Why Therapists Don't Charge Their Worth | How to Make Money in Private Practice

Lindsay BryanPodvin's Video on the Emotional Reasons why Entrepreneurs don't Charge their Worth:
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Set Your Rate in Private Practice:
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For all the howto videos I offer about charging what you’re worth and setting yourself up for financial success in private practice, I know that still many therapists are undercharging BIG time. I get it because I’ve been there! In this video I cover some reasons why so many therapists don’t charge their worth in private practice and offer some solutions.

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This video is geared for therapists of all kinds, including psychologists, MFTs, LPCCs, social workers, and others in the clinical counseling field.

Welcome to Private Practice Skills! I’m Dr. Marie Fang, psychologist in private practice. I post videos offering tools I learned the hard way about starting and growing private practice so that you don’t have to.

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Here are some of the primary reasons I’ve seen for why therapists charge less than they’re worth:

1. Emotional reasons. I think this is handsdown the main barrier keeping therapists from charging what they’re worth. This is such an important topic that I’ve teamed up with financial therapy expert Lindsay BryanPodvin of Mind Money Balance (show link to insta and screen share from youtube), who posted an entire video on her channel with tools to help you tackle the emotional barriers that are keeping you from charging what you’re worth.

2. Lack of Financial Education. Charging $120 as an intern allowed me to take home about $50 per hour of work after all.

3. Stigma. While I was in grad school as well as when I taught graduate level MFTs, there was a HUGE stigma around therapists and others in the helping profession earning income higher than a basic living wage. Somehow in our culture we’ve fostered a belief that if we truly desire to help people, we shouldn’t be earning more than a bare minimum for it to be genuine. But there are two major issues that this mindset brings up:

If we have to constantly grind in order to put food on the table, we inevitably burn out. And burned out therapists make for bad therapists. We also then model this unhealthy behavior for our clients as well.

If we charge less than we’re worth, people question our capacity to help them. They assume we’re charging less because we’re not good enough to charge more. This will either leave empty slots on your calendar or cause your caseload to be full of people who are less invested in therapy and more interested in landing a deal.

4. Gender socialization. This message is for us ladies. I know many of us are taught to believe that we shouldn’t be big earners. This can run deep, whether we believe that we shouldn’t earn as much as the men in our lives, or if we believe that we’re genuinely less capable of being as skillful as men. I think also sometimes we’re just not taught to have a mindset that earning higher income is something worth pursuing. Whatever the case may be, I think we have much ground to cover on this front.

With baby girl on the way (due in August), I can’t stand the idea of her growing up believing that she is less capable or that her skills are less valuable simply because she is a woman. This motivates me to know what I’m worth and to act like it so I can hopefully model that for her in a healthy way. I would love it if we rallied to do the same!

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I think many of us can relate to at least one of the items on this list. If you’re not sure how to go about setting your rate so you can charge what you’re worth in private practice, I have a video covering the practical side of setting your rate, so you know exactly how much income you can expect to earn before ever getting started.

A huge thank you to Lindsay BryanPodvin of Mind Money Balance for teaming up with me on this video!

What barriers have held you back from charging your worth in private practice?