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One of the biggest challenges we as a tribe seem to face is Imposter Syndrome — feeling like a fraud.

I think that this is fairly common to most professions.

With us, this energy seems to come from three main elements of our work.

First, there is a fairly rampant myth that we have to have our lives perfectly tidy and all put together. Newsflash, we don’t. Many years ago, a friend of mine assured me that as we long as we are just a couple of steps ahead of a client, we can reach back and give a hand up. We don’t have to be perfect to help another.

SIDENOTE, AAIT helps us get our own lives together even as we are helping others.

Second, we don’t see the results we expect to see. Our clients muddle through the same problems week after week. Or it feels like things just take too long. The insights don’t produce change, the CBT exercises feel like drudgery and clients don’t do them, or the same pain still seeps into their lives. Having the means to help people make change in EVERY session is a total game changer here.

Third, we are learning something new and feel the natural trepidation of someone applying a new skill. We know from watching athletes, especially gymnasts, that it takes repetition to master a new skill. We see it with singers and other performers who practice and practice until that practice is ingrained in them. That repetition brings home the gold.

The challenge for us is that it’s oh so alluring to simply slide into our old ways of doing and being. Soon that new skill gathers dust as a simple certificate documenting our CEUs for some future faceless board. Our clients are never the wiser. They don’t even know that we let things slide. This is what separates good therapists from GREAT therapists. Great therapists push through the discomfort of being awkward in a new skill to find that sweet spot of ease and confidence. We KNOW we make a difference because we see it — daily — on repeat.

I’ve trained enough people now to know that the first two hurdles are easy to transcend with AAIT. The third one means digging in and practicing. I LOVE that we can use what we learn with ourselves.

In the AAIT Foundations course, we learn three different means of addressing a problem like imposter syndrome, or the awkward feeling of trying something new with a client and feeling like something less than an expert.

Register for our next live series event and discover some practical support and learn more about this promising model. Our clients need reliable and rapid help. Investing in us invests in them.

www.tinyurl.com/aaitlive

Willa can’t begin to understand what it means to feel like an imposter. She is who she is!