Introductions!

Hello!

Welcome to my page for business and mindset coaching for mental health therapists (specifically trauma therapists) who are in private practice!

I’m so glad you’re here!

I’m Amanda K Buduris! I’m a licensed psychologist, Certified Brainspotting Practitioner, and multi-business owner.

I’m a woman of color, a partner, and a cat mom of two. 

I also have a BIG garden in my backyard, complete with four chickens since the cost of eggs is skyrocketing these days! 

Outside of attending to my little zoo, baking is a HUGE hobby of mine. My partner and I binge-watched The Great British Bake Off through COVID and replicated a ton of their recipes. 

In my professional life, I have my PhD in Counseling Psychology (from Iowa State University) and I primarily worked in university counseling centers before making the move into private practice. 

I’m also super passionate about helping clinicians feel more fulfilled with their work in their private practices, which is why I started this new business venture!

I want to also share about my professional story…

In October 2021, I was completely discouraged as a college counseling center staff therapist. I was so close to being licensed, but it felt like forever away. Even then, I struggled with this idea that I really loved college counseling work, but the agency was no longer working with or for me.

A lot of clinicians move from college counseling to private practice, but no one ever taught me how to do that!! I was scared and overwhelmed, but come December 2021 (when I finally got licensed), I knew I had to start looking into the transition, because I was becoming more and more burnt out with each hour of the work day.

So I took two weeks off for my holiday break, and deep dove into ALL THE FACEBOOK GROUPS to get guidance and feedback about how to legally and ethically set up a private practice. I then spent the next 6 months learning about all the systems and getting my practice set up, taking on my first private practice client in April 2022, and going full time in July 2022.

I was thrilled to start accepting the clients I wanted to work with and explore how I wanted to work with clients to best support them.

Setting my fee was the first huge hurdle! I did the typical recommended “look at what others in your area are charging,” but I had HUGE imposter syndrome that no one would want to pay me that much. As a private pay clinician, I began by setting my fee at a rate of $125, with sliding scale options lower than that.

My caseload quickly filled up and I just as quickly realized I was not going to make enough money to effectively run my business and pay my bills!

The more I began networking with other therapists and investing in other coaching courses, the more I became aware of ways to increase my overall income, including alternative ways outside of the traditional 45-60 minute model of therapy.

I had a big BREAKTHROUGH!

As a trauma specialist, trained in Brainspotting and EMDR, I know many of my clients who are survivors really struggle to contain their safety-building and trauma processing to roughly 50 minutes.

When I started hearing about other therapists offering therapy intensives – IT WAS A GAME CHANGER!

It made so much sense to me to modernize therapy and break free from the insurance model of shorter sessions, and ultimately provide better service and faster healing for clients.

And then I thought, “I could bring on more clients who want to work in this way.”

AND THEN I THOUGHT, “I could also start offering intensives to couples!”

But in my journey towards crafting my intensives, I also discovered something else.

My own history of generational trauma led to some pretty huge money mindset blocks that made me HELLA anxious to offer intensives at a premium price. I didn’t want to advertise them (outside of my website) because I thought things like:

• No one will want to pay me that much

• People are going to judge me because of the cost of these

• They’re going to assume I’m a BAD PERSON WHO’S JUST IN IT FOR THE MONEY

I knew success was possible. I knew I needed to get to the place of leveraging my time to match my lifestyle. I knew it was possible to make more money, I saw people doing it. And I saw these people share explicitly how they were able to make the shift in their business.

MONEY MINDSET WORK!

So I did it. I took that course we’ve probably all seen advertised on Facebook about how to make more money. The more I invested in my own money mindset, the more I’ve been able to shake these thoughts out of my head.

AND INSTEAD

I now run intensives for trauma and couples, I charge a premium rate ($250) for my traditional 50 minute sessions (because I still like variety in my caseload), and I confidently state my fees during consultation calls.

NOW! Why you’re here…

I took all the knowledge I had learned, along with my own experience of traveling this journey myself, and I packaged it all together in the THRIVING TRAUMA THERAPIST BLUEPRINT.

It wasn’t easy work, but it needed to be done.

It’s designed to help you with ONE burning question I know you have.. How can I still transform lives without having to sacrifice freedom, security, and flexibility in my own life?

Now, I am a successful business owner, in the middle of launching a new coaching business. As a first gen, therapist and business owner of color, with no direct models for starting and running a successful therapy business (yes, I DIY’ed the whole way), I am amazed at what I’ve accomplished.

To put it into perspective, the agency job I left paid me about $70k per year, and I’ve made almost $150k in my first year of private practice (including building up my caseload). Since adding intensives to my practice, I’m consistently earning $13k+ per month.

I’m so passionate about what I’m doing, and so grateful that my hustle in my business helped me to support my family while my partner was laid off from his tech job and unemployed for four months. I have so much flexibility to do everything the way I want, which serves me and my clients. I have the security of knowing my family’s financial goals will be met.

Most importantly, I have the freedom to create my own destiny.

So many trauma therapists these days are either leaving the field or looking to change niches to better manage the emotional load of what trauma therapy can be. As a survivor of trauma myself, I know how important it is to have GOOD trauma therapists out there taking care of themselves so that we can continue to take care of a population most clinicians are terrified of.

I know in my heart I will always be supporting others in their trauma recovery, and that I have the freedom and flexibility to support myself as I do this work!

And I want this for YOU too! I can’t wait for you to feel true freedom.

It’s time to collapse the timeline.

It’s time for you to spend more time with your family. It’s time for you to have “me time.” It’s time for you to have financial security. It’s time for you to scratch the itch of wanting to heal the world from trauma in ways that honor your worth and your time, and best benefit the clients who most need us.

It’s time. I know you can feel it!