Happy New Year, TPA Family!
I want to start the year off by highlighting one of the exercises in the Ideal Client Arc in Module One.
The last step of the Ideal Client worksheet sits alone on the final page, under the heading “Diary Page.”
TPAers skimming over the video or those in a hurry when going through the worksheet the first time could easily miss it. You might have missed it yourself.
This post is an invitation to go back and have another look.
Here are two therapists describing what they do:
Therapist A: “I help people manage their anxiety and live more fulfilling lives.”
Therapist B: “I work with women who’ve gotten so good at appearing calm that no one knows they rehearse conversations in the shower and apologize for things that aren’t their fault. I help them drop the old narratives that keep them chasing validation and become the authors of their greatest chapters yet.”
Which one makes you stop scrolling?
Generic Marketing Fails
The first statement isn’t wrong. It’s just forgettable.
“I help people with anxiety” could describe thousands of therapists. Technically true, completely uninspiring.
If you’re not speaking to someone, you’re not speaking to anyone.
Your words float past potential clients like background noise.
They might agree with what you’re saying, but nothing in your message makes them feel seen.
Feeling Seen is Everything
When someone is considering therapy, they’re looking for evidence that you understand their specific experience. Not anxiety in general. Their anxiety.
The particular flavor of suffering that wakes them at 3am, that follows them into meetings and makes them wonder if they’re the only one who feels this way.
Generic marketing can’t provide that evidence. Specific marketing can.
The Diary Entry Exercise
How do you develop the kind of specificity that stops your ideal client mid-scroll?
You get inside their head with genuine empathy. And one of the most powerful tools I’ve found for developing empathy is the diary entry exercise.
Here’s how it works: Write a full page from your ideal client’s perspective. First person. Present tense. Raw and unfiltered.
What keeps them up at 3am?
What do they hope for but are afraid to admit?
What are they tired of? What have they tried that hasn’t worked?
What do they tell themselves in their worst moments?
Don’t write what you think they should feel. Write what they actually experience. Use their language, not clinical terminology.
Capture the thoughts they’d never say out loud (the ones that feel too messy, too embarrassing, too revealing).
When you understand your ideal client at this depth (when you can articulate their inner world with precision and compassion), your marketing stops feeling like marketing.
You reflect their experience back to them with such accuracy that they feel recognized. Understood. Less alone.
This is what builds trust before the first session. This is what turns a website visitor into a consultation request.
Your Assignment
This week, I want you to write a diary entry for your ideal client.
One page. First person. Stream of consciousness.
Focus on one specific struggle. Perhaps it’s the Sunday anxiety before the workweek.
Maybe it’s the exhaustion of being the “strong one” in every relationship.
Maybe it’s the loneliness of looking successful while feeling like a fraud.
Use their actual language. Avoid jargon. What would they text a close friend at midnight? What can they admit in the privacy of their own head?
Then look at what you’ve written. Notice the phrases that feel most alive, most specific, most true.
Those are the words that belong on your website, in your Psychology Today profile, in your messaging.
Your ideal clients are looking for someone who truly gets them.
Be that someone.
Learn how TPA can help you connect, convert, and serve your ideal clients. Click here to get started.