If you are a therapist like me, you have definitely heard this saying a lot. In fact, just a minute ago, an ad popped up on my Instagram page with a quiz to find out which of the hypothetical “four” types of therapy niches I am. (Spoiler: there’s more than four niches; that’s just marketing doing its thing to try to draw people in.) Even when I was still in grad school, people often told me I needed to “find my niche.” Finding your niche means, in the therapy realm, choosing one or maybe two specialties to hone in on. Especially at first, and candidly even now sometimes, the thought of finding a niche feels overwhelming because I am interested in a lot of topics. I get it on paper: the clearer I am about what I work with, the clearer it will be for clients who are struggling with those things to find me. Yet I know I’m not alone in feeling like finding a niche isn’t as easy as it’s made out to be, which is why I’m writing about it. Not just for my fellow therapists, but for anyone still figuring out what they want to focus on in their lives.
I’m processing this topic in real time, so writing this blog post is as much for me as it hopefully is for you. The reason I share this is: one, to lead with vulnerability by admitting that I don’t have it all figured out, and two, to let you into the process, not just the finished product, as people often do. Honestly, I am guilty of this, too. Processing things on my own and letting people in only once I have processed them enough to articulate them clearly. However, there is something to be said about letting people into the mess of the process. Of not having everything figured out and still being able to show up confidently and vulnerably in the uncertainty. In receiving others’ insights with an openness to your mind being changed by their differing perspectives, while still maintaining your core values and discerning which insights align with how you operate. This blog post is one way I’m practicing this for myself.
As an analogy person, the best way to articulate how I’m feeling in the process of finding my niche is that I’m like a kid in a candy shop, with so many options that look appealing, but I haven’t tried the candies enough to know which ones I like best. Personally, this is hard for me because I have always wanted to figure things out quickly to become as good as possible at the tasks I’m completing. It’s also been hard for me professionally because it’s made me feel like I’m behind and lack the clarity that more seasoned therapists possess. However, what I’m realizing is that I’m unfairly expecting myself to be in a place I haven’t had the time or experience to be in yet. Going back to the kid in the candy shop analogy, it takes time to try all the different kinds of candies to see how your body digests them and assess if you still enjoy them after the initial novelty of the new taste wears off. The same premise applies to finding a niche. You can’t just try it once and know for sure it’s your niche. You have to try it multiple times and process how it sits with you over time. I recently recognized that I’ve been frustrated with myself for not being ahead of where I am to a place that I can only get to with time. If you’ve been feeling that too, I want to share the same encouragement I’ve been telling myself: Being who you are and where you are is enough. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep staying connected to what feels most authentic to you. The rest will fall into place in its due time.
A positive aspect of finding your niche, or, in general, discovering what you’re passionate about, is that we usually don’t have to start from scratch. We are typically drawn towards things we have personally experienced because our bodies are wired to feel more comfortable with what’s familiar than with what’s unfamiliar. In other words, we are often motivated by our pain, and therefore naturally have a strong desire to help others with the same types of pain we’ve endured. So if you are struggling to find your niche, ask yourself what you’ve been through that you would want to help others overcome. Once you have processed and healed from your pain enough (key word enough, since healing is ongoing and you can still feel pain about something and be able to help others through it) to be able to recognize when your experiences could be interfering with your responses, which we therapists call countertransference, your similar experiences can be used as a strength. Because while no one experiences the same thing in its entirety, you having experienced something similar means you can relate and have insight that you couldn’t learn in a textbook. I’m not someone who believes you had to have gone through something in your personal life, especially as a therapist, to help others with that same thing. For example, you can help a client who is a parent even if you aren’t one yourself. I have a lot to say on this matter and will likely write a separate blog post about it. But for now, I bring it up to say that your niche doesn’t have to be something you’ve experienced, as long as it’s something you’re deeply passionate about for whatever reason. Your passions come from somewhere that matters to you, which is why they often do come from lived experience.
If you’re anything like me, you have lived a lot of life and have many different experiences, which can make it challenging to narrow things down to find a niche. To give a few examples, I enjoy working with athletes since I was an athlete, grief since I know what it feels like to grieve deeply, and complex trauma since I have experienced it. All three of these things (and I have more than three, I just put three here), I will always be passionate about, and the thought of having to pick one over the others doesn’t feel right to me. In my processing, I’ve realized that choosing a niche can feel unnatural, as if you’re choosing one part of yourself over others that feel just as important. I am not one-dimensional. I am multi-dimensional. Therefore, my niche can be multi-dimensional too. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t have to pick one or two things. I can, but I don’t have to. I cannot specialize in everything, of course, but I can have a small range of specialties that I know well. And like anything in life, niches can ebb and flow in different seasons. Maybe in one season I will be more focused on grief, and in another on complex trauma. There’s freedom in that for me, that it doesn’t have to be permanently fixed. This is where I am currently at in the process of discovering my niche. I’ve talked to other therapists who think like me, and others who have no problem narrowing their niche to one or two specific areas. Wherever you land on the metaphorical niche spectrum is okay. And you, like me, have permission to evolve as you grow as a person and professional.