#3 How to embrace your insecurities and fears while breaking taboos
You think you are alone with the emotional ups and downs during a career change? This week's interview will tell you all about the emotional rollercoaster of a rather unconventional career transition.
Bonjour fellow transitioners and welcome to another episode of our ChangePath newsletter 🧡💜
One of the biggest barriers to changing your career is the fear of the unknown as well as the many insecurities that come with leaving your current path. What we need are inspiring stories that will help us to tackle our biggest fears head on and this week’s story is a very special one breaking with a lot of taboos and stigma: From recruiter to sex-therapist.
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This time we are expanding our horizons with a very intimate and personal interview. Clémence has been our muse for building ChangePath and we are over the moon that we can share her story today. She did a courageous but emotionally turbulent transition that serves as an inspirational example of how drastically you can change your career if you really listen to your dreams. So let’s dive right in - C’est parti! ⛵️
3 Questions & Answers about Change with Clèmence
Hi Clémence, can you tell us more about your career transition?
I became a recruiter right after graduating from my Business School. At that time, I was driven both by entrepreneurship and having an impact. As a recruiter in a young company, I could help lay the foundations of the startup I worked for AND have an impact on young startups looking to grow their teams and on people's careers.
Basically, my job consisted of:
1️⃣ Helping entrepreneurs sort out what roles they needed within their companies and find the right candidates for their teams
2️⃣ Leveraging candidates potential, help them sort out what to do next, find the most fitting job and company culture and coach them throughout the hiring process
Although I found some sense of purpose in this first job, this was slowly nuanced by the reality of the market. The recruitment market is highly competitive and in the end, the qualitative human part of job was overshadowed by hard performance targets. I didn't feel fulfilled anymore and slowly burned out.
In 2021, I left my first job, feeling a bit empty inside, but with the idea of launching something around sexuality.
It may sound totally random, but to me, it wasn't. As a matter of fact, I was personally passionate about the topic of sexuality. Having experienced sex-related pain in the first years of my sex life, I had healed thanks to sex therapy, and I had learned to feel more and more empowered with my own body and sexuality. My personal path was powerful and inspiring to me and I felt the urge to help others.
I knew that sex was a taboo topic, so, it wasn't going to be easy.
But I also knew that where there is taboo, there are people that need help. Where there is taboo, there is impact to create.
Positively impacting people's lives was something I had always strived for.
So, in September 2021, I started a podcast called dénudé.e.s, where I interviewed people about their intimate path and life experiences.
Why a podcast? My aim here was to create a space where people could speak freely about how they live in their bodies and sexualities, emancipate from societal taboos and imperatives, and build the sex-life they really yearned for.
Also, after coaching and hiring people for 2 years, I felt I was good at interviewing people and helping them find their own truth.
Since I gave people the space to freely express how they felt and experienced their bodies, their relationships and sex, they thought of the podcast as something therapeutical. As the year passed by, I became more and more convinced that sex therapy was my path.
By September 2022, I started my degree in Sexual Health (at Université Laval in Quebec) and throughout 2023 I completed this degree and studied a second course on the side to become a sex therapist in France.
In December 2023, I had my first clients as a sex therapist. And today I help many individuals and couples develop a more fulfilling sexual life and accompany them through their own intimate journeys.
What were your main obstacles in your career transition process?
In my career transition from recruiter to sex therapist, I can identify two major phases so far. In each phase, I struggled with many fears. Mainly the fear of not knowing where I was heading (uncertainty), the fear of failure, the fear of judgment and the fear of not making a good living out of it.
The first phase of my career transition was before I decided I wanted to become a sex therapist.
It was a 1 year long phase, filled with uncertainty about what direction to take. During this phase I was unemployed for a while, working on my podcast and making money on the side through freelancing activities. At that point I didn't know whether I considered my podcast just as a side project or as an actual career switch. Where would it lead me?
Recruiting was my first job and the only one I had the certainty I was good at. So, I helped a startup grow its international team for a few months while building my podcast. Although I had a great time, learned a lot and loved the company, I know now what actually drove me into this freelancing mission: SECURITY. I was lacking security in every way: Money wise and emotionally. "Recruiting is the only job I can do well. I need to keep doing it" was what I was telling myself.
During the summer 2022, after one year of going forward and backwards, I wanted to put a stop to this painful process and almost went back to working full time in a startup as a recruiter! I know now that it would've been a big mistake because I knew deep down I wanted to become a sex therapist... I just couldn't admit it to myself (and to the people I loved).
Luckily, I finally accepted my new path. Why did it take me so long? Because I was so SCARED of everything. I feared going into a "weird career" (judgement of others). I feared going into a career that "made no sense" considering what I had done before (lack of coherence). I feared wasting my time and realizing that I wasn't good at this new job (uncertainty and fear of failure).
What helped me overcome this wild fear and go for my dream job?
1️⃣ The feedback I got from the people that participated in my podcast dénudé.e.s, who thanked me for giving them a space to share their experience and embrace it. This helped me gain confidence that maybe, I could be good at this...
2️⃣ The healing words of my parents, which paved the way for my change: "You are allowed to pursue whatever route makes you happy. We do not care what you do, we just want you to be happy. All that matters is what you believe in. Follow whatever you are passionate about."
It was like magic: the next day I applied to my Canadian degree in Sexual Health and I was accepted a few days later.
The stars were finally aligned.
But then the second phase started: studying again, launching my practice, getting past my imposter syndrome and persevering throughout the launch phase even though it is hard and uncertain.
This second phase is not over yet, I'm still struggling with many questions:
🤨 Am I actually good at it? (I realize not having a manager telling you if you're doing the right thing can be hard, luckily I get feedback from the people I help and I can see the impact in their lives)
🤨 How can I build my patient base?
🤨Am I going to make a decent living out of it?
But thank god for these questions! I'm learning so much. I'm learning that I'm actually good at it and that I truly love my new career. And after a difficult journey, I'm learning what it feels like to be in the right place: every single appointment energizes me and gives me a sense of purpose.
Can you describe your career transition in three words?
Not three words but three learnings.
👩🏼🔬 Test, learn and start small. I found out that you cannot know what you're good at and what you truly love without making small experiences and iterating along the way. My podcast was my first small experience and it led me to where I am today.
🚣🏽♀️ Persevere always. This career transition made me learn so much about who I am, confronting me with my deepest insecurities and negative assumptions (e.g. the assumption that I'm going to fail). I've had times where I thought I should just stop and go back to a more "normal" career. But these learnings about myself are so precious. And persevering through ups and downs allows me to experience true personal growth.
👯♂️ Get positive support from friends and family. I realized you need to be around the RIGHT people, the ones that support you and believe in you, no matter what. Especially when you fail to believe in yourself. Like my parents did when they reassured me with the right words or like my boyfriend does whenever I doubt about myself and lose confidence. Huge thanks to them ❤️
Follow Clémence transition and story on LinkedIn.
If you are interested in her offer and support, check out her website here.
Quote of the week:
“They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People
Podcast episode of the week:
We have seen how important friends and family can be for your career transition with Clémence’s experience. This podcast episode dives a little deeper into navigating the transition with your partner because when you make a shift, your loved ones shift too. We hope this episode inspires you & your partner to navigate inevitable changes with compassion, trust and teamwork.
Listen to the episode here.
Change your now and start your tomorrow with ChangePath. 🧡💜
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