… alternatively titled: Why am I doing this?!
It is now January 2024 and in less than three years — Lord willin’ and the crick don’t rise — I will have my doctorate in Behavioral Health. I am 56 and here I am, back in school. Why?
I am here because this program will help not only my bottom line but, most important, my patients. I have two master’s degrees and after one semester as a doctoral student, I have discovered that I am already a better practitioner. This doctoral program was chosen after many years of looking for the right program. This program puts it all together — it deals with the brain, the body, the mind-body connection, the medications — the whole person. It discusses the brain as not just the “holder” of the mind, but as part of the body. It is all about taking all the parts together to make a whole. This program takes the next step in the feelings-thoughts-actions triangle. Behavioral health as visualized by Cummings considers how we think, act, and behave not only as a brain function, but as a whole body function.
Why is this important to my clients, you might ask? It is important because it means that now their mental health is deemed to be part of their general health. Their mental health practitioner (that would be me) is going to work with, treat, and discuss their mental health as a part — a bona fide team member — of their physical health (based on the mind-blowing premise that your body includes your head and its contents!). When my client has anxiety due to a medical condition, we deal with both. When a client stops socializing due to COPD or is depressed over loss of function, we — my fellow DBHs and I — will deal with all of the client and not just certain of their parts.
As for my bottom line, Cummings not only focuses on the health and well-being of our patients but also on the entrepreneurial aspects of our business. This is important, especially for me, as I have not taken a single business class previously. I am learning how to enhance my business through doing things like this blog; we will also be required to create podcasts. As painful as the learning curve may be with all this techie stuff, I truly appreciate that blogs and podcasts will be immensely helpful for my private practice. Most of my clients grew up with social media and are totally comfortable with everything being online. I need to keep up with them.
Additionally, learning how to read trends and how to manage the business side of the house is an aspect of private practice that I will definitely appreciate. I think that most therapists are not both people- and business-oriented, so to have these areas of concentration together in one program can only help us to make our businesses more profitable. I will make the reader of this post the following promise — despite the foregoing, I will never put my business above the clients, but I do have to make a living. It’s all about balance.
I invite you to follow me on my way to the Cummings doctorate. Here we go!