An interview with Tiffany McLain about how therapists deserve to make a good living and often do not. Curt and Katie interview Tiffany regarding her perspectives related to how sliding scale fees can perpetuate racist and classist systems, the problem with therapists sacrificing themselves and acting as saviors, and the impact you can make if you amass wealth and seek luxury.

It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

Interview with Tiffany McLain, LMFT

Tiffany McLain, LMFT is a therapist & consultant whose mantra is, “Full fees are the new black.” Via her program, The Lean In. MAKE BANK. Academy, she helps therapists ethically earn 30 to 50% more per month while seeing fewer clients by showing them how to think about and directly address fees in a clinically appropriate manner.

In this episode we talk about:

Tiffany’s Lean In Make Bank Academy
How current events are impacting therapists making money
The belief system that we are hurting clients by charging them
Why therapists are so susceptible to these messages
How women and minorities are external reinforced to sacrifice ourselves
The stigma of building wealth, living life more fully, seeking luxury
Grappling with raising fees, with people needing help
The internal dialogue that comes in when trying to raise fees
How luxury has been sustained on the backs of others
The misguided attempt to fix the system through self-sacrifice
What the cost is when you self-sacrificing
The problem with Saviorism
How a sliding scale can encourage racism and classism
Negating self-efficacy and fostering dependency, through lowering our fees
Sliding scale = subsidizing our client’s treatment
Tiffany’s experience with a sliding scale therapist
How gratitude for a therapist sliding their fee can lead to clients hiding themselves, not fully showing up or engaging in treatment effectively
The value issue related to people asking for a sliding fee or balking at paying the full fee
How these issues may come in at the beginning of a therapist’s career
Talking about your fee as a clinical intervention
Unconscious dynamics that keep us from acting on what we know re: setting fees and money
Money is a representation of the therapist’s need and desire
Processing emotional reactions to fee changes with clients. For example: “When I raise my fees, it hurts you” without collapsing, lowering the fee, or losing boundaries
The challenge of looking at financial capacity for individuals
The idea that we do not have to take care of individuals who cannot afford our fee in order to create access – and ideas of how we can increase impact once we’ve had the ability to create financial stability and wealth
The benefit to society of women gaining wealth, with the ability to make a bigger impact
The importance of setting your fee appropriately from the beginning