68. Setting Boundaries Using AI for a Healthier Private Practice

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Setting Boundaries Using AI for a Healthier Private Practice

Boundaries are one of the most essential and often challenging parts of running a private practice. Using AI can make this easier by offering tools, insights, and structure to support your time, energy, and financial policies.

In this episode of Run Your Private Practice with AI, I share how AI can help therapists identify boundary issues, stay consistent with policies, and prevent burnout. Whether you’re struggling with overbooking, communication overload, or sliding scale decisions, these AI strategies are designed to lighten your load.

AI Tips You Don’t Want to Miss:

  • How to use AI to spot time leaks and restructure your weekly schedule.
  • Setting up communication boundaries with autoresponders and scripts.
  • Handling financial boundaries like sliding scale and late fees with AI-generated templates.
  • Practicing boundary-setting conversations using AI roleplay.
  • Tracking burnout and emotional energy levels through AI journaling.

Mentioned in this episode:

Connect with me:

Sponsored by Alma: www.helloalma.com/kym
Sponsored by Berries: www.heyberries.com/therapists

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Hey everybody. Hope you’re doing well. If you didn’t listen to last week’s episode, I created a hub that It’s about 35 so far, GPTs, and there’s gonna be a lot more custom GPTs.

[00:00:11] I talked about that last episode, if you wanna know what those are. They’re specialized little robots basically that I’ve created to help private practice owners run their private practices with ai when you don’t have the time to learn how to do it yourself. So I’ve built out all these tools for basically anything you could ever imagine you would need to know about a private practice, there’s a GPT that I’ve built out for it.

[00:00:33] Plus I’ve built out a number of web apps that go with the GPT, so they’re like little tools that you can use to help you with, you know, onboarding is one. I’ve got a social media one I built out. I built one for scalable income where you can interact with the app and help you decide how you wanna scale your practice, that sort of thing.

[00:00:52] But today I was working on one about boundaries. I was gonna just tell you guys a little bit about just boundaries in general, which I’ve probably talked a little bit about this before on this, this podcast, about how to use AI to help us keep our boundaries as therapists.

[00:01:07] ’cause I don’t know about you. I’m not great with my own boundaries. I’m really good at telling my clients to have boundaries, but I’m not so great with it sometimes.

[00:01:15] So, for time boundaries. This is one way you can use AI for this, and I’m kind of going through this ’cause I built out a GPT basically in the GPT, you just like tell a little bit about your day, like you can voice it into ChatGPT you tell it about your day and this thing is programmed to tell you where you might need to have better boundaries or when you’re close to burnout.

[00:01:37] It’s gonna analyze that for you. So it’s sort of like a voice journal that you do in the GPT and then it’s gonna give you feedback at the end of the day or the end of the week or whatever, to say, here’s how you can have better boundaries. And then it’s gonna give you suggestions of how you could set that up using AI to make your life easier.

[00:01:52] So time boundaries are using AI auto reminders. Many of you probably are already doing that with your EHR if you have an EHR that does that. But blocking off admin time using AI to ask it, to help you look at your schedule from the last week and see if there’s places where you could block off admin time and then actually going and blocking it off and

[00:02:13] not allowing yourself to book more people on there. And some people have, their personal calendar connected to ChatGPT ’cause you can connect your Gmail, your, calendars. Now you can connect all of that as long as there’s no PHI. So it can actually go in and monitor your calendar with this GPT and then tell you if your boundaries are good or are not good.

[00:02:34] So that’s one way you can do it. Boundary reminders, those sessions are 50 minutes. I’m not available outside of these office hours. So, trying to just really make sure your calendar is aligned with your boundaries and you can use ChatGPT to help you with that. You know, it’s gosh, I’m seeing like.

[00:02:50] you know, 30 clients a week and it just seems like I’m always getting into like 7:00 PM appointments when I don’t want to, or gosh, it always seems like I’m, I’m just kind of have a straggler at the week and I’m booking one Saturday morning, that sort of thing. You could put that stuff in the ChatGPT, and it’ll help you or Claude or whatever you like Gemini.

[00:03:07] Put it in there, tell her what you’re doing and ask it to help you set better boundaries around your schedule or to even help you figure out a way to fit more clients in throughout like your boundary time instead of just like willy-nilly putting people in here and there. AI can help you with that.

[00:03:23] This GPT I built out definitely helps with that. Communication boundaries. So using AI generated scripts or audio responders to your emails that outline your boundaries so they know what to expect. Meaning like, a template, you can ask ChatGPT to write this up that says, I don’t respond after 5:00 PM I don’t respond when it’s not business hours and that sort of thing.

[00:03:46] So helping it, talking ChatGPT to figure out what your boundaries are. And then having it write things like autoresponder for you that you can just put in your email so somebody emails you or texts you or something like that. You can have an autoresponder already set up and send it, or just have it automated so you don’t even have to worry about it.

[00:04:03] So people know what to expect and when you’re available, when you’re not available. Um. Financial boundaries using AI to generate policy templates response scripts to sliding scale requests. If somebody reaches out and they’re like, do you have a sliding scale. ChatGPT can figure out your sliding scale. I can ask like, how much do you still need to make? What’s your income coming in?

[00:04:23] How many slides GU slots can you have? ChatGPT will help you with all of that. And of course, this boundary bot that I built out is programmed to do that, so you could just automatically use that bot to help you too. Late fees, do I have late fees? What’s my policy around my, my late fees, insurance issues, all of that stuff.

[00:04:41] You can use AI to help you manage that better. You just put it in there and ask it to write up a little policy for you, and you’ve got it done. It’s easy peasy. And I did in the Hub, thera AI hub. I did build out a GPT that’s a paperwork creator. It creates paperwork templates for you based on how a lawyer would do it.

[00:04:59] Of course it’s not a lawyer, but it’s a good start and then you can have a lawyer check it out. But it’s great for stuff like that. No-show policies, after hours, policies, all of that using the boundary GPT or the paperwork GPT to help you do that. And you can just use ChatGPT to do it too. You don’t have to use my tools for it.

[00:05:15] Some other financial boundaries, for example, payments are due at the time of service. You know, I don’t know about you, but how many times has somebody said, I don’t have my copay today. Can I pay you next time? Talking to ChatGPT about it, to even get your mindset right around it. Like, oh, I don’t wanna, you know, I want them to keep coming.

[00:05:32] I don’t wanna charge, or I don’t wanna hold, hold a strong boundary around that. Using AI to help you like talk through that, to get a script, to understand like good ways to say it that help you feel comfortable saying it. Practice it with ChatGPT. You can even I do this sometimes, do a mock interview with ChatGPT.

[00:05:49] So you could say, look, I’m terrible at, you know, when my client says this, this, and this, I’m terrible. So I want you to act like my client and do a mock role play with me and be really hard on me. Make it really difficult for me to say no, and you could practice back and forth with ChatGPT.

[00:06:06] So I’ve done that for various things like if I had a podcast interview or something I was nervous about. I would practice with ChatGPT beforehand and tell it to act like a really hard interviewer and that sort of thing. And it’ll do it. It’ll role play back and forth with you in the voice mode. So you could do that to help practice and make your boundaries better.

[00:06:22] Emotional energetic boundaries. So AI can help track burnout signs via journaling. So the boundaries bot I built out already does that. It’s like got a built in, like you can just kind of voice with it and it’s gonna give you feedback already, but you don’t have to use my built out bot.

[00:06:39] You can just talk into ChatGPT and then say, you know, do you see any signs and symptoms of burnout based on what I’m saying? And it’ll give you feedback like that if you ask it to give you burnout feedback or gimme a burnout checklist.

[00:06:51] And then you can go through and say, every time I talk to you, I want you to check it against this checklist to tell me if you see any signs and symptoms in myself. So using it for that sort of thing. For burnout, boundaries. And of course the GPT I built out already does that for you. Ethical legal integration AI can be used to reinforce, not override your licensing board standards, right?

[00:07:14] So you could download your licensing board manual, upload it to a custom GPT, and ask you questions, you know, like, is this, is this a boundary violation? Is this an ethical violation? You can talk to it and get feedback in case you’re not sure. ’cause I don’t know about you, but there’s been plenty of times where it’s like, I don’t know, this is kind of a gray area.

[00:07:35] I don’t even remember what my standards say about that. So having that manual already uploaded, you can talk to it and figure out, you know, where you stand with it. It’s like a ethical consult with ChatGPT. so those are just some ideas.

[00:07:47] All right. So that’s all I’ve got today. I hope that helps. Thera AI Hub is being released on October 14th as opening day opening cart, as we call it. I’m so excited. I am gonna be doing a free. Webinar that day that I’m gonna teach you how to build out a social media GPT that’s trained on your brand voice. So that’s gonna be a free webinar I’m doing for anybody that wants to come to that.

[00:08:13] And then during that time, I’m gonna show you that there are AI hub, so you can go in and kind of see the back end of it and everything that I offer there. And then I hope that you’ll love it and that you’ll want to join the Thera AI Hub. I’m really excited it’s gonna be for founding members. It’s $19 and 99 cents a month.

[00:08:30] And it’s a recurring monthly feed. You can stay in as long as you want to. I think you’re gonna wanna stay because there’s a lot of really cool stuff in there. So anyway, I hope to see you guys at the free webinar and also if you have any questions, let me know. Okay.