The holidays can be magical… but for therapists? They can also feel like a pressure cooker filled with client crises, family expectations, over-responsibility, and the quiet fear that taking time off means you’re “letting someone down." and going broke.

In this candid, cozy, and surprisingly hilarious episode, we get grinchy, in the best, most therapeutic way possible.

If you’ve ever:
✨ booked clients during a holiday week and immediately regretted it
✨ felt guilty for wanting (or needing) actual time off
✨ questioned whether you’re doing “enough”
✨ found yourself emotionally over-involved in clients’ family chaos
✨ struggled to turn your therapy brain off

…this episode is a must-listen.

We share four grounded, grit-building strategies that have changed not just our holiday seasons, but our entire careers as trauma-trained therapists, supervisors, and practice owners. Through stories from the courtroom, client sessions, foster care work, family traditions, and classic holiday movies (yes, even the Grinch), you’ll get the permission, validation, and practical tools you didn’t know you needed.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why you must schedule like a Grinch (and how to stop feeling guilty about it)
• How to remember you are enough, even when you're not actively “helping”
• How to release over-responsibility and stop holding every family system together
• A simple visualization to “take off your therapy hat” and reclaim your actual life
• How to create emotional boundaries that make you a better therapist

This episode mixes warmth, humor, clinical wisdom, and the exact kind of honesty therapists rarely get. Consider it your holiday reset button, packed with reminders that therapists are human beings first and that gritty self-compassion is not optional… it’s essential.

Whether you're walking into the holidays feeling connected, depleted, overwhelmed, or somewhere in-between, this conversation will help you breathe deeply, soften your shoulders, and choose what you need this season.

✨ Check out our freebies and our NEW Grit School:

• Therapist AF: Grit School for the Real World, practical skills, nervous system grounding, and the reps grad school skipped
• The Gritty Therapist freebies, tools, and support: thegrittytherapist.com
• The Cord Where Science Meets Connection attachment/trauma-focused therapy.

Follow along on Instagram @grittytherapist and go get your gritty on. 💛