2025 Was the Year the Work Got Deeper
A Professional Reflection on Showing Up, Burning Out Less, and Doing Therapy That Actually Changes Things
If I had to describe 2025 in one sentence, it would be this:
I stopped trying to do more and committed to doing what matters.
Not louder. Not busier. Not trendier.
More intentional. More rooted. More aligned with the people I actually serve.
As a therapist in private practice, it can be easy to measure a year by numbers alone. Appointments completed. Notes written. Revenue generated. Events attended. And yes, those things matter. But they do not tell the full story of what it takes to sustain a practice that serves anxious, high-functioning, deeply burnt-out helpers without burning the therapist out in the process.
This year, my professional life was shaped by community involvement, clinical consistency, hard conversations, and a deepening commitment to therapy that is honest, relational, and actually effective. This is a reflection on what 2025 looked like from the inside.
Showing Up in the Community I Serve
In 2025, I was far less interested in being visible everywhere and far more committed to being present where the work actually lives.
That meant spending time in rooms where conversations about burnout, trauma, leadership, and care are already happening — not as a brand exercise, but as part of my community that I am genuinely invested in. Throughout the year, I participated in events that brought together business leaders, clinicians, advocates, and community partners who are actively shaping how support shows up for people under real pressure.
I attended the Dallas Business Journal’s Mentoring Monday to connect with other women navigating leadership, growth, and responsibility in high-demand roles. I supported and attended multiple events benefiting Genesis Women’s Shelter and Community Partners of Dallas, organizations doing long-term, relational work with survivors and families, not just crisis response. I participated in Genesis Alliance gatherings that center on sustainable advocacy, collaboration, and systems-level change.
I also spent time in professional spaces designed for depth rather than performance. Attending the Psychotherapy Networker Conference allowed me to engage in ongoing conversations about trauma-informed care, therapist sustainability, and what ethical private practice actually requires in a culture that rewards over-functioning. Speaking to a supervision group and later presenting The Burnout Myth at Genesis allowed me to bring these conversations directly into spaces where helpers are already asking, Why does this feel impossible even when I’m doing everything right?
My Podcast Episode for Genesis and subsequent presentations were not about offering another self-care checklist. Instead, the conversations were about naming what so many helpers experience but rarely hear reflected: burnout is not a personal failure, and you cannot regulate your way out of systems that demand chronic self-abandonment.
Being present in these spaces sharpened my clinical work. It reinforced what I see every week in session: that anxiety, burnout, and over-responsibility are not individual defects, but predictable responses to environments that ask too much and give too little. And it clarified my role as a therapist is not to teach people how to endure the unsustainable, but to help them stop organizing their lives around it.
What the Clinical Work Actually Looked Like
Behind every event, presentation, and networking event was the steady, often invisible work of therapy.
In 2025, I worked with 41 clients.
I completed 764 appointments.
I wrote 773 clinical notes.
I had only six late cancellations across the entire year.
Those numbers matter not because they prove productivity, but because they reflect consistency, containment, and trust. Therapy works best when it is reliable. When people know they will be met, held, and challenged without judgment.
Across the year, there were 33 client cancellations total, which is not unusual in a population navigating burnout, illness, caregiving responsibilities, and emotional exhaustion. That data reflects strong therapeutic alliance, high client satisfaction, and sustained engagement over time, not disengagement or lack of commitment to the work.
People continued to show up because the therapy was helping. When cancellations did occur, they were not driven by ambivalence about treatment, but by the realities of being human in systems that still demand too much. Illness, caregiving responsibilities, work crises, and emotional exhaustion were the primary drivers. Unfortunately, these are the same pressures that bring many clients into therapy in the first place.
From a clinical perspective, this data reinforces two truths at once. First, the work is effective. Clients stay, return, and engage deeply because they experience therapy as supportive, honest, and worthwhile. Second, even meaningful therapeutic progress does not exempt people from the impact of unsustainable systems. Therapy does not exist outside of capitalism, caregiving demands, or professional burnout, and pretending otherwise does a disservice to clients.
Rather than viewing cancellations as a problem to be “fixed,” I see them as information. They tell me my clients trust the work enough to return, and they confirm what my clients and I name together every week: burnout is not a personal failure. It is a predictable response to environments that leave little room for rest, flexibility, or recovery.
This framing is central to how I approach burnout therapy and therapy for therapists in Texas. This kind of work requires steadiness, pacing, and a therapeutic relationship strong enough to hold discomfort without rushing resolution. A more relational approach is especially essential for people who are used to being the strong ones everywhere else. The goal is not to teach people how to perform resilience better inside broken systems, but to help them reclaim agency, boundaries, and self-worth in the middle of them. I am wildly passionate about this population that needs depth, honesty, and sustainability rather than quick fixes.
What My Clients Actually Come to Therapy For
Over the past year, I collected mid-year and end of year client feedback surveys. The patterns were remarkably consistent.
Clients come to me for anxiety, depression, and feeling overwhelmed.
For burnout and work stress, especially in toxic or demanding environments.
For help with boundaries, people pleasing, and over-responsibility.
For trauma processing, including sexual trauma and family of origin wounds.
For emotional regulation and support with big feelings.
For a place where they do not have to be the strong one.
Clinically, this confirms what my caseload already reflects: I work with high-functioning helpers who are exhausted from managing everything and everyone. And, it means I can confidently speak to topics like therapy for anxiety and burnout, support for people who feel responsible for others’ feelings, and trauma-informed therapy for helpers without spewing falsehoods.
What Clients Say Is Different About the Work
What clients consistently say they find most helpful about working with me is not a single technique. It is the combination.
They name feeling listened to and deeply understood.
They talk about validation and having their emotions named clearly.
They appreciate honest feedback and being called out on patterns without shame.
They value accountability that is firm but kind.
They describe therapy as a place where anything can be said out loud.
They highlight flexibility with EMDR and having a choice about pacing.
They note gaining perspective when they feel trapped in their own thoughts.
One piece of feedback comes up repeatedly: You call me out, but still let me come to my own conclusions.
That balance matters. Therapy that only validates can stall. Therapy that only challenges can feel unsafe. The work lives in the middle.
If you are curious about how this shows up clinically, this is where my writing on emotional regulation, boundaries, and trauma-informed pacing comes in. Posts like LICENSED, EMPATHIC, AND EMOTIONALLY FRIED: THE HIDDEN COST OF CARING FOR EVERYONE ELSE , What if You Actually Aren’t Lazy? or THE QUIET GRIEF OF PERFECTIONISM & PEOPLE PLEASING: NAMING THE LOSSES speak directly to this process.
What Actually Changes When People Stay
The most important data point from the surveys was not why clients came, but what changed.
Clients reported:
Reduced anxiety and improved coping.
Clearer boundaries at work and with family.
Less people pleasing and less self-blame.
Greater emotional expression and tolerance for big feelings.
Reduced shame around trauma responses.
Increased self-confidence and identity clarity.
Ending unhealthy relationships.
Making braver, more values-aligned decisions.
This is not surface-level relief. This is a structural change.
People are not just calmer. They are less self-abandoning.
They are not just coping. They are choosing differently.
If you want to understand what that kind of change requires, I often encourage people to read my longer-form blogs on burnout, perfectionism, and over-functioning. These posts connect the dots between nervous system work, boundary repair, and long-term sustainability.
What 2025 Taught Me as a Clinician
This year also revealed growth edges. 2025 taught me something that feels obvious in hindsight but was harder to live in real time: when you are a small business owner, you are often both the problem and the solution. There is no system to hide behind. No administration is making decisions for you. No external structure to blame or rely on. Every choice I made in 2025, how I scheduled, who I served, what I tolerated, what I changed, came back to me. That level of responsibility can be confronting, but it is also clarifying. It forces honesty.
One of the most important things I learned this year is that it is not only acceptable for me to take breaks, but it is also necessary. Rest is part of running a sustainable practice and being a regulated, present clinician, so I am practicing asking myself, “Have I rested enough to be working this hard?”
I also learned that I am allowed to change my mind and revise decisions as I gather more information about what actually works for me, not what is “normal” or expected in my life and practice. This clarity directly informed one of the biggest professional decisions I made this year: getting off my final insurance panel.
Leaving insurance was not about avoiding work or making therapy inaccessible. It was about acknowledging reality. Insurance reimbursement rates continue to devalue the time, expertise, emotional labor, and administrative burden required to provide ethical, high-quality care. Staying on panels meant absorbing unpaid labor, managing constant system friction, and operating in a way that was misaligned with the depth and pacing my clients need, especially those navigating burnout, trauma, and over-responsibility. I could either continue to contort myself to fit a broken system or choose to build a practice that allows me to show up fully, sustainably, and consistently for the people I serve. In 2025, I chose the latter.
This year also reinforced something deeply personal and equally professional: I cannot do this work without nourishing relationships. Not networking relationships. Not proximity relationships. Real friendships that make you feel seen, supported, and allow you to evolve. Having people in my life who can witness growth without needing me to stay the same has been essential. Relationships that hold space for change, uncertainty, ambition, rest, and recalibration are not luxuries; they are lifelines in this world. My friends and family make it possible to take risks, to pivot, and to keep going when the work feels heavy.
And finally, 2025 taught me something I now say with both humor and truth: I am a little unhinged, and that is precisely why this works.
It takes a certain kind of person to build a values-driven private practice in a system that rewards martyrdom and self-abandonment. It takes someone willing to question the rules, challenge the narrative, and keep going even when the path is unclear. If being “crazy” means refusing to accept that suffering is the price of helping, then yes. I am that kind of clinician. And I trust that instinct more now than ever.
This year did not make me more polished. It made me more grounded. More discerning. More willing to choose sustainability (aka myself) over approval. And that, more than anything else, is what will carry this work forward.
Why I Am Ending 2025 More Certain Than Ever
If there is one thing I am taking into 2026, it is this:
Therapy does not need to be louder or more optimized to be effective. It needs to be honest.
The people I work with do not need another productivity hack. They need someone who understands why rest feels unsafe, why boundaries feel cruel, and why being the strong one became their identity.
That is the work I do.
That is the work I will keep doing.
If you are anxious, burnt out, emotionally overloaded, and tired of holding everything together, you do not need to try harder. You need a space where you can stop performing and start telling the truth.
You can learn more about working with me through my individual therapy services, burnout therapy, or therapy for therapists in Texas. I also encourage you to explore the blog for deeper dives into people pleasing, perfectionism, and recovery from chronic over-functioning. The full blog archive is available at
www.SageHolisticCounseling.com/shc-blog
If you are ready to begin, you can schedule a consultation here:
https://sageholisticcounseling.clientsecure.me/sign-in
You do not have to keep doing this alone.