Here's a story nearly every practitioner gets told, without anyone saying it out loud: the clinician, 1:1 across the desk, is the "real" version of this job. Everything else is somehow lesser.
It's not true and it's perpetuating an outdated black and white version of a multicolour, multipassionate profession.
The Fish Doesn't Know It's in Water
It's genuinely hard to see what makes you unique, for the same reason a fish can't see the water it's swimming in - it's just always been there. You expect everyone to practise the way you do, because your way is the only water you've known.
That's why an outside tool - a personality profile, a strengths assessment, even something like astrology or human design - can be so useful. Not because it defines you, but because it hands you language for something you've been doing unconsciously for years. I personally LOVE these tools!
Why Naming Your Uniqueness Actually Matters
This isn't a self-indulgent exercise. In a genuinely crowded wellness landscape, the thing that makes you findable - and referable - isn't your qualification. Plenty of people share that. It's the specific, quirky, unmistakably-you way you show up. Clients don't choose you because you're a naturopath. They choose you because of how you do it.
The Many Ways to Be a Practitioner
Clinician is one identity among many, and none of them outrank the others:
- Researcher - diving deep into evidence, contributing to the body of naturopathic knowledge globally.
- Industry - working with the companies and manufacturers behind the medicines we use, in tech, sales, or education roles.
- Mentor or educator - sharing decades (or a single year) of hard-won experience with the next generation of practitioners, or educating the public directly.
- Practitioner support - bringing skills in finance, tech, design, or admin to serve other praccies, who understand this world in a way most support providers don't.
- Manufacturer or maker - for those who love creating the actual creams, teas, products and remedies.
- Clinic owner - leading a team, rather than practising solo.
Your Identity Changes With Your Season
The way you practise with a newborn on your hip looks nothing like the way you practise once your kids are at school or grown, and nothing like when you first graduate to when you are considering ‘retirement’.
That's not inconsistency.
That's honouring the season you're actually in - and it's allowed to keep changing. Just like nature does.
Seeing 45 clients a week might be exactly right for you this year, and completely unsustainable next year. Both versions are valid. Neither one is "more of a real practitioner" than the other.
How to Start Finding Yours
- Try a personality or strengths profiling tool you haven't done before - even a free one.
- Notice what's kept you intrinsically motivated since long before this career, not just since qualifying.
- Ask which of the identities above already feels closer to true, even if you've never let yourself say it out loud.
Where to Take This Further
If naming your identity feels like the missing piece, my free Practitioner StartUp Challenge walks new and returning practitioners through exactly this kind of foundational clarity work over five days.
And if you're ready to build the practice around the real you - not the version you were taught to be - that's the whole premise of the Naturopathic Futures Academy.
There is room for every version of this profession. Including yours.
Keep being you, everyone else is taken.
Tammy
