I am embarking on the new year, 2017, as a business owner and operator. Since I last blogged I have acquired clients and loss some clients. I have at least three consistent clients. However, in the world of therapy business is always recalculating. As of this day I have serviced at least 20 people, some have been clients and some have not been. I actually have ten clients on the books that I have serviced at least once. Though my business is still in the red and may be for awhile, I realize that what I do has value. I realize that there are people willing to pay for the service I am willing to provide. I have some people who want the service for free but this too has meaning because in the end they value what I do as a service. Therapy is not easy because you are dealing with people who have complicated internal dynamics.
Thus far, I have had to deal with those who want to control my time, control my words, and control my being. I allow them to have the control as long as we are in the therapeutic setting, it will not harm them, mislead them, or patronize them in any way. However, I have had to set boundaries for some. Sometimes people try to exert control over matters they clearly have no control over. Sometimes this is because they have no "Internal Locus of Control" (See my blog, The Therapist, "Internal Locus of Control" regarding this term). Clients often try to control the therapist because they have little control in other areas of their life or they just want to control everything in their life. For example, when they sign a contract for time, date, and consistency of visits but they wish to change the time and frequency to something other than what they signed contractually. This behavior could be very indicative to how they are leading their life. I am not one to say you must always follow the rules; however, you must be aware enough to know when there are some rules that you must follow.
If you are a private therapist or thinking about going into private therapy you have to make the decision to do right by the client or do right by the business. I have decided that I will do right by the client. In other words, I don't plan to chase a dollar. I will enforce agreed upon contracts because the most important thing about therapy is building a viable truthful relationship between the therapist and the client. This cannot be done if the client decides to come only when they feel like it or change the schedule because they want to see how you, the therapist, will react. Clients must pay for the session if their cancellation is not within the contractual guidelines. I have had at least one or more clients give a reason for cancellation because they just needed to vent that one time. If you do not adhere to the contract you signed then you are charged. A client may choose not to return ever if they are charged a fee but another way of looking at this is that it is the responsibility of the therapist to hold that client accountable. If you allow clients to be haphazard with their therapy sessions then you promote inconsistency, being inconsiderate, and not allowing the client to be held to their word (the contract); thus, they are haphazard in their life. The inconsistency will impede building a therapeutic alliance; therefore, the client would not see any positive progression in her life. She would then probably be the main person spouting that therapy does not work.
So in the end, I feel it necessary to hold the client accountable. Allowing the opposite would be incongruent with how the rest of the world operates, which would be a dis-service to the client. You risk losing a client sooner rather than later. So, you may be able to collect a few more fees before they decide the therapy isn't working anyway. Holding clients accountable it is also way of doing right your business. If you allow clients to stick around who often cancel, do not pay for those cancellations; thus, you are allowing them to call the shots, you risk missing out on clients who actually are willing to pay and be accountable for themselves. So, in essence, doing right by the client is doing right by your business.
