with all those protective strategies tied to being conditionally accepted because you are helpful, only because you're helpful, and the pain of scarcity? And those are just a few examples.

Speaker 1:

There could be many other examples, but this is the way it was for me. This was my inner system that had vulnerabilities that have come out as a result of my inner system. For me, when I experienced self-doubt, underneath that I had all these protective mechanisms and underneath that I was trying to prevent myself from feeling unworthy and conditionally loved. I had this narrative in my childhood of being accepted or praised based on whether or not I was helpful to my family or not, a burden to my family, or doing something that helped someone when they were in need, or being a good child, basically. And I wasn't really met with the same warmth and compassion and acceptance when I was being messy, when I was being, when I was having big feelings, when I was being quote-unquote more difficult. And so this pain of being conditionally accepted comes up whenever I have this summer slump, even though it's maybe decontextualized.

Speaker 1:

But that feeling of incompetence comes up because I have this association with okay, I feel good when people need me and when the summer slump happens and I'm not getting referrals, maybe I am not as skilled, maybe I am not as wanted, maybe I am not as valuable or needed as I thought I was, and so for me, the shame of feeling of incompetence comes up whenever I don't have whatever. Incompetence comes up whenever I don't have. Whatever this is, this is what I used to feel like when the summer slump happened, when I didn't get referrals, that feeling of the shame of incompetence came up, or the shame of being unloved or unworthy came up, and that was something that I didn't make connection wise until I did some deeper digging and self-reflection. As a result of this painful feeling, I isolated myself. I didn't tell people that I wasn't getting a lot of referrals, I was ruminating about being a bad therapist. I was comparing myself to other colleagues, I was withdrawing and not asking for help. I was not sharing about how there were no new clients coming in and there was a collapse for me and a depressive shutdown that I experienced.

Speaker 1:

Another thing that I experienced during that time of feeling really steeped into my self-doubt was a sense of scarcity alongside my self-doubt. I come from an immigrant household where my parents are definitely not as well off as they came out with their refugee status. So they didn't have a lot of financial literacy skills, they didn't have a lot of money management skills and they didn't have a lot of skills higher education skills to manage, make, to attend jobs where they could be higher paying. My family really scraped by a lot of in my childhood and it was often noted to me that I had to be really conscious of starting from a really young age, and I would overhear fights of my parents arguing over who's paying what and about money stress. I just remember the pain of this part around scarcity and worry and uncertainty around basic needs being met being something that was a constant theme, and I noticed that this part of me that feels the intensity of that scarcity comes up whenever summer slump comes up. As a result, notice myself shutting down, feeling hopeless, feeling really depressed and hiding and just feeling the heaviness of the uncertainty around not knowing when it was ever going to be stable again. And so how do we deal with the summer slump in a way that doesn't compromise our boundaries, doesn't cause us to shut down for extended periods of time, doesn't cause us to market out of fear and compromise our energetic limits?

Speaker 1:

My invitation to you is that we have to go deeper and realize the conversation under the conversation. So what I mean by that is to recognize and this is what I do with all my clients to do a parts map around all your protective mechanisms in response to a triggering event. In this case, a triggering event is the summer slump. So I listed to you my parts map around how I responded to the summer slump. I went into overproductive mode, I did new marketing strategies, I changed my website, I said yes to every client that walked into my door.

Speaker 1:

I also noticed one of my protective mechanisms is my inner critics really acting up and causing me to downplay my skills, create self-doubt, which is a protective mechanism, by the way, and it caused me and this is a big one, like I shared before to compare myself to other folks. And so part of that work is to do a little digging just to notice some behaviors and patterns that come up internally and externally, and we'll do that together in our work together. And then we go even a step deeper If I ask the questions if those protective mechanisms weren't there. Deeper, if I asked the questions, if those protective mechanisms weren't there, what pain would I feel? And that for me was a pain of unworthiness, feeling incompetent and feeling the pain of financial scarcity. That comes from my own intergenerational patterns, and these all might be different for you as a clinician. It could bring up totally different things, and I would work with you on teasing out what are those vulnerable feelings underneath.

Speaker 1:

And then this is the other step that we would do is that would extend self-energy, compassion, curiosity, love and support to care for your exiles. Part of the last healing step involves inviting your vulnerable part underneath to share their painful stories, and sometimes those painful stories might not be explicitly accessible, but they might be implicitly accessible, which we would use somatic techniques around. But the more the exile can show you or the exile, meaning vulnerable part can show you more about themselves so you could understand them. It brings a whole new perspective to the conversation. It's no longer about marketing, it's no longer about comparison, it's no longer about self-doubt, it's about the conversation underneath the conversation. And so we would do that digging and the detective work underneath to channel that painful feeling underneath and the stories that come with that, so that the burdens can be released around those vulnerable parts. And that is ultimately the work that would bring prolonged healing.

Speaker 1:

And then there wouldn't be a fear of the summer slump, even if, circumstantially, the summer slump happens. And of course, there's workaround techniques like yes, would you budget in the future for the summer slump, knowing that there will be a dip in intakes? Yes, would you change your marketing strategies in order to accommodate that? Yes, would you be mindful of how you can do different things during the summer slump in order to channel your energy in different areas? Sure, all of that work is considered logistical work, and so many people go to the logistics first before they do the inner work.

Speaker 1:

And so my invitation to you is to do the inner work first, and then you will see your marketing change, you will see your energy change towards the summer slump and how you approach your logistics around the summer slump, because it wouldn't be from a place of fear and insecurity and worry, but from a place of invitational joy and anticipation and curiosity to see what might happen. So I invite you to do this work with me. I want to invite everyone to sign up for my newsletter and also click in the Calendly link if you want to do a free consultation with me. I look forward to hearing from you and I hope that this was helpful. Take care.