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Episode 200: Mail Bag!

Curt and Katie reflect on 200 episodes, answer questions and respond to feedback from listeners. We explore the tension between making a good living and providing affordable mental health care to consumers. We dig into paying prelicensed individuals, antitrust concerns, training centers, ethics codes, app therapy, setting fees, and therapist career trajectories.

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.

Transcript

Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.

In this episode we talk about questions from our audience:

  • Celebrating 200 episodes!
  • Question about how to make money and help to provide affordable access to clients
  • Systemic challenges and the phases of change to the system

“While the pie in the sky hope is for big systemic change, we can’t quite go to big systemic change while all of the individual responsibility lies on the individuals.” — Curt Widhalm, LMFT

  • Individual responsibility and the problems of this individual responsibility to therapists
  • The way in which we can take action to make our careers more sustainable, while also advocating for change
  • The debate about unpaid internships, training centers, and free labor (which is against the law)
  • Online App Therapy – whether it is hurting the field and gaslighting therapists

“I think when we’re looking at it from a systemic angle versus whether or not somebody should actually try to get employed or to work with these these companies [online therapy apps], it really does start with laying a foundation of undervaluing therapy, where folks feel like…they’re entitled to it.” — Katie Vernoy, LMFT

  • Sliding scale, setting fees, and why therapists’ rates vary so widely
  • Why people don’t stay therapists, feel the need to become a thought leader
  • Reflections on 200 episodes

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Resources for Modern Therapists mentioned in this Podcast Episode:

We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below might 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!

CAMFT’s statement on Paying Prelicensees as a Best Practice

Department of Labor Statement on Internship Programs

  1. Robert Casares Jr. (2020): Embracing the Podcast Era: Trends, Opportunities, & Implications for Counselors, Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, DOI: 10.1080/15401383.2020.1816865

Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:

Making Access More Affordable

A Living Wage for Prelicensees

Antitrust for Therapists

That’s Unethical

Gaslighting Therapists

Online Therapy Apps (that Curt is renaming to App-alling Therapy)

Overcoming Your Poverty Mindset

Negotiating Sliding Scale

Asking for Money (a throw back episode on setting fees)

You Don’t Have to be a Thought Leader

Why Therapists Quit and Part 2

Who we are:

Picture of Curt Widhalm, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcast; a nice young man with a glorious beard.Curt Widhalm, LMFT

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

Picture of Katie Vernoy, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcastKatie Vernoy, LMFT

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. 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.

Stay in Touch with Curt, Katie, and the whole Therapy Reimagined #TherapyMovement:

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Consultation services with Curt Widhalm or Katie Vernoy:

The Fifty-Minute Hour

Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:

Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group

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Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:

Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW

Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com

Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):

Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements).

… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)

Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.

Curt Widhalm 0:15
Welcome back modern therapists, this is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm, with Katie Vernoy. And this is the podcast about all things therapists, the things that we do in our professional lives, our personal lives, and everywhere that those intertwine, I guess is the word. But who cares about English this morning because we are celebrating our 200th episode.

Katie Vernoy 0:42
Oh, my goodness, I can’t believe it. And it’s early. So I need to do that again. I can’t believe it! That’s awesome! Yay!

Curt Widhalm 0:51
In the world of podcasting, whenever, in the day that you’re listening to this recognize that Katie and I got up early. We’re like little kids celebrating a birthday.

Katie Vernoy 1:01
We couldn’t wait.

Curt Widhalm 1:04
So we’ve been reaching out to you, our listeners on our social media and in our Modern Therapists Facebook group, and a number of other places and wanting to look at 200 episodes and kind of turn this into a mailbag episode. And have this be a little bit more catch all, addressing content and questions and revisit some things that we’ve done in the past. And be able to kind of have this episode be a celebration of you, who keeps us going. Who apparently, from your feedback helps keep you going. So…

Katie Vernoy 1:39
Yay.

Curt Widhalm 1:39
Glad that we’re all in this together. And I want to jump into some of these questions, we’ll close out this episode with just kind of a reflection on 200 episodes, and maybe a little talk about where we’re going next. So, our first question is from one of our previous guests, one of our early guests on the show, Laura Reagan. And her question is how can therapists help make therapy more accessible while earning a living commensurate with having a master’s degree? When I was a couple of years out of grad school, my agency salary was so low, I could have qualified for food stamps, something is wrong with that picture while I had a mountain of student loan debt.

Katie Vernoy 2:25
I mean, we talk about this a lot. So, I guess we’ve been answering this topic. And this comment was in response to the Making Access More Affordable. And I think this is something we’re still trying to grapple with. I mean, to me, for finding ways to truly make a great living while also providing access, there needs to be systemic change. I mean, I don’t I don’t see anything else. There’s there needs to be funding, there needs to be, you know, efficient systems. So bureaucracy doesn’t take over and use all the money for moving paper around. And so I don’t know, I don’t have a lot of I’m just excited. We’re in Episode 200.

Curt Widhalm 3:10
Yeah, tough question to start off the mailbag with. And Katie and I looking at what’s coming next. And this might be a little bit of a preview here, kind of looking at, there’s three phases of addressing these two particular issues together. And the phase that we’re in right now. And the phase that we’ve been in for a while is individuals having to deal with systemic problems. That a lot of us as individuals in this field make great investments into our education and maintenance of licensure, our businesses and are engaged in a system that very much relies on exploiting especially early career labor. And while the pie in the sky hope is for big systemic change, we can’t quite go to big systemic change while all of the individual responsibility lies on the individuals. And so Katie and I are formulating some better ways of saying that there’s a middle phase that we need to go through that has some systemic adjustments without shaking too much of either accessibility on the consumer end or on the provider end. And what that looks like is some very comprehensive changes. I don’t know that anything quickly is going to happen on government levels, at least, you know, when we hear about things like single payer health care bills that are good in theory, as far as it comes to, you know, clients being able to receive services. But the transition to that we’ve seen over the last decade that the Affordable Care Act was supposed to be one of these steps in transition. And now that we’re 10 plus years into the Affordable Care Act., we’re no closer to making the next substantial change towards anything that does anything in that direction. And so in the meantime, we’re left with kind of this individual responsibility. And some of that is a very, very nuanced discussion. And I don’t know that I have a particular answer for it other than continuing to advocate. Katie and I are going to be outlining some steps over the next several months through the podcast, through our work with Therapy Reimagined conference, as far as being able to more comprehensively do that. And stay tuned to some future episodes that we look at as far as making so more in-depth answers on this particular question.

Katie Vernoy 5:40
Yes, and I want to add the other piece to it on the systemic level is, we’re all taking individual responsibility. And I think there will continue to be a responsibility we have to do our best in creating careers that we can sustain. I think the other element, and I think there’s a lot of folks doing this on TikTok and doing this in all different spaces, but continuing to highlight the importance of mental health services and the importance of mental wellness. So that as these things move forward, there is a value placed on the work that we do. Because I get worried if there is systemic change, and we have single payer, we have some of these other things, that it means all therapists get paid very little, just consistently and everyone has access. So I think it’s, it’s a problem that has many, many layers. And I think, you know, Laura definitely laid it out very well. But I think it’s, it’s something where we all have to kind of survive and move forward and hopefully thrive, while also allowing and advocating for change. That the next one actually talks about the initial steps of this is that Fred1111 is the username for this one. This was on Instagram. Second grad student here looking for internship, just read about the trending argument that unpaid internships are unethical. Thoughts? So I’m gonna let you start with this one, because this is like this is your hot button topic.

Curt Widhalm 5:44
This is a weird space. And as I engage in more ethics discussions, and especially coming from professional associations. There’s a nuance between where antitrust stuff meets ethics. And a lot of professional organizations are wary to wade into telling people about specific business practices because of antitrust regulations. We have a question, we have a very great episode on That’s Unethical that talks about things that kind of sit outside of the ethics code. And we have a less than entertaining episode on antitrust stuff that kind of goes hand in hand on this.

Katie Vernoy 7:16
Although, although that’s where we did bring up the cardigan cartel. I still love that.

Curt Widhalm 8:06
So as far as ethics codes go, there’s a passing tolerance of them under language such as employers need to follow business practices or legal business practices.

Katie Vernoy 8:22
Yes.

Curt Widhalm 8:23
Which there are specific places within federal and each state’s laws about certain conditions that must be met in order to have unpaid internships. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t pretend to play one. I play a therapist on a podcast, and…

Katie Vernoy 8:44
And an ethics expert.

Curt Widhalm 8:45
I, and so I don’t know all of the laws in the way that lawyers do. And so it’s just a little bit of my perspective from this. But as a non lawyer, it is very hard for me to see how a lot of postgraduate placements meet the requirements of unpaid positions. I’m one person and this is kind of one of my lifelong advocacy things that I’ve seen some successes and changes on. But it hasn’t been within the ethics that we’ve been able to make these changes. It’s within the other statements that we make here on the show that we’ve got the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to make statements on: it’s best practices to pay pre-licensees a living wage. That these are outside of the ethics. The argument that I would have against these practices are unethical is that they sit outside of ethics codes. It’s not inherently ethical. It’s not inherently unethical. But because of antitrust stuff it doesn’t sit quite there. Is it crappy? Absolutely. Do we eat our young in this field to exploit you know the the working class in order to keep other people’s jobs safe that are much further in their career. Totally. Is it unfair to early career people? Absolutely. Are we working to change that? Yes. I just don’t know that that sits within an ethics question. Because people who write the ethics are tied by antitrust laws.

… 10:22
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Katie Vernoy 10:22
So to take it from kind of technically around whether or not it fits within an ethics code, I think the thing that I see when looking at unpaid prelicense positions, or provisionally licensed positions, where kind of what’s maybe okay, and what’s like super bad, I think the maybe okay and I still am, this doesn’t have a great taste in my mouth to say this. But if there is a intensive training program that provides some sort of benefit that someone would normally pay for, and you’re using that training with clients who are opting into, like a residency type situation, I still think you should get paid. However, there’s…

Curt Widhalm 11:17
Medical residents get paid.

Katie Vernoy 11:19
I think it’s something where I can, I can see that, you know, like you’re in an intensive training program. Maybe that fits in a gray area, I don’t like it, but maybe that’s okay. But when someone is telling you to work for free, and you’re not getting thing and anything from it, or you’re getting supervision and hours, I think that feels really bad. So I guess it’s kind of the layers of how bad it is. But I think if someone is providing you with intensive training that would cost you 1000s of dollars, I think they should pay you. But that’s better than if they’re just trying to get you to work for free so that they can, you know, get themselves a little bit of money while running a clinic and quote unquote, providing access. So I don’t know if that’s a good nuance, but like, for me, that’s that’s where I kind of say like, morally, I think, if, if morally, one is a lot worse than the other.

Curt Widhalm 12:17
And that’s within the wage order around the Department of Labor’s view on unpaid internships is that the kind of training has to meet what would be taught in a higher education. And in our field, that would mean a master’s level education…

Katie Vernoy 12:33
Sure.

Curt Widhalm 12:34
…on campus sort of thing, which many of these agencies don’t provide. That…

Katie Vernoy 12:37
Yeah.

Curt Widhalm 12:38
…supervision is not education. And it’s not education to that standard. This would be education at that standard in addition to supervision. We will link that statement from the Department of Labor in our show notes for your wildly entertaining eyes.

Katie Vernoy 12:58
Those are over at mtsgpodcast.com.

Curt Widhalm 13:02
Some questions that we don’t have some, some people to credit these questions to that have showed up on some of our social media. I’m wondering if you guys can address app therapy. This is somebody who attended our Therapy Reimagined 2019 conference. While attending last year’s conference: I feel like a message I walked away with was what we should know our worth, especially with Tiffany McLean’s presentation. In response to your gaslighting episode and the movement toward online therapy, I wonder if the apps in some way are gaslighting the field. I wonder about the selling point is often focused on it being affordable. I know this affordability is essential for access, which can often mean reimbursement of $40. It seems like it’s setting an unhealthy expectation from the public community.

Katie Vernoy 13:51
Yeah, I mean, we did talk about this. And so we’ll link to our online app therapy episode, which I don’t remember the name of. But to me, I think, since that episode…

Curt Widhalm 14:06
And before you get going, it’s I can’t believe we missed that calling that episode App-palling Online therapy.

Katie Vernoy 14:17
It is appalling. Since that episode, I think the thing that I keep seeing and thanks to all the folks who keep linking to our episode when people bring up the online app programs that will remain unnamed, that are kind of the worst offenders of this. But this idea of gaslighting and setting a poor tone or an unreasonable expectation for the community. I think it just is hitting deeper. Because to me, I think when we’re looking at it from a systemic angle versus whether or not somebody should actually try to get employed or to work with these these companies. It really does start with laying a foundation of undervaluing therapy, where folks feel like they need it, they’re entitled to it. And, and we talked about this on the episode, but also they should have, you know, like 24/7 access to their therapist. And there’s a very, you know, like the consumer, I, we believe in, you know, feedback informed treatment, but this highly consumer focused, unhealthy expectation that a therapist can respond so quickly, and they can get really poor reviews or get, you know, all this stuff kind of thrown into one where therapists are kind of these commodities that are being sold, and and potentially being mined for AI later. It just to me, it sets up this weird tone that continues to speak to these individuals solving a systemic problem and, and the system being run on the backs of folks who are making very little money or if they’re making decent money, it’s because they’re working a bazillion hours with a bazillion clients. And so just it, it feels like this is a bigger problem, even than when we talked about it on the episode.

Curt Widhalm 16:18
I’ve kind of wanted to do an update on this just with some of the stuff that’s happened. And well, I’m a glutton for punishment in researching some of the things that we bring to this podcast. What it does is it messes with my targeted advertisement algorithms. And so I get a lot of these app ads in the midst of my social media when I’m scrolling through Facebook that I’ll see Victoria Justice talking about her mental health problems or Hayley Williams… and Katie is holding up a postcard that was sent to her office about BetterHelp. And, you know, I go through these comments, just kind of out of morbid curiosity and see all of these people. So happy that these very paid actors and musicians and celebrities are coming out about their mental health experiences. Not necessarily that these people have used BetterHelp to get help. But it’s very much that there is a dual message that’s being sent by companies like this. I got an email from BetterHelp, here a couple of months ago. Just one that whatever email list that I was on that they sent it out to me, and it was titled, Our top earners make $135,000 plus per year.

Katie Vernoy 17:41
Wow.

Curt Widhalm 17:42
I was like, oh, you know, very little overhead. You know what, I’m curious enough to check this out to share with our listeners here, and I posted this in our Modern Therapists Group at the time, but when I actually looked at it, they couldn’t still say how you would make it. Part of this was, you would go in and put in the number of hours that you would work and in order to make $135,000 a year, you would need to work 50 hours a week, for 52 weeks out of the year.

Katie Vernoy 18:18
Oh my goodness.

Curt Widhalm 18:20
And it would come out to about just over $50 per hour. But in some of the research that we had done for our app-alling episode. Knowing that this is not only just having a caseload of 50 people, this is probably a caseload of probably 90 or 100 people based on context that you would be able to have of which this particular company has no guarantee that they would give you. So there is a degree of gaslighting, specialized marketing that if you’re going to soften the language that I do really encourage you to do your due diligence when evaluating if this is something that you want to make as a part of your practice.

Katie Vernoy 19:08
Yeah, I’m looking at the postcard here. It says: The world needs therapy. You can help.

Curt Widhalm 19:15
And yet, there’s no statement about we contribute to the capitalistic efforts that push one group of people down in order to make them need therapy.

Katie Vernoy 19:32
So we clearly have strong opinions about that. So maybe we, maybe we move on, and we’ll just link to the episode that we that we went deeply into it in the show notes. The next comment or a series of comments was an email string with a listener named Amanda. And we already kind of addressed these and so I want to curate a little bit what that is. We we had Tiffany McLain on an episode talking about overcoming your poverty mindset. And this was something where we started to understand that we’re speaking to therapists. This is a podcast for therapists. And some therapists are clients, but they also are therapists. So to that, I think those things are interesting. But there was a tone within that episode that was very targeted to therapists. And we did a response episode to that partially in response to what Amanda was talking about related to sliding scale. Just looking at a couple of these, these comments within these emails. Amanda said, I want my therapist to make a ton of money. Heck, I want to make enough money to pay my therapist full fee. I make sure that I pay more every time I get a raise and have or have the ability to. I stretch every week to get as close as possible to paying full fee. If this is actually how therapists think about me, no, thank you. And there was a refer back to kind of Are therapists rescuing clients? Are they, you know, are our clients wanting to you know, not respecting their therapist? And I think that the piece that really, I think hit Curt and me was you have a publicly available podcast, clients are listening. I was like, Oh, goodness. And so we did, we did kind of think through it, respond back, we had a great conversation with Amanda. And after the sliding scale podcast, this is what was written: Just listen to this week’s podcast, I appreciated the different tone. Nicely done. As a client, always trying to do the right thing by my therapist, and my lawyers and my insurance agent, etc. This answered questions about how prices are set and how sliding scale can work. I will remain curious about studies showing the efficacy of treatment based on dollars paid, but including the point at which being uncomfortable can become a detriment. I was paying $175 to a $200 provider and was sick about the money every week. I’m now paying full fee to a $125 provider and very comfortable but not sick with worry over it, and very uncomfortable but not sick with worry over it. Also, why the heck is there such a huge difference? I’ll leave it to you all. Just wanted to say thanks.

… 22:14
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Curt Widhalm 22:15
So we addressed a lot of these concerns. And we’re conversing quite a bit back and forth with this listener over the last couple of months in response to some of these episodes. Part of the question that I want to address here is Why do therapist rates very? That, and a big part of this is as you know, from from a systemic standpoint, a lot of us come to find in our field that the general community mental health agency type jobs tend to have a certain pay scale that is not commensurate with the investment to get into those fields. Kind of addressed with the questions at the top of this episode. And so a lot of people end up feeling like they need to push out, that they need to launch into business on their own, start their practices, go do a group practice, whatever their next steps might be. And especially if they’re not engaged in health insurance managed care type contracts, they’re free to charge whatever it is that they want. And for a lot of people, charging those fees ends up being things that help to compensate for many years of unpaid or very underpaid work, and helps to create the upwardly socially mobile lifestyle into a working professional class that is often necessary for a lot of people to maintain a private practice type business with all of the marketing that would go on and entailing being available for clients outside of those managed cares type situations with case loads that are reasonable enough to be able to provide the kind of care that people paying those premium prices might be. Some of those differences are going to vary wildly from one person to the next. That, you know, the neighborhoods that people live and work in are going to adjust their business and, you know, personal expenses type things. And some of that is going to be, this is not a a client blaming thing, but there are clients who feel that the higher that they pay out of therapy, that the more that they get out of it. That there is a place that they feel that they have to do the work and that they’re more willing to bypass some of the work if they’re not paying. Now, Amanda’s experience here is that she has found the point for herself where those two things meet. And that’s not true for everybody. Some people, that price point is going to be much lower. Some people, that price point is going to be much higher.

Katie Vernoy 25:04
I think we’ve talked about this in a lot of different episodes. And I think, kind of from the other angle, when we’re setting our fees, I think there there’s the practical things. And if all of us were kind of following through with the practical elements of it, we would look at our expertise, our costs, and the going rate. And I think we, I think we actually did, like long ago an episode on fee setting. So I don’t remember what we said. I think probably ideas have even shifted since then. But I think the other piece of why it can be so different is sometimes there, there are the therapist factors, I guess, around how much someone is willing to charge. How much they feel like their expertise is worth. And there are varying rates of confidence that can also impact what someone is charging. And so to me, that’s why I’m excited that Tiffany is coming back to our Therapy Reimagined conference because I think she’s really able to dig into that element of it. Which is, therapists underpricing their work because of this, whether it’s imposter syndrome, or fear or that kind of stuff. And so the the broad range of fees can be different financial needs, different logistics, but it can also be emotional on the therapist side.

Curt Widhalm 26:27
Our next question comes from somebody who contributes quite a bit of comments to us off line. And so just giving credence to the questions. We don’t necessarily have the same communications with this person. So we’re gonna let them just be out in the ether.

Katie Vernoy 26:49
To the show.

Curt Widhalm 26:49
Yes, in response to our You Don’t Have to be a Thought Leader episode: You must be reading my thoughts, because the latest podcast episode couldn’t have been more timely. For a while now, I’ve been wanting to shout at the top of my lungs, what’s wrong with being just a therapist? While at the same time, I’m aware of the need to be seen as an expert, or at least highly knowledgeable. This, of course, can easily be taken too far.

Katie Vernoy 27:13
And I think that’s interesting, because I, even since that episode, and with some of the work we’ve been doing, with some of the interviews, we’re getting ready to put out with a series that’s coming up soon. I feel like this has become more of a focus. Is like we’re seeing more and more that mental health proper, like actual real therapy is needed, so highly. And so I think there, I really feel a concern for folks not being able to stay quote, unquote, just a therapist or keep a, a robust therapy practice. And, you know, I’m, I’m one of the folks. Like my therapy practice is definitely becoming smaller. And so I think it’s something where identifying how we can be a therapist and focus our efforts on being a therapist, I think is something that is driving me a bit more because I think there’s, there’s such a need. And because it’s so hard, and because of the systemic concerns we’ve talked about and that folks have been responding to with our episodes around why therapists quit. I think it’s it’s something where the systemic changes feel even more important, because I think we do have folks who would really like to be, quote, unquote, just a therapist, but feel this pressure to either move into the thought leader space so they can expand out into something that might be easier? Question mark. But I think it’s something where given the choice, I think if the system supported therapists, as therapists, I think we would have more people valuing that as the brunt of their career. I don’t know maybe.

Curt Widhalm 28:50
Yeah, I agree. And, you know, this kind of goes back to Amanda’s question here a little bit, too, is that the one of the biggest things I’ve learned across 200 episodes is that there’s no one way that therapy should be. That there’s a lot of individual factors from clients. And there’s a lot of individual factors from therapist’s end. That as long as the therapy is backed by reasonably good science. And it is something that involves both clients and therapists working towards good outcomes. That therapy is something great and successful. And there’s plenty of evidence that it works in all sorts of styles. And some of that is very individual factors. I remember hearing from Jeff Zeig that after Milton Erickson died, they were trying to kind of consolidate and make sense of the interventions that Milton Erickson, who’s one of the great strategic therapists, they would go around through his case files of what kind of work and they’d make a pile of one intervention that worked with a handful of clients and another intervention that worked with another bunch of clients. Then there was just a huge pile that was who knows? It’s probably just Milton being Milton. And it works. And, you know, this is somebody who had a great impact on our field now, you know, 50-60 years ago, and is something where this great rush to get to this magic, you know, pinpoint accuracy of, here is this one model that fits everybody everywhere that really kind of started, Katie in my discussions around things. And I found myself being less argumentative with people about these kinds of here’s the way that things should be, and more of how does this work for you? And this is my message to both clinicians and clients is that for some people needing to take those steps beyond being a therapist are for them. And for those listeners here, we support you in that, and we have a catalogue of episodes. And we’ll continue to make content for you supporting that. And for people, like our friend of the show here, we hear you too. And it makes sense for you. And we’ll continue to make content and create stuff for you as well.

Katie Vernoy 31:24
So there’s more to discuss, but we must sign off. And so I want to nod to Fay who sent us a great email that is giving us some some definite content for future episodes. So definitely stay tuned, we’ll be actually doing whole episodes on the questions that you were asking. But I wanted to quickly reflect on this process of being a podcast host and speaking to this audience every week. And for me, I think I’ve learned so much both in hearing from the audience and getting subtle and not so subtle feedback and criticism. Being able to talk to some really great guests and learn so much. And so I just wanted to say thank you for being along for the ride with us and for providing us this platform both to do the work that we want to do and advocate advocating for change, as well as being our community and supporting us while we’re learning all this great stuff.

Curt Widhalm 32:35
And I do want to give a quick shout out as well, to Robert Cisneros, Jr. who included in the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide in a journal article in the Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, Embracing the Podcast Era trends, opportunities and implications for counselors, where we were cited along with a bunch of other really good podcasts as far as our work and specifically being recognized for what would fit within the ACA code of ethics of providing our therapists community with relevant and timely trends in the field in a way that is readily accessible and being used as an example of that. So we’re excited for…

Katie Vernoy 33:25
Yeah.

Curt Widhalm 33:25
…some of the, some of the ups and downs, and the jokes and professionalism that we bring. To be able to have a community that helps keep us going to better help serving communities. So please stay in touch with us on our social media. Join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapists group. We’ll link to a bunch of stuff in our show notes at mtsgpodcast.com. Don’t forget to like and subscribe us, leave us a rating and review and until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy.

… 33:25
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