Career Trekking with MTSG: Interview with Marissa Esquibel, LMFT

An interview with Marissa Esquibel, LMFT on her journey from community mental health to private practice. Curt and Katie talk with Marissa about how she used the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast to shift her mindset and change her career trajectory. Marissa highlights the benefits of belief, guidance, and community.

It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

Interview with Marissa Esquibel, LMFT

“Though she be but little, she is fierce.”

– Shakespeare

Marissa Esquibel is not like a regular therapist, she’s a cool therapist. With her practice located near Los Angeles, Marissa is on a one-woman mission to empower young women to stop playing small and to start taking up space. She works exclusively with young adults, 20-something’s, who are checking off all the boxes of “success,” and yet, they feel like failures internally. They often come to Marissa dealing with depression, anxiety, imposter syndrome, or codependency. As an undergraduate, she attended UC Santa Barbara and then received her Masters in Clinical Psychology from California State University, Fullerton. In September of 2018, she became licensed and opened-up shop to her virtual therapy practice in March 2020. When Marissa is not in session with patients, she spends her time reading, hanging out with friends and family, binging on podcasts and audiobooks, attending her own therapy, and making sure to get her 10,000 steps a day. She loves her work, job, and life and looks forward to connecting with you.

Learn more about Marissa at therapywithmarissa.com

In this episode we talk about:

Marissa’s burnout story and how she made the trek from community mental health to private practice
Reflections on the question: what do therapists get wrong (and the self-analysis and feedback informed nature of the question)
The idea of self-sacrifice and hard work being required to be a good therapist
The importance of critical thinking regarding what is effective, what is healthy for me
How Marissa made the decision to move to a group practice and then her own private practice
Marissa’s experience at Therapy Reimagined 2019 and her follow up with speakers
The need for belief, guidance, and community
Marissa talks about the episodes that helped her to move forward
How Marissa implemented a new plan for her career
“I choose this agony, this heart ache, this effort” – Marissa Esquibel, LMFT
Marissa’s choice to be vulnerable at this time and to keep on going
The determination and belief that has kept Marissa moving forward on her vision and mission
The need to hear from (and connecting with) people at each stage of career development

Resources mentioned:

We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!

therapywithmarissa.com

Marissa’s social media:

https://www.instagram.com/therapywithmarissa/

https://www.tiktok.com/@therapywithmarissa

Tiffany McLain – Lean in Make Bank

Relevant Episodes:

Toxic Work Environments

Joining Your Association

Making Bank as a Therapist

Getting a J-O-B

Interview Strategies for Therapists

The Burnout System

Giving and Getting Good Supervision

Therapist Safety

Connect with us!

Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group

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Our consultation services:

The Fifty-Minute Hour

Who we are:

Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com

Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also Past President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com

A Quick Note:

Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.

Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.