Dear Black Therapist Start Your Private Practice
Update: My Hourly Rate is $350 per hour. I had to stop devaluing myself.
Dear White Allies, I am writing this to my black and indigenous people of color. I realized that no one has ever permitted us to do this, nor are we the target demographic to a lot of the more popular “how to start your therapy business” marketing schemes. Many of them assume that the therapist has resources that we, as black and indigenous people of color, do not have access to. This letter is me attempting to correct that imbalance. Although you are not my target audience, that does not mean that you cannot help my message reach a larger one, nor does it mean what I have to say will benefit you. Also, when I say “white therapists,” you should know “exactly” the type of “Freudian blank stare” “I am reading from a manual,” “ooo I just learned this as a conference” type therapists who think technique is a substitute for personality and objectivity is a substitute for empathy.
My name is Derrick Javan Hoard, and I am a black licensed marriage and family therapist, and I want you or someone you know to start your own private practice where you are the boss. I know we don’t usually talk like this out loud, but I have been punished my entire life for saying things that others wouldn’t say, now I am ready to be punished for saying things that other people can’t say.
Dear Black Therapist, Please stop trying to do therapy like white therapists and learn how to use your self.
I know we have been beaten and bruised by the specter of systemic racism in America, and our profession is no different. Not only must we deal with discrimination and lack of respect from clients, but we also have to deal with microaggressions and white therapists asking us traumatizing questions on our lunch break as a shortcut to doing their research into their complicity in systemic racism.
Side note: I offer anti-racism therapy and coaching for people who have woken up to their complicity in systemic racism. It’s time to stop using your ability to recognize your privilege to beat up on yourself and recognize injustices in the places that you work.
Dear Black Therapist, Most of your programs have been indoctrination to shut down the essential therapy tool, your “self” . Common factors research shows that up to 80% of the effectiveness of therapy depends on the relationship between you and your clients. Still, most of you have such an inauthentic relationship with them. And yes, we do have issues of boundaries to attend to. Still, you can set boundaries AND be your authentic self. It just feels like you can’t because you have been taught to be “objective”, which is synonymous with “racist” in this context for the simple fact that the white people writing these theories did not have practitioners of color in mind.
On top of the fact that the people I am talking to are working in agencies, group practices, or for other therapists who will happily advertise and profit from your blackness to attract clients, but remind you to “watch your emotions”, question the professionalism of your hair, and generally gaslight you into becoming the type of therapist that makes them feel comfortable.
What do you get in return? A stable job working with clients who are not the reason you had the life experiences you had while getting trickle-down compensation from business owners and agencies making millions off of your burnout and commitment to serving your clients.
It isn’t a fair deal, and it is an integral part of a broken system. We all know that agencies get rich off of paying you peanuts to work with low-income clients, and white therapists get rich off of hiring you to work with higher acuity black clients they attract by virtue of their privilege in marketing and advertising. People look for a “black therapist”, but find a white therapist who “hires black therapists” — systemic racism in action.
Suppose you want to help dismantle systemic racism in our profession. In that case, you must start your own private practice because if you don’t start practicing privately, you are contributing to a racist system by your inaction. Now, I know that all of us are in different areas of our lives, and some of us think we don’t have the time, money, or resources to do it and that isn’t true. You can be working towards it even if you aren’t there. Even if you only have one client in your private practice while still working an agency job or for another therapist, that is one client who gets to experience what working with a professional who looks, sounds, and emotes like them feels like.
Which brings me back to your “self”, you know how we are when we aren’t worried if white eyes are looking? You know how carefree we speak in our “breakout” sessions or how animated we get when we forget our masks in a diversity training meeting because one of the white therapists suggests that we “treat racism like a mental illness”? That Energy? You can use that in therapy. Think of the theories as song lyrics with no music or rhythm. You are the music and the rhythm. This is why so many therapists all “sound the same”, it is because we only were taught one damn song in college, it is time to start singing our own. Stop being people’s back up vocals and take the lead.
You have to start your private practice. Betterhelp is snatching up your clients and matching them with subpar therapists who don’t care about them. Talkspace is snatching up your clients, and they are being retraumatized as the therapists who left BetterHelp join Talkspace and then leave those clients because you guessed it, they don’t care about them. Life coaches are snatching up your clients, and I have no idea what they are doing with them, but they need you to market and advertise yourself so that they can find you.
Your ideal clients need you to wake up and break free of your mental enslavement to the idea that you have to be Kati Morton, Brene Brown, or Lori Gottlieb to be successful as a therapist. Even though I know the system is set up in such a way to make you believe it.
Dear Black Therapist, you deserve a nice apartment.
Dear Black Therapist, you deserve to be able to eat out whenever the hell you want.
Dear Black Therapist, you shouldn’t be worried about your student loans.
Dear Black Therapist, you deserve to make all the money-all of it.
Dear Black Therapist, you deserve to work with other ethnicities too.
Dear Black Therapist, you are licensed for independent practice, and you deserve to practice independently.
Now, I know that you can read these words and they do not have the same effect as the music that I could put to them. I have provided a link to my website where I will help you start your private practice, in fact, I already have an hour-long video where I walked someone through the process. It is free, I hope it helps, and I tried to answer every single thing that I could, but if I missed something or if you want to have me give you your own personal pep talk and/or use my “Black Therapist Self” to help you work through your difficulties or your excuses you can schedule a session with me.
Even now, I feel guilty saying that “you can schedule a session with me”, but that is absolutely white supremacy and conditioning that what I have to say is not valuable. Not only is what I have to say valuable, how I say it is priceless. That is what I want you to use in therapy Dear Black Therapist and once you do, you will find that you won’t want to work in places that don’t let you practice the way you were meant to.
