Is It OK To Do Less Long-Term Work?

This is a short episode and it’s really about you giving yourself permission to do the work that is going to feel most joyful and sustainable for you.

I’m going to talk about two different roles we might choose for ourselves as therapists, healers and coaches:

A catalyst who helps people through a big and clear change in a particular area of their lives.

OR

An integrator who helps people grow and maintain changes over a long period of time in many areas of their lives.

I know there’s a lot of overlap and nuance between these 2 roles.

Therapists I work with who want to create signature programs beyond private practice often want to be in the role of catalyst more of the time, and long-term integrator less of the time.

They’re feeling over-full on the long-term work of helping their clients day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month and year-by-year.

They value that long-term work and are honored to get to do it, but they fear that if they keep doing it full time, they’re going to burn out, or maybe just not love their work so much.

In the programs they create, these therapists want to be in the role of short-term change catalyst.

They want to step further into their role as teacher, presenter, and facilitator.

They want to create a container that moves participants through a process of profound growth in a particular area that they really care about.

The topics of these programs include: sexuality, relationships, parenting, money, business, and particular life experiences like divorce and grief…and on and on. I’ll give you a few examples of programs folks have created in a minute.

These programs are time-limited, usually happening over a number weeks or just a few days.

These therapists find it satisfying to watch their people have big insights and make big changes and progress in their programs.

But when folks are getting ready to create their programs, they sometimes think…

“Wait a minute. Even if I help people create a lot of change quickly, maintaining those changes takes long-term work. It’s not just one and done.

So then is my program valuable enough if it doesn’t help people through the long-term maintenance of that change?”

Here’s my answer: YES. The focused change your program creates is highly valuable.

Both kinds of work are totally valuable and necessary.

Neither kind of work is more or less valuable.

As a therapist, I was trained with a bit of either/or thinking. I remember learning that REAL change takes time, and that rapid change is probably fleeting.

Perhaps as therapists, sometimes this is a defensive stance. Sometimes the long-term, subtler work of a therapist doesn’t get enough credit because it’s less obvious than the change that happens during something like a retreat or a workshop.

But you, my friend, are not going to devalue that long-term work. AND you still might not always want to do that long-term work yourself.

You can choose to run a time-limited program and you can also encourage your participants to keep doing long-term work after they are done with your program.

Think of this from the participant’s point of view. I’ll use myself as an example.

When a topic really matters to me, I want to work with someone who is obsessed with that topic for a period of time. I want to be held in a container where I’ll get to focus on topic only. I want a curated experience that is designed to help me make a significant change.

This happened to me recently.

I was a participant last year in Deb Benfield’s program: Aging With Vitality And Body Liberation.

As a 52 year old who has a body, I loved the idea of putting myself in Deb’s hands to go through a big transformative experience over 8 weeks.

I wanted to deprogram myself from ageism and step further into body liberation. I know Deb is an expe