What's Up Buttercup? |
 Have you ever read or seen and advertisement for something and you just knew immediately that you had to have whatever the advertiser was selling? 🤩
A fancy blanket with pockets for your feet to keep you warm when the weather turns cold or the latest kitchen appliance guaranteed to make you and your family nutritious meals in almost no time with no effort from you. The description practically made your mouth water and you got that warm fuzzy feeling because you just knew in your heart of hearts that this something was going to be ‘da bomb. Now, have you ever had the experience of buying that something only to find yourself dazed and confused because whatever you just laid down your hard earned cash for did not end up living up to the hype that gave you the warm fuzzies in the first place? It fucking sucks, right? The blanket isn’t soft or warm and the kitchen gadget is made of cheap plastic and breaks before you can make your first gourmet meal. What a let down! 😝 Advertisers get paid a lot of money to hook us on an emotional level. To use their words to reach deep inside and tug on our heart strings in a way that opens up our purse strings so that they can make a sale. Companies do this all the time AND, in the end, if their product (or service) doesn’t live up to the description that company is not going to stay in business for very long. Maybe you had a similar experience with online dating. From my own experience one guy in particular stands out to me. His profile and his pictures did not match up with the guy that I met in person. He was at least 40 pounds heavier and I’m pretty sure he had photshopped his acne out of all of his pictures! Oh, and I can’t forget the feeling of desperation oozing from his pores that did not match up with the confident words of his profile. 😬 Now imagine being in some sort of emotional pain and searching online for a service provider like a counselor or therapist. You are awake at 3:00 in the morning and scrolling through Psychology Today profiles and one practically jumps off the page. You start to feel relief almost immediately as the words in this profile are practically wrapping you in a warm hug of understanding and compassion. You feel like you have just met your soulmate! The words in this profile allow you to drift back to sleep safe in the knowing that there is a professional out there who “gets” you and once you make an appointment all of your pain and suffering will begin to heal. You make the appointment and show up giddy with anticipation of meeting this amazing practitioner whose words have already been a healing balm on your open wound. Then something strange and unexpected starts to happen. As the session progresses you get this feeling in your gut that the person in the room with you is not the same person from the profile that spoke to your deepest core self. Now, on top of the pain you were already experiencing, you have concerns that you may have been “had”. Now, you may be saying “What’s your fucking point, Lynn?” Thanks for asking 😜 Let me tell you a story that I heard from a friend and colleague. It happened to her this week. She had a new client who told her that she had been referred by a new therapist in the area. My friend wanted to thank this new referral source and so jumped on Psychology Today to find this person’s profile and get an email. What she found shocked and angered her 😳🤯😤 What do you think it might have been? If you guessed that my friend found herself staring at her own (almost verbatim) profile, you would be correct 😳 Yep, the other therapist had Copied and Pasted, almost verbatim, her entire Psychology Today profile 😖 WHAT THE FUCK! SO NOT COOL 🤬 I wish that this story had flabbergasted me and was the first time I had heard of something like this. Unfortunately it was not and actually happens more often than I like to think about. It happened to me right after I started my private practice 😣. I was shocked at first and then angry. Once I worked through those feelings I was flattered and then, ultimately amused. Why amused? Because I found the fraud while I was working on giving my own profile a makeover. In the end I decided that my new profile was better and if she wanted a hand me down she was welcome to it 😘 Here’s the thing, though: It is a form of identity theft and it happens when someone inexperienced and desperate gets writer’s block, thinks that reading other therapist’s profiles on Psychology Today is the best way to get unstuck, and then has an impulse to ease their own pain and suffering by using a tool that we all have in our technology toolbox: Copy and Paste. Folks, Copy and Paste is a great tool as long as the words that you are copying and pasting ARE YOUR OWN WORDS (or you have paid someone else to write them). Copy and Paste is a HUGE NO-NO if the words are not your own, you have not paid for them, and/or the person you are copying them from has not given you permission! Think about it. You may like to think of yourself in whatever fun and fancy way that someone else described themselves AND it is not authentically you. When that client shows up they are going to have a nagging voice inside their head questioning what it is that is not matching up! Your therapeutic relationship is now built on a lie 😩 I’m pretty sure that none of us wants to be perceived as a sleazy advertiser using someone else’s words to describe us just to get client’s in the door and take their money 😬 No matter what we are selling, be it our services or a product, we have to find a way to describe our service or product in a way that speaks to the heart of our ideal client or customer in an AUTHENTIC way! Don’t just copy and paste someone else’s awesome shit, create some of your own! What? You don’t think you are creative enough or good enough? Setting aside the (false) idea that you are not creative and good enough (for now 😉) you actually have lots of options that don’t include CHEATING!
So if you have been feeling desperate and have either considered stealing someone else’s words (or have already done it), chill the fuck out and pick one of the above options. Your ideal clients are waiting to meet YOU, not a false advertisement 😘
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
November 2019
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