When I look back on my career as a marriage and family therapist thus far, there are at least three significant turning points that I can identify that changed my work in some significant way or set the course for the type of work that I wanted to do. I call these pivotal moments. This post is all about these pivotal moments. You likely have experienced your own unique pivotal moments in your career and I hope this post will inspire you to reflect on what those moments may be.
What is a pivotal moment?
I consider a pivotal moment a significant milestone, turning point or game changer in your career. It can be anything. I struggled for the proper terminology to describe these moments that I had been thinking about, but then recalled an article that I read in graduate school about pivotal moments in therapy and I knew this was the phrasing I was looking for. From my recollection of that article read a long time ago, the client often had a different perception of a pivotal moment than what the therapist had identified as pivotal.
The key to a moment being pivotal is that it impacted YOU in a significant way. You are the only one who can define what was a pivotal moment for yourself. Although I will share examples of what I identified as pivotal moments for myself, I encourage you to focus on what you experienced as pivotal in your career.
The interesting thing about pivotal moments is that we may not recognize them as pivotal in the moment. In fact, it can take a long time to recognize the moment was pivotal.
Why are pivotal moments important to reflect on?
- As a mental health provider, it is always wise to reflect on why we are doing what we are doing. This helps us be purposeful and mindful in our work with clients instead of being on autopilot. Some of of the changes that occurred in us as practitioners as a the result of a pivotal moment may be so subtle that we don’t even notice them until we slow down to reflect.
- Reflecting on pivotal moments can offer insights into the growth we have already experienced working in the mental health field. This can help us build our self confidence as we consider how far we have come and all that we have learned.
- Pivotal moments also offer glimpses into areas for further learning and growth.
What do pivotal moments look like?
As I mentioned before, I can identify three pivotal moments in my career. None of the moments I am going to describe are client related, although there have also been interactions with clients that stand out in my mind as significant learning opportunities that shifted my work as well.
1. The choice of where to complete my practicum
The nonprofit agency where I completed my practicum ended up becoming my professional home for 7 years. As most students who are interviewing for a practicum or internship placement, I was just happy to find a placement and never imagined I would be there for so long. My practicum was with a program and supervisor that focused on treatment for families affected by sexual abuse. I had never intended for this population to be the focus of my work, but it ended up being the main focus of my work for a that seven year period. Additionally, in my time at that agency I was given the opportunity to be come a clinical supervisor and also an administrative program coordinator for the sexual abuse program. All of these were amazing learning opportunities and contributed to the clinical, organization and business skills that I have today.
2. Becoming a mother
I know that becoming a mother is part of my identity outside of being a therapist, but it also impacted my work. The most notable change for me was an increase in capacity of empathy for the parents and families that I work with. It is not that I wasn’t empathetic in the past, but I feel that the connection that I experience with families is different now. I am also mindful of whether there is a point at which I could become too empathetic (especially with parents) and that would interfere with my work as a therapist. Additionally, I have generally found myself becoming more careful about my boundaries around my work time and my personal time after having children, which I think has prevented burnout and has kept me able to keep working in the mental health field. Looking back now, I am surprised by how I was able to work such long days pre-children given the intensity of the work that I was doing.
3. Making the decision to focus on truly building a private practice.
As I mentioned in my last post, I don’t think I was originally truly committed to the idea of having a successful private practice. The moment (or most likely series of moments) that I decided that I was “all in” to the private practice journey, I officially became a business owner and my mindset shifted. The addition of business owner to my list of roles added a new dimension to my decision making process. I no longer need to just make good clinical decisions, but also am responsible for making good business decisions. In my previous role as a program coordinator at the non-profit, I did have some responsibilities tied to the success of the program, but the stakes seem just a little higher when it is my own practice.
Something that intrigues me about these pivotal moments is that they are all connected in some way to times that I incorporated new roles into my identity…as a therapist, as a program coordinator, as a clinical supervisor, as a mother and as a business owner.
I’d love to hear about your pivotal moments as well. Please feel free to leave a comment below or email me at sarah@sarahleitschuhcounseling.com if you’d like to write a guest blog post about your experiences.
Sarah
Excellent article, thank you for sharing your pivotal moments. I would agree becoming a mother was one of mine, as was my decision to go back to school and get my degree in nursing, when I was 30 years old. I believe that when I became a “mom” it was the best prep course for how to be a better nurse. 🙂
Thank you for this insightful article!
Lisa, thank you for commenting and sharing your pivotal moments. I am sure that being a parent helped you develop even more patience and empathy than you had in the past which would contribute to being a wonderful nurse, in my opinion.
I have found that my pivotal moments aren’t realized until much later. It is when I have time to reflect upon periods of time in my life that I realize I have had such a moment. Most of my best moments have also occurred during some of the biggest changes in my life.
I agree that pivotal moments are not often recognized as pivotal until much later. We are generally wrapped up in the thoughts and emotions of the current experience and can’t fully anticipate a lasting impact of a moment until much later. Thanks for commenting, Julie.