Today we’d like to introduce you to Inga Simonian.
Hi Inga, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started my psychology business in 2012 when I went on a few interviews right after obtaining my license. When I was offered $25 an hour for a job as a licensed psychologist, I realized quickly that with a $250,000 student loan debt and not wanting to work in prison, I had to start my own practice. That’s when I took a huge leap of faith and opened shop, with zero clients from internship, despite not being encouraged to while in grad school, or remembering a bleak picture of private practice. Shortly after I had a few clients and was navigating insurance billing, my husband got laid off from Disney because he didn’t agree to go to China after becoming a father. Spontaneously, he started helping me out with billing and that was the take off we didn’t know we needed. That was the birth of a business child that who was named much later and I am very excited to announce that Conscious Connections had a baby. We have a new and very rare program that is truly a treasure. A hypnotherapy service by an experienced and trained hypnotist can be added to a patient’s treatment plan and may be covered by insurance. These sessions can range from simple short sessions to five hour journeys accessing deep wisdom from the higher self. Please see www.templejourneys.org for more information
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has not been easy, but we have been blessed. We did not know about the option and availability of consulting with other business owners, so we did it the hard way, figuring and carving our own path along the journey. Looking back, I am grateful that we had to blaze our own trail, as we are a unique practice, according to our patients, therapists and community. Our culture feels normal to us, but to others, we are very rare. The first time we got an insurance audit, on the first day of being on a much needed vacation, we panicked and spent almost the entire trip working on that. We also were nervous with the first few subpoenas and record requests. We now have established protocols, and our focus is not on growth, but on qualitative improvements, including and most importantly our offices. We take great care of the spaces where the courage, magic and transformations occur, which includes the remembering and sharing of great pain. We have spent many nights at the offices with our three children, cleaning, fixing moving and decorating. That is the most important thing for us, not our online presence but the community’s real time therapy experience.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are a holistic psychology group practice with offices in Burbank, Sherman Oaks, and Pasadena, and we see patients across the lifespan. We have created enchanting child therapy spaces, and host an older adult support group, women’s support group, authenticity support group, movement and yoga assisted trauma group. We also provide telehealth sessions as needed. The name for the company came to me in 2017 at a Mindfulness Conference at UCLA with Deepak Chopra, Dan Siegel, Kristin Neff and many other extraordinary speakers. I was pregnant at the time with my third child, a sweet and spiritually curious boy who was a big surprise in our lives. I was greatly inspired at this conference despite being in an uncertain period in my life, and I remember the name as well as the logo being downloaded into my mind’s eye like the logo itself, a rooted tree with lights in place of leaves. Needless to say, I gave multiple births that year. Our company definitely feels like a family child, and currently it seems to be a young adult, thank goodness.
We offer a safe and loving container for our associates to learn from their clients, their supervisors, and most importantly from their own selves. The therapists that resonate with our team are naturally inclined to view and treat the whole person, family and community, and this holistic view gets tended to, honored, and expanded. With my training in psycho-analytic principles, and my investment in Jungian and alchemical studies, I direct the ship of my company to withstand and go beyond the unknown, to be intentionally unlearning, and to find the art in it all. Shadows are our friends, the dark is beautiful, and light is reflected in the mirror, be it our associates’ light reflected back to them by their supervisors, or our clients’ powers being enlightened by their therapists. We guide our clients directly into their broken hearts because it is their that their treasures and superpowers are found. There is wisdom in the symptom and we have the patience and passion for the deepest explorations.
Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
I have found that the strongest path for growth is your own healing journey. When you enter the chambers of your inner world, you meet yourself with honesty, and face your pain and limiting beliefs, which then give you the power to clear and shift them. Once you do the deeper work, the universe gives you what you already resonate with on the inside. The shifts start within. Then you can network organically, positively, and with an open heart. You meet the world with how you can serve them, not the other way around. My biggest marketing method has been the invisible kind, on an energetic level, and very Scorpionic, destroying what is in my way, and creating what is in my imagination, which is a field that already exists; the quantum world of infinite possibilities. I also see networking as play, because when you are feeling joy, you magnetize what you want. So maybe netplay is a better word.
Pricing:
- Our prices per session range from $125-200.
- We also some insurance plans. Right nowt they are Medicare, MHN/Healthnet, La Care/Carelon, Blueshield, Cigna and Aetna
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ccpsychology.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/consciousconnectionspsychgroup
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/ingasimonianphd
