The RDtoCEO Podcast
Dive into The RDtoCEO Podcast, hosted by Registered Dietitian and CEO, Eva Haldis, where she shares her journey in entrepreneurship, with discussions on the basics on building a private practice and becoming a confident CEO. The RDtoCEO Podcast is your go-to resource for mastering the art of transitioning from a dietitian to a successful CEO.
The RDtoCEO Podcast
Navigating Rejection in Private Practice
How do you handle the sting of rejection in your professional life? As someone who has faced the unpredictable cash flow of an insurance-based practice, along with the emotional rollercoaster of client cancellations and ghosting, I know firsthand how tough it can be to keep your head up.
Rejection in private practice isn't just about canceled appointments. It can seep into every corner of our professional confidence and lead to burnout if not managed well. This episode explores how feelings of rejection can be triggered by clients, networking challenges, and even our own perfectionism and people-pleasing tendencies. We discuss strategies like maintaining a positive feedback folder and tracking data to keep a balanced perspective on referral patterns and business trends. Understanding how to distinguish between genuine feedback and catastrophic thinking can make all the difference in navigating these emotional complexities.
For those of us with ADHD, rejection-sensitive dysphoria (RSD) adds another layer of intensity to these feelings. I delve into my personal journey with ADHD, especially after becoming a parent, and how RSD has shaped my reactions to perceived rejection. Traditional therapies like CBT and DBT often fall short in addressing the unique challenges posed by RSD, making self-awareness and appropriate medical treatment crucial. By sharing vivid memories of rejection and the strategies I've employed for resilience, this episode offers a compassionate look at how to manage these intense emotions, particularly for entrepreneurs with ADHD. Join me as we unpack these topics and work towards building emotional resilience in our professional lives.
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Welcome to the RD to CEO podcast. I'm your host, eva Haldis, registered dietitian who one day found herself a whole CEO of a business. Join me as we navigate the world of entrepreneurship so you can go from being an RD who sees clients in private practice to a confident CEO growing the practice of your dreams. Hi everyone, Welcome back to another episode. Today should be a good one and a fun one to talk about. We will be discussing rejection and how rejection shows up in so many ways in private practice in particular, and some of the strategies I've used to help navigate how to deal with rejection, because I think it can become something that really gets in the way at times from feeling confident and feeling like we are doing the right thing or taking the right steps. And I even want to put quotes on the word right, because I think we have to also just be mindful that not everything's going to be perfect. But I definitely want to talk about strategies around how to navigate rejection in private practice and being a business owner. Before we do that, I realize a lot of my episodes if you've listened to any before. I sort of just jump into the topic at hand and talk about it, which is good because I don't want these podcast episodes to be super long. But I also know that when I listen to people's podcasts I really like to hear a little bit about them and what's going on in their lives. So I thought maybe I'll start including a little update on things that are happening in my business and maybe some of the themes I'm noticing. So I am recording this on Friday, june 7th. It's funny because earlier this week, on Wednesday, I released my episode about money, my part two episode. If you haven't listened I will. In that episode, literally I go through my QuickBooks and tell you the numbers of the business and our revenue and profit over the last three years. I go from 2020 to 2023. Since 2024, we're still in the middle of it I didn't share those numbers, but I did go through the first three full years I had business and it's funny because I think by the end of the episode I mean, if you listen, spoiler alert obviously our revenue goes up and our profit does as well. I felt really good, confident, talking about it because I was happy with where the numbers were going.
Speaker 1:And on Wednesday morning I actually had a business coaching call with my business coach, hannah, who also another plug was on the podcast a few episodes ago and I was thinking in the morning I don't really think I have anything to talk about. I think I'm just sort of in this like coasting phase and maybe we'll talk about just what's next. And right before my call with Hannah, I logged on to go do some payroll and quickly realized that I had just enough money in my bank account and in my emergency savings to pay my team and almost not enough to pay my biller for the month, for last month's billing and, of course, panicked because I was like what is happening? And it's ironic that it was the day that I posted this episode about money stuff because, yeah, I was stressing a little bit, but after that I went through it all the expenses I have and everything, everything's fine.
Speaker 1:I think that's one of the challenges of being an insurance-based practice is, our money is never in real time. A lot of our money comes in a week, two weeks, three weeks later, sometimes even longer. So we're sort of looking at things in the future for money. So what, my team is now working. You know the hours that we're working now that they need to be paid for in two weeks we're probably not going to be paid for those for another two weeks after that, and so sometimes there's just some delays. I've been redoing a lot of my financial planning in the last few weeks and so I think it's also just a growing pain of just being sort of in between.
Speaker 1:The other major update is that my practice has been growing, so we recently added two new clinicians to the team. It's the first time I've added two people at the same time. When clinicians are onboarding, we do have an onboarding period, so there's a few hours that are paid for that. So it's sort of money we're investing into people before they're actually bringing in revenue for the practice. So just some big expenses. We did a big CEU course, so there's just been a lot of expenses and I'm really working hard on not using my credit cards and just paying for things with money I have. So that's just a growing pain I'm going through currently is the discomfort of money.
Speaker 1:But the one thing with private practice, especially group practice, is the flux of money is just so constant because payroll is a really big expense in group practice owning and I've talked before about the book Profit First for Therapists, but I'm so grateful for it because I think a lot of people do use the Profit First method, but private practice, and group practice in particular, is just so different than any other business. We can't really compare it because our service that we're selling is also what we're paying people to do, so our pay rate is higher typically than maybe another job where they're selling other services. So there's just a lot of growing pains happening With money. As always, it's just kind of an ongoing thing, but, alas, because money is constantly happening in delayed time, I would say you know, we're getting insurance payments already the day after my panic of not having any money. So it's there.
Speaker 1:Just if you are out there and struggling with the same thing, just know it is normal, typical and it's always good to just do a little inventory of, like, what am I spending money on? And if you look in your inventory and say, okay, everything that I'm spending money on is like very standard things that I need, then you're probably on the right path and probably just need to increase your revenue, which is something Hannah and I were talking about doing. And so I'm actually going to be submitting for the first time, a fee increase letter to one of the insurance companies we are credentialed with, who have not increased their rate at all since I've been in network with them. If anything, they've decreased it because if we bill for telehealth, it is significantly less. It's about like $10 less than if we were to do it in office. While we do see folks in office, I would say a majority of our clients are still virtual and it's one of our most popular plans. So I will definitely be chatting more about that in the future and I will let everyone know how that goes. So stay tuned.
Speaker 1:But other than that, the business is going great. Like I said, we have just added on two new clinicians. One of our clinicians is going on maternity leave soon, so that's really exciting for them. But it's also a new transition for us that we're navigating. But so far everything is looking good and I will say onboarding new clinicians is always somewhat stressful just because taking insurance, there's a waiting period, there's a credentialing period, there's a lot of things. We need to get them set up before we can really start booking for them. And then there's also a lot of learning curves with accepting insurance and being a new provider, that, even though we handle all the billing part, when they're the person that the client sees. The client will be talking to them about insurance, and so having our clinicians learn about insurance is also its own growing pain at times.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, just the in-between period I've never, I will say. Now I'm into my fifth RD on the team. I haven't figured out a good time to hire. I think that's a question I get a lot from dietitians is like when should I start hiring? And I honestly haven't done a great job with forecasting when it would be a good time to hire, because I don't think I'm always thinking about that. One thing that will come up in this episode that I'm going to talk about today and a future episode is I have ADHD and so I can be very impulsive and that's one of my superpowers and also one of the things that makes things hard for me sometimes and challenging. So I'm trying to be a little bit more intentional. If I continue to grow the team, which I think I will continue to do, so I will say one of the things that's really nice about keeping track of inquiries and just schedules and months is you can see the months that are the busiest and, for whatever reason and I've said this before March is our busiest month, year after year Since 2021, march has been the busiest month for us as far as new inquiries. So I think my goal will definitely be to hire somebody to start that process, probably at the end of the year, maybe really really early on 2025, and hopefully get somebody ready to go by March so that we are ready for a new person to get filled right up.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of the little update on my private practice. I've been continuing to work less than 20 hours, as I say. Often. My son is in preschool three days a week and then then on Thursday afternoons he's with my mom, which is really helpful, but it doesn't leave me a lot of time. I was just thinking yesterday, since I've been in my practice full-time or spend my full-time my main job. I don't think I've ever worked nine to five and there's almost a part of me that wishes I could. But also coming back to ADHD, which a lot of things do for me, I think there's actually one time where I was like I want the whole day to work and I remember I had so much time and I was like what am I going to do? And then I felt the pressure to like fill that time.
Speaker 1:So it probably is actually good that I have less time. It forces me to sort of get out of my own way and do things, and now with the summertime it's you know people were going away. My son has like a week off between school and camp that we'll have to make some adjustments around for schedule stuff. So it should be interesting, but it's really nice. I will say it's been really nice, though, to reflect on the perks of owning your own business, because yesterday my son and I went down to the beach for the day to see my in-laws. It was my mother-in-law's birthday and it was just so nice that I could choose to be off and I didn't have to tell anybody and I didn't have to ask for permission from anybody. Obviously, I try to be respectful of my team and not just like take off and not be available for them, but it's really nice to have that freedom. That's one of the things I really wanted from being a business owner. So anyway, I think that's plenty an update.
Speaker 1:Let me know if you like hearing more about my life or if you want to not hear about it at all. You can always skip ahead. So today I really want to talk about rejection, because it comes up so often in my life for one, but for private practice in particular, rejection is just going to be a part of that world that we're in with private practice, because not everybody is going to want to work with us, not everyone's going to work with us long term, so it's inevitable that people will feel some rejection, even if their clients aren't actually rejecting them. We are always going to be humans first and we're going to be bringing a lot of stuff into our work, no matter what job we do and I find a lot of dietitians probably because a lot of us are type A perfectionists, people pleasers the idea of rejection can feel so hard. So that is what I want to talk about today.
Speaker 1:As always, make sure you are staying up to date on podcast episodes by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. I also have a little newsletter that I sent out. I thought my last newsletter was pretty entertaining. So if you want to get emails from me, probably once or twice a month on my website, wwwrd2ceocom, you can add your email there and I will definitely not spam you because unfortunately, my time management is not great, so I don't send emails that often, so you can be sure to know that you will not get spammed by me, at least not now.
Speaker 1:All right, so without further ado, let's talk rejection. Okay, so what am I talking about when I'm talking about rejection? Obviously, I think we probably most of us know what the word rejection means, but I'm really talking about the idea of not being given approval, acceptance, and really what that brings up in us as humans. We are still people that have feelings and emotions and we can't necessarily avoid that stuff coming up in our work that we do. This is something that I was talking a lot about, too in the money episode, because we have a lot of money stuff that comes up. So the same is going to be happening when it comes to how we maybe perceive people and their views of us, and there's a lot of ways that rejection can show up.
Speaker 1:As a business owner in private practice, I think the main things we may see as forms of rejection, or I'll say, ways that we may feel rejected, even though they're not necessarily rejection in this way, and sometimes we don't know why these things happen, but I find that these are situations that can often bring up the feeling of being rejected and then the feelings that come with that. One of that is maybe clients one not booking with you at all. Maybe it's you have a discovery call with someone and then they decide not to schedule, or they schedule and then they cancel before the first session. Or maybe you have an appointment with somebody and then they cancel after that or they don't follow up or don't reschedule. We've had a lot of clients ghost us and so they just don't show up one day and then we never hear from them again.
Speaker 1:A lot of ways that our clients are maybe showing up, in whatever context, may make us feel rejected, whether it's maybe feedback that they're giving or, like I was saying before, maybe not showing up or not following through with an appointment. And also I think we can see and feel rejected when we maybe meet with a clinician for networking or go to a networking event and then no clients come of it or they never refer to us again. Or maybe we have a client with a shared provider and something happens, and then that provider whether it's maybe the client seeing a therapist and you and then that provider, whether it's maybe the client seeing a therapist and you and then they stop seeing you as a dietitian, and then it's fears of oh no, this therapist is now never going to refer to me. So there's a lot of ways that I think we have this fear of rejection that comes up, and these are the situations I often see that bring up those feelings of like, oh no, I'm being rejected and what does this now mean? So rejection, I think, as a umbrella topic, is tough because obviously I would say most people don't like the feeling of rejection, so that's going to obviously be hard for anyone. But how it impacts us is really what I want to talk about today, because for some people it might feel disheartening, for some people it might lead to burnout, resentment, what am I doing? Am I doing this wrong?
Speaker 1:There can be a lot of feelings around it and it can really impact maybe how we're showing up then in future sessions If we have this constant fear of rejection. Let's say, from a provider that we're sharing a client with. I've had a client before that the physician that was working with them had a lot of opinions up front and it impacted me during my sessions with that client because I was sort of thinking in the back of my head oh my God, is the client going to tell the doctor this? What are they going to think Because maybe we weren't fully aligned on what we wanted to do. So that really impacted how I was showing up for my client and I had to do a lot of work and supervision around doing what I felt was the most effective and what the client was really telling me and how we were working together to come up with our goals of treatment and not trying to not think of the person in the back of my mind like, oh no, they're going to think I suck, they're going to tell these people that I suck and then no one's ever going to refer to me. So there's ways that this is really going to show up.
Speaker 1:And also I think we have to sort of figure out what are we catastrophizing when we are afraid of rejection as a business owner. There's a lot of pressure because we rely on referrals, we rely on new clients. There's almost this feeling of needing to sell ourselves at times because that is how we will then get business right, like at the end of the day. Obviously I don't want to think about our clients as business. Then get business right, like at the end of the day. Obviously I don't wanna think about our clients as business, but it is right, because if we see the clients and then we're building insurance, that's where we get our income. So it can be really hard to not worry then about what people might be thinking.
Speaker 1:If there's this pressure that you have, how am I gonna fill up the caseload? How am I gonna keep getting referrals? How am I going to keep getting referrals? How is this going to stay consistent? What am I going to do?
Speaker 1:And it can so become this overwhelming feeling of I have to do it all perfectly, and I'm sure we've all heard many a times how dietitians can often be type A perfectionists and people pleasers. I think that is the other thing that we often find, and of course, we want to help people, and so if we feel like we're not doing a good job at that quote unquote good job that's going to feel like oh no, the client's upset, and then, once again, it's that feeling of rejection that's coming up of, like they're not going to want to schedule with me, they're not going to book with me, and what is that catastrophizing then leading us to? So that's really, I want to say, how I see rejection and the feeling of rejection coming up a lot in my own experiences. My clinicians that are on my team and as well as other dietitians that I've worked with for business coaching and also, I think, just friends. I have friends who are therapists, and this is really common across the board in private practice. Once again, especially as we're sort of providing a service for people, it's hard to not then feel like it's dependent on how we are if they're going to come back and continue to see us. So that's a lot of pressure and obviously rejection is going to be a normal part of life and there's a lot of different things that we can do to sort of handle it, deal with it. All those things and I'm going to talk about that in the context of how do I do this in my personal life and also what are strategies, of things I can do in my private practice to help me through it.
Speaker 1:But before I do that, I also want to talk a little bit about something that maybe is not as common, of a term or a kind of symptom of ADHD and neurodivergent folks. And the disclaimer I want to give here, of course, is that I'm not a medical provider, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a therapist. So this is coming from my own understanding of what I'm talking about and my own history with it and my own experience with it. I'm sure ADHD is going to come up a lot in this podcast because I have ADHD and it really impacts me as a business owner in so many great ways and so many challenging ways. So it shows up a lot for me and so if you relate to any of this, I hope it's helpful.
Speaker 1:I also really have this theory in my head. I haven't looked into this at all, but I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs tend to have ADHD, because I think we're always multi-passionate about things, we get excited about things, we're impulsive, we make big decisions quickly versus overthinking it sometimes. There's a lot of really good perks of having ADHD, but I do feel like a lot of entrepreneurs have ADHD. Once again, that's not a scientific research, that's just my own theory, but anyways, coming back to this idea of rejection within ADHD, so there's this idea called rejection-sensitive dysphoria and a little background on my story with ADHD, and I think I'm going to do a full episode on it because it is a big part of my life, the voice that I had it ever since I was a kid.
Speaker 1:My mommy said joke about it because I wouldn't sit still. She would say I have a selective attention, which now we know is actually what ADHD can be not being able to pay attention, but it's selective. But because I'm a female, presenting it really shows up differently. And I think people have this idea that ADHD is like what we see a lot in in boys and males of this like sort of hyperactive and all these other things that maybe women and people identifying people don't really we don't show it in the same way. So it was very much overlooked and it really wasn't until I had my son that it really all sort of went like so extreme that I was like all right.
Speaker 1:Finally, maybe I should get diagnosed just to see, because all the things that had sort of become ways to cope with it were sort of taken away from me, one of which being I used to have just all the time in the world and so I would just do my work when I needed to, and now I had way less time. So if I didn't have the capacity to focus, that was really that made a huge impact on my work when I needed to and now I had way less time. So if I didn't have the capacity to focus. That was really that made a huge impact on my work, my business, and it really impacted me a lot. There's other ways that it shows up as far as being like overstimulated very easily. There's a lot of sensory stuff that I didn't even realize I had a sensory things Like. I always say to people this example of like I'm very sensitive to wool and clothes that have wool in it are very itchy for me and it would never make sense to me. Why would stores sell things that are itchy, not really realizing that maybe it's not as itchy for people. I'm just very sensitive to certain feelings and textures on my skin and things like that. But also, anyways, one of the other facets of getting my diagnosis for ADHD was learning about this idea of rejection-sensitive dysphoria, and so I'm going to talk a little bit about what it is and how I think it's showed up for me and how I've really having my ADHD diagnosis has helped me, as a business owner, move through rejection.
Speaker 1:So what rejection-sensitive dysphoria is? It's not a formal diagnosis. There's some common manifestations or disruptive reactions of emotional dysregulation around rejection, whether it's perceived or actual. This is from the ADD magazine Attitude Mag. I found an article about it, but the way that they had defined it here is it's a common but under-researched and often misunderstood symptom of ADHD, particularly in adults. It's a brain-based symptom that is likely an innate feature of ADHD. Though the experience of rejection-sensitive dysphoria can be painful and even traumatic, rsd is not thought to be caused by trauma. Rsd is the acronym for rejection-sensitive dysphoria.
Speaker 1:Once again, most people don't like the idea or feeling of being rejected, but for folks with ADHD who maybe present with this idea of rejection-sensitive dysphoria, it can be really dysregulating and almost painful to describe the idea of rejection and or even the feeling of it, whether once again it's perceived or not, and or even the feeling of it, whether once again it's perceived or not. You know things that maybe are signs of this and, once again, not a doctor, not a therapist, not a psychiatrist, but you know a lot of feelings around, once again, real or perceived criticism or rejection, negative self-talk, low self-esteem, poor self-perception, talk, low self-esteem, poor self-perception, rumination and perseveration. I think this was a really common one for me, where I was just thinking about things over and over and over again, this idea of possibly being rejected by something. The other thing that's really interesting is it's not just for you, it could be for others and I remember my husband and I when we first had our son if anyone has little kids out there, you know, can really cause a lot of challenges with communication. So we worked with a couple's therapist for a little while to just work on some communication.
Speaker 1:And this actually, who brought this up to me? And as the therapist was explaining it to me, I was like it's so funny, because I have such vivid, specific memories as a kid into adulthood of just these moments when I've seen other people be rejected in some way. I have this very vivid memory of seeing this kid be yelled at by his dad, this one interaction I had with my cousin when we were little, this one thing with my husband, just moments, and I'll think about those things and it will truly be painful for me. I remember I used to stay up at night and cry, thinking about it when I was a kid, about other people, not just my own, and a lot of the anxiety I had around people pleasing was like this perceived rejection. It wasn't even like things that were happening, and so, anyways, I just want to bring that up because I think it's one just not often understood, talked about, and if you do fall into or meet criteria for ADHD and this really resonates with you, it's really can be helpful to say for me. It's at least been helpful for me to say like, okay, as I'm working through business stuff that I can identify, okay, this might feel really intense for me because of RSD. I also do think being treated medically for ADHD has been so helpful for me across the board, including this anxiety that I have around people pleasing. So that's something that's just my own little tidbit there.
Speaker 1:But because I think oftentimes folks with ADHD can also become entrepreneurs, this can probably be really common and so it can feel really, really hard if you're experiencing these intense, disruptive, painful feelings of rejection when you're also in business and private practice, and even if you're not even the business owner but a clinician in private practice, rejection comes up a lot as far as like booking clients and things. So it can feel really dysregulating if that's happening all the time and you're like, why can't I just get over this? It just might be hard for you because if you have this, it might be 10 times harder than maybe somebody who doesn't. The other thing to note on that is as I was doing some research on it.
Speaker 1:It can often be this feeling, this obviously very dysregulating feeling of being rejected, that hasn't shown to have benefit when doing other, maybe more traditional, forms of therapy like CBT and DBT. And I really related to that because I've never been able to sort of I can't like talk myself through things like, well, what if somebody is mad at me? Like it's okay, like that never helps me actually. So you know, having you know reframing things doesn't really help at me, like it's okay, like that never helps me actually. So you know, having you know reframing things doesn't really help for me. What's really just been the most helpful Once again anecdotally, is just understanding this part of me a little bit better and knowing that this might be when I'm feeling, you know, significantly dysregulated by some idea of rejection, noticing that it could just be one my anxiety, but also this like extra layer of it from having ADHD as well. So if this is something that you once again are finding maybe relatable and you have a psychiatrist or a therapist to talk to them about, it really interesting to explore that.
Speaker 1:But coming back to how we're going to handle this as we navigate, being business owners, I would say when I first started my practice, it was in 2019. I didn't get my ADHD diagnosis until I was. It was probably 2021 or 22. So a few years into my practice and part of, also, I think, one of the things that's going to be sort of how can I handle this and what are ways that I can work on managing more of this, whether it's RSD with, you know, neurodivergent folks or just in general, people who are finding that they're feeling rejected constantly and it's bringing up a lot of stuff for them and really causing a lot of burnout with being a business owner.
Speaker 1:In private practice, there's a lot of different things we can do to help us through it, and one of those things is going to be your own work and your own stuff in therapy and finding what's going to be the most helpful thing for you to start working through it, because, at the end of the day, I'm going to give you a lot of different strategies as far as like what we can do on the business side of things and on the work side of things to help, but it wasn't until I really was doing my own work, getting trained for ADHD, also doing therapy with it, working on parts work, which has been really helpful for me, and then experiencing rejection in ways through that and feeling like, okay, now, a couple of years in, I can sort of handle it more than I used to be able to. So one I think it's just doing your own work, but also time. It just takes time and you have to sort of go through the really hard shit first to then be like, okay, I can handle this. And for neurodivergent people in particular, that connection of like I can handle this sometimes doesn't click in our brains as quickly or at all. So sometimes we have to go through things that really suck a few times before we can feel like confident and we can get through it. But we do get through it and I think it's just knowing it and doing that own work in therapy.
Speaker 1:Number one it's just gonna be so helpful because this one is so hard. It's so hard to be a clinician in general. It's hard to be a business owner on top of that, and especially as you grow. If you go into a group practice you're carrying a lot of responsibility and other people's feelings around that. So that's something else that I've had to experience as a business owner who's now in group practice is how do I help my clinicians through this feeling of being rejected and have it not impact their confidence as a clinician? So I want to come back to now. Okay, so this is inevitable I'm going to be rejected. I don't have ADHD, maybe, but I still hate the feeling of being rejected because, of course, who doesn't? Maybe you do have ADHD. You resonate with RSD. Either way, right, we're all going to experience rejection, in private practice in particular, in some way, shape or form. So what are the things we can do outside of going to therapy and doing all the work?
Speaker 1:So one thing I want to say is, when we are having a really hard time, it can be so easy to sort of hyperfixate on the negative and forget about all the positive things. So I remember actually a therapist in a group that we collaborate with said this before is to keep a folder of positive things. We get positive emails, messages, texts, things like that all the time. It can be really helpful just to keep that somewhere, things like that all the time it can be really helpful just to keep that somewhere. I've gotten texts before with this podcast. I remember when I was back in the day of my grad school journey into becoming a dietitian, I had a food blog and I still have text messages saved from friends who read the first post or two and just some really sweet thoughts that they set my way around it. I still have those texts because one it was just so thoughtful, but two, it's really helpful to come back to those positive things Sometimes when we're just feeling really, really hard on ourselves about things.
Speaker 1:So if you have clients that send a nice message or a thank you card or something, keep it somewhere so you just have it when you really need it, when you just kind of need a little boost of positivity, just look in that folder. Also, just knowing that it's probably part of our human nature to focus much more strongly on negative things and positive things Probably was a survival thing over time. Right, like this is bad. I need to avoid this thing. So I need to make sure that my brain remembers how bad this thing is so that I can outrun this animal in the future, things like that, right, we have to sort of focus in on those bad things, so positive things maybe aren't sticking as easily.
Speaker 1:So just knowing that just because we're feeling this intense feeling of being rejected doesn't actually mean that we suck as a provider and then we can come back to that positive folder to be like, oh cool, look at all these nice things people have said and coming back to that. So we can come back to that positive folder to be like, oh cool, look at all these nice things people have said and coming back to that. So we can kind of help ourselves get a little more centered, knowing that the reality is even though I know I just said earlier that things like reframing or even noticing like what is true and what is not might not always be super helpful, it can be important just to come back to the reality of like what is true is I am still a clinician, I still do have clients that really enjoy working with me and I have a lot of clinicians that I refer to and back with and they do not reject me in this way. Right, like I'm okay, everything's okay. Actually, what's actually happening versus what we're catastrophizing?
Speaker 1:The other thing that's been really, really, really helpful for me is tracking data, because when we have these negative things happen which I don't call them negative, but say I had a client that didn't show or a client that canceled or something like that. Something like that. If we're going to be a little bit more hyper fixated on this negative thing or this thing that feels dysregulating in whatever way, it can be really helpful to go back to some data around other things. So if you're catastrophizing like oh my God, this client's not coming back and now the therapist is never going to refer to me, it can be helpful to maybe go into, like your tracking sheet I keep track of, we keep track of all inquiries that come into our practice, where they're coming from, how they got our info. So one you can see okay, there's a lot of really great people that are still referring to me, so clearly I don't suck that bad.
Speaker 1:And the other thing is, if the catastrophizing part is like, oh my God, no one's ever gonna refer to me and I'm gonna have no business ever again, you can see their numbers in general like, okay, what are the actual numbers? Or maybe things are just slow and you're not getting a lot of new clients. Sometimes looking at the numbers can be helpful because you can say, okay, well, last year on this time it was also really slow. Maybe it's just a time of year thing. There's not a lot of consistency across the board for people. I find with referrals, especially in the last couple of years with COVID and then post-COVID and then post-COVID times, all that stuff has really changed how clients are showing up. But you can see if there's any trends at all that you can at least look back on and say okay, this is typically a slower month for us anyway, so it's probably fine. So that's number one that can be helpful just to look at and see what's going on.
Speaker 1:The other thing I like to keep track of is maybe where referrals are coming from. So if I'm worried that this, you know, one provider is not going to refer to us, I can look and say like, okay, well, do we really get a lot of referrals from doctor's offices anyway? Not really. I mean, most of ours come from therapists, so maybe it's okay if they don't refer to us, right, like we still have a lot of really other great referral sources. Or maybe when we're feeling rejected because we think it's slow because of something we're doing, we can actually look at the data and say, okay, actually, no, we're getting a lot of inquiries. It just feels like there's nothing happening in my brain because I'm feeling really hard, because I'm feeling this really hard moment right now about feeling rejected.
Speaker 1:So that's the other reason that I think data can be just really helpful, not just like the positive notes that people send you, but like actual data of like are clients coming through the door? Are they sticking around? What's actually happening? Because what we might also find in that is it's not necessarily us, but there could be a bottleneck in a process of ours that's causing that delay. So this is where sometimes, especially if you have a group practice and you want to see, you know, if you're fighting one of the clinicians, maybe their retention isn't really great and they're getting new clients constantly you kind of compare it to other people and say like, okay, what's what's common across the board for our team? And if it's different, then you can kind of say, okay, like what's going on here? But having that data can actually just be helpful to start with, because it can just.
Speaker 1:I always say to my team it's just data collection. We say that for a lot of things, because sometimes we just need the information before we can make a judgment of it in our brains, and so having that information, first and foremost, will be really helpful. The last thing that I think can be really helpful is finding community with like-minded or clinicians who are also in similar places you. There's just something very comforting about hearing from other clinicians who are doing very similar work, from. There's just something very comforting and validating when you're talking to other clinicians who are doing very similar work to you, maybe in the same area, taking insurance, who are having the same issues you're having or same challenges you're having.
Speaker 1:As my practice has grown and changed over the last few years, when I was first a solo clinician, the things that I was experiencing were different than they are now as a group practice owner. I recently had coffee with another group practice owner locally who also has a big dietitian practice and takes insurance, and truly we sat for two hours and just went back and forth like, do you see this, does that happen to you? And it just felt so nice to have somebody to talk to who had the same exact things that they were struggling with figuring out and understanding and kind of just comparing our experiences, because it can be hard to not always internalize what's happening in your practice as something that you are doing and to really look outside of it as like, oh, this is just a normal trend of how things are in this field that we're in and the work that we do. Something that really comes up for us sometimes is, you know, we are weight inclusive dietitians and we work with eating disorders and folks who are looking to heal their relationship to food, but, like, not everybody's ready for that, you know, and it's not because we are doing something wrong as clinicians, like they live in. We all live in a full society. Speaking of rejection, right, like a society that has literally taught us that to be accepted is to be in one type of body and not in the other. And there's a lot of things that are going to impact that, not just around social acceptance, but like safety, medical safety, medical care access right, like that's going to impact all those things as well. And so it's like, of course, that's going to be hard for people. And it's not because we suck as clinicians, right, like we have to sort of sometimes take ourselves out of it and like zoom out on what's going on, which can be really hard when you're just like in it day to day, so having somebody who's also doing very similar work, whether it's you're in solo practice and you're doing like you're also a inclusive person and you take insurance and having these issues like finding somebody else to be in community with if you can can just feel so nice and it's hard to come by sometimes, but I would definitely definitely recommend that.
Speaker 1:And if you don't have people around you, there's a lot of Facebook groups. I don't think the only reason I haven't deleted Facebook at this point in my life is because I'm in a few groups for dietitians that are just so helpful, like the insurance and credentialing Facebook group is so helpful for insurance stuff. And then there's a dietitians in private practice group. Now I'm in a dietitians in group practice. I mean that one feels so validating because there's a lot of things that come up in there. That's always like, oh my God, yes, I go through this too, and so that can really help when we're starting to feel that. That like anxiety building around, rejection and what that will lead to, right.
Speaker 1:And I want to just sort of come back to this idea of what I was talking about with you know the clients that we work with in our practice in particular, and how being in one body is more socially accepted practice in particular, and how being in one body is more socially accepted, right. There's also ways and how. I said that that's also related to safety and access. The same is going to go for us in other ways, right? Like especially depending on our families of origin and how being successful is being perceived and what that means and how that is going to give acceptance or not and what that brings up for us. If you're like Eva, what are you talking about? I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:I grew up in a stricter household. I would say my family, we are immigrants. I was born in Russia and, yeah, there's a lot of pressure to achieve things in my family. I grew up around a lot of that and being sort of compared to others at times, I would say we've made a lot of improvements in my family over the years, but nonetheless, that was something that I grew up around. So, like, how I performed was then whether or not I would get in trouble and then whether or not my parents would provide that feeling of acceptance or that feeling of rejection. Right, and as kids I say this to my clients all the time like we don't understand the difference.
Speaker 1:And so acceptance is safety and that really strengthens our attachments to our parents and being rejected is actually like a survival thing, like if our parents reject us, we wouldn't survive, right, and so in our brains it's going to become this thing where we feel like we have to avoid rejection at all costs. And then it can bring up a lot of stuff. As adults we are like why am I still caring about this? Right, like this is where the therapy part comes in, and not just for you. But coming back to this thing of family of origin, there could be a lot of pressure around how you perform and what your success and how that's measured, and so to feel like you're being rejected in ways whether it's through clients, and then that catastrophizes to like what am I doing in this practice? And it's never going to grow. And it can also really tend to tie back to your feelings of like if I'm not successful, that means what? And is that going to cause rejection, maybe from my family? Right, unfortunately, right.
Speaker 1:Living in a capitalist society, we need money to live, and so if we're not able to make money, that's going to limit our access to things that could limit our access to safety, to also, you know, medical care. If we can't afford insurance, I mean, it's going to impact us in a way. So it's like of course there's a lot of protective mechanisms around rejection whether it's like, if I keep getting rejected by potential clients, I'm never going to have income. That's going to impact my life, right, so you get what I'm saying. I'm going in circles at this point, but rejection is going to come up in private practice. So it's one thing, just to I just want to say, just to validate like it's not you, it's the work we do. So you will be rejected in ways you will probably experience rejection and the feeling of it and how that impacts you is going to be the work that you do on your own. But coming up with some data that can help support like, okay, actually my business is fine, we're getting my inquiries, we're booking people I actually have all these people on my schedule this week or look at the money it's actually growing, our revenue is growing. That data can just be helpful reminders of like what's actually happening in your business versus like what your fear is maybe like presenting.
Speaker 1:The other thing is, you know, if you're really sensitive to some rejection, of having that folder of positive messages screenshots? You know, somebody sent me a really nice text message the other day about the podcast. I took a screenshot of that. I need that in those moments because there's going to be moments where I feel like, what am I talking about? Who cares what she's saying? What is the point of this? Those feelings of like, what if people reject this? It'll be really helpful for me to come back to some of those nice messages that I'll get about things that I'm doing, and particularly this podcast. So, you know, having that folder of positive messages and things can just be helpful to come back to when you're in a space, to be ready to see it and receive it.
Speaker 1:And, lastly, finding community, if you can. It's hard to find community, but there's a lot of online spaces now. That's really helpful. Networking events as hard as they are and, you know, if rejection is something that you're very sensitive to, then being in a networking environment might really be hard too. That is where you can really meet a lot of people who are in similar at least areas as you, maybe doing similar work as you, and you know finding your people that way can just be really helpful. So you have somewhere to go and somewhere to be like.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm going through this too Great, it's not just me. This is normal, right. Like. If you think about, like all the things online that we the TikToks or reels or memes right, that's like all about us relating to one another, right? Like I feel like I see comments all the time of like wow, like nobody has ever had a unique experience ever, but it's sometimes we feel like it's a unique experience that only we're having, and so that it can be really easy to come back to like I suck, versus like oh, this is just something that is happening as a result of bigger things than me and it actually has something to do with me. It has to do with my, the work I'm in which, once again, we're in private practice, right, like which, once again, we're in private practice. Right Like people's insurance is going to run out, people's finances are going to change.
Speaker 1:They're not going to always be able to afford to work with you. They might just have different goals. They might have a lot of other stuff going on in their life. There's a lot of reasons why people stop coming to see you or clients don't book, and maybe you're just not the person for them. But that doesn't mean my rejection stuff is coming up where I'm like, am I even making sense? But I'm sure I am and I'm sure if you experience some of these things like I do, you'll find this hopefully relatable. And just to come back to ADHD and rejection sensitive dysphoria you know it was really helpful for me to learn more about my ADHD and finding a provider who really understood it. I'm hoping to have my psychiatrist actually as a guest to talk about ADHD, because I do think it just impacts business owners in such an interesting way. So I'm definitely going to be doing an episode on ADHD, whether it's with my psychiatrist or with somebody else in mind that I want to ask to be on. So stay tuned for that. Lots of ADHD stuff to come, that is for sure. But just know you're not alone out there.
Speaker 1:This work is super, super hard and we carry a lot of emotional stuff for our clients and we also are putting ourselves out there constantly to help build our caseloads and come back to oh, that's actually one thing that I forgot to say. I actually think it's maybe one of the most important things. Sometimes it feels like do I suck? Am I doing this? I think just coming back to our values and what do I actually want to do and what do I want to put out in this world. Am I doing that in the work I'm doing? The answer is yes, then you're on the right path. The answer is I'm not sure it's figuring out. Okay, what am I feeling aligned with and how do I want to show up as a clinician? How do I want to show up as a business owner? How do I want to show up as an entrepreneur, and can I control the way that I'm showing up versus these things that are happening to me? And I think coming back to that values piece is going to be really, really helpful to just remember as well when we are having a harder time. All right, that is all I have to say so far on rejection.
Speaker 1:If you found this episode helpful, I would love to hear so I can add it to my positivity folder. So please let me know whether it's leaving a comment. You can send me a message online or on my website. I don't think I really have ever shared my Instagram handle here, but my Instagram is at evahaldus, underscore RD. The website, of course, is wwwrdtoseocom. I'll be sure to link the rejection sensitive dysphoria article that I was referencing and anything else that I think of about rejection that might be helpful. As always, please make sure to like and subscribe so you can stay up to date on all things RD to CEO. I look forward to talking to you next time. Bye, thanks for listening to the RD to CEO podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes for any. Bye.
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