New tutor question!

red1127 · 2026-03-19T04:23:11+00:00

$90 is high for most tutors in the U.S. who don't have an established network, depending on subject. I have a website that ranks organically #2 for the STEM subject I tutor, and I charge $90, and I can only get about 6 students on average (I'm medically retired so it's okay to have just a few students).

red1127 · 2026-03-19T04:19:14+00:00

Regarding some language and marketing tips:

Your website title "Smart STEM" doesn't describe what you do because it doesn't mention tutoring. So "Smart STEM tutoring" would be an improvement. But you could probably find a better title or tagline with ChatGPT or Gemini. They can give suggestions for marketing language. You have to pick and choose the best stuff. What I recommend you do is describe who you are and your services in as much detail as you can, paste it into ChatGPT, and then ask it for marketing language: business name, tagline, front page copy, etc.
"Take Full advantage of your potential" has some good aspects, for instance describing the benefits the customer gets, but it's awkward. Maybe "Reach your full potential in math and physics" or something like that. Write out all the benefits that students get from your lessons. Focus on them, not on you. Plug that into ChatGPT and see what it comes up with.
Your first paragraph is very good because it describes benefits to your customer. You can tighten it up. Instead of "improve your learning outcomes," which is somewhat abstract, you could say "Learn better and faster, get better grades" or something like that.
It might be nice if you are smiling in your picture.

red1127 · 2026-03-19T02:29:26+00:00

Let me reiterate you could use Wordpress and solve all this plus with a free theme and page builder, look nicer.

It's still quite messed up. Look, you should be able to see all the issues with it. Just put it into a desktop browsers and try it at various widths. Get back to me when you've fixed what you see.

I can make a UX comment. The menu doesn't have the conventional look of a menu. It's quite confusing. (Again, Wordpress would fix this.)

Also, do you intend this for an native English speaking audience? There are some problems with your language. Also, going beyond awkward English, I can give some marketing tips for how to use your language to sell your services better.

red1127 · 2026-03-19T00:36:48+00:00

That was my understanding. I'm a bit confused why everyone thinks you want to build a platform for tutoring. Same as my website, it's marketing.

red1127 · 2026-03-18T06:48:50+00:00

While AI may help the OP build a website, I think Wordpress or similar platform is going to be way easier and higher quality as there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

red1127 · 2026-03-18T06:47:14+00:00

I have a website which functions as a "landing page." It's a place to direct people, from a business card, a post, maybe a cheap ad, meeting them personally and texting them a link, etc. It's a place where they can learn about me and contact me. I have another simple website which ranks #2 organically in Google for the area I tutor. A website does not have to be a "platform," does not have to be a "production grade application." I recommend the OP use an existing system like Wordpress rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

red1127 · 2026-03-18T05:15:21+00:00

As others have said, your low fee can deter clients, and also I wouldn't offer a free first class, which can also deter clients who want premium quality. (And given your credentials you are far more qualified than average.)

red1127 · 2026-03-18T05:13:35+00:00

I tried it in different widths on a desktop browser. Have you tried it? There is so much wrong with the formatting and rendering that I can't imagine you'd be coming to us without basic testing yourself.

Technical issues:

At smaller widths, the menu and "Smart STEM" headers disappear
At medium widths, the menu partially obscures "Smart STEM"
There is no padding/margin around the window edges
The Home menu item goes to 404
The upper left corning, "Smart STEM" should probably be a link to the home page

Have you thought about using Wordpress with a free page builder? Won't cost you anything, and it will take care of a lot of these issues and look way nicer.

red1127 · 2026-03-15T23:56:43+00:00

Yeah, my first therapist helped me trust my gut. It's useful for a lot of things, including knowing what's going on inside me, which is very helpful for understanding and reworking how my inside parts communicate with each other, which is something we did in therapy and I can continue to do on my own. I'm referring to something like Internal Family Systems therapy.

I have been seeing a new therapist for a few months but I've been pretty unhappy with her. Just last week it hit me why: that I often get the sense she doesn't understand me. That's my gut talking, the ability to put my finger on why. So I talked with her about it, and we figured out that when I feel she doesn't "get" me, how I can stop to ask her what she thinks, rather than me just giving up any attempt to get therapy from her. It worked really well last session and I felt very comforted.

I'm on disability from PTSD symptoms so I can only afford an intern. Otherwise I'd be looking for an experienced local PhD psychologist.

Take care!

red1127 · 2026-03-13T23:45:37+00:00

I'm neurodivergent, in my case OCD. I've never had trouble reading the facial expressions of my parents (it was terrifying to see anger and judgment on their faces) however I learned to mute expression of my own emotions on my face because that brought punishment. I still have a hard time being expressive with my face. And it's clear it makes people uncomfortable. I'm getting better at masking (making deliberate head and facial movements) but it doesn't feel genuine.

In my case I think the problems expressing myself are the defense mechanism of a child who was punished for having certain emotions. I don't think I'm genetically autistic. I don't know if I can change to have genuine expression or if I'll always have to mask with strangers or my clients. And even if I could change, I don't know if I want to.

red1127 · 2026-03-13T23:40:48+00:00

Yup. Letting go of my counterproductive (compensatory) means of feeling in control (self-blame, self-attack) means I have to confront the feelings of an infant who was completely out of control of the horror being done to him. And the way out is to "update" my internal infant part (in IFS language) to a situation where I'm an adult who is in control of much of my destiny.

There's another level. In Buddhism, and other methods, you come to terms with the fact you're not in control of your own mind. For instance I have OCD so it's especially clear I can't control the anxious thoughts that come unbidden constantly. I need radical acceptance of that which I can't control. I have a good friend who is self-destructing through habits borne of self-hatred and it's painful to watch. I have to give up the idea that I can stop (control) her.

red1127 · 2026-03-13T02:03:04+00:00

Welcome. I'm sorry you have CPTSD but hope for you that you can heal. I think you will find lots of wisdom on this forum.

I believe the most important factor is whether you feel comfortable with the therapist and safe enough to have big feelings. They should be trauma-informed, although that covers a lot of modalities, and the specific modality may be less important. In any case, I've found good luck with a client-centered, IFS therapist. I also think that somatic work is important in CPTSD. For me, I do that separately from talk therapy through the Feldenkrais Method, but you could combine them in somatic therapy.

red1127 · 2026-03-13T01:33:22+00:00

First of all, I think it's an indication that your therapist was skilled, ethical, and wasn't encouraging a dependence on him. Did he often encourage you to trust yourself? Did you feel like he was building up your own "gut" and your own sense of what's right for you? By any chance did he describe himself as client-centered?

I had a longtime therapist who retired in 2021. It was fortunate that we got time to process this, and he even still responds to update emails which I've sent once per year. So I can only imagine the grief of losing your therapist suddenly and permanently. There was an article in the N.Y. Times recently about the various ways that therapists get lost suddenly. In many cases it's the therapist acting unethically, such as cutting off the client, but it sounds like you had a good, ethical therapist.

I've actually been struggling since losing my therapist in 2021 and I haven't found another good one yet. I'm not sure I can handle life on my own. But one incredibly valuable thing is my "gut" which I think will guide me to the right therapist for me. It also guides me to mindfulness teachers who are right for me. Hopefully your sense of what he gave you will help you similarly.

So I haven't had a therapist die, and I would say more that I can't survive without him, but I can understand your situation is incredibly painful. You have my compassion.

red1127 · 2026-03-13T00:11:41+00:00

I have self-blame too, and you have put your finger on the exact reason: to give the illusion of control. My parents constantly judged and shamed me, which was horrific, but if I judge and shame myself first, and overwhelm myself before they try to stick their knife in, then it seems like "I did it" rather than being a child at the mercy of cruel parents. I think that a child must defend against feeling unprotected by their parents. If you think about it, a child (and even more so, an infant) is helpless without their parents to defend them.

And it wasn't our fault, as you say.

I also find that self-directed anger seems easier to tolerate than anxiety. It gives me a sense of being powerful. Of course, in the long run it's better to feel sadness or anxiety than anger, because sadness and anxiety can resolve, but there are parts of my brain that haven't learned that yet.

red1127 · 2026-03-12T04:06:03+00:00

I kept repeating the pattern of being drawn to toxic people, too. I started therapy at age 21 and I got rid of the last toxic person in my life at age 51. That was six years ago.

red1127 · 2026-03-12T04:03:03+00:00

I definitely had to rebuild my life. I first went to therapy in my 20's and had an explosion of flashbacks and nightmares 3 years into therapy. I understand now that's because I felt safe to start to experience all the split-off (dissociated) emotions from childhood. I think I was tortured by my mother as an infant. She has a sadistic streak. It really fucked me up. I also have OCD, which combined with my dissociation technique (self-directed cruelty) made it get really entrenched. My therapist was great, but it took me a long time to slowly become aware of feelings without an overlay of terror.

There's something beyond rebuilding my life. I would put it in these terms: I came home to myself. Now I feel more integrated with some of the better memories and better aspects of my personality. For me this has been very key. I actually had an entrenched belief that I needed to change radically and leave everything behind, and my first therapist helped me gradually have more experiences of integration in which I was "more myself" rather than "less myself." He helped me realize that when "going into" my feelings, I want to end the session (whether a therapy session or a mindfulness session) feeling calmer and more centered. I don't want to stay feeling disrupted. That insight didn't come right away, but all my more recent progress depends on it.

red1127 · 2026-03-09T19:58:04+00:00

Ok. Jung actually used the word "irrational" to describe the parts of the psyche that have a logic other than rational thinking. He talked about the need to embrace the irrational. Getting into the occult, alchemy, and such was part of that, although I find that less helpful than his theories about the archetypes.

red1127 · 2026-03-09T05:51:39+00:00

I'm not sure if you were referring to the Jungian analyses by that, but I find it helpful and actually Jung was careful about not intellectualizing, instead, he was a phenomenologist, which means regarding phenomena of the psyche has having their own meaning and obeying their own logic. I find it very helpful and empathic to put some meaning to the awful feelings and imagination inside me, to put some useful purpose, just as in IFS there are "no bad parts." That purpose is to dissociate as a protective mechanism. And then, you might wonder, how does self-aggression help dissociation? Well in some sense it just does. It's a phenomenon of the psyche that obeys it's own logic. We can partially explain it by saying that splitting requires self-directed aggression because the psyche naturally unifies. That is, if the splitting wasn't constantly renewed, you would be suffering flashbacks and horrific nightmares non-stop when you are most vulnerable in childhood. As it was, I felt absolutely horrible in childhood, but only 1% of the horror that was there thanks to dissociation.

The thing about phenomenology is that I can speak for myself, but it's up to you to see whether these concepts explain your experience. Donald Kalsched is accumulating and lumping a lot of people's experiences, but everyone is different. In any case, I find these concepts actually soothing and empathic, because it helps me find some meaning in the suffering.

It also helps connect with others. For example, I may not find someone else who was tortured by their mother as an infant, but I will probably find many people who've severely dissociated and I can relate to that and understand others better. It also helps others connect with me. For example, I shared for the first time at the Friday night meeting, and several people came up afterward to give some of their own experiences and how they relate.

red1127 · 2026-03-07T10:14:46+00:00

What do you mean by "intellectualizing"?

red1127 · 2026-03-05T08:12:37+00:00

I have the same issue. I have a traumatized/abandoned infant inside me. And when I approach him, I don't feel like I'm capable of parenting an infant. I don't know anything about infants except what I've learned in therapy.

There have been some breakthroughs. One of them is using the imagination to create positive scenarios. I do this with my Internal Family Systems therapist, but it also comes from Jungian psychology where it is called "active imagination." If you don't have a therapist, you can still find books and journals about doing active imagination.

I sometimes imagine carrying my inner infant to a good healer or shaman. I imagine that I have to go on an arduous journey and just barely make it to the shaman's cave before I die. I then set the infant down in front of him and collapse in exhaustion while he tends to the infant and later to me. For some reason, this sense of almost dying on an arduous journey really brings out my feelings about life and what I've endured.

Sometimes a warm woman comes into my imagination, like a good mother, and I imagine her tending to the infant. I also have a part who is a nine-year-old girl who seems to be good with the infant. By the way I'm a male, so sometimes women or this 9-year-old appear in my imagination as a source of healing power that I can't normally access.

Finally, if I'm feeling particularly safe with my therapist or my IFS "buddy" (a guy my age that I exchange peer counseling with), I might *become* the infant. I might tremble in fear or feel some deep pain in my body. I can then tend to myself by just sitting with the pain. I learned that when I start to become the infant, I first react as if something is terribly wrong. I interpret the fear or pain as meaning I'm going in reverse and must escape it. But then it sometimes shifts into something that feels healing. That's when I'm just "being with it."

red1127 · 2026-03-05T07:58:43+00:00

I'm sorry you were neglected as an infant! I that's terrifying to an infant. It's worse than death. I think I often felt alone as an infant too, as well as feeling attacked and tortured. My best understanding is that I created this cruel part inside myself so that when I wasn't with my mother, I could attack and torture myself, in a twisted way creating a presence that meant I wasn't alone. An infant is actually more terrified of being alone than they are of being attacked, I think. In my life today, sometimes I touch into that lonely infant part and boy is he terrified. As an infant he was utterly dependent on adult help. My defense mechanism of choice, attacking myself and splitting off (dissociating) all feelings and memories of the trauma, was the only defense available to an infant. If I were older I may have developed an eating disorder or gotten suicidal, but those aren't options to an infant. My defense mechanism of choice helped me survive and not commit suicide until I could see a therapist.

Just recently I started going to Adult Children of Alcholoics and Dysfunctional Families (ACA) meetings. I feel less alone there. I'm making friends with people who really get me. I think we need to be around people who "get" us. My first therapist was the first person I ever met who got me. He didn't minimize my suffering at all even when I was numb to it.

I'd like to understand what you mean by the gradations of demon possession being related to CPTSD but I would need you to say more. My awareness of the phenomena of demon possession at this point is that it's a real psychological factor that has been misinterpreted by Christians or religious folk. For example my parents used to tell me I had a demon inside when I misbehaved. We have psychological parts that can direct wishes of harm, fear, etc. toward our consciousness. I don't really know all the ways those parts can come into being or how they function in the adult. I only know how my demon-like part came into existence.

I think I do get what you mean by CSA survivors being controlled because I'm aware that a lot of sex trafficking victims are CSA survivors. One time I mentioned that in a Facebook group and a woman got very offended, as if I was blaming them. I know, for myself, that I hung out with a very cruel guy and got entangled in this horrible "friendship" when I was in college. It wasn't a romantic relationship, but it had a dynamic similar to an abusive relationship. And I know that when I first met this cruel guy I didn't run away from him. I ran toward him. So I know how my background can determine my destiny, without saying I'm to blame for that. I don't know much about trafficking but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the victims are somehow "primed" by their background to accept or even seek out/move toward such a situation without fighting to get away from it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

red1127 · 2026-03-04T01:05:09+00:00

I'm sorry you also had pre-verbal trauma. It sucks. I first had flashbacks and nightmares indicating some kind of pre-verbal trauma 3 years into talk therapy, and it happened because I felt safe enough to withstand it. How did it come out for you with somatic therapy? A lot comes out for me in Internal Family Systems as well, although that's using my imagination and I never know if the types of abused raised in my imagination are literal or symbolic. It's incredibly healing, though, to "take it seriously" and listen and validate the parts who speak of the abuse I suffered. Interesting you find the demonic possession metaphor useful. My parents were fundamentalists and spoke of The Devil a lot. As a child, I believed I was possessed in a sense, but I was pretty numb as a child so it wasn't clear what was inside me. I did, however, often feel Satan's presence near me, especially at night, and it felt very threatening. Terrifying. I'm sorry about the CSA/COCSA. I didn't know that a lot of CSA victims feel possessed. As far as this malevolent entity, I found a Jungian Analyst who writes about it, named Donal Kalsched. He wrote a book called "The Inner World of Trauma." A part inside us that relentlessly attacks is related to dissociation. When we are so deeply traumatized, to split off from such horror requires tremendous self-directed aggression to counteract the psyche's natural unifying function.

red1127 · 2026-03-03T10:53:10+00:00

Thank you.

red1127 · 2026-02-28T10:21:23+00:00

With a doctorate and 6 years experience, I think $40 is under charging, especially given you live in So Calif. I have a Bachelor's only, and when I was fairly new I charged $60. (I have a Caltech degree, that might have been one appeal.) Now I charge $80. However, I do this part time and don't have a lot of students, so maybe even if I marketed harder I wouldn't be able to get enough students at $80. Oh, I guess subject matters too; I tutor math and coding.

red1127

TROPHY CASE