Blogging can feel surprisingly confusing, especially when you care about getting it right.

In this episode, I’m talking about why writing can feel heavy and muddled for therapists, even when you’re thoughtful, experienced, and genuinely good at your work. If blogging has ever left you questioning yourself, abandoning drafts, or wondering why it feels harder than it ‘should’, this one will likely feel familiar.

In this episode, we explore:

1. Why blogging often feels confusing, not because you can’t write, but because you’re trying to hold too much at once
2. How ‘it depends’ thinking, which works beautifully in therapy, can make writing harder
3. Why trying to speak to everyone can leave you stuck mid-post
4. How confusion can quietly turn into self-doubt
5. What helps blogging feel lighter again, without forcing yourself to push through

This is a reflective episode, designed to offer relief, reassurance, and a different way of understanding what’s really going on when blogging feels hard.

Links and next steps

1. Find out more about the Blogging Clarity Session (introductory offer available for a short time)
2. Explore more support for ethical, human marketing at janetravis.co.uk
3. Check out my FREE and paid resources HERE

If this episode resonated, you might want to follow the podcast so you don’t miss future episodes.

Have you ever sat down to write a blog post and ended up more confused than when you started? You might even have told yourself something really uncomfortable in that moment. Like, well, I just can't write, or I'm just overthinking, or maybe blogging really isn't for me. But in my experience, blogging often feels hardest for those therapists who are actually really good at what they do.

Because it's not that you lack ideas. You know, you probably have lots of ideas, but it's because you're trying to speak to all sorts of different types of people in one blog post. So if Blogging's ever made you question yourself, this episode is for you.

Welcome to the Grow Your Private Practice Show.

I'm Jane Travis, and I'm here to help you to get found by more of the right clients with simple doable marketing, especially blogging. Now, each week I'll share practical tips to help you grow your practice with clarity and confidence. So let's dive in.

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back and if it's your first time here, I am so happy that you found us.

Now, today I'm talking about something that I actually see all the time and it's something I've experienced very much myself, and that is why blogging can feel so hard when actually you are great at your job. Because that's the bit that doesn't really get said very often. You know when blogging feels difficult, it's very easy to assume that it must mean that you're just bad at writing or that you don't know enough or that you are overthinking it, or that blogging just isn't really your thing. But in my experience, and I've been doing this for a while now, blogging tends to feel hardest for those therapists who are thoughtful and very ethical and genuinely care about getting things right.

So it's not because they lack ideas, they've probably got loads of ideas, but usually it's because they're trying to speak to too many different types of people or different types of issue in one post. Now I know this because I used to have an embarrassing number of half written blog drafts, so you know, we're not talking to two or three sitting there waiting to be finished.

Oh, no. More like 20, sometimes closer to 25. Sometimes it's more than that. If I'm gonna be really, really honest and a little bit embarrassing, but. So they weren't empty documents just with a title on, you know, they probably had a good title. It probably would have a good start. It would probably have whole paragraphs being written, but then it would just stop.

It would just peter out. And again, it wasn't because I didn't know what I wanted to say. I had plenty of things that I could say. The problem for me was that I'd start writing and I'd start getting a few paragraphs in, and then I'd get that familiar voice would kick in and go, I. Well, it depends.

And this is something that happens in therapy, isn't it? Something that, you know, we say quite a lot of time in the therapy room. So for example, I might be writing a blog post that's all about loneliness and I'd start off feeling really clear and talking about how common loneliness is and how most people feel lonely at some point, even if their life looks full from the outside.

And how you can feel lonely even when you're not physically alone. And then my thinking would start to open it out a little bit because of course loneliness can look like being on your own and craving connection. But it can also look like being in a relationship that isn't really working anymore and that connection's gone. And it can also look like being surrounded by people, but always playing a part.

So never really feeling fully seen. Again, or, or feeling connected with people. And each one of those different experiences matter. They're all important. They'd all speak to a different kind of person, and that's where the writing would start to get a little bit wobbly, because now the blog didn't quite know who it was for, you know, was this blog about. Was this blog for somebody who's feeling really isolated and logging for that connection? Or was it for somebody that was feeling lonely in their marriage?

Or was it for someone that's feeling unseen because they're always adapting to other people? So I'd start trying to talk to all of them. So maybe a paragraph for this version of loneliness, and then another paragraph for another version of loneliness, and another to make sure that nobody felt left out.

And before long it all got a little bit blurry and foggy. So the blog would start to feel really confusing to write because it was confused. And I could feel myself losing my footing, unsure of where it was actually going or who it was actually speaking to. And that would be the moment that I would stop.

And that stopping point is also when the story in my head would start. So in my head I'd be hearing things like, well, maybe I just can't write, or, why does this feel so hard for me? Or, I'd imagine that other people could manage this. Why can't I, what's wrong with me? That I can't just write this in a cohesive way.

Or sometimes it might sound a little bit more practical. So sometimes it would be, I don't have the time to do this today, or I'd, I'll come back to this when my head's feeling a little bit clearer, you know, or I'll finish this another day. But underneath all of that was the same assumption that the problem was down to me.

Now I can see that that's not really what was going on. That wasn't the truth. The problem wasn't that I couldn't write, it's that I wasn't really clear on what that particular piece of writing was gonna be about. And when you're not feeling clear on the subject, then writing can start to feel really slippery. You know, everything seems relevant, so then nothing actually quite settles in and it's really easy to mistake that feeling for a lack of ability. There's also another layer of this that I think really matters for counselors. Most of the time when you are sitting with a client, there isn't an answer. There's certainly no neat answer that you can give people. You know, there isn't a di definitive. Do this and everything's gonna be fine. And look, that's not your job as a counselor anyway.

That's not what we do. You know, your work is about sitting alongside people. It's about exploring. It's about helping someone to make sense of their experience in their own time. So we get very comfortable with uncertainty. We get very comfortable with things unfolding slowly. You know, with saying, well, it depends, you know, because that's just how it is, isn't it? But when we sit down to write a blog. It can suddenly feel like we're supposed to do something very different. Like we should be offering an answer, some magic answer and some takeaway, you know, something concrete that we can give them to do, and that mismatch is something that can feel really awkward for a counselor.

You know that real life doesn't work like that. You know that what helps one person might not help another person, and you know how that context matters. So you end up putting yourself under a huge amount of pressure to be helpful, to be accurate, and to make sure that nobody feels underst. And that's an impossible pressure to manage when one blog post is expected to speak to everyone and offer certainty where certainty just simply doesn't exist.

And that's when blogging can start to feel too much. Not because you don't know enough, you already know far. You know plenty. You can definitely blog, but sometimes because you know a little bit too much to offer a simple answer. Now I don't really have that many half written drafts anymore. I still do a little bit, but you know, it doesn't happen quite in the same, in the same amount.

Thank goodness. You know, because when I start writing about something, I feel clear at the beginning. What tends to happen is halfway through, I might realize that I've got myself a little bit confused and I'm not sure of the direction that I'm going in, and I can feel the writing slipping back into that.

It depends space again. But what happens now is that I can recognize what happens. I know what's going on, so I can stop. I don't tell myself I failed. I stop because I can tell that I'm not quite clear in my own head yet. For a long time I thought the answer was to think harder, to plan more or to push through.

Does that any, do any of those sound at all familiar? But what I actually needed was a more clear direction. This is what I see again and again with therapists. Many therapists don't struggle with blogging because they're bad at writing. Not at all. They struggle because they're carrying too many options. There are too many voices. There's too much pressure to do it properly.

The thing really that I want to share with you today is that blogging starts to feel easier when you are clear on what your post is there to do and what it's not there to do. Who is it that you are talking to and who is it that you are not talking to? So these days my blogs don't usually spiral off into 20 directions, thank goodness.

, that doesn't really happen now. So I've not got a folder there with loads of, you know, like a graveyard of, of different blog posts. And it's not because I've found a perfect system, but because I know what I'm trying to say and who it is I'm trying to speak to before I even start writing.

Interestingly, that's exactly the way I now help other therapists to write. Not by teaching them how to blog as such, but by helping them to get clear enough in that one blog post so that it only has one job to do. And just before I finish, I just want to mention something briefly in case it's useful to you. Now. I'm quite excited because I've been planning something for quite a while, and I'm really pleased to say that it's finally ready.

It's brand new and it's a new one-to-one offering that I've called the blogging Clarity session. So this is a 90 minute session. Where we look at your blogging as it is right now, we untangle some of your ideas. We get clear on what you are trying to say, who you are trying to say it to, and you know who you'd really love to be filling your diary with.

After that, it's gonna go up to its regular price. So if this episode has felt a little bit familiar with you, you'll find all of the details in the show notes. So no pressure. It's just an option for you if it feels like the right, the right next step for you. So look, thank you so much for listening today.

It's been great having you here. And like I say, if this episode has resonated with you, you might want to actually follow or subscribe to the Grow Your Private Practice Show so that you don't miss future episodes. And if you know any other counselors or therapists who've been quietly struggling, then please feel free to share this blog post with them, and all the links to anything that I've mentioned are in the show notes and go and grab them.

So that's it for this week. Take care, and I look forward to seeing you next time. Bye.