124. The Hidden Burnout Trap Every SLP Has Fallen Into

If you’ve ever walked out of a session wondering, “Was that good enough?” — this one’s for you.

I’m naming a sneaky burnout loop that traps a lot of high-achieving SLPs: the cycle of over-delivering and over-functioning just to feel effective. We’ll unpack why that urge to “do more” is quietly draining your energy, confidence, and joy — and how to define what enough actually means in your sessions and your life.

By the end, you’ll see that the value isn’t in the extra few minutes or the perfectly prepped materials. It’s in how you show up — and what you choose to believe about your work and your worth. 

What You’ll Learn:

• How the “good enough” trap creates a burnout loop for high-achieving SLPs
• Why tying your worth to client outcomes keeps you stuck in over-functioning mode
• The sneaky ways “doing more” shows up in your day — and how to catch it sooner
• A mindset shift to stop delegating your self-worth to your caseload or clients
• What it looks like to end a session on time and feel good about it
  
  

If this hit a nerve (in the best way), I’d love to help you explore what enough looks like for you.

Book a free 1:1 consult, and we’ll talk through how to quiet that “do more” voice and build a version of balance that actually feels good. 

📌 Book a free 1:1 consult
👥 Join the FB Group → SLP Support Group

Keywords: SLP burnout, high achiever SLP, people-pleasing therapist, ADHD and burnout, speech therapy boundaries, redefining enough, executive functioning coaching, productivity for SLPs

Progress over perfection, always.

To find out how I can help you improve your work-life balance, click here.

Come join the SLP Support Group on Facebook for more tips and tricks!

Follow me on Instagram! @theresamharp

Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.

Transcript

theresa-harp_2_11-03-2025_111214: 0:27

Hey, SLPs, welcome back to the podcast. This is episode 1 24. All right, if you have ever walked out of a session wondering, was that good enough? Then this episode is for you because I'm gonna be naming a very sneaky burnout loop that a lot of high achieving SLPs fall into a lot of the time. It's this urge to overdeliver over function in order to feel effective, effective as an SLP or a pt, ot, however you identify a business owner. You know, I'm talking about this in the context of a clinician, but honestly, this information is relevant regardless of what role we're talking about. Heck, this can even apply to being a mom. A hundred percent okay. And this is quietly sneakily draining your time. It's draining your energy, it's draining your confidence. It's draining your possibility of work-life balance, or your definition, your vision, your version of work-life balance. So stay with me today. You'll leave this episode. Understanding what is happening, this pattern, what's going on, how it is costing you, and most importantly, what you can do about it. Alright, so let's say who's ever been here? I'm raising my hand. You can't see me as I'm recording this, but I'm raising my hand, right? You stay eight minutes past a session, right? Eight minutes past the end of a session because you wanted to get data on one more goal, what you wanted to hit one more target area or because the client was. Finally on a roll, understanding something or demonstrating something, building this skill, getting their sound, you know, um, improving their sound productions or starting to demonstrate this language structure that they've been working on for so long, and you're like, oh, we gotta capitalize on this. Let's keep going. Right? And then you miss lunch. Or you miss out on your documentation time or you're now late for the next session and playing catch up. Right. But it felt worth it, right? It was worth it. Or was it? Okay. So I want you to think about one of your quote unquote best therapy sessions and ask yourself what made it feel that way? What was it about that session that your brain. Is using as proof that it was a good or the best, one of the best sessions. Okay, because here are some of the ways. This will show up. This can look like not just staying late in a session. Okay? Some of you may be right on time with all of your sessions. If you are amazing, you're a unicorn, how do you do it? Let us know. We need to know. Okay? But this isn't just about. Going over the time in a session. This is staying late at work. Just to finish one more thing, or it could be skipping your documentation time to prep for a session or research a topic just to learn one more idea or one more thing, or have one bit. You know of a more, a better understanding of what's going on with your client or how you can help them. This might be over prepping materials for sessions. You know that your client loves Paw Patrol, and so you are down a rabbit hole trying to find all the PAW Patrol materials and crafts and ideas that you can implement in your session with that client. This might be creating these jazzy visuals, these beautiful homework sheets or handouts that you can give to your client or to your clients' caregivers that are gonna really help them master the skill that you're targeting in your sessions. This might be coaching or counseling caregivers emotionally. Just as much, if not more, as clinically and bending the rules or bending your boundaries to support the caregivers because they need you. Right. This might look like in a session feeling every minute of that session to make that session worthwhile. Alright, well, I've spent, I've already spent five minutes catching up with this client and oh my gosh, the clock is ticking. We gotta get it in, we gotta get into these trials, we gotta get going, we gotta get data, we gotta going, what are we doing? Right? It's when we get in these patterns and we all do it, and it is perfectly human. It's perfectly human. I want you to understand that. Okay. Nothing has necessarily gone wrong here. There's nothing wrong with you. Congratulations. You care. You're a great therapist, you're a great private practice owner. You're a great, uh, business owner. You're a great supervisor. You're a great mom because you care. Okay. It's about caring, but what happens is that in our mind, this becomes a way to prove that we are good at what we are doing. It's about us proving that we've done enough, right? Because so many of us. Regardless of what role we're talking about here, whether it's your role as an SLP or as a parent or as a, uh, you know, grown adult, caring for elderly parents or as a mom or whatever, you fill in the blank. But in that role, we tie our self-worth. To the perceived success of that scenario, like in this case, I'm talking about sessions, intervention sessions. Okay. Treatment sessions. We tie our self-worth as SLPs to this perceived success of the session. The problem though is that we're chasing this invisible goalpost. Called enough. You are trying to hit a target that does not exist. It doesn't exist for your clients. It doesn't exist for your supervisor or your boss. It doesn't exist for you. Right? Because enough, and I'm using air quotes here, but enough is vague. So we have this like. Thought in our head, and it comes in all different versions. Okay? All different flavors. So yours may sound a little bit different or feel a little bit different than this, but here are some ways that this thought might show up. It might show up as, Ooh, that session was not good enough. Oh man. We didn't get enough done in that session. Oh, I don't think we got enough trials. I didn't get enough data. Oh, my data was not good enough. It wasn't accurate enough and I definitely missed some of the, of the sections of the session where I should have been collecting data, but I wasn't, or I was collecting it, but I'm pretty sure that I was a little bit hairy in terms of the queuing that I was providing. Oh my gosh, we didn't get to this. We were supposed to target this in the session. I didn't even get there. It's not enough. Right. But enough is vague and not only is it vague, it's emotionally driven, right? Because we're getting ourselves worked up about this and it's constantly shifting. We are not defining enough. There is no clear definition of what enough is, so we're telling ourselves that it wasn't good enough, but we don't even know what enough is. We don't know what good enough looks like. We're not defining it, we, it's just like a feeling. It's this very cloudy, murky, undefined, intangible vision. And when a session feels flat or a session feels rushed, or a session feels like you weren't quite connecting or getting in a rhythm, or the client wasn't doing what they were supposed to be doing, right, they, they're not going along with the plan that you've come up with. The internal narrative that we have becomes, I didn't do enough, or that wasn't good enough, and here is the problem. I told you that this is, that nothing has gone wrong. Right? And And that's true. Like this is just a human tendency. This is an SLP tendency. Okay? But here's where it leads. We then start over functioning, right? Like I told you before, the example of you stay past the end of the session to try and get a little bit more data. Or to end on a good note, right? We start over-functioning, and while we're over-functioning internally, we're questioning and doubting our ability and the results that our clients are getting, which then leads to this pattern of burnout because we're like, go, go, go, do, do, do. I gotta do better. I gotta work harder, I gotta get more in. And now you are burning the candle at both ends. You're exhausted, you're starting to then feel resentful because, oh my gosh, I am giving everything I can to this job. I'm giving, I'm putting all of my energy and I'm doing everything I possibly can to show up as a, as the best SLPI can be, and my kids are getting the leftovers, the scraps, my husband. My partner, whoever is getting like the worst parts of me, my house is falling apart, my relationships are struggling. I haven't had time for, you know, uh, I don't know, a, a night off or a visit with my friends or lunch or just time to sit and read a book in ages. Oh my gosh, I feel so resentful. Right. Now you might not have those thoughts. Exactly. You might not even, this might be happening and showing up for you, and you might not even realize that that's what's happening. But over-functioning leads to the burnout, leads to resentment, leads to then guilt. Oh God, I'm a terrible SLP. Here I am, like talking about how awful I feel and, and hating my role as an SLP. Because of what it's costing me in my other areas. Oh my gosh, that's terrible. No, this is my job. This is what I have to do. Come on. Right. And then repeat. So we're back in this cycle, but here's what I want you to ask yourself. And in fact, this is what I've asked myself in coaching sessions. Okay. Or. Between coaching sessions as a coach, this is what I have wrestled with and worked on is what if it's not your job to make the session valuable? What if it's not your job to make this session feel valuable? What if your job is just to create the environment? Create the space where the value can emerge and trust that the client or the caregiver will meet you. There you are not valuable because you go above and beyond. I'm sorry if that's hard to hear. I, I, it might be hard to hear, but going above and beyond is not what makes you valuable. You are valuable because you are you. You are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. You are inherently valuable. You have to believe that in order for this to work, and that's what I do in coaching sessions sometimes. That's where we focus. That's where the work. Happens is on recognizing your inner self-worth your own inherent value, right? Because if we don't have that, if you don't have that, you will be constantly trying to overperform over, deliver, outperform, do whatever you can to create that feeling of value for yourself, but you're just delegating value, your value, your self-worth to external. Circumstances to people and things outside of you, you're delegating your self-worth to somebody else, and that will never work. That will never work. Okay, so I want you to know that it's not the progress that a client makes or the number of trials that you get in a session that create a valuable session. You're valuable because you showed up. As you as yourself, right? And you showed up and you were there and you were present and you brought your expertise to the table. It doesn't need to be wrapped up in pretty, you know, ribbons and bows and bells and whistles. It can just be you. So here's what I want you to. Shift. This is something that we work on in coaching, is reframing your definition of enough, because like I said earlier, we really don't have a definition of what enough is. I told you it's subjective. I told you it's murky. I told you it's emotional and it often shifts, right? Like one day your definition of enough might look like this, and then the next session, your definitive definition of enough. Might look like something else. And so when we don't have a very clear definition of what enough is, we're constantly trying to hit a target that we have no idea where that target is. So you get to decide what enough is, and. As a coach, I will help my clients determine this. Sometimes we want, again, to define enough as something that's external, right? We wanna define enough as number of trials in a session, or we wanna define enough as, uh, you know, amount of progress a client makes over time. And we use those results to. Determine whether or not we've done enough as clinicians. But again, when you do that, you're delegating your value to people and things outside of your control. So I challenge you to reframe what your definition of enough is. Here's an example for you. You could say that enough, is that I showed up enough, is that I showed up. Enough might be that I showed up and I used my clinical judgment. I showed up as the, you know, as the clinician who was present and who was effective and showed up in that time constraint. Staying past the end of the session doesn't make. The session better. Staying past the session doesn't add more value to the session. You honor your time boundaries. You do your job and you are very clear on what is your responsibility as a clinician and what is your client's responsibility as your client. Okay, so here are some sort of. Mantras, if you will, or affirmations, whatever you wanna call them. I like to call them intentional thoughts, so. In coaching, we do a lot of thought work. We look at the inner thoughts that are happening. Sometimes you're very aware of them, sometimes they're very, um, sort of subconscious or sneaky that you don't even realize that they're, that they're there and getting in the way. So here are some intentional thoughts that you could choose. I'm just throwing a couple ideas out there. You have to figure out what works for you. That's what I do with my coaching clients is figure out intentional thoughts that feel. That feel like, okay, we try them on and it fits. It fits good enough for now. Like I could, I could choose this thought and I could work on it, and it feels like it's not a huge stretch from where I am right now. So, couple of intentional thoughts. The value is not all on me. The value is not all on me. Here I'm laughing because here's an intentional thought. Sometimes I get myself in trouble when I'm, I'm a little bit, um, frank. When I talk, when I say things, and I don't mean this to be offensive, but this thought was very helpful for me as an SLP, it is speech therapy, not chemotherapy like. Honestly, that is what I had to tell myself for a very long time. We are doing speech therapy, not chemotherapy. It's okay to miss a session because I, I would put so much pressure on myself. Right. Another intentional thought. I create the container, but I don't have to pack it to the brim. Okay. Other questions that you can do to sort of help you figure out when this is happening and what you can do? Like what you can do about it, um, just to sort of check in with yourself in the moment might be questions like, would I still be doing this if I already believed? That I was good at my job, or would I still be doing this in the session if I already believed that the session was effective enough? Good enough, right? What does enough look like before the session starts? If you're really fixated on, no, Theresa, like that's not true. There really is a clear definition of what makes a good SLP and what makes a good session, and you feel really strongly about that. I would challenge you on that in coaching, but if you did feel like that, that were true for you, right? So then ask yourself before the session starts, what does enough look like? What does enough look like in this session? What would it feel like to end on time and trust that it's okay? What would it look like to start. End. End on time and know that it was okay. All right, so when we do this, when we start making these shifts, here is what is possible. You start to leave work on time and actually feel good about it. You can leave work on time and feel guilt free. Like, okay, I'm out. Here we go. Okay. You can start your day when you get to work. Feeling grounded, feeling safe, feeling emotionally regulated, not feeling like you have to prove yourself for the next eight hours when you stop chasing enough. You trust your clinical judgment and you focus on your clinical judgment instead of second guessing or playing Monday morning quarterback, right? You have enough energy for your life, for your personal life, for the things that fill you up, for the things that you love and enjoy that add value. To your life. You have energy left for your kids. You have energy left for you, for your, your goals, your personal goals, your health, your physical health, your mental health, your emotional health, your spiritual health. The relationships around you start to improve. Your more present. You are more focused. You stop spiraling over every. Me session, like me, I was all right, or, oh, it's a total SHIT show, right? You stop spiraling over that and you start noticing the wins and tracking that progress and focusing on the growth. The growth for your clients, the growth for you. For the people in your life and around you, right? You start to feel proud. You start to feel valuable. You start to feel competent instead of panicked, insufficient, inadequate. You can leave the, at the end of the week knowing that it was a job well done. Now I'm going and I'm focusing on these other areas of my life because my role as an SLP is not all of me. Whew. Okay. I wanna also offer that if this hit home for you, if this is hitting a nerve, if you're like, yes, I understand what you're saying, Theresa, but I don't know how to actually create that. Like I don't know how to actually. Build that skill. I don't know how to determine and feel that enough is enough and that it looks like this and that. I make it a reality. Then send me a message. There's always a link in the show notes to schedule a free consult. Right? We could talk through what does enough look like for you. And what shifts for you when you define that, right? What's possible when you know what's enough and you start operating from that place? I can tell you this, there's a lot less sleepless nights. There's a lot less of the 3:00 AM wake up that happen where you're panicked about, oh my gosh, that client is just not. Progressing. What am I doing wrong? What am I not seeing? Oh my gosh, I'm a terrible SLP, right? That's the kind of stuff we get to do in coaching. That's the stuff that's possible to shift when you do this work. It is not easy. It is not something that I can just give you, right? I told you this is work that I have done with myself as a coach, making sure that I'm not taking responsibility for my client's results. I say this with the utmost love, support and respect for my clients. And what I have learned is that when I show up as the coach, not as the one who bears the responsibility for the client's success, I can deliver at a much higher level. It keeps my clients in a place of, you know, uh, value. Competence, possibility. It keeps them as the one who is responsible or them as the ones who are responsible for their results, right? I told you, you are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. You are inherently valuable. Same goes for my coaching clients. Same goes for your speech clients. Okay. Reach out if you need any support. I'm happy to help you. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this episode. Pop into the uh, SLP support group on Facebook where we can continue the conversation, and I will see you all next week. I.