Why Therapy is Political with Tracy Vadakumchery

Tracy Vadakumchery [00:00:00]:

I'm very specific about who I am about, and when you're clear about who you're about, people are actually really grateful. Thank you for telling me who you're about. So I can either weed you out and know I don't want to work with you, or I know for a fact that I want to work with you. You got to be specific. And I think like that means like, knowing who you are, knowing your worth, and charging your worth.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:00:24]:

This is heard business school, where we sit down with private practice owners and industry experts to learn about the business of therapy together. I'm your host, Michael Fulweiler.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:00:39]:

Feeling disoriented and needing to regroup isn't unusual for those pushing boundaries and creating change. We welcome Tracy Vadakumcheri, also known as the Bad Indian Therapist. Tracy's journey is a testament to resilience and innovation, from battling imposter syndrome in group practice to establishing a thriving private practice and creating an impactful online presence. With a master's of education in psychology, psychological counseling from Columbia University, she doesn't shy away from critiquing community, mental health and nonprofit organizations for underpaid therapists. Sharing her own experiences of burnout and the strategic steps she took to transition to private practice. Tracy also discusses her role as an advocate, the importance of vulnerability in therapy, and her latest project, detoxify your guilt course, aimed at empowering others. This episode has so many great lessons about balancing personal well being with professional growth. Here's my conversation with Tracy.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:01:32]:

Enjoy.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:01:34]:

Tracy Vadakumcheri, welcome to the show.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:01:38]:

Thank you, Michael.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:01:39]:

So excited to have you on. It's been really fun getting to know you. You are a content creator in addition to being a therapist. We've partnered with you on Instagram, and it's just been really great getting to know you and learning more about your practice.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:01:57]:

Thank you. And it's been great working with heard and working with you, Michael, and I'm excited to get into it.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:02:04]:

Great. Let's dive right in. I was doing research on you for this show, and I learned that you actually got your master's in education from Columbia, which I thought was interesting. Is that an unusual degree path for a therapist?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:02:19]:

I think every state and every university for becoming a therapist is going to be different. So I got my masters of arts and my master's in education in counseling, psychology and psychological counseling. I don't know why it's like that at teachers college at Columbia University, but I know that the master's of arts is what allows me to, like, teach. If I wanted to, like, if I were to go back and maybe, like, host, like a practicum or a fieldwork class, and then the masters of education in New York state is what allows me to meet the licensure requirement. So it's really not that much of a difference. It's pretty much the same thing, but yes.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:02:55]:

Is that something that you're interested in doing at some point, teaching?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:03:00]:

I don't know. To be honest, that's been like, a bigger, broader question, because I know some people were like, do you want to get a PhD? And I'm like, I'm not interested in doing research. I have thought about the very broad possibility of going back to teach a course on therapy and marketing, but there is a part of that imposter syndrome. I'm like, well, I don't have a business degree. I have no experience outside of the fact that I took a couple of coaching programs. What do I know? Like, marketing and therapy, besides what other people have told me. So I have thought, like, maybe one day going back to Columbia or another school and teaching about the importance of marketing yourself as a therapist, because that's just something that many people don't get or don't. Many people in our field don't understand or don't learn, but I have my own imposter syndrome.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:03:53]:

I'm like, am I even qualified to do that? So that's something that I have thought.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:03:57]:

About but not really totally resonate with that. I hear that all the time. It's the premise of the show. I feel like I say that on every show. Like heard business school exists because therapists aren't taught business in graduate school, at Columbia, or even in undergrad. Did you take a business class?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:04:17]:

I took maybe a microeconomics 101 class. I was like, I don't know if I could ever do that. I don't think I understood it at the time. I think I might understand it a little bit better now. But no, no business finance course, nothing in that realm in my formal education whatsoever.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:04:36]:

Yeah, and then once you go into private practice, if that's the path that you want to take, now, you are a business owner. Right. Which I want to definitely get into. But before we talk about that, I would love to talk about your path to private practice because you had a few stops on the way. Could you talk about what that experience was like for you coming out of graduate school and kind of where you went first?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:05:03]:

I don't think any therapist who goes into this profession saying, yeah, I know what I'm going to do with this degree ends up doing that because the path that led me to this profession was working in like a lot of like dv, intimate partner violence, gender based violence organizations. One that happened to be at my undergrad university campuse. And I describe that world as kind of a black hole. Just the level of like b's you have to deal with from everyday people just over such, what happens to be such a hot button topic, unfortunately, and just how much stress. The advocate who had a master's in counseling, but she just wasn't licensed to practice, she was working there and just how much she has learned to meet people where they're at and really help change the system. And I kind of saw what she was doing and I'm like, you know, I don't know if I really want to go into this realm of, like, gender based violence work, but I know that I do like the concept of helping people where they're at and meeting people where they're at. And that's what really got me to go into a counseling psychology program. What I really wanted to do was work with university students at like a college counseling center because that was most of my background at the time.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:06:31]:

I was a resident assistant. I was also working on campus for this organization. I was a research assistant. At some point, like, I wanted to do, like, more university student affairs. That never happened. My internship, my fieldwork placement was at a university. I think that, like, the ups and downs that I've been through in this field, just like the places where I've had to dip my toes just to get my clinical hours for my license, just shows that, like, it is okay if it doesn't turn out the way you planned. I never went into this thinking that I was going to do private practice.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:07:08]:

I went into this thinking that I was going to work at NYU as a college therapist. That doesn't happen, right? So you find your way. Eventually you find what works for you, and you find out that the thing that you originally wanted to do doesn't actually work. So you pivot.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:07:25]:

At what point did you change your mind or did you start to explore other options beyond working at a college counseling center? If that was kind of what you wanted to do initially? Was it just sort of through your experiences, like you mentioned, like where you were working, you just kind of were put on a different path?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:07:43]:

I would say the main reason was it was a credential issue. Most of these college campuses, they only hire PhDs or somebody with a social work degree. And, you know, when I started to go into this profession. I didn't realize that you could become a therapist with a social work degree. When I was going to school undergrad in Chicago, you know, it was. I was under the impression that, like, people who are doing social work are working more with, like, government benefits, connecting people to resources. And I was like, I don't know if that's really what I want to do. I don't know if that's really something that I'm yearning to do.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:08:22]:

So maybe I want to do more counseling psychology. So I didn't realize just how hard it is actually to get the kind of job that you want in New York state. I found out very quickly that most of these college campuses, even hospitals in New York, they want a PhD or somebody with a social work degree. So if I wanted to get my clinical hours plus benefits, and again, this was seven years ago, so things might have changed. But if I wanted to get a stable paycheck, stable salary, benefits, maybe the pay wouldn't be that great, but I would be guaranteed the clinical hours for my license. It was working in the non profit sector, and it's not pretty. It's not glamorous. You know, you are helping people who have very real, serious needs.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:09:11]:

It's not going to be like you in a cardigan with your coffee mug, sitting in a fancy office. You could work towards that. There are definitely some therapists who get that kind of job straight out of grad school. But, like, it's not as glamorous as you think it is. I think that I had to pivot several times when I just realized the burnout wasn't worth it, that the pay wasn't worth it, and when, like, leadership wasn't worth it. I think that working in these different sectors has taught me a lot about how therapy can look different for everyone. And then eventually, I found my own footing and realized that. But private practice is possible for me.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:09:52]:

It's not impossible. And that's with the help of learning from other therapists and places like heard business school.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:09:58]:

You mentioned the pay wasn't worth it. It's widely known that therapists are underpaid and undervalued, especially in community mental health and the nonprofit world. Why do you think that that is?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:10:15]:

Well, we're talking about community mental health and meeting a financial need, right? So then people justify that and say, oh, you didn't do this for the money. Well, that doesn't mean that, you know, my bills are paid from Mars. Unfortunately, there are a lot of community mental health and nonprofit organizations that, like, claim to be, like, progressive and, like, pro mental health, but use their progressive values to underpay their therapist. And I'm like, well, how is that? How is that progressive? You talk about wanting to destigmatize therapy, but you're devaluing emotional labor that is required to give good therapy. So that doesn't make sense. You're not actually disrupting the mental health industrial complex when you do that. You're actually further reinforcing it, and you're reinforcing the stigma. When you devalue the labor of therapists, you send the message that this isn't real.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:11:17]:

This isn't something to be taken seriously. I think that if you run a nonprofit and you get all this funding from the board, you should be able to recognize that not paying your therapist enough to live in the area on top of benefits is what is creating the turnover and the burnout. I think that oftentimes, nonprofits and community mental health clinics, their progressive values is actually just saviorism. It's just a saviorism complex. And that's why you're not seeing the changes in the outcomes that you want, because you think that, like, therapists are supposed to be self sacrificing people, that we're supposed to be these blank slates, these robots, but nobody can connect to somebody who isn't human.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:12:03]:

I imagine that can feel very discouraging as a new therapists coming into the field, that you get into the work because you do want to help people, and you also want to make a living and afford a lifestyle that you want to enjoy and envision for yourself. Those things shouldn't be mutually exclusive. Yet the message is, well, you didn't do this for the money. Have you seen therapists burn out and leave the field? In your experience working in the, in the nonprofit world, especially early on in your career?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:12:40]:

Yeah. And then they blame other therapists for why they're miserable, for lack of a better term. I think that this mental health industrial complex has gaslit therapists and healers into thinking that you're just supposed to be self sacrificing to help. I didn't go to grad school to be a martyr. I went to grad school to learn skillset. Don't get me wrong. I think there is something to be said about therapy being inaccessible and unaffordable. But therapists are not charging that much to spite you.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:13:13]:

Therapists are charging that much because they have student loans to pay, and they also have practice expenses to pay. This doesn't come out of thin air. There's a lot of overhead that goes into this. I think that instead of blaming therapists for trying to survive, we should blame the conditions that they're under in order to get to that point and be the good therapists that they are. I find that I'm going to be very frank. I was one of those people who criticized therapists for charging so much money. Like, I went into my program at Columbia criticizing therapists for charging more than like $50, not realizing, like, oh, there's a reason why therapists charge that much. They're not trying to be like, evil, greedy people.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:14:02]:

That is literally how much it costs to run a practice because you are self employed. It took my own challenging, my own feelings of shame and self loathing as a therapist to realize that therapists are not bad people for that. They're not trying to make the system worse. They are responding to the system. There are going to be so many therapists who go into this field who are like, oh, I'm going to be different from all the other therapists. Just like how there are like teachers who go into the field of teaching and they're like, oh, I'm going to be different from all of the other teachers. You are entering the system. You're going to be just like all the other teachers.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:14:45]:

You're going to be just like all the other therapists because you will learn very quickly that they're not the bad guys. They're just responding to the system and trying to make it sustainable for them and their families so that way they can keep doing the work. And I say that because I notice so many people think they're going to be different. Good on you. If you can find a sustainable way to make it work for you, great. But if you don't have boundaries, if you're afraid of being seen as a bad therapist, if you're going to constantly compare yourself to other therapists all the time, this field is not going to be sustainable for you. You have to learn how to set those expectations with yourself. Now, you're going to be a bad therapist to somebody.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:15:24]:

You can't help everyone. You got to set those boundaries. Now, if this is something that you want to be committed to for the long haul, you got to let go of some of those unrealistic expectations.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:15:33]:

How have you learned in your own practice to let go of some of those things? Is it through supervision or just your own experience and figuring it out on your own supervision?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:15:46]:

My own therapy, personal experience. I think my very first nonprofit job at the New York foundling actually, because there was so much pressure for outcomes, outcomes, outcomes, making sure we had fidelity to the family therapy model. But then we were working with, like, poor working class black and brown families who may or may not have no English, and there are little to few bilingual therapists or language resources, and they were responding to their own circumstances. And we somehow had to be the people to make sure that there was progress in therapy and progress and treatment. And I remember putting so much pressure on myself to make sure that I was following the fidelity, following, like, the model to an exact t. But then the families that I was working with would be pissed off. They would drop out of therapy. It was my job to reengage them back into the treatment.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:16:50]:

At the nonprofit that I was working at, I was getting so mad at myself. And then at some point, my supervisor was like, Tracy, it's not you. It's not you. Like, you are not the reason why it didn't work out with this family. And I think that's something that I need therapists to understand sometimes. You're not going to be that perfect therapist that gets, like, this high retention and success rate with all of your clients, because not only are your clients also responding to their circumstances, you're also responding to their circumstances, too, and you're responding to your own. And those are limitations. There is no such thing as being perfect in this extremely imperfect world.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:17:34]:

It's not you. It's not them either. But I think this expectation that therapists are going to be superheroes, that's not real. And I think that's when I learned, like, oh, like, this isn't actually my fault. This is no one's fault. I did what I could with my responsibilities, but that's the most that I can do.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:17:53]:

I want to come back to this, but before we follow that, I want to talk about. So you leave the nonprofit that you're working for burnt out. You decide to go work at a group practice. Can you talk about what that experience was like?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:18:10]:

I was extremely burned out from working in the nonprofit sector because it involved a lot of travel. It really prevented me from having a social life. Something that my supervisor had said at the time is that when she started that job, she had told her friends, like, I'm probably not going to see you in years because this is therapist boot camp. I think something that therapists forget is that when you work in a sector that has such high demand and high need, it gets really, really, really hard to have a life outside of your job. So I was not in a good place mentally and emotionally. And something that I was open about on my social media was that I was hospitalized for suicidal ideation, and that happened at that time. I was hospitalized for suicidal ideation, and that's when I realized, like, this is not working for me. This is not sustainable for me.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:19:05]:

And I had this, like, crazy idea that maybe working for, like, a group private practice would take care of me. Unfortunately, that didn't work out as well either. But needless to say, my road to here has been a very rocky one. And working for a group private practice did not necessarily mean I was going to be taken care of. I was fee for service. It was $30 a session, which you would think, you know, from an outside perspective would be good money. But you're not supposed to see back to back clients. And when you are only getting paid that much, but with no benefits, clients frequently cancel or reschedule.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:19:50]:

Clients drop out. It's not sustainable income, especially in New York. You could try seeing back to back clients, but I promise you, you are not going to be a therapist who pays attention to detail. You're going to forget your clients names. You're going to forget important details that your client told you. So that didn't really work out for me either, and I was starting to feel really, really discouraged. I'm like, oh, this field wasn't what I thought this was. I thought, therapists are supposed to get paid so much more money.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:20:22]:

Where are all those therapists that charge $300? What are they doing? Like, I was so confused because the image that I had in my head of what I thought a therapist was versus the actual experience was not lining up at that point. I had decided, you know what? Screw this. Maybe the nonprofit sector wasn't that bad after all. At least I had health insurance. And I was like, you know what? Maybe I like doing, like, more emergency work because it means I'm needed, and it needs. At least I'll get a steal. Stable paycheck. So I returned back to nonprofit work, this time within correctional health services, working at Rikers island as a mental health clinician.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:21:02]:

And my hours were 04:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. i think it was Tuesday through Saturday. Eventually got it switched over to Monday through Thursday night. So at least I had a life that was its own world in and of itself. But, like, I think it's important for people to know that if you enter this field and it's not glamorous, that is to be expected, and that is okay. I'm happy to talk more about my jail experience, if you will.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:21:29]:

Yeah, I was going to say, so this group practice job was so bad that you literally went to jail over working at this group practice. I'm curious, as you're going from nonprofit to group back to nonprofit, is private practice even on the table, or is it something that it just doesn't seem attainable?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:21:49]:

It didn't seem attainable for a very, very long time. I was convinced. I'm like, oh, my God, I never want to do private practice if this is what it's like. I think the truth is that many of these group practice owners, especially older, a little bit more out of touch, don't believe in marketing themselves, but then market themselves in the wrong ways. Like, it's just, it's weird. There's a lot of imposter syndrome going on where, like, even group practice owners don't really know what they're doing. And I was just like, there is no way in hell I want to do this. Because how does anybody make a living doing this without getting married and having, like, somebody to financially support them? There's no way that this works.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:22:33]:

I just feel like it's all about whether or not the person running the practice has a clue and if they're willing to invest in the business, coaching, the marketing, the advertising, to make sure that clients keep coming in and that you're paying your therapist well. Like, yeah, I don't think the group practice I was working for was actually following labor laws, to be honest. But yeah, it was a very toxic relationship.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:23:00]:

Sorry that you had that experience. I feel like as a new therapist, working in a group practice could be a very valuable experience if the practices run well, because you can learn how to run a private practice and if it's something that you even want to do and how they market their practice and how they do their books and accounting and how much they pay therapists and all those things. Like, it can kind of be your crash course in business if you haven't had that exposure, and then you can decide, this is something I want to do. I have this model where I've been able to learn how to run a business. Now I can go do it on my own. And it sounds like that was not the experience that you had.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:23:44]:

Emphasis on somebody who knows how to run their practice well and invest in the resources, like a bookkeeping and accounting system, like Heard. And I think I sound like a negative name. I realize I sound like a negative nancy, and that's not my intention. This might have been my case.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:24:00]:

It might not be your, your experience, and that's valid.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:24:03]:

I think it's also very important that you surround yourself with therapists who are confident and willing to learn. There's a lot of therapist Facebook groups, email listservs, where I feel like more than half the time it's a bunch of therapists projecting their own misery, and that's not going to make you feel any confident in your decisions either. So I think it's all about making sure that you're surrounding yourself with therapists who practice what they preach to their clients and have an optimistic mindset as well.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:24:35]:

So you have this view of private practice from your group practice experience that isn't something that seems like something you want to do, but that changes at some point, right? Like, you do end up deciding to go into private practice. Can you talk about what that decision was like? And was there an event or series of events that changed your mind about private practice as an option?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:24:59]:

At this point, I was still very much of the mindset that despite my experience, I knew that I was pre licensed. And I'm like, okay, maybe things change once you're fully licensed. And I knew that there were therapists who were making more money than I could ever dream of, like the concept of six figures. I was like, can I at least get 50k without overworking myself? That would be nice. I knew it was possible, but I'm like, oh, maybe things will change once I'm fully licensed. But I don't know, like, do I want to give up these union benefits? Do I want to give up the health care insurance, the pension? I think that around that time, I had heard of companies like Alma, which helped at the time. I was taking insurance at the time, and I think they were only in network with Aetna and Oxford. And the concept of was, like, amazing to me.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:25:56]:

I was like, oh, well, I don't imagine, like, how do people get clients this way? Like, how is it possible to get clients this way? It turns out companies like Alma made it very, very possible. And I'm so thankful that Alma gave me my head start and made it possible that, you know, you don't actually have to, like, work for somebody else and have somebody tell you what the administrative bottom line is. Of course, you know, working with insurance is another administrative bottom, bottom line. But there is a freedom, I think, now that these companies offer in 2024 companies like Alma, where, like, you can set your own schedule, set your own hours, see as many clients as you like, depending on what your practice expenses are and whatnot. But that really gave me the head start to realize that this was possible. And, you know, as I had started to kind of morph myself into the bad indian therapist and was really specific about who I wanted to be, about what I actually wanted to practice, growing my practice, growing my brand, I was able to work with a lot of business coaches who told me, like, okay, well, you're taking insurance now. What about getting off insurance panels? So that way you can focus on building your practice and building your brand in other ways. And that made it possible, too.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:27:19]:

And I want to say thank you to all the business coaches who also helped me get to that point. The point being is that this was a slow. This was a slow journey for me. This is seven plus years in the making. It didn't happen overnight. And slow and steady wins the race. I couldn't imagine doing all of this in one year, two years, three years, I'd be so burned out and overwhelmed. I think for me, it was very much a slow transition, but a slow transition that got me to where I am today.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:27:50]:

The point that you're making is really important in that as a therapist, if you have a full time job, whether you're working in a group practice or you're working in a nonprofit, you're able to start seeing clients on the side through a service like headway or alma. Or you could contract with an EAP company like spring Health or Learhealth. Like these companies exist now that make it very easy to either get credentialed or to start seeing clients on the side. And as soon as you start doing that, you're now self employed. You're technically a business owner. You're operating as a sole proprietor, even if you don't form an LLC and actually have a business entity. But I talk to a lot of therapists who are contract in, and I ask them, are you in private practice? And they say, no, no, no, I have a full time job, but I'm an independent contractor. Well, it's like, even as an independent contractor, you're still in private practice, right? Like, these are your clients that you're seeing.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:28:52]:

And I think that is one path to be able to start, to build up a caseload on the side, see if this is something that you even want to do, and then you can decide, great. Now, I've built this up to an amount where I feel comfortable leaving this full time, stable job that I have. But even that decision is scary, especially when it comes to benefits. I think benefits, health insurance, that's something that keeps a lot of people employed. The idea of the golden handcuffs of like, well, I don't want to give that up because the reality is you could pay $500, $600 a month for your own health insurance or more, depending on where you live. But you don't need to have a business plan and you don't have to have everything figured out in order to start seeing clients and start to build your practice on the side.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:29:48]:

Yeah, I think it's important to know that, okay, yeah, you have a contract with these companies, but in reality, you are self employed. They're not giving you a bi weekly paycheck and taking out federal tax and state income tax. You are a self employed business owner at that point. And I think that can be really, really empowering to hear, like, even if you're doing this part time, and it is true, you know, health insurance premiums are ridiculous. Like, I think, like, once you self employed, people, like, you have to, if you're fully self employed, you're paying double the premium. So it is insane. Just the realities of being a self employed private practice owner, which, you know, also explains why therapy is expensive. But I think it's also important for therapists to know that you are deserving of growth.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:30:36]:

You are deserving of a raise. You deserve to give yourself a raise. You can't be making the same pay forever and ever and ever. Like, eventually your financial needs are going to change over time. So you are allowed to give yourself a raise, especially if you are self employed. You're allowed to go out of network with insurance at some point. If it no longer works for you, your practice belongs to you. It doesn't belong to anyone else but you.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:31:01]:

If you're not raising your fees, which is something we've talked about on this show, and your expenses are going up due to inflation, you're actually giving yourself a pay cut. Like you may think, oh, I'm keeping my rates the same for my clients, but you're actually reducing your profit if you're not raising your rates over time. And it doesn't need to be a significant amount. Right. It's $5, $10 per session per year or whatever that percentage is.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:31:29]:

Right. I think what keeps so many therapists from doing that? I think especially for a lot of black and brown therapists of color, there is this assumption that you shouldn't be doing that because you're supposed to be, quote unquote, community oriented. I hate that term. I hate that term. I think that term has been co opted to mean that because you are a therapist of color. You're supposed to be self sacrificing. You're supposed to give up your own needs. And if you're asking for a group of people that are already so underrepresented within this field to give up their own needs, you're essentially asking for fewer and fewer therapists who look like you and fewer and fewer therapists of color who end up dropping out.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:32:14]:

I think that it is really, really hard, what I've noticed for some south asian american therapists I know, to convince themselves, like, actually I deserve to give myself a raise because they are so afraid of, well, I'm going to lose clients. Nobody's going to want to pay me that much. And something I recently posted to my stories is that what brown people really don't like to admit is that we hate a generalist. Like, we hate somebody who is for everyone. You're not going to be for everyone. You got to be really, really, really specific about who you are for so that way you can attract more of what you want. That is a very hard concept for people to understand. I am not a south asian american therapist for all South Asians.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:32:56]:

I am a south asian american therapist who works with toxic guilt, toxic shame, intergenerational trauma, some of which falls under people pleasing perfectionism, anxiety. I'm very specific about who I am about. And when you're clear about who you're about, people are actually really grateful. Thank you for telling me who you're about. So I can either weed you out and, no, I don't want to work with you, or I know for a fact that I want to work with you. You got to be specific. And I think, like, that means, like, knowing who you are, knowing you're worth and charging your worth.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:33:29]:

How did you come to that definition of your own niche? Was it something that, like, you discovered over time? Was it something that came out of. You mentioned you had done some business coaching as well? Because I do love that. And I completely agree. The more specific you are in who you work with, the more you're going to resonate with people who are looking for a therapist that looks like you or that works with the population that.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:33:58]:

You work with or speaks to your specific pain points. We are not a monolith. We don't all struggle with the same issues. So if I'm not speaking to your pain points or if you can't resonate with the pain points I'm speaking to, you're not my client. You're free to go work with another south asian therapist who does. We are not all the same. I came to this conclusion slowly over time. I never thought that deeply about my identity, to be honest, until I started branding myself as the bad indian therapist.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:34:29]:

I never went into this thinking I was going to work with south asian american clients who struggle with toxic guilt and toxic shame. I was like, there's no way that that many people resonate with me. Anyway, I decided to go out on a limb in 2021. I was like, you know what? Let me, I've heard of this organization. It's called Southasiantherapist.org comma. It's an online listserv for therapists to, like, you know, post their profile. It's a directory where people can find south asian therapists. So I was like, you know, let me go out on a limb here and talk about my very personal experience growing up as an Indian American who never felt indian enough, who was called whitewashed.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:35:10]:

And I was surprised. I told myself, it's dollar 15 a month. I'm going to cancel my subscription if it doesn't work out. I have been paying south asian therapists $15 a month for the past three years. I have never canceled that subscription because ever since then, I have been getting so many requests from people wanting to work with me. Even when they found out, like, I didn't take their insurance, they're like, oh, I'm willing to pay out of pocket. Like, that was really shocking to hear. I think that sometimes we forget that not every, if one wants that therapist who's like, buttoned up and says, oh, I specialize in CBT and EMDR and DBT, a lot of clients don't know what that means.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:35:58]:

They want someone relatable who's going to get them. They want somebody vulnerable about their own experience, somebody who's also human. And of course there are going to be people who don't want to work with somebody like that because they don't want a therapist who's human and open about their experience. Very judgmental of therapists because they're judgmental of themselves. They're not your clients. Then there will be people who will want to work with you. There will be many people who think that you're a bad therapist. That is the reality.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:36:28]:

I recently had an interaction over the weekend where somebody basically insinuated on threads that I'm a bad therapist. Okay, you're not my client. That's fine. You don't have to work with me. But there are also going to be many people who will be like, can I work with you? Are you licensed in my state, people will resonate with you, too. You just got to learn how to focus on the energy that matters. You got to be who you are. Like, you can't just be like every other therapist.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:36:52]:

That's not what people want.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:36:54]:

Right. And being a bad therapist, that's kind of your brand, right? Yeah, I am, actually.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:37:01]:

Bad Indian is the title, right?

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Michael Fulwiler [00:37:04]:

Right, exactly.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:37:05]:

But this is not like the good girl indian therapist who's going to do whatever you want her to do. This is the bad indian therapist.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:37:13]:

Yeah. And you've alluded to this, but can you explain what being a bad Indian means for me?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:37:20]:

Being a bad Indian can't be defined because there's no such thing as a bad or a good Indian. It's almost, like, satirical in a way. It's poking fun at that concept, because this whole idea that anyone should ever be put into a box of expectations, to me, goes against the entire concept of what belonging to community and being a healer or a therapist actually means. The way I see it is that, like, part of being a therapist or belonging to any kind of community means being human. And I think sometimes, because we're responding to very real world circumstances, people expect you to follow these unwritten codes of what it means to belong in order to preserve and protect the identity of what it means to be indian. Preserve and protect the identity of what it means to be a therapist. For the longest time, actually, I was like, maybe I should write a book about shame and identity, because I do think that we put people into boxes. We, as members of the south asian diaspora, put ourselves into boxes because we are so afraid of cultural loss.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:38:37]:

And I think that therapists do this sometimes, too. As therapists, we put each other into these boxes of what a good therapist is supposed to be because we're so afraid of the profession losing respect, losing its credentials, losing its ability to be taken seriously, becoming watered down. We calcify and hold on to these rules because we are so afraid of this field, losing integrity. Right. And I see the parallels between how so many south asian people are judgmental of each other and then how so many therapists are judgmental of each other because we place so much value in our identity. I think there's a little bit of a scarcity mindset there, like, well, what would happen if you were to step out of that box? What would go wrong? And how. Like, so much of that fear is just a response to so much, like, discrimination, financial instability, just like the world that we live in. So I do think that there's a lot to unpack in terms of those expectations.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:39:47]:

And I call myself the bad indian therapist for that reason. I'm not going to fit those expectations. You know, I am going to disappoint you. That is a fact of life. Don't get me wrong. I stand on my values. I know I'm not a selfish person. I know I'm not a bad person.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:40:02]:

Right. But I'm not going to be a perfect person who follows through on your expectations of what you think I should be. And it's been hard for me to stand on that sometimes. I think the positive side of having the social media presence is that it's allowed me to be more in touch with my culture and my cultural community. But it also has brought me into contact with some very judgmental, narrow minded people and thinking that I have to follow those expectations as well. I just want you to know that if you follow me, I'm going to disappoint you. That is the whole point of my page. And I want to give you permission to disappoint other people as well.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:40:36]:

These expectations that therapists are a blank slate, that they shouldn't talk about themselves, they shouldn't share their political views. This is all by design. I imagine that was part of what you were taught to in school or by therapists who had been in the field for a while. Because my sense is that is kind of the way that it has been. And I think that that's changing, which I think is a good thing for the field. But I'm just curious, like, was that your experience? Was that the narrative that you were taught coming up as a younger therapist in the field?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:41:12]:

Oh, yeah. I mean, I definitely the whole, like, you're supposed to be a blank slate because you shouldn't project your values or your beliefs onto your client. You know, I tried being a blank slate. That doesn't work because at some point, if you want to give effective therapy, you do have to come to a clinical judgment about your client. You do have to project some of your beliefs and values a little bit, especially if those beliefs and values are shared, specifically if they are shared with your client. You do have to call out how if your client's not acting according to their values, because it doesn't make sense to your value system. Right. And that might actually be something helpful for your client to hear.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:41:53]:

I find that when you are a blank slate therapist and you tell yourself, like, don't judge your client, don't judge your client, don't judge your client. Like, you are so sensitive to telling them the things that they want to hear and not the things that they need to hear. Like a client, actually, when I was working for that group practice, which was like all CBT, a whole other issue. But, like, he even said, he's like, what's your personality? Like, I want you to call me out on shit irony. Like, he would think that this was, like, somebody of my culture, right? This was like a white, straight man my age. Like, I'm a brown woman, like his therapist, and, you know, hired to work with him. And he's like, I want to hear your personality. I want to hear your beliefs.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:42:37]:

I want to hear your attitude. I want to, like. Like, where is any of this? I feel like I don't get a sense of who you are. And I mistook that to mean, like, oh, but I'm not supposed to share who I am. I'm not supposed to make the session about me, but I misunderstood him. I think that we are not doing clients a service if we're censoring ourselves. When you're a blank slate, you're censoring yourself and you're not sharing what clients need to hear.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:42:59]:

Sometimes do you think there's such a thing as over sharing or inappropriate self disclosure? And where do you draw that line?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:43:09]:

I think I draw that line when I know that it's not something that's actually going to benefit them and their journey. Like, you know, you got to ask yourself, what is the purpose of sharing this? What do I want them to take away from this? Like, what is this going to help them understand or help them learn something that I didn't really talk about in here? I recently shared with a client that I've been fired three times. She needed to hear that because she kind of assumed that she's a failure because she's been fired once, and that's just, like, looked down within our community. When I told her, like, I've been fired three times, I got back up again. And I'm glad it happened because I'm here working with you. I think sometimes when we self disclose, we just have to ask ourselves, what is the purpose of this? What can the client gain from me hearing this? And what will it help them understand? It's never about, like, my client paying me 230 a session just to hear about me. That's not at all what I want. No.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:44:07]:

We talked earlier about this idea of the mental health industrial complex, and as a therapist, it's not your responsibility to fix the system. But what about therapists who do want to create change and want to feel like they're part of a solution. How do you think about that as someone who does identify as, you know, an advocate and someone who is, you know, outspoken about your beliefs?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:44:35]:

I don't identify with the idea of, like, advocate activists because I think that we should all be. That that should not be a job. Like, I feel like we should all be this. That's something that everyone's an activist for something, right? Like, that's. I don't believe in career activists. I think that's the whole problem. I think that for therapists who want to change the system, great. I'm always in support of anything that is going to help clients or the people that we serve.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:45:05]:

I think that we should listen to therapists like that more. I think where I have this problem is when we start blaming and sharing therapists for what our government and, like, these billionaire CEO's and. And healthcare insurance CEO's are doing. Like, you are not responsible for what people up top are doing. My biggest problem is that there's, like, a morality complex, like a moral hierarchy of, like, oh, well, I'm a therapist who's trying to change the system, and you're a bad therapist. You're a bad, evil greed. Like, don't do that. That's not how you change the system.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:45:44]:

You are only doing this not to help people, but so that way you can feel better about yourself. That's not social justice. That's you on a high horse.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:45:53]:

Yeah. It's performative activism at that point. Right?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:45:56]:

It is. It is performative because you're doing this for your own ego. You're putting other therapists down so that way you can feel better about your own savior complex. Instead of punching to our right and punching to our left, I think we should be punching up personally. If you want to get mad at the inequities in the system, don't get mad at the average Joe like us who's just trying to pay bills. And I'm not saying we're above accountability. You know, we all have a little bit of responsibility, but the people who bear the most responsibility are going to be the health insurance CEO's who do a clawback and take back all the money they paid you for your hard work. That's probably somebody you should be getting mad at.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:46:34]:

You've built your practice. You know, you started. Sounds like taking clients through, you know, a service like Alma, you have, like, a very clearly defined niche, which sounds like it's attracting clients who are a good fit for you. I'm curious what are some challenges that you're facing today in your business, and how are you thinking about them now that you're a little bit more established?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:46:56]:

You know, I think a challenge that I'm facing today is branching out. Like, I also don't want to rely on fee for service, one to one therapy to pay my bills. You know, I don't think that's fair to me. I don't think that's fair to clients. I also hate that, like, but there are some people who do really want to work with me who don't live in a state that I'm licensed in or can't afford therapy, but somehow still want to learn from me. So I'm really trying to kick my other projects off the ground. I just launched a course. It's called detoxify your guilt.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:47:33]:

I share a lot of skills about how to not let unhealthy guilt dictate your decisions or your choices, how confident you are. I really have a lot of value, skills, and tools in there, so I'm trying to launch that off the ground, so that way, at least I'm helping people in some realm. I think that's where I'm really struggling, too, is like, okay, how do I branch out? How do I branch out in a way that is also sustainable, where I can take care of myself and also help people who may not otherwise be able to work with me. It's tough. It is. I don't think there's ever such thing in private practice as stable income, unless you overwork yourself, which I'm not willing to do. Like, I went into this for the freedom. I didn't do this to feel like I was back in the nonprofit sector again.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:48:17]:

I love that. Where can people find that course, if they're interested in learning more?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:48:22]:

Yeah, it's actually at my Stan store. You can find it at my Lincoln bio, on my Instagram page, at the badindian therapist, or on TikTok. It's literally, I think, Stan store, the bad indian therapist. I still have yet to launch the sales page on my website, so I'll get back to you about that. But if you go to my instagram, if you go to my TikTok, you can find it between now and July 13. You can use code Tracy 20 and get 20% off. The total will come out to, I believe, dollar 48. So that's great.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:48:54]:

We'll link that in the show notes as well for folks who are interested. Tracy, this has been great. I know we covered a lot in this conversation. As we wrap up here. I'm curious. If there's one thing that you want therapists to take away from this, what would that be?

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:49:12]:

You got to do it. Scared. You know, there are going to be so many people who try to guilt trip you and make you feel bad. Your practice ultimately belongs to you. You're running a business at the end of the day, that is the reality of the healthcare system we live in. And, like, you gotta, you gotta take care of yourself, too, in order to do good work.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:49:32]:

Love that. Thank you, Tracy, so much for, for coming on the show.

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Tracy Vadakumchery [00:49:35]:

Thank you, Michael.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:49:36]:

Thanks for listening to this episode of Heard Business School brought to you by Heard, the financial back office. For therapists, visit the Heard resource hub at joinheard.com to support you in your journey as a private practice owner.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:49:49]:

And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube.

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Michael Fulwiler [00:49:51]:

Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you in the next class.