A tiny survival guide for the clinician with 14 unfinished courses in Teachable whose fave mentor just offered another one for 50% off

Julie Granger
Jul 14
7 min read

You're just trying to grow as a clinician.

So why do you feel like you don't know enough / are constantly falling behind every time you open your phone?

Why do you keep buying courses when you see a sale online?

Why do you RACE into the comments section when your mentor poses a clinical question, only to walk aaway feeling like you just got eaten alive by Brad and Karen who feel like they need to preach "NUANCE" to every clinician, making you both feel like there are too many little details to weigh with every patient, and also like you just don't have it systematically figured out the way they do?

The answer might be "Just stop scrolling and deactivate social media."

But this is 2026, the internet is here to stay, and you might not want to cut yourself off from the rest of the world.

So here are some other options to quiet the noise without isolating yourself from genuinely helpful things that can help you grow as a clinician.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and propose that you don't need another course. You need to do less learning, and more of one of these things.

1. Put yourself on a "need to know" basis for the places that get you spiraling online

You don't have to unfollow or leave things especially if you don't want people to know you stopped following. Try these instead

Mute accounts — if something about their content / vibe / etc just makes you feel like you need to constantly check every post or makes you question why you can't seem to say anything as eloquently as they do or sends you running to Pubmed because they keep citing evidence you didn't know existed — it's time to mute, babe. They don't have to know.
Mute clinician FB groups where you feel like you need safety goggles, a helmet, bug spray, and to clear your chakras and touch grass after reading one more comments section where women are low key shaming each other about "not being nuanced enough." (Look, I love that nuance is having its moment, but can we just... not?)
Remove socials from your phone and use desktop only — you can still access all the doom scrolly goodness, it just won't happen while you're sitting at a red light and get you so sucked in you are getting honked at because the light turned green 20 seconds ago.

The actual sharpie line: sometimes this isn't enough and you need real black and white boundaries:

Brick your phone
Put your phone in another room when you're working
Leave your phone at home when you go for a walk (you'll be fine listening to the sounds of nature instead of a podcast, I promise)

You don't have to burn down the internet.

You're allowed to leave rooms where you keep forgetting yourself.

2. If you ARE going to scroll (because hi, welcome to 2026, this is just what we do now), make it work for the version of the person you want to become, not the version your mentor wants you to be

Choose what you see, just like you'd choose who you invite into your home.

Tell IG/TikTok what you actually want to see — you can do this on your FYP by saving keywords or by hitting "not interested" on ads
Make saved folders of posts that make you feel more like yourself, not less. The algorithm will know to show you more of this.
Send posts you LOVE to friends you actually want to connect with. Again, the algorithm tracks your every move. This tells it "Please send me more of this."
Comment on people's posts you ACTUALLY want to see more of; go radio silent on the ones that make you feel like shit. And if you haven't already muted them, quickly scroll past. Don't rage linger on their accounts because you're jealous (or inspired? Hard to tell) or trying to figure out why they've gone viral and why it's not fair that you're not. The more you give them attention, the more the algorithm will show you their content, the more you'll feel like garbage. See the relationship? You do have control.

The answer probably isn't "never consume anything again."

It's paying attention to what you're consuming and letting it nourish you instead of depleting you or making you need to do a 30 min breathwork session after every scroll session.

3. Figure out what you were actually looking for when you opened the app

Because maybe it wasn't information.

Maybe you needed:

Someone who gets it
Someone to laugh with
Someone to tell you "OMG SAME"
Someone to remind you you're not practicing alone on an island
Someone to validate that your emotions are real (versus explain and psychoanalyze them to you in a 20 slide carousel)
To make an appointment with your therapist you've been ghosting for 9 months (instead of watching TherapyTok and furiously analyzing your eldest daughter patterns so well you can now write a dissertation on it)

Cool.

Text the colleague.

Send the GIF.

Voice memo the friend you keep meaning to catch up with.

Find the thing you were actually seeking. Then go get that from another place other than comparing yourself to someone else's highlight reel.

4. Build your "maybe I actually know what I'm doing" evidence file

Because your brain has no problem comparing yourself to the mentor who posts screenshots of patients telling her how nobody could help them like she could 🙃

So do the same thing. But don't post it, because you don't need to prove anything.

Go through your last 2 months of patients and write down:

1 thing I did well
1 thing that surprised me
1 moment where I thought "damn, I've got this"

Also: take screenshots of the emails, texts, and DMs they send you and save them to a folder on your phone.

Get a fun box to store the handwritten cards you get somewhere you can actually see them.

(Or make some kind of collage. Mine live on my windowsill in my office.)

5. Stop being a clinician chameleon, FFS.

You're not supposed to look and sound and talk and treat like every other clinician on the internet.

You can admire someone without:

Reposting every one of their posts and saying "THIS OMG." And then feeling like you can't say it or post it because they already said it. Write and post your own. Give credit where you need to cite them. Put it in your own words.
Binging every single one of their podcast episodes the minute they are released.
Signing up for every single one of their courses no matter what they're offering.

Constantly fangirling and pedestaling someone else never gives you enough space to see what YOU are capable of.

I'm not saying don't appreciate or be a fangirl or give credit where it's due. Dear God, please do that.

But when you're so busy giving to and hyping everyone else — you're probably just adding to a growing pile of "I'm not enough" that lives inside of you.

So, you need to grow your pile of "Wait, maybe I am kind of good at this" instead.

6. Remember you are a whole human, and being a clinician is just one part of you. Don't let it swallow you whole.

Your work can matter.

You can love it.

You can be really freaking good at it.

AND ALSO:

You get to do things just because. Because it feels good. Because you felt like it.

It doesn't have to be a strategic professional decision.

It doesn't have to be productive or make you grow.

What's good for all the non-clinician parts of you is good for clinician you.

Go swing on the swings
Buy the fancy coffee syrup
Run through sprinklers
Dance between workout sets
Buy the extra soft toilet paper
Cuddle your dog longer
Read a fiction book
Find a smutty book (and actually read it)
Listen to a true crime podcast

Not everything has to make you better at your job.

Some things are allowed to just make you happy.

And happy clinicians usually arrive more clear-headed and grounded than clinicians who have 375 tabs open in their head.

(I dare you to email me and tell me what the weird, quirky, or completely non-clinical obsession is that you have. Looking at you, sourdough bakers.)

What did I miss? Reach out and tell me! The problem isn't that you care what people think.

You're human. You're supposed to care what people think.

The question is:

Who are you giving yourself unlimited access to care a little too much about what certain people think who always end up making you feel like you're never good enough at anything you do?

Because right now every mentor, colleague, guru, stranger, and Facebook commenter you're seeking input from is living rent free in your head, dictating what you do, say, believe, eat for breakfast, or how you workout, run, do a squat, or talk to your patients.

This may be hard to hear — but I promise you these people are not thinking about you the way you are thinking about them.

I promise you that you're not as behind as the internet might make you feel.

There are also parts of the internet (like this one) here to remind you that you are really freaking good at what you do.

I know it might be unconventional -- but "growth mindset" doesn't always mean doing more things. It also means having the courage and discernment to do less.

Rememebr when we were taught in clinical training to precribe the minimal effective dose to patients?

The same goes for you in your career.

Would love to hear the ways that you've quieted the noise, nourished yourself by doing less, by consuming fewer things that make you feel terrible.

Reach out! I'd love to cheer you on!