When Your Community No Longer Fits — Anita Sandoval

Show notes

Anita Sandoval is a Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor (LPC-S), EMDR therapist, author, and host of Empowering Women in Conversations. She helps women break free from people-pleasing, heal from trauma, rebuild self-trust, and create healthy boundaries. Through her work, Anita combines psychology, neuroscience, and practical strategies to help women stop losing themselves in relationships and start living authentically with confidence and resilience.

Anita's path to building an independent practice involved repeatedly choosing her own judgment over the expectations of the people around her, whether that meant moving her work online years before telehealth was common, stepping back from contracts that no longer served her, or letting go of friendships that no longer fit who she was becoming. She and David talk about what that kind of independence actually costs, including the self-doubt that comes with making decisions alone and the loneliness that can follow when you outgrow a community before you've found the next one. Anita's perspective is that this in-between period isn't something to avoid or rush through, but a necessary part of figuring out your own values and finding the people who share them.

Anita and I discuss:

• [01:59] How a strong need for mental health support in the Rio Grande Valley, particularly within Mexican culture, shaped her path into counseling
• [03:00] Why she believes women face particular pressure to conform, drawing on what she observed as a teacher
• [04:54] Being called "arrogant" and "difficult" for insisting on her own autonomy
• [07:20] Opening a telehealth practice years before COVID, despite skepticism from her community and her supervisor
• [09:32] Breaking a three-generation pattern of abuse and neglect by deliberately choosing a different path
• [11:29] How she manages self-doubt while running a solo practice without a built-in support system
• [14:27] What changes between online and in-person connection, and what may not
• [16:32] What it takes to build growth and momentum for an online counseling practice
• [19:06] Moving from taking on every available contract to niching down and working primarily by referral
• [21:31] Her advice for finding a community that provides long-term support
• [22:00] Why she believes "motivation is garbage" and intentionality is what actually drives change
• [22:54] Embracing the loneliness of outgrowing old relationships and identities while figuring out who you are

Learn more about Anita at:

• https://anitasandoval.com
• https://www.anitasandoval.com/newsletters/therapist-tea-things-i-notice-in-therapy
• https://www.anitasandoval.com/podcast-directories
• https://www.anitasandoval.com/why-am-i-so-tired-subscribe

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