3 R-CERPs

Hold On For One More Day

Managing the Emotional Arc of the Client Relationship, Combating Family Overwhelm and Coping with Provider Burnout

Annie Frisbie, MA, IBCLC, PMH-C
Abstract
The clinical relationship between an IBCLC and a family has an emotional arc. It begins with hope and anxiety, moves through a middle full of waiting and adjustment, and ends in a way that is rarely satisfying. This course focuses not on the logistics of running a practice but on the inner experience of managing that relationship: what it feels like to invest in a case, what happens when outcomes are unknown, and how providers can find genuine completion when the story does not resolve the way they hoped.

Through a composite longitudinal case study followed across six visits and three and a half months — from a complex acute presentation through graduation from care — and drawing on frameworks from The Resilient Practitioner (Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison) and Burnout (Nagoski & Nagoski), this course offers IBCLCs specific tools for staying present with families without losing themselves inside the work. Three embedded reflection pauses give participants structured time to apply concepts to their own practice in real time.

This course is designed for IBCLCs in private practice and any outpatient setting where the provider carries the relationship across multiple visits over time. It is appropriate for IBCLCs at any career stage, with particular relevance for those experiencing compassion fatigue, high case complexity, or uncertainty about how to manage their emotional investment in client outcomes.

Learners say 

Annie's presentations are always focused upon the practical - what we need to know to do a good job, within our scope, and with heart.

Gale N. Touger, FNP-BC, IBCLC

Annie provides a wealth of information in a clear, concise manner. 

Kate Seeley, RN, IBCLC

I love Annie's layers of learning from my early days getting my feet wet with the podcast, studying for the exam, and contemplating private practice. Each platform (podcast, book, business coaching, course) builds on the next with evolving examples. The content doesn't live in the past but is alive and adaptable. As I navigate and grow in private practice with each consult, the information takes on new meaning and application so that I never find myself saying "I already know this."

Sarah Hogan, IBCLC
Meet the Instructor

Annie Frisbie, MA, IBCLC

Annie Frisbie MA, IBCLC has been a lactation consultant in private practice in New York City since 2011. She is also the creator of the Lactation Private Practice Essential Toolkit and the accompanying Lactation Private Practice Essential Course, and is the co-host of the Lactation Business Coaching Podcast. In 2018 Annie was honored with the US Lactation Consultant Association's President's Award, "awarding those that demonstrate extraordinary service to the association and profession." 

Annie has a BA from Franklin and Marshall College with a double major in American Studies & Theatre, Dance, and Film, and an MA in Cinema Studies from New York University. She lives in Queens, New York with her husband, their two children, and their two cats. 
Patrick Jones - Course author
Knowledge Gap
The IBLCE certification process prepares IBCLCs extensively in clinical assessment, care planning, and evidence-based lactation management. It does not prepare them for the relational and emotional dimensions of sustained private practice: the weight of uncertain outcomes, the grief of cases that do not resolve, the difference between caring burnout and meaning burnout, and how to find psychological closure when a family simply disappears.

Without language and tools for these experiences, providers often carry cases in ways that compound over time. Complex cases involving perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, financial barriers to care, unsupportive partners, and the legacy of systemic racism in healthcare present challenges that fall outside the lactation scope of practice — yet affect every aspect of the feeding relationship. Providers who do not have frameworks for navigating these limits risk both over-functioning (taking on what is not theirs to carry) and under-functioning (referring too quickly to avoid discomfort).

This course addresses the gap between clinical competence and relational sustainability. Participants will leave with specific, named practices for managing their emotional investment, completing stress cycles, building effective referral circles, and finding their way to done when the ending does not arrive cleanly.
Objectives

01

Describe the emotional arc of the lactation consultant/client relationship across its three phases — acute, ongoing, and completed — and identify the provider’s emotional experience at each phase

02

Apply open-ended questioning, goal reframing, and ‘yes-and’ communication strategies to center the family’s goals while protecting the provider’s emotional investment

03

Identify and apply at least two strategies for recognizing when personal history or emotional investment is influencing clinical judgment

04

Distinguish between caring burnout and meaning burnout and identify the specific provider beliefs and behaviors that contribute to each

05

Explain how placing ideology over individual family needs contributes to meaning burnout and identify alternative approaches that sustain clinical purpose

06

Describe the scope and limits of the IBCLC role within a broader circle of care, and apply referral language that expands the team rather than transferring responsibility

08

Use at least two concrete practices for finding psychological completion when case outcomes are ambiguous or unknown

09

Name the physiological basis of the stress cycle and identify at least one personal practice for completing it following emotionally demanding clinical work

10

Get "Hold on For One More Day" by Wilson Philips stuck in your head
IBLCE Content Outline
Section V — Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology: V.A Transition to Parenthood; V.G Maternal Mental Health
Section VII — Clinical Skills: VII.B1 Active Listening; VII.B2 Anticipatory Guidance; VII.B3 Care Plan Development and Sharing; VII.B4 Educating Mothers and Families; VII.B6 Emotional Support; VII.B7 Empowerment

Course Lessons

Annie Frisbie IBCLC Inc has been accepted by the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners® (IBLCE®) as a Preferred Provider for the listed Continuing Education Recognition Points (CERPs) programme. Determination of CERPs eligibility or CERPs Provider status does not imply IBLCE’s endorsement or assessment of education quality.  INTERNATIONAL BOARD OF LACTATION CONSULTANT EXAMINERS®, IBLCE®, INTERNATIONAL BOARD CERTIFIED LACTATION CONSULTANT®, and IBCLC® are registered marks of the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners.

Annie Frisbie IBCLC, Inc actively supports the World Health Organization (WHO) International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and subsequent World Health Assembly (WHA) resolutions. Therefore, Annie Frisbie IBCLC, Inc is not a company, inclusive of manufacturers, distributors, or marketers, whose products fall within the scope of the World Health Organization (WHO) International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (1981) and subsequent World Health Assembly (WHA) resolutions (e.g., infant formula, bottles, and teats).

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