I’ve never been great with remembering birthdays. I now have a system for jogging my memory that mostly works, although, it still took a dear person congratulating me on Willow Tree Counselling’s anniversary last month, to remind me that Willow Tree Counselling is now officially 15. It was enough to make me pause.

This article is about Willow Tree Counselling’s history, and if you’re not hankering to know, this article is probably not for you. But I’ll continue for those that are curious and for my own self-indulgence: I find it interesting to take stock and reflect on my journey from launching this practice, to where I am today.

The Idea

Some of you know that I worked public mental health for 10 years, and also provided counselling and psychotherapy for an employee assistance program before making the leap to private practice.

I had been dreaming about private practice for some time, but was scared to go through with it. I worried about my health authority pension, losing my benefits and the security of regular employment. Even though I’ve been practicing counselling and psychotherapy since I graduated in 1998, I strangely wondered whether I had enough clinical experience to serve clients who would be paying me for my counselling services. Insecurity is funny that way.

Fruition

15 years ago was a surreal time of life. I was on mat leave with my second child, with a goal to start my practice just after my EI stopped, after much encouragement from my spouse. Because I made this decision early in my mat leave, I had just under a year to launch and I decided that if I was going to do so, I would have to adhere to a strict business development schedule compatible with my parenting duties: 10pm to 2am, Monday to Friday. I’m tired just remembering that!

I was obsessed back then with all things private practice: writing my website, developing consent forms, finding office space, understanding licensure, buying office furniture, advertising options and more. I had a giant envelope with lists upon lists, that I would review daily, crossing things out and adding just as many new items. There wasn’t a ton of information for counsellors interested in private practice with only about half of therapists having any kind of website or webpage. In some ways the control freak in me liked the struggle because it meant I learned more.

I did know that despite the work involved, I wanted to stick to being a solo practitioner as I was so drawn to working for myself; It felt like a liberatory act, after so many years working for others. And I had no interest in becoming anyone’s boss. I wanted to keep my practice as personal and as grassroots as possible, meaning that clients would engage with me at every point of the counselling process: inquiries, consultations, bookings and the therapy itself.

Values

I was equally obsessed with wanting to provide the best counselling experience I could to my clients. I had been deeply influenced by the high level of care that I had received from my midwives. I spent a long time identifying my practice values, and in subsequent years, developed a richer understanding of the clients I worked best with.

Challenges

Setting up my first office on Howe Street at Drake (a charming 2-story walkup building that has since been bulldozed) was stressful. Both of the counselling chairs I bought couldn’t fit in the office and the couch just barely fit with about an inch to spare!  My dad had died early in my maternity leave and I used some items from his former apartment to make the space more homey. It was all pretty surreal.

I still remember my first Willow Tree Counselling session after being on mat leave. Definitely not my best work but somehow I knew that I was in the right place, doing the right thing. And subsequent sessions just confirmed that.

There was a lot to do back then! I had no Jane App, my appointments were recorded in a pretty paper agenda and appointment reminders were emailed to clients manually. Any time a client wanted to book a counselling appointment outside of their session, this all had to go be arranged by email. Yes, there were more than a few administrative snafus back then, ahem.

And all this was happening amidst a backdrop of having young kids, with my partner and I “ships- in-the nighting it,” covering childcare while each of us worked. And there didn’t seem like there was time to sleep enough, perform adequate self care or find a clinical supervisor who could support me through all of this.

The latter was a mistake which revealed itself after the worst crisis of my career but which brought me to the clinical supervisor I have retained ever since, and shaped my understanding of the importance of clinical support and self care in the context of private practice which is clinically and collegially isolating.

Shortly into my private practice journey I also decided that it was good to apply to become a Registered Clinical Social Worker, which was not an easy process. After applying and getting the approval to write the board exam, I woke up on the morning of with a serious case of food poisoning. And sparing you the gory details, I felt that I had no choice but to write it—back then the exam was only held once a year and I’d just spent the better part of 10 months studying for it, not to mention the large sum of money I’d paid to write it.

So, I shored myself up with a dose of Gravol and wrote the damn thing. How I completed it and did well, I’ll never know, but the whole experience helped my clinical confidence more than I had originally bargained for.

Developments

There’s been a number of major changes over Willow Tree’s life:

Office Space

Most of you probably aren’t aware that the Willow Tree bricks and mortar space is its 3rd location, all in very close proximity to one another. I loved my original office at Howe and Drake  but moved a mere block and a half down Howe Street to my current location, when it met the wrecking ball, later upgrading my office to my current space which is almost twice the size with nice big windows.

Website

Like my office space, I’m also on the third version of my website. Even though my son tells me that cringe culture is dead, I can’t help but feel mortified when I look at the original version of my website  Gah. Aside from the shock of updating my profile picture, I’m a lot happier with the current incarnation!

Online Booking and Practice Management Software

As much as technology can be a pain at times, I don’t know where I’d be without my practice management software, which has saved me hours of administrative work and mistakes. When I book with my health professionals I love it when there’s an online booking option but when I rolled it out initially, I needed a lot of convincing!

Video Counselling

When the world went into Covid lockdown, I was cursing myself for not being an early adopter of virtual counselling. I can still remember the shock of conducting video sessions for the first time, coming from someone who didn’t even FaceTime 😳. And during lockdown, I’d even put additional pressure on myself to make myself look like I’d done this many times before! But getting through the Jane App’s videoconferencing issues in the early days made me so glad I persisted: video and phone counselling is now about 60 percent of my practice. When I started out I never anticipated that there would be a counselling landscape outside of the traditional counselling office.

Future Directions

I’ll admit that I don’t have the energy I once did for rapid practice development, and am so happy to be in a place where my practice systems are more established and self-sufficient than in the old days, allowing me to focus more on my clinical work, as well as the self-care that supports that. And as my clinical supervision practice continues to grow, so too does the enjoyment of a beautiful balance between counselling, psychotherapy and supervision. Thank you to all clients past and present who have been part of this journey! I am so grateful that you have been part of it all. 🙏 💕