A Therapist Can't Say That podcast

4:06

Dr. Kae Hixson and I started a new podcast! I wanted to give you a peek into what we’re up to. Welcome to The Kiln , where postgraduate education meets brave, bold, and imperfect therapy. We’re here to shake up professional culture—to make it braver and to help therapists rediscover their excitement for this work. At The Kiln , it’s okay to be imperfect. We’re building a learning community where practicing trauma therapy with courage is just as important as doing it with competence. On this podcast, we’ll share what we’re creating at The Kiln and why it matters. Learn more about The Kiln: Website Learn more about Dr. Kae Hixson: Website Learn more about Riva Stoudt, MA, LPC: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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MBNET: Confronting Interpersonal Trauma with Courage 50:13

17 weeks ago50:13

50:13

Over the course of three seasons, we have talked plenty about trauma. And yet, somehow, I have never explicitly described or discussed the modality I use with clients, Mentalization-Based Narrative Exposure Therapy (MBNET). MBNET is a methodology that Dr. Kae Hixson and I synthesized from two different approaches that we were independently trained in, and it’s what we teach at The Kiln. On today’s bonus episode, Dr. Hixson joins me to get into how we arrived at this blended model for treating patients struggling with complex interpersonal trauma. Listen to the full episode to hear: How MBNET builds on existing research and frameworks to create a novel approach designed explicitly for interpersonal trauma Why complex interpersonal trauma needs an approach that addresses incidents across the lifespan How MBNET provides tools to intervene in client avoidance of traumatic memories How the concept of traumatic mind mapping explains and addresses the depth and severity of interpersonal trauma Why we believe in the transformative power of clients’ stories in processing their trauma How the structure and flexibility built into MBNET make it easier to meet clients where they are Learn more about The Kiln: Website Learn more about Dr. Kae Hixson: Website Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: Season 1 Ep 10: Leave No Stone Unturned: The Healing Opportunity of Exposure Therapy With Allison Aosved Season 1 Ep 14: Growing Into the Light: In Memory of David Schnarch Brain Talk: How Mind Mapping Brain Science Can Change Your Life & Everyone In It, David Schnarch Season 3 Ep 5: From Childhood Wounds to Therapeutic Wisdom with Dr. Karen Maroda Season 3 Ep 3: Unraveling Popular Ideas: Challenging Neuroscientific Narratives in Therapy with Kristen Martin…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 3.12 - Into the Hall of Mirrors: Deciding What (and When) to Pathologize 26:25

19 weeks ago26:25

26:25

As I’ve been trying to wrap up this season of the podcast, I’ve been reflecting, in particular on my conversations about psychiatric diagnosis with Dr. Awais Aftab and Dr. Miri Forbes. I keep coming back to this question: How do we decide what human traits, behaviors, and subjective experiences to pathologize? What makes something about a person a problem that we try to fix? It’s a deeply complicated question, with few, if any, absolute answers. Yet I still think we have to wander that hall of mirrors, and I believe that how we conceptualize and approach the question is actually more important than any conclusions we might make. Because when we are able to articulate the various factors that influence what we pathologize and when, we actually increase our ability to apply those factors across contexts without needing to have an ultimate conclusion that is true for all people, in all contexts, at all times. Listen to the full episode to hear: How even using suffering as a metric for a problematic trait is often complicated by context Why we cannot discount the sociocultural context for an individual’s expression of traits Why pathologizing states as problematic across the board falls apart in real life How the medical model of optimal human functioning fails to translate to psychopathology Why we have to stay open to uncertainty in viewing our clients’ suffering and how we can help ease it Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling The Kiln School Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat Resources: Season 3 Ep 9: Epistemic Justice in Diagnosis: Exploring Borderline Personality Disorder with Dr. Awais Aftab Season 3 Ep 10: What We Talk About When We Talk About Diagnosis Season 3 Ep 11: Redefining Psychiatric Constructs with Dr. Miri Forbes Effective Reaction to Danger: Attachment Insecurities Predict Behavioral Reactions to an Experimentally Induced Threat Above and Beyond General Personality Traits , Tsachi Ein-Dor, Mario Mikulincer, and Phillip R. Shaver…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 3.11 - Redefining Psychiatric Constructs with Dr. Miri Forbes 1:00:59

26 weeks ago1:00:59

1:00:59

Everyone who has a foot in the world of psychiatric diagnosis seems to agree that our diagnostic system could, at the very least, use some updating, if not burning it down and starting over. So how do we approach developing constructs of psychiatric diagnoses that are more complex, more accurate, more flexible, and more context-specific than what we’ve been taught or what exists in the DSM-V? Today, I’m excited to share my conversation with Dr. Miri Forbes, an expert in psychopathology and one of the authors of the paper, “ Reconstructing Psychopathology: A Data-Driven Reorganization of the Symptoms in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. ” Dr. Forbes and her colleagues are doing innovative research on creating more empirically-supported diagnostic constructs. This approach to symptoms, categorization, and how we think about and use diagnostic constructs is one that I hope will help us get out of the habit of taking our current diagnostic constructs too literally. Dr. Forbes, an Associate Professor at Macquarie University's School of Psychological Sciences, is focused on improving our understanding of the empirical structure of psychopathology based on the specific patterns in which symptoms of mental disorders tend to co-occur. She is an Associate Editor of The Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science ,and serves on the Editorial Boards of Clinical Psychological Science and The Journal of Emotion and Psychopathology. Additionally, Dr. Forbes is a member of the Executive Board of the international Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) Consortium. Listen to the full episode to hear: How a dimensional model can potentially help decrease stigmatizing and pathologizing of individual human experiences How the regrouping of symptoms creates potential for more fruitful research into how and why symptoms cluster and how best to treat them Why reliance on current categorization and diagnostic criteria can cause clinicians to miss or lose vital information about clients Reckoning with the utility of existing diagnoses like BPD that may lack statistical support Learn more about Dr. Miri Forbes: Website Twitter: @MiriForbes Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling The Kiln School Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat Resources: Reconstructing Psychopathology: A data-driven reorganization of the symptoms in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders…

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Ep 3.10 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Diagnosis 33:01

28 weeks ago33:01

33:01

In my last episode, Dr. Awais Aftab and I explored the controversial nature of Borderline Personality Disorder as a diagnosis. One of the reasons I wanted to discuss BPD is that it opens the door for digging into psychiatric diagnosis itself, and that’s part of what I want to discuss more today. What is our purpose in using diagnosis? How does it benefit us as clinicians and the clients who receive that label? Getting more clear about the constellation of things we may be referring to when we talk about diagnosis, in general, is a crucial prerequisite for using specific diagnoses wisely, especially for using highly controversial and stigmatized diagnoses like BPD. Even if you never use diagnosis, the language and concepts of psychiatric diagnoses are out there. It shapes our professional discourse, past and present, and increasingly impacts our clients’ thinking when they arrive in our offices. Diagnosis is complex, multifactorial, and profoundly impacted by context, and we must contend with it. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why it is vital that we understand diagnoses and their value–or lack thereof–as constructs and constructs as tools How holding diagnosis as a lens, not a label, allows for more flexibility and curiosity The heavy lifting we expect from diagnostic constructs applied across multiple contexts Why it’s not always necessary to share how you’re applying a diagnostic construct to your therapeutic relationship with a client Why we have to learn to uncouple “difficult” from “bad” with our clients Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling The Kiln School Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat Resources: Management of Countertransference with Borderline Patients , Glen Gabbard…

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Ep 3.9 - Epistemic Justice in Diagnosis: Exploring Borderline Personality Disorder with Dr. Awais Aftab 41:36

31 weeks ago41:36

41:36

Suppose you polled therapists and asked them what the most controversial diagnosis is in the current version of the DSM. Many of us would likely say Borderline Personality Disorder, and it would certainly be in almost everybody's top three. I’ve been wanting to do an episode on BPD for a bit because there is something about this controversial diagnosis that allows us to explore the challenging and consequential nature of psychiatric diagnosis itself. To guide us in this exploration, I've had the privilege of inviting Dr. Awais Aftab, a leading authority in the field. His extensive work on philosophical, ethical, and scientific issues related to diagnosis makes him the perfect person to delve into this complex topic with. Awais Aftab, MD, is a psychiatrist in Cleveland, Ohio, and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University. He led the interview series "Conversations in Critical Psychiatry" for Psychiatric Times, which explores critical and philosophical perspectives in psychiatry, with a book adaptation forthcoming from Oxford University Press. He is a senior editor for Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology and has been actively involved in initiatives to educate psychiatrists and trainees on conceptual and critical issues. He blogs at Psychiatry at the Margins. In the conversation, we dig into whether Borderline Personality Disorder is “real” and what that means, how it relates to the philosophical concept of epistemic injustice, how context influences the utility of a diagnosis, and more. Listen to the full episode to hear: How treatment of people diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder frequently illustrates aspects of epistemic injustice/justice The ways that clinical setting and context influence the use, or misuse, of BPD as a diagnostic label and how that impacts patients How quantitative psychology is influencing how we conceptualize personality disorders Why a BPD diagnosis can be intensely valuable for some clients, and how it helps guide clinicians Why we can’t chalk up all psychopathology to trauma How calls for testimonial justice from psychiatric patients should serve as a corrective force to excessive skepticism of patient narratives Learn more about Dr. Awais Aftab: Psychiatry at the Margins X: @awaisaftab Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling The Kiln School Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat Resources: Borderline Personality and Self-Understanding of Psychopathology Epistemic injustice The epistemic injustice of borderline personality disorder, Jay Watts, BJPsych International A Metaphysics of Psychopathology , Peter Zachar Peter Fonagy…

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Ep 3.8 - The Medicine of Intimacy: Embracing Anger in Therapy 21:57

34 weeks ago21:57

21:57

Imagine yourself saying, “I am angry at my client.” If you immediately need to add a whole bunch of context and caveats to make that statement feel okay, you’re not alone. Admitting that we get angry with clients is uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable with colleagues and supervisors, and it’s definitely uncomfortable with clients. It’s even uncomfortable to admit just to ourselves. But anger is powerful, and it makes itself important, whether we want it to or not. Even the most mild-mannered, even-tempered person can experience anger towards a client at some point. It's okay, and it's a normal part of the therapeutic process. When anger presents itself, we have two options. We can repress and avoid something important, or we can choose to confront it and deal with it. As I so often tell my clients, before we reliably know what to do with a feeling, we have to actually feel it to get to know it. Expanding on last episode’s conversation with Dr. K Hixson about conflict with clients, I want to explore some of the reasons why we might get angry with clients–some situational, some due to the very nature of the therapeutic dyad–and where we go from there, even if it gets messy or uncomfortable. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why client relationships might, by their nature, be more frequent sites of anger than average interpersonal relationships How guilt and shame compound our discomfort with anger and get in the way of the curiosity and possibility that come with sitting with it Why it’s worth learning to understand our anger as a source of information about ourselves, our clients, our client relationships, or all three How anger is like fire or water–dangerous but capable of being handled with skill and purpose The social and cultural forces that make us even more reluctant to admit to anger at clients Why we owe clients and potential clients a view of our humanity within the work Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling The Kiln School Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 3.7 - Getting Into It: Overt Conflict with Your Clients with Dr. K Hixson 54:34

37 weeks ago54:34

54:34

Be honest. When you think about overt conflict with a client, is your first thought that it’s a site of exciting progress, full of potential for movement? No, of course not. I don’t either. If you’re like me, and I’m guessing a lot of you are, your first reaction to actual, or even hypothetical, conflict with a client is somewhere on a spectrum from deeply uncomfortable to scared. It's a shared experience, and it's okay. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable, challenged, and even scared. But these are the moments when we have the potential to do the most transformative work for ourselves and our clients. So, let's embrace these opportunities for growth. Dr. K Hixson returns to the podcast to dive into how we can handle overt conflict with clients, including how avoiding conflict damages the therapeutic relationship, common sites of conflict, the importance of not rushing a resolution, and much more. Listen to the full episode to hear: The many factors that cause therapists to be conflict avoidant, from cultural milieu to liability fears How the “good therapist” myth and taboos in the field impact common sites of conflict between therapist and client Why we have to disentangle fear of doing harm from fear of hurt or conflict Why we need to learn not to take responsibility for things that aren’t ours How denying a client’s bids for conflict and not calling them on their shit can damage the relationship How clients benefit from our modeling, that conflict does not have to be dangerous or suppressed Learn more about Dr. K Hixson: Website Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling The Kiln School Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat Resources: The Analyst's Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice , Dr. Karen Maroda…

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Ep 3.6 - How to Stop Treating Your Clients Like Your Parents 29:59

39 weeks ago29:59

29:59

How can we stop treating our clients like our parents? As therapists, we often share the experience of having been a parentified child, and this shared background fundamentally shapes the way we practice therapy, creating a unique bond and understanding among us. The relational patterns we developed as children, regardless of our current relationship with our parents, deeply influence how we manage our relationships with our clients. Recognizing and addressing these patterns is crucial, as repeating them without awareness can lead to disengagement, burnout, and even leaving the field entirely. So, how can we shift our approach from treating our clients as we would our parents to treating them as independent adults? Our journey towards treating our clients as independent adults begins with acknowledging our childhood patterns and the wounds we still carry. This self-awareness is not only a path to personal growth but also a key to improving our professional practice. Listen to the full episode to hear: How the relational programming we received in childhood can keep us and our clients stuck How successful therapy actually replicates the foundational grief of the parentified child Why your relationships with both your favorite and your most challenging clients might be where these relational patterns lurk the most Why we have to accept reciprocity and mutual gratification beyond collecting your fee in client relationships Why you have to stop coddling your clients and treat them like the capable, strong adults they are Why repressing your own emotional reactions to your clients isn’t helping them or you Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling The Kiln School Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat Resources: The Analyst's Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice , Dr. Karen Maroda Season 3 Ep 5: From Childhood Wounds to Therapeutic Wisdom with Dr. Karen Maroda Season 2 Ep 9: Immediacy in Therapy: Breaking the Fourth Wall with Dr. K Hixson…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 3.5 - From Childhood Wounds to Therapeutic Wisdom with Dr. Karen Maroda 57:42

43 weeks ago57:42

57:42

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: as a group, therapists tend to have some pretty similar formative childhood experiences. Our shared experiences as parentified children not only draw us to this field, but according to today’s guest, they fundamentally influence and shape how we practice once we become therapists. This understanding can foster a sense of connection and empathy among us, enhancing our ability to relate to our clients. From the modalities and techniques we employ to the all-too-common fear of hurting our clients’ feelings, Dr. Karen Maroda asserts that how we approach our profession is deeply tied to how we were parentified. By acknowledging and examining these impacts, we can take control of our practice, helping our clients grow and ensuring a sustainable career in the field. Dr. Maroda’s work is not just theoretical. It's a call to action, urging us to embrace clinical and personal courage. It's a roadmap, guiding us on how to navigate our roles as therapists in light of our formative childhood experiences. Karen J. Maroda, PhD, ABPP, is a psychologist/psychoanalyst in private practice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She is the author of several books, including The Analyst's Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice, and has published numerous journal articles, book chapters, and book reviews. She lectures nationally and internationally on the therapeutic process, including the place of affect, self-disclosure, countertransference, legitimate authority, and the need for clinical guidelines. Listen to the full episode to hear: How our parentification as children can be an indicator of our potential empathic strengths How parentification often sets us up to be conflict-avoidant and self-sacrificing, to the detriment of ourselves and our clients How treating our clients as excessively fragile or infantile hinders their ability to get better The real antidote to feeling frustrated and disengaged with a client who’s not making progress The relationship between our outsized fear of harming clients and our fear of our anger and frustration that was forged in childhood Learn more about Dr. Karen Maroda: The Analyst's Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling The Kiln School Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat Resources: Season 2 Ep 10: Client Relationships in the Trenches: The Role of Self-Validated Intimacy A Curious Calling: Unconscious Motivations for Practicing Psychotherapy , Michael B. Sussman…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 3.4 - Therapy in the Shaky Landscape of Contemporary Neuroscience 24:57

45 weeks ago24:57

24:57

As humans, we tend to like answers a lot more than we like questions. When we believe we have found answers, re-examining what we think of as truth is inherently destabilizing. In a relatively young field like neuroscience, paradigm shifts, misconceptions, corrections, retractions, and foundational remodels are inevitable. We already have more questions than answers, and each answer spawns a thousand more questions. That ever-unfolding feedback loop of curiosity, seeking, and finding is beautiful. However, it also causes problems when the paradigms we’ve adopted as true turn out to be mistaken. Do we throw out therapeutic interventions that work because the neuroscientific explanation becomes irrelevant or outdated? Or do we twist the evidence to make it fit to keep using these interventions? The former seems wasteful, the latter disingenuous. So what do we do? It's a daunting task, but acknowledging the vastness of what we don’t know or understand with certainty is a crucial step. This honesty and humility might just be the key to becoming better therapists. Listen to the full episode to hear: The high stakes of re-examining accepted paradigms for ourselves and our clients Why the therapy field’s longing for legitimacy makes us so prone to cling to neuroscientific concepts Why even rock-solid science probably still won’t erase therapy’s “weird” reputation Why it’s worth asking ourselves how we would explain what we do if we couldn’t rely on our favored neuroscientific explanation How over-adherence to neuroscientific explanations is fueling the toxic intraprofessional culture of therapists Why approaching neuroscientific concepts with humility and a grain of salt and maintaining a healthy skepticism with your clients isn’t going to kill your credibility Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling The Kiln School Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat…

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Ep 3.3 - Unraveling Popular Ideas: Challenging Neuroscientific Narratives in Therapy with Kristen Martin 51:41

48 weeks ago51:41

51:41

If you’re a therapist in 2024, odds are you have given a client a neuroscientific explanation for a symptom they’re experiencing or an intervention you’re using. You’ve probably done it sometime in the last week. So have I. Neuroscience-based language is the lingua franca of our field nowadays. As a field, we have largely abandoned the languages of behaviorism or psychoanalysis, though there are still therapists who use those frameworks. But if you asked most therapists right now why they think what they do works, you would get an answer about the brain and nervous system. This would be fine, except that at this moment, as our scientific knowledge rapidly grows, so do our claims about what that knowledge means, sometimes outpacing real understanding of the emerging research and its practical implications. So when I encountered an article in The Washington Post titled “ The Body Keeps the Score offers uncertain science in the name of self-help. It’s not alone ” by writer and cultural critic Kristen Martin, I was intrigued by the way she shed light on some of the neuroscience that we increasingly use to justify what we do as therapists. I invited Kristen to join me to unpack some of the all-too-common misrepresentations and over-interpretations and the wide-ranging implications for our field and the people we treat. Kristen Martin is a writer and cultural critic. Her debut narrative nonfiction book, The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow , will be published in winter 2025. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why we are so compelled to seek out neurobiological explanations for human experiences The significant limitations of the research that routinely gets cited to justify neuroscientific models of mental illness and trauma How poor communication, low science literacy, and social media exacerbate the spread of “folk neuroscience.” How neuroscientific explanations for mental health struggles are being co-opted and exploited by bad-faith actors and systems How biologically-based explanations for mental health issues can increase stigma How neurobiological models let us bypass our collective responsibilities to mitigate systemic issues associated with trauma Learn more about Kristen Martin: Website Twitter: @kwistent Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling The Kiln School Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat Resources: ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ offers uncertain science in the name of self-help. It’s not alone. Scanning Dead Salmon in fMRI Machine Highlights Risk of Red Herrings | WIRED Caitlin Shure, PhD Fundamental challenges and likely refutations of the five basic premises of the polyvagal theory , Paul Grossman How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain , Lisa Feldman Barrett…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 3.2 - Finding Our Place in the Lineage of Therapeutic Practice 26:21

50 weeks ago26:21

26:21

Since the last episode’s conversation with hannah baer about the Jewishness of therapy, I’ve been thinking a lot about lineage. When I first decided to do an episode on the topic, I was primarily motivated by wanting a deep sense of admiration for the Jewish pioneers of the field. Their contributions, which, like any minority group, tend to get erased as they are absorbed into the dominant culture, are invaluable and deserve explicit recognition. But our conversation and hannah’s original article also helped me connect to something more than claiming therapy’s Jewish roots and contributions to global culture. The American myth of being self-made or self-determined tends to alienate us from our lineages, but we are part of them whether we consciously engage with them or not. The history and context of our field matter, even when those histories are messy, ugly, and problematic. Contending with therapy’s history opens a dialogue between ourselves and our forebears in ways that move the profession forward and bring us together in solidarity and kinship. And that is a project worth taking on. Listen to the full episode to hear: How the American fantasy of being self-made teaches us to ignore the lineages of our practice The importance of pushing back against ahistoricism and divorcing concepts from their context How we are in relationship with our lineages, whether we are conscious of it or not Why critiquing and rejecting what you don’t like about the field’s lineage isn’t enough How acknowledging our lineage opens the door to deeper camaraderie and kinship Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling The Kiln School Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat…

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Ep 3.1 - Between Mysticism and Modernity: Reclaiming the Jewishness of Therapy with hannah baer 1:05:57

52 weeks ago1:05:57

1:05:57

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar: In a group of leftie social justice therapists, someone says that therapy is a profession founded by white men. Everyone else in the room nods along and acknowledges the white male hegemonic roots of the profession, then moves on to discuss other things. The problem with saying that white men founded therapy and is part of a white hegemonic legacy is that it just isn’t true. If you go down a list of the founders and early theorists of therapy as theory, discipline, and practice, you’ll find that many of them were Jews. Even now, many of our theory heroes and celebrity therapists are Jewish. And that’s not incidental or coincidental; it is consequential. Therapy is foundationally and elementally Jewish. To dig into therapy’s Jewish roots, I invited writer and therapist hannah baer to join me. We also talk about therapy’s relationship to Jewish mysticism and esotericism and delve into the ways in which therapy follows the Jewish tradition of marking and understanding the past. hannah baer is a writer and therapist based in New York. She is the author of the memoir trans girl suicide museum. Listen to the full episode to hear: The conflation of survival and accumulation of privilege that has happened in many Jewish families as they have been assimilated into whiteness How the rejection of psychoanalytic therapy is tied to the drive for assimilation into white culture and the rejection of mysticism Why it should be okay for therapists to accept that the magic that happens in the room can’t always be explained by science or reduced to an insurance note The Jewishness of verbalizing and analyzing trauma, and reinterpreting historic theory The radical promise of therapy to help people metabolize and contextualize their trauma so they don’t repeat it on others The American insistence on focusing on the now or the future at the expense of grappling with and understanding the past The impact of consumerism on how patients approach mental health treatment Learn more about hannah baer: trans girl suicide museum Instagram: @malefragility Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling The Kiln School Instagram: @atherapistcantsaythat Resources: Wikipedia: Who Is a Jew? Therapy Was Never Secular The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients , Irvin Yalom The Case for God , Karen Armstrong Hannah Arendt Building a Life Worth Living , Marsha M. Linehan Standing Together…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Introducing The Kiln: Revolutionizing The Therapy Training Landscape 50:35

1 year ago50:35

50:35

Co-conspirator and friend of the podcast, Dr. K Hixson, returns to share some exciting news about a true labor of love. We’ve joined up to create The Kiln, a comprehensive supervision and training program for pre-licensed therapists in Oregon. The Kiln will also offer continuing education to practicing clinicians. This venture was born out of our mutual frustrations and concerns with the direction, trends, and tendencies in the current state of our field, and our deep dedication and commitment to our work. Today, we’re going to get into why we are bringing an apprenticeship lens to postgraduate supervision, pushing back on current paradigms in trauma treatment, and how you can join our trainings or become part of our very first cohort. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why many grad schools and supervision programs fail to train great therapists The two fundamental philosophies that define our approach with The Kiln Why we teach exposure-based trauma therapies and push back on anti-exposure bias Why therapists need to be able and willing to confront themselves Trauma processing modalities that we are excited about working with and teaching Learn more about The Kiln: Website Learn more about Dr. K Hixson: Website Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror , Judith Lewis Herman Brain Talk: How Mind Mapping Brain Science Can Change Your Life & Everyone In It , David Schnarch…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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EP 2.12: 10 Things I Have Learned in 10 Years as a Therapist – Part 2 21:38

1 year ago21:38

21:38

To wrap up season two of A Therapist Can’t Say That, I’m continuing my reflections on my ten years as a therapist. I’ll be back in April with interviews on some juicy topics, but for now, here are lessons six through ten that I’ve learned over the last decade of doing this work. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why being overly passive for fear of screwing up might be the biggest mistake of all How courage is the true gatekeeper of all my clinical skills What it really means to take responsibility for what happens in the therapeutic space What I’ve come to deeply appreciate about the siblinghood of being a therapist, cardigans included Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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EP 2.11 - 10 Things I Have Learned in 10 Years as a Therapist – Part 1 23:43

1 year ago23:43

23:43

Every therapist remembers their first client. Many look back and cringe at what a bad job they think they did. But for me, I look back and remember the magic I felt in the room with my very first client. Which isn’t to say I’ve never done a bad job with clients. I have, just like we all have. But after ten years of being a therapist, when the work I do has become part of the mundane fabric of my day, I still remember so clearly the magic of being so in it with my first client. So today, I’m reflecting on ten years of being in this field. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why I believe that empathy is crucial to our relationships with our clients How making a new therapy with every client is about more than what tools we use Learning to have faith in the emergent process of doing therapy while confronting the unfixable The realities of balancing the amount of relational energy I have between clients and loved ones Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: Slapstick , Kurt Vonnegut Season 2 Ep 9: Immediacy in Therapy: Breaking the Fourth Wall with Dr. K Hixson Standing by Words , Wendell Berry…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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EP 2.10 - Client Relationships in the Trenches: The Role of Self-Validated Intimacy 32:08

1 year ago32:08

32:08

In the last episode with Dr. K Hixson, I said that our field is defined by the wish fulfillment fantasy of the parentified child. The parentified child wants nothing more than to get it right, manage the relationship, and have the parental figure be healed and available to you If you are a therapist and you think that you were not, in some way, a parentified child, you’re probably wrong or in denial, or you’re one of the very, very few exceptions to this trend. I stand by what I said that grown up, parentified children make up the bulk of this field, which means that knowing someone is a therapist means knowing something pretty significant about a dynamic that shaped them. But when we name it, there can be a sense of residual shame that comes up. Today, I’m digging into where that shame comes from, why so many parentified children end up in this field, and how the drives of the parentified child help and hinder us in this work. Listen to the full episode to hear: How being a therapist can actually be an impediment to personal healing The fine line between interpersonal hypervigilance and interpersonal hyperattunement How this work can reinforce patterns of relational perfectionism and imbalanced caretaking roles so common to parentified children How using immediacy with our clients can actually help us heal these patterns and tendencies The difference between self-validated intimacy and other-validated intimacy and how it applies to immediacy and self-disclosure Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: Constructing the Sexual Crucible: An Integration of Sexual and Marital Therapy , David Schnarch…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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EP 2.9 - Immediacy in Therapy: Breaking the Fourth Wall with Dr. K Hixson 1:04:04

2 years ago1:04:04

1:04:04

Immediacy may seem like a stale topic, but I truly believe that it has the capacity to be the primary tool of magic in the therapeutic relationship. Immediacy is risky. Immediacy is counter-cultural. Immediacy is a disruption to our people-pleasing tendencies. Immediacy challenges us to stretch our tolerance for uncertainty. Immediacy is a key to unlocking difficult clients. Immediacy invites us to do therapy by taking off the therapist mask and being seen. Immediacy is the mediator of therapeutic intimacy that can change lives. It’s not trendy, influencers aren’t posting about it, but it is incredibly powerful and effective. Today, my dear friend and colleague K Hixson returns for a conversation about immediacy and why we believe that it is such a potent tool. Listen to the full episode to hear: How immediacy lays the groundwork for intimacy and trust in the therapeutic relationship How we’ve confused therapy with customer service, and how immediacy breaks down our people-pleasing tendencies How immediacy can teach us to repair ruptures in a way that strengthens the relationship Why immediacy is so effective with clients with interpersonal trauma histories The role of self-disclosure in using immediacy Why over-attachment to protocols is really just wish fulfillment Why it’s vital to broaden our understanding of the history of the field and not just chase the latest trends Learn more about Dr. K Hixson: Website Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy , Irvin Yalom Negotiating the Therapeutic Alliance: A Relational Treatment Guide , Jeremy Safran, J. Christopher Muran…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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EP 2.8 - Paradox, Love, and the Therapeutic Journey 29:38

2 years ago29:38

29:38

Inspired by my conversation in the last episode with Dr. Andrea Celenza, today I want to talk about tolerating paradoxes and about love in the context of therapy. In our conversation and in her book, Sexual Boundary Violations , Dr. Celenza discusses the concept of the “multiple irreducible levels of reality in the therapeutic relationship.” None of those multiple realities is more or less real than the others and it’s essential that we, as clinicians, maintain our awareness of them. Yes, it’s hard. These multiple realities evoke a whole range of relationships and power structures that often contradict each other. Of course it’s hard. But when we try to collapse these realities, that’s where we get into trouble. I want to unpack what that means for us in our therapist-client relationships, and how it requires us to hold and tolerate those multiple realities. Listen to the full episode to hear: Three essential layers in the therapeutic relationship How the relationship dynamics that arise out of transference and countertransference are both real and useful, even when they contradict each other The paradoxical axes of power in the therapist-client relationship How multiplicity and power bump up against each other and why we have to tolerate the tension How collapsing the paradox of multiple realities in the dyad creates problems with intimacy–being either exploitative or superficial Why too little intimacy in the therapist-client relationship is a significant problem How love and grief show up in therapeutic relationships Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: Season 2 Ep 07: Let's Talk About Sex: A Humane Approach to Sexual Boundary Violations with Dr. Andrea Celenza Lynda Barry Season 2 Ep 4: What Happens When Our Clients Encounter Our Humanity? Sexual Boundary Violations: Therapeutic, Supervisory, and Academic Contexts , Andrea Celenza…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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EP 2.7 - Let's Talk About Sex: A Humane Approach to Sexual Boundary Violations with Dr. Andrea Celenza 50:34

2 years ago50:34

50:34

Sex with clients. It’s an interesting topic because it’s both very taboo and not at all polarizing. Many taboo topics are just that because discussion of them invites conflict. Sexual boundary transgressions aren’t like that. We can pretty much all agree that they’re wrong and bad. So then why is it so hard to talk about? I would argue that in this case, it’s because of fear of being in any way associated with a transgression of that magnitude, and the vicarious shame of being part of a group whose members sometimes commit these transgressions. But we have to talk about it and here’s why: a 2017 paper reviewed multiple studies and found that as many as 7 to 12% of therapists surveyed in those studies admitted to having sexual contact with a client. And that’s in self-reported surveys. The consensus among people who study and write about this topic is that the actual numbers are probably much higher. Obviously, just agreeing that we shouldn't do that and then moving on isn't working. We need to be having conversations that go beyond, “it’s wrong,” and “here’s some tips for holding boundaries,” especially if you are a supervisor or therapist of therapists. At some point, you will have a supervisee or client who comes to you about sexual attraction to a client and how you respond can make or break whether they go on to act on it. To guide us in wrestling with this very fraught subject in a deeper, broader, and more generative way, I am so excited to bring you my conversation with psychologist and author Dr. Andrea Celenza. Andrea Celenza, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and Assistant Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School. She is also Adjunct Faculty at the NYU Post-Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and The Florida Psychoanalytic Center. She has written numerous papers on love, sexuality and psychoanalysis. Her third book, entitled, Transference, Love, and Being: Essential Essays from the Field , was published in 2022 by Routledge. Dr. Celenza is in private practice in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA. Content note: This episode contains brief, non-graphic mentions of sexual assault, incest, and suicidality Listen to the full episode to hear: Why we need to reframe sexual boundary violations as something we are all potentially vulnerable to Risk factors and precursors for boundary transgressors and how they overlap with non-transgressors How the therapeutic relationship can mimic common problematic childhood dynamics for therapists The impact of negative transference on the potential for boundary transgressions Why we have to be aware of and positively leverage the power imbalances inherent in the therapist-client relationship Why we have to learn to capture and tolerate multiplicity in ourselves and our patients Learn more about Dr. Andrea Celenza: Website Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: Sexual boundary violations: A century of violations and a time to analyze. Confronting Our Stories: Recentering Narrative Work In Trauma Therapy…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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EP 2.6: The Vulnerability of the Therapist as Client 23:10

2 years ago23:10

23:10

Being in therapy as a therapist, and being a therapist for therapists, is a bit like magicians trying to entertain each other. We’ve studied the tricks and techniques. We’ve seen behind the curtain and we can’t pretend otherwise. There is enormous pressure for each of us to do our own work in therapy in order to be good clinicians for our clients, but therapists are truly a special population. We carry the weight of other people’s stuff, and we’re much more likely to need to unload about our work in session. And yet, knowing what we know, it can be difficult to let go–about work or whatever we’re trying to parse through–without fear of being judged as bad therapists. On the clinician side, we know, or at least sense, that therapists need something a bit more from us, but there’s no specific training in just what that is or how to give it. So what do we do? How do we approach being in therapy as a therapist and providing therapy to therapists? I’ve been mulling over those questions since my conversation with Dr. Elene Herrera in the last episode, and today I’m digging into where I think we can go from here. Listen to the full episode to hear: How therapists’ inside knowledge of the therapeutic process and of being a therapist impacts our experience of therapy What needs to change on the macro level of our professional culture to better provide treatment for therapist clients Why we have got to stop being so quick to harshly judge each other if we want to be better clinicians to each other Why we need to accept and invite human messiness into our sessions with therapists as clients What we can do in session to break through barriers to get our therapist clients to be vulnerable with us Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: Behind the Scenes: When Therapists Become Clients with Dr. Elena Herrera…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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EP 2.5: Behind the Scenes: When Therapists Become Clients with Dr. Elena Herrera 47:31

2 years ago47:31

47:31

Why is it so hard to be in therapy as a therapist? Why is it so hard sometimes to be a therapist for other therapists? What happens when we sit down and try to play this game we play with each other? I’ve been wanting to do an episode on therapists as clients since I conceived of this show, so I’m excited to share my conversation with Dr. Elena Herrera today. Dr. Herrera specializes in working with therapists as clients, and shares some unique insights about challenges and patterns she has noticed in her work, as well as frequent themes of shame and embarrassment and fear of judgment that come up when therapists seek therapy. We also dug into the broader issues of therapists feeling that they need to have achieved “well-adjustedness” in order to be good therapists, what it is that makes seeking therapy as a therapist feel so very vulnerable, and what happens when our work comes with us into the room. Dr. Elena Herrera is a bilingual (English/Spanish) speaking psychologist with over 15 years of experience treating adults, youth, and families. She has worked in college counseling centers, children's crisis clinics, and community mental health clinics helping clients from various ethnic, cultural, and economic backgrounds. She has experience working with a range of populations, from people facing extreme emotional crises, to college students adjusting to life away from home, and engineers and techies experiencing burn out and fatigue. Dr. Herrera is also a clinical supervisor, training and mentoring future psychologists. Currently, her practice focuses on treating men and women in tech and engineering, couples, and other therapists. Listen to the full episode to hear: The challenges of maintaining professional boundaries and distance when working with someone whose experiences may be so similar to your own Why seeking therapy evokes so much shame for therapists The layered fear of judgment, personally and professionally, that often comes up for therapists in therapy Why letting go of the therapist identity feels so vulnerable What happens when therapists bring their work with them into therapy Why it’s vital for therapists to put aside rigid rules and listen when a client reveals boundary or ethical violations Learn more about Dr. Elena Herrera: Herrera Psychological Services https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-herrera-psy-d-9737024/ Facebook: @DrElenita Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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EP 2.4: What Happens When Our Clients Encounter Our Humanity? 31:56

2 years ago31:56

31:56

Trauma therapists are often told that we have to prepare our clients for any and all disruptions to our schedules well in advance, to avoid causing harm to them or causing therapeutic rupture. But life happens. We have unexpected and unforeseen circumstances that mean that we may have to suddenly cancel sessions or rearrange our entire schedules around a new preschool pickup time. (Ask me how I know). And there are most likely therapists out there on TikTok or in Facebook groups who will judge us any time we have to make a last-minute cancellation or otherwise allow our own personal lives to intersect with the lives of our patients. It’s vulnerable to admit to patients that we aren’t perfect, that we have messy lives, that we aren’t in what Onyx Fujii and Asher Pandjiris called “a state of perpetual wellbeing,” in the last episode. If our clients’ perceptions of who a therapist can and should be are disrupted by our vulnerabilities, needs, and limitations, what does that mean about who they think a therapist can and should be? Since my conversation with Onyx and Asher, and with a whole lot of disruption in my own life and schedule, I’ve been thinking a lot about what happens when our clients encounter our humanity. Today, I’m digging into why it feels so vulnerable to share our life circumstances with our clients, why our fears of rupture when we have to might be exaggerated, and how cultural expectations of therapists as aspirational figures impact how our clients perceive us and what we do. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why we’re so afraid of violating the taboo of our personal lives impacting our clients Why our clients’ compassion and kindness in the face of our challenges is scary The intersection of mental health stigma and the therapist as an aspirational figure How mainstream perceptions of what therapy is and does impact who our clients think we should be What happens when therapy influencers on social media give clients unrealistic expectations for healing and wellness Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: The Use of Self in Therapy , Michelle Baldwin, ed.…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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EP 2.3: Normalizing Vulnerability: The Power of Authenticity in Client Relationships with Onyx Fujii and Asher Pandjiris 1:02:44

2 years ago1:02:44

1:02:44

If you’ve been in this field for even a couple of hours or so, you have almost certainly had someone try to impress upon you the importance of self-care. Not usually in the context of your self being valued for its own sake, but self-care that enables you to show up effectively for your clients. On the face of it, there’s not much to disagree with there. Yes, when we are adequately cared for, we are better equipped to show up and care for our clients. And yet, we’ve been taught that our self-care, and by extension our need for care, should be invisible to our clients. The tenet that if we are doing self-care right, it will be invisible, can contribute to the sense we often have that critical elements that comprise our humanity are a secret that we must keep away from our clients. The belief that exposure to our fallibility will harm our clients is so interwoven into the substrate of this field that we rarely think to ask the question, what are the harms we are doing by hiding our fallibility? What opportunities for connection with our clients are being lost when we perform what today’s guests describe as a “constructed state of perpetual well-being?” Onyx Fujii (they/them) is queer, non-binary, chronically ill, culturally Jewish, mixed-race clinical social worker in private practice in Philadephia (on unceded Lenni-Lenape land). Healing justice is at the core of their multidisciplinary practice where they offer trauma-informed, anti-oppressive psychotherapy, clinical supervision, and cultural humility facilitation and consultation; focusing on the intersections of gender, sexual orientation, race, chronic illness, and disability. In 2021, they became a co-founder and co-director of the Kintsugi Therapist Collective, a virtual community of care workers dedicated to embodied and liberatory visions of care. Their professional practices and writing center on the significance of identity, trauma, (in)visibility, and connection. They are committed to sustaining a social justice-orientated business that aims to empower and liberate through compassion and understanding. Asher Pandjiris (they/they) believes that everyone deserves to be supported in dealing with their own legacies of trauma and psychic suffering so that we can more easefully navigate this neoliberal/capitalist/deeply racist, transphobic and ableist heteropatriarchy that is traumatic for everyone, especially folks who are highly sensitive and/or navigate multisystemic oppression. The programs and workshops they offer are aimed at supporting folks in these challenges. They love hosting the Living in this Queer Body podcast and facilitating programs on topics that they feel deeply passionate about. Listen to the full episode to hear: How performing professionalism and well-being contributes to burnout, especially for marginalized and chronically ill therapists How acknowledging their physical and mental needs has actually created points of connection for Onyx and their clients Why Asher allows themself to “fail” their clients by showing up imperfectly How honesty and transparency can actually improve the reparative client-therapist relationship Why therapists may be uniquely expected not to need the same kinds of care as their clients Learn more about Onyx Fujii and Asher Pandjiris and Kintsugi Therapist Collective: Kintsugi Therapist Collective Instagram: @kintsugitherapistcollective Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: We Need Not Be Fine: A manifesto for mental healthcare workers who can’t go on like this…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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EP 2.2 Deep Play: Exploring the Therapeutic Playground 26:04

2 years ago26:04

26:04

For the last few weeks, I’ve been reflecting on the conversation I shared with you in episode 2.1 with Silvana Espinoza Lau about therapeutic goal setting. And what I’ve realized is that when you set out to look at the topic of setting goals in therapy in anything more than a superficial light, you relatively quickly start running into the question of what therapy is. Why, in order to examine the topic of therapeutic goals deeply and honestly, do we first have to reckon with the question of what therapy is? The existence of therapeutic goals implies something important about therapy: Therapy is a goal-directed activity. We aren’t just passing the time. Therapy is supposed to accomplish something. The intention is to get somewhere different than where you started, no matter how granular or broad your goals may be. If you don’t, it didn’t work. So what is it that we are setting out to achieve? What’s the overarching goal that we all share in the goal-directed activity of therapy, regardless of the diverse theories and delivery systems we subscribe to? What is the big goal of therapy? Listen to the full episode to hear: Why the concept of improving mental health raises more questions than it answers What differentiates therapy from other activities intended to mitigate human suffering The real impact of goal-setting in therapy What therapy has in common with game theory and play Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: EPISODE 16: Marketing With Integrity Deep Play , Diane Ackerman…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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EP 2.1: Balancing Goals and Healing in Therapy: Navigating the Tension with Silvana Espinoza Lau 1:05:43

2 years ago1:05:43

1:05:43

In the final episode of my last season, Therapists As Makers of Culture, I asked you to think about what kind of professional culture you want to leave behind for the next generation of therapists and clients. We have an opportunity, with a little luck and intention and skill, to change something important about the structures of how things have been. We have an opportunity to lay the foundations for a different, hopefully better, culture of therapy that we’d like to leave behind for whoever comes next. I want to make a professional culture where we challenge ourselves and each other to stretch our capacities to hold complexity. In this conversation with Silvana Espinoza Lau, we’re discussing some of those complexities. We’re talking about how we determine and assess where we’re actually trying to go with clients when we embark on the journey of therapy with them, the importance of paying attention to all of the different and sometimes competing agendas that inform a client’s stated goals, and how we can use connection and curiosity as our guideposts. Silvana Espinoza Lau (she/her/ella), is a healer and settler in unceded Kalapuya land of the Champinefu band. She holds several privileged and marginalized identities that inform the way she supports people. Experiencing an oppressive system, that at times told her she did not belong, has given her enough empathy to support people who have felt othered, unseen, underserved, and underrepresented. She loves to support individuals who feel as the representatives of their culture, or who feel in between cultures. She especially likes to support BIPoC, a population that has been largely underserved and asked to adjust to Western norms. Even though she believes in anti-oppression, decolonization, and liberation, her hope is to move towards dismantling and recreating therapy as centering the people who have been forced to exist at the margins due to our current oppressive systems. Listen to the full episode to hear: The complex set of factors that impact how therapists approach goal-setting before a client even gets in the room, from education to pressure from insurance companies Why we need to acknowledge the biases and agendas we bring to our practice, and the wider context of cultural agendas that impact our clients Why measured progress is not the same as real healing, especially within oppressive systems How to lean into curiosity and connection when working with clients with differing identities Learn more about Silvana Espinoza Lau: Seventh Self Consulting @ecolonizeyourpractice on Instagram Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: Pedagogy of the Oppressed , Paulo Freire…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 18 - Therapists as Makers of Culture 14:15

2 years ago14:15

14:15

As I've been reflecting on the conversation Dr. K Hixson and I had about clinical supervision and reflecting on the past season of this podcast, I keep coming back to the piece we stumbled upon about clinical supervisors as culture makers, culture replicators, and culture changers. It feels very fitting that we got there because this podcast itself was born out of the desire to change the culture of our profession. And as I've been sitting with that over the past few weeks, I’m becoming more aware of how important I think it is that as therapists–all of us, clinical supervisors or not–we cultivate an understanding of ourselves as makers of culture. And while it may not come naturally to us to think of ourselves as makers of culture, human culture is made by humans. We are all producing or reproducing that every day within our spheres of influence. And of course, the bigger that sphere and the greater your influence within that sphere, the more power you have as a maker or unmaker or reproducer of culture. And we know from Spiderman that with great power comes great responsibility. So the question remains, what kind of culture do we want to make? Listen to the full episode to hear: Why all therapists need to recognize the power and influence we wield, no matter the size of our practices How to think of culture in terms of lineages of interpersonal influence The shifts in therapists’ professional culture that I hope we will make Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling About Riva Instagram Resources: The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients , Irvin Yalom Maxine Hong Kingston…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 17 - The Intimacy and Aliveness of Clinical Supervision with K Hixson 1:04:54

2 years ago1:04:54

1:04:54

When you hear the phrase “clinical supervision” what do you think of? For me, the first thing that comes to mind is stacks of paperwork - or whatever the electronic version of that is. I think of the years-long slog of racking up hours while marching towards that finish line of professional legitimacy: licensure. It's not a very alive-sounding phrase, is it - “clinical supervision?” It sounds, well, clinical. And then - “supervision,” not really most people's idea of what sounds like a great time. It conjures up visions of surveillance, of being put under a microscope. Or from the supervisor's side, of being the teacher with the whistle on the playground who has to watch all the kids at recess and make sure nobody cracks their head open falling off the monkey bars. But if we extricate ourselves from the trap of looking at clinical supervision through the lens of bureaucratic hoop-jumping and box-checking, if we divest from centering risk management in our clinical and supervisory relationships, if we can tolerate our anxiety about someone falling off the monkey bars here and there, if we can do that, we can see something more profound in the space that's left. In this dance of apprentice and mentor, we are building professional lineages that will shape the culture of our profession potentially long after we are no longer around. So what kind of culture do we want to shape? Today I'm speaking again with my dear friend, colleague, and mentor Dr. K Hixson about clinical supervision. Dr. Hixson has made clinical supervision and training supervisors a cornerstone of their practice, and the conversation you're going to hear us having today is born out of a shared vision for what clinical supervision has the potential to be. Listen to the full episode to hear: The power of good clinical supervision to help early career therapists learn and unlearn, and repair relationships to power post-grad school Why clinical supervisors need to let go of their perception of themselves as the expert in order to develop excellence Why risk tolerance–not risk aversion–is an essential quality for clinical supervisors Why supervisors need to consider the impact they have in shaping the culture of early career and future therapists Learn more about Dr. K Hixson: Website Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 16 - Marketing With Integrity 24:31

2 years ago24:31

24:31

On episode 15, creative director and brand strategist Rachael Kay Albers said something that I have been turning over and over in my mind since: Marketing artificially accelerates the pace of human relationships. As soon as I heard her say that, something started to click for me about why therapists tend to dislike marketing, and it centers around the concept of artificiality. We see artificiality as phony or fake, as standing in opposition to authenticity. And therapists love to see ourselves as being driven by authenticity. We want to get under the external layers and into the real, raw stuff. It’s what we do. It’s not exactly a revelation that the primary complaint I hear from therapists about marketing is that it feels fake or superficial or inauthentic. But Rachael’s comment made me realize it goes deeper than that. And it can’t be remedied by telling us to just be authentic or ethical or don’t be a slime ball and overpromise results. What’s really happening is that we accurately perceive that marketing manipulates and speeds up the pace of our relationships with our clients. And we do not like that. But the more I think about it, the more I ask myself, aren’t we doing that anyway by the very nature of the work we do? Isn’t there a layer of artifice inherent and necessary to the work that we do? Listen to the full episode to hear: What aspects of our relationships with clients our marketing speeds up and why that’s not the worst thing Why artifice and authenticity are not opposites, or mutually exclusive in our practices How a measure of artifice can actually facilitate authenticity and be in alignment with our integrity Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling About Riva Instagram Resources: A Therapist Can’t Say That Ep 15: Is Ethical Marketing Possible? with Rachael Kay Albers…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 15 - Is Ethical Marketing Possible? with Rachael Kay Albers 1:16:16

2 years ago1:16:16

1:16:16

Here in 2022, therapists have largely resigned ourselves to the fact that we need to do some kind of marketing. We have been dragged into the world of social media, user generated content, and the imperative of the personal brand. And the necessity of marketing ourselves comes with a lot of uncertainty, discomfort, and unease. How do we market ethically? What does it actually mean to be authentic in our marketing? Is there any way to do this without feeling icky or like we’re selling ourselves? And our discomfort with the idea of marketing in and of itself makes us easy marks for people selling certainty, selling relief from our anxiety about marketing, and we can end up buying into cookie cutter strategies that don’t work. Which isn’t to say all standard marketing advice is bad–it helped me grow a thriving practice–but there is something deeper to consider about how and why therapists struggle with this process, and how we contend with it. Which is why I’m talking to Racheal Kay Albers, Creative Director and Brand Strategist at RKA Ink. I wanted to talk to Rachael specifically, because she puts the experience of marketing in 2022 into a much-needed historical and sociological context that gives voice to the way marketing grinds up against our values and our senses of ourselves. Rachael Kay Albers is a creative director and brand strategist for businesses that burn the rulebook. When she's not helping brands set fire to the box instead of thinking inside it, she writes about the intersection of branding, pop culture, tech, and identity. She also hosts the podcast, Marketing Muckraking, where she explores what brand culture is doing to us — and what to do about it. Listen to the full episode to hear: How social media skews our concept of how long marketing–or therapy–should take before we see results Why your brand is about how your audience perceives and remembers you, not your logo Why we have to go deeper than fill-in-the-blank “about me” and “who I treat” to make potential clients feel seen and safe Why marketing can be surprisingly emotional A way to think about niche that goes beyond ideal client profiles Why the pursuit of ethical marketing means leaving money on the table Learn more about Rachael Kay Albers: RachaelKayAlbers.com RKA Ink Marketing Muckraking Podcast Instagram: @rachael.kay.albers YouTube: @RKAInk TikTok: @rachaelkayalbers Twitter: @rkaink Facebook: @rachaelkayalbers Connect with Rachael on LinkedIn Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 14 - Growing Into the Light: In Memory of David Schnarch 26:46

2 years ago26:46

26:46

Two years ago, on October 8, 2020, my teacher, David Schnarch died suddenly. Anyone who knew Dave even for a few moments, could see that he had an arresting presence. Tall and broad-shouldered with high contrast, salt and pepper hair, strong features, and an electric gaze that, when focused on you, elicited the distinct and disarming feeling that he was looking into some dusty and hidden back corner of your soul. I have tried and failed to pay tribute to Dave before, but in this episode, I will attempt it again through my personal recollections of his work, and how his training and methodology impacted me and my practice. Content note: This episode contains somewhat detailed references to sexuality and mention of fertility treatment. Listen to the full episode to hear: How I first encountered Dave’s work in the self-help section of a new age store Why I booked a flight to Germany for a training before even reading the book it would be based on The vulnerable, though anonymous, share that made me feel profoundly seen Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling About Riva Instagram Resources: Passionate Marriage: Love, Sex, and Intimacy in Emotionally Committed Relationships , David Schnarch Brain Talk: How Mind Mapping Brain Science Can Change Your Life & Everyone In It, David Schnarch…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 13 - Why is Subsequent Therapist Syndrome Common in Our Field? 26:34

3 years ago26:34

26:34

In the last episode, Dr. Ofer Zur stated that he estimates at least 50% of board complaints in some way involve the subsequent therapist encouraging a client to initiate a complaint against a prior therapist. And most of these cases do not involve egregious misconduct or predatory behavior. Many of these cases result from misunderstandings, clients who are unreliable reporters, gray areas, differences in theoretical orientation that result in disagreement about the use of therapeutic practices, or poorly handled therapeutic ruptures of the sort that all of us have been, or will be guilty of, at some point in our careers. So of course, I keep asking myself why. Why is this phenomenon so common in our field? Why are therapists so frequently getting involved in the complaint process against other therapists? And what is it about our field that makes this more likely compared to other professional fields with board complaint processes? Today, I’m digging into the contributing and converging factors that may explain just what it is about therapists that makes this phenomenon possible. Listen to the full episode to hear: How the savior complex that drives many of us into this field may motivate therapists to encourage clients to initiate board complaints How risk management mentality and differences in theoretical orientation converge in our perceptions of harm How professional isolation and the uncertainty inherent in this work contribute to subsequent therapist syndrome Why curiosity and building real community may be the antidote to our unhealthy professional culture Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: Episode 08: Why We Become Therapists with Ben Fineman and Carrie Wiita Episode 12: Subsequent Therapist Syndrome with Dr. Ofer Zur…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 12 - Subsequent Therapist Syndrome with Dr. Ofer Zur 45:05

3 years ago45:05

45:05

Imagine you’re sitting in your office with a new client and the intake conversation turns to their previous therapist and they toss off a piece of information or a comment about something that their previous therapist did or said that really concerns you, maybe even alarms or disturbs you. How would you react? What would you do? If it occurred to you that might encourage your client to report their former therapist to the licensing board, you are far from alone. Today, I’m talking with Dr. Ofer Zur about what he calls subsequent therapist syndrome, a surprisingly common phenomenon where a client makes a licensing board complaint against a prior therapist based on the advice or encouragement of their new therapist. Dr. Ofer Zur is a psychologist, ethics professor, and consultant on ethical, clinical, and forensic matters in psychotherapy. He has a great deal of experience with the board complaint process and all of the reasons why therapists get embroiled in it, and the various outcomes of the process. We’ll discuss a variety of factors that influence our perceptions of prior therapists, the interprofessional dynamics at play that make it so hard for therapists to simply say to each other, “I disagree,” and how context complicates our perceptions of ethicality. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why context and relationship are vital to understanding the actions of a prior therapist The enormous influence of risk management on perceptions of clinical standards and minimizing harm How the wide spectrum of theoretical orientation makes therapists more likely to see each other as negligent or unethical Why it’s worth it to connect with your clients’ prior or next therapists Learn more about Dr. Ofer Zur: DrZur.com Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 11 - Anti-exposure Bias in Trauma Therapy 35:22

3 years ago35:22

35:22

In episode 10, Allison Aosved and I discussed exposure therapy for trauma, and the anti-exposure bias that we are seeing in the field. Today, I want to dig a little deeper into the context of that conversation, the factors that are contributing to anti-exposure bias, and how opinion on theoretical orientation inevitably shifts and swings over time, and how concerns about retraumatization and vicarious trauma may be impacting therapists’ ability to truly help their clients heal. Because my concern in the context of anti-exposure bias is that many people may be missing out on some of the potential transformative impact of trauma therapy when they don't have access to exposure-based methods that do utilize the narrative, and that access to these modalities is becoming increasingly limited. Listen to the full episode to hear: How differences in generational cohorts may be influencing view on exposure-based modalities Why our field is so prone with pendulum swings of prevailing opinion on treatment and best practices Why therapeutic rupture and client buy-in may be major contributing factors to adverse experiences with exposure therapy How anti-exposure bias increases opportunities for avoidance and therapist-client collusion How clients’ positive outcomes influence the impact of vicarious trauma Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: A Therapist Can’t Say That Ep 10: Leave No Stone Unturned: The Healing Opportunity of Exposure Therapy with Allison Aosved Revolutionizing Trauma Treatment: Stabilization, Safety, & Nervous System Balance , Babette Rothschild…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 10 - Leave No Stone Unturned: The Healing Opportunity of Exposure Therapy with Allison Aosved 1:00:12

3 years ago1:00:12

1:00:12

Trauma has become a huge buzzword over the past several years. In fact, I would say that trauma is having a moment. And because trauma is having a moment, there is a glut of people out there who are chomping at the bit to tell you what the best kind of treatment for your trauma is and what you should be looking for in a trauma therapist. And this has become a prime opportunity for people to sell their own theoretical orientation or opinion on trauma therapy, not as if it's an opinion or a theoretical viewpoint, but as if it's simply a statement of fact about trauma treatment in general. That theoretical difference being the schism between trauma therapists who believe that exposure, meaning a direct confrontation with the content of a traumatic memory, is a crucial part of trauma treatment and those who believe that it's not only not necessary, but that it is dangerous or potentially harmful. There is a shift towards the viewpoint that exposure is harmful in the context of trauma, when in fact it can be, and very often is, a powerful and life changing intervention and the backbone of the work that many of us do in treating trauma. And I'm concerned that clients may be being dissuaded from accessing kinds of treatment that could make a massive positive difference in their lives. Today, I'm talking with Allison Aosved, a clinical psychologist who specializes in prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD and does a lot of supervision and training in that modality. I wanted to talk with her about the importance of trauma exposure and some of the factors that may be contributing to increasing anti-exposure bias in this field. Listen to the full episode to hear: How the research on exposure therapy is affirming it as an effective treatment for PTSD and a range of other disorders How the fear of exposure therapy causing destabilization or retraumatization for clients isn’t borne out in the research Why the isolation of private practice can make therapists risk-averse in their treatment Why distress and discomfort shouldn’t be confused with danger How exposure helps uproot shame around traumatic experiences The role of informed consent in exposure therapy Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 09 - It's Complicated: Why We Become Therapists 26:19

3 years ago26:19

26:19

Why do we become therapists? You wouldn’t necessarily think this is a spicy topic, but it is. Some therapists would say that we as therapists are just people who are unusually compassionate, empathetic, and giving, even selfless or altruistic. I don’t agree. I don't think we're more inherently compassionate or giving people than anybody else. Often, we're people who took on caregiver roles in our families of origin and we learned to give in order to get, and ultimately, we’re no less selfish than anyone else. But if you say that out loud in a group of therapists, as I have, they will bristle. Unless it’s on Facebook or Twitter, and then it will be a flame war. The first answer is obviously the more flattering version - the version that’s been run through Instagram filters. The second answer might not be as flattering, but it might be more real. Why does it matter what we think our reasons are for becoming therapists? Why do we need to accept the less flattering portrait of ourselves? Because whether we acknowledge it or not, it’s in the room with our clients. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why the grandiosity of thinking we’re more compassionate or altruistic is a problem for our work as clinicians How attachment to the self-belief that we are especially compassionate is connected to moral injury, burnout, and shame Why we have to acknowledge that making sense of people often motivates us at therapists Why it’s necessary to interrogate our relationship to power and influence in our roles as therapists Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: Episode 06: Carrying the Weight of Moral Injury with Dr. K Hixson Episode 07: The Poison and the Cure: Expanding Our Understanding of the Wounded Healer Episode 08: Why We Become Therapists with Ben Fineman and Carrie Wiita…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 08 - Why We Become Therapists with Ben Fineman and Carrie Wiita 1:01:55

3 years ago1:01:55

1:01:55

There are so many ways, so many careers we can choose where helping people is the central thing. And the type of helping that we are interested in and pursue says at least as much about us, if not more, than the fact that we want to help in general. Yet, if you ask a therapist why we decided to get into this field, the answer you're most likely to get is to help people. But what are some of the other deeper, more complicated, maybe less flattering answers to why we became therapists? And why is it important to look at those reasons up close? Today I’m joined by Ben Fineman and Carrie Wiita, co-hosts of the Very Bad Therapy podcast, where they not only feature client stories about negative experiences with therapy, but they also call into question a lot of the conventional wisdom about what makes therapy effective and what makes therapists skillful. We’re discussing the reasons we become therapists, consciously and unconsciously, and how that shows up in the therapy room for us and for our clients. Ben Fineman is the co-host of the Very Bad Therapy podcast. He works as the Clinic Director of Sentio Counseling Center and the Chief Operating Officer of Sentio University, two new nonprofit organizations which use the emerging science of Deliberate Practice to improve the quality of therapist training and education. Ben is also an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist in the state of California. Caroline Wiita is a marriage and family therapist trainee in Los Angeles, California. Her interests include the professional development of therapists, postmodern approaches to psychotherapy, and the finer points of cheap wine. She also runs MFT California, an online catalog of marriage and family therapy (MFT) programs in California, and offers personal coaching for anyone thinking about becoming an MFT. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why we need to interrogate our reasons for becoming therapists beyond altruism The cultural assumptions and scripts we interact with when we tell people we’re therapists How our self-presentation impacts our relationships with our clients and how we can use that to generate positive outcomes How our conscious and unconscious motivations for doing this work show up in the therapy room Learn more about Very Bad Therapy: Very Bad Therapy Facebook: @VeryBadTherapy Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 07 - The Poison and The Cure: Expanding Our Understanding of the Wounded Healer 25:50

3 years ago25:50

25:50

Therapists are tasked with being secret keepers. The first layer of secrecy seems easy and simple. Maintaining client confidentiality. You can probably recite the limits of confidentiality off the top of your head, and you probably do it regularly during intake sessions. Everything else goes in the vault. But the vault isn’t a what, it’s a who. The vault is us. We mostly talk about confidentiality from the client’s perspective. The absolutely crucial nature of it, the ethical dilemmas that come up when we have to breach it, how the client’s understanding of confidentiality impacts the therapeutic process… All very important things. But we rarely talk about what confidentiality means for therapists beyond a set of rules or ethical puzzles to navigate. What does it really mean for us as therapists to be the bearers of all of this confidential information about other human beings? Content note: References to interpersonal traumas Listen to the full episode to hear: How bearing witness to the capacity for human beings to cause harm challenges our illusions and contributes to moral injury Why the disruption of our expectations of human beings as moral agents has the possibility of being generative, for ourselves and for our clients Why our institutions need to support the passage of intergenerational knowledge among therapists How therapists experience traumas intrinsic the work and as a result of the systems we work in Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: A Therapist Can’t Say That Ep. 6: Carrying the Weight of Moral Injury with Dr. K Hixson A Therapist Can’t Say That Ep. 4: Doing Our Own Work: Mental Health and Workplace Culture with Rebecca Ching, LMFT, PCC, Certified IFS Therapist…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 06 - Carrying the Weight of Moral Injury with Dr. K Hixson 52:14

3 years ago52:14

52:14

Moral injury. It’s a term that often evokes images of soldiers deep in the fog of war or perhaps of a surgeon in scrubs holding their head in their hands in the hallway of a hospital emergency department. A therapist sitting quietly in their office or in the cubicle of a community mental health agency’s open office plan isn’t really what pops into most people’s heads when someone says the words “moral injury.” But maybe sometimes it should be. As therapists, we are in daily intimate contact with the moral complexity of human beings. And we also have front row seats to the profound moral failings of the large systems that we and our clients regularly have to navigate. Today, I'm talking with Dr. K Hixson, a dear friend, colleague, and mentor of mine, as well as a community treasure in our therapist community here in Portland. Dr. Hixson and I get into some of the big factors that contribute to moral injury among therapists like individualism and the burdens of excessive responsibility that we place onto individual clinicians, and how the larger systems that we operate within prevent us from living out our own values, both as clinicians and as regular humans. Listen to the full episode to hear: How the concept of burnout can turn systemic failures into individual problems How the shortage of therapists contributes to moral injury in the field Why therapy can’t be divorced from the context of politics, capitalism, climate change, etc. How the individualized medical and insurance model of care fails clinicians and patients Learn more about Dr. K Hixson: Website Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram Resources: What is Moral Injury - Syracuse University Moral Injury Project…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 05 - How Are You Doing? Building A Culture Of Support 24:01

3 years ago24:01

24:01

As therapists, we know about the power of silence and how much someone is saying when they aren’t saying anything at all. And we know how silence around something big, like a client’s suicide attempt, sends the message that this is too big or too scary to talk about. But if we mostly all agree that therapists are responsible for doing their own self-work, it’s necessary to facilitate conversations around the decision-making that precedes a serious event or to simply check in on a clinician. Because we know that in the aftermath of a crisis event, when a therapist says they’re fine, there’s some work to be done. Yet there is a culture of silence from supervisors that contributes to the dysfunctional workplaces in mental health. Silence imbues the event with shame and inhibits the capacity to do self-work. So what stops supervisors from supporting their clinicians after a crisis? Content warning: This episode contains frank discussion of suicide. Listen to the full episode to hear: How supervisors fail their clinicians when they respond to crises with silence How silence is tied to the precarity of funding in community mental health Why the conflicting agendas of the multiple stakeholders in mental healthcare make clinician professional development and self-work an uphill battle Why systemic overhaul of the mental health field is necessary, and maybe inevitable Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 04 - Doing Our Own Work: Mental Health and Workplace Culture with Rebecca Ching, LMFT, PCC, Certified IFS Therapist 56:58

3 years ago56:58

56:58

It’s something of a cliché that being a therapist comes with the obligation to do your own work. And it happens to be a cliché I agree with. And if you’re listening to this podcast, I’m guessing you do too. But what happens when the institutions and systems that train us, employ us, and regulate us act as barriers to actually doing that self-work? Today I’m talking with psychotherapist and certified leadership coach, Rebecca Ching. In addition to therapy and coaching, Rebecca also has extensive experience with supervision, teaching, and advocacy in the mental health field and we’re going to dig into dysfunctional mental health workplace culture, how we got here, and why it’s so hard to change it. Rebecca Ching is a psychotherapist, leadership developer, writer, speaker, and host of The Unburdened Leader podcast, where she goes deep with leaders on how the burdens they carry inspire their life’s work, how they still threaten to take them out, and how they rise from them. Unburdened Leadership™ is the work Rebecca has honed to take leaders and entrepreneurs through so that they can have greater impact and legacy. She is also the CEO and founder of Potentia Family Therapy, Inc. and is a Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator and Consultant and Certified Internal Family Systems Therapist and IFS Approved Supervisor. Rebecca also leads, Rebecca Ching Leadership Coaching and Consulting, and is where she develops leaders through coaching and workshop experiences. Listen to the full episode to hear: How grad school, licensure requirements, and low wages pave the way for early-career burnout Why the professional culture of mental health needs to acknowledge the wounds that lead people into the field How the current educational and licensing systems create barriers to clinicians without financial privilege Why the emphasis on efficiency from leadership, funders, and the culture leads to therapists who can’t or won’t do self work Learn more about Rebecca Ching, LMFT, PCC, Certified IFS Therapist: RebeccaChing.com The Unburdened Leader Instagram: @rebeccachingmft Facebook: @rebeccachingmft Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 03 - Uncharted Waters: The "Good Therapist" and Collective Trauma 20:58

3 years ago20:58

20:58

The “good therapist” isn't necessarily the type of therapist you want to be. It's not the most actualized version of you as a therapist. It's not even necessarily a particularly effective therapist. The good therapist is about being seen as good and about being able to reassure ourselves that we are good when maybe we don't feel so sure. Maybe we bump up against the specter of the good therapist when we have difficult clients and we genuinely feel at a loss for what to do. Maybe it's when we have something heavy going on in our personal lives and find our minds repeatedly drifting away from a client in session and back to our own problem of the week, because a good therapist wouldn't do that. Maybe the good therapist peeks through the office window judging us when we go against established norms, like when we use self-disclosure more than other therapists might think we should, or talk more in session than we think we're supposed to, or whatever else gives us the sense that we're stepping outside of bounds. And the specter of the good therapist has definitely been much more activated for almost all of us during the past two years of the pandemic. The pandemic has made the gap between who we believe we should be as therapists and who we actually are much, much harder to bridge. Listen to the full episode to hear: How the good therapist archetype creates dishonesty in the name of professionalism Why therapists aren’t any more equipped than most people to address collective trauma Why we need to think beyond the good therapist archetype to meet the increasing uncertainty of the future Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 02 - The Myth of the "Good Therapist" with Nancy Jane Smith 52:58

3 years ago52:58

52:58

If you’re a therapist, even if you’re far from your practicum days, you can probably relate to the feeling of sitting in a session and being distracted by the thought of whether you’re living up to the standard of a good therapist. And you’ve probably had a moment where you’re sitting with a client or group and you heard something come out of your mouth and immediately thought, “That doesn’t sound like something a good therapist would say.” Who is this mythical good therapist? What are their qualities and where do those ideas come from? When you think about that archetypal good therapist that you compare yourself to, is that therapist a blank slate? Does a good therapist take all the most challenging cases? Do they self-disclose? Do they diagnose and write treatment plans? Are they a quiet introvert? Do they have it all together? Nancy Jane Smith and I are talking through some of these questions today and how uncomfortable it can be when we sense we’re going out of the “good therapist” box. Nancy Jane Smith, MSEd., LPC is a Licensed Professional Counselor trainer, and author specializing in high-functioning anxiety. Nancy completed her postgraduate training in Gestalt Therapy at the Gestalt Institute of Central Ohio and is a Certiﬁed Daring Way™ Facilitator, based on the research of Dr. Brené Brown. She has over 20 years of working as a counselor and coach and most recently created Self Loyalty Schoo,l an audio-based program to help quiet high-functioning anxiety. Nancy has written 3 books with tips, lessons, and stories on reducing anxiety, most recently, The Happier Approach: Be Kind to Yourself, Feel Happier and Still Accomplish Your Goals . Listen to the full episode to hear: Why Nancy struggled to feel like a legit therapist How norms around self-disclosure are shifting and why Nancy is open about her own anxiety How different therapist subcultures influence the image of the good therapist and create new pressures Why Nancy regrets being too passive with early clients and why some therapists don’t talk enough Why the good therapist isn’t an effective therapist Learn more about Nancy Jane Smith: NancyJaneSmith.com The Happier Approach: Be Kind to Yourself, Feel Happier, and Still Accomplish Your Goals Learn more about Riva Stoudt: Into the Woods Counseling Instagram…

A Therapist Can't Say That

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Ep 01 - Why I Started A Therapist Can't Say That 15:30

3 years ago15:30