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Finding Alignment in a Second Career – Special Series Becoming a Therapist: An interview with Iris Wilson-Farley

In this new series, Curt and Katie interview graduate students and will follow them on their journey to becoming a therapist. Our second interview is with Iris Wilson-Farley, a 54-year-old trans woman and graduate student pursuing her Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Iris shares her journey moving from a 32-year corporate career to becoming a therapist, her passion for working with the LGBTQ+ community, and her reflections on safety, technology, and additional training opportunities.

Transcript

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(Show notes provided in collaboration with Otter.ai and ChatGPT.)

An Interview with Iris Wilson-Farley

Photo ID: Iris Wilson-FarleyIris Wilson-Farley (she/her) is currently a first-year graduate student, seeking her Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. Counseling is a new career path for Iris, after spending the last 33 years in customer service, project leadership, and human resources (HR) roles, including 22 years focused on career development, leadership coaching, and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Iris is excited by the prospect of applying her life and work experience, along with all of the new theories and practical skills that she’s learning, to the field of professional counseling. Iris is a member of the American Counseling Association, as well as the Society for Sexual, Affectional, Intersex, and Gender Expansive Identities (SAIGE), and has led committees at the local and national levels for an addiction-related nonprofit, and currently volunteers as a leader at her church, focused on personnel matters and development of HR procedures.

In this podcast episode, we meet Iris Wilson-Farley, an aspiring therapist

We continue our new series on becoming a therapist, with Iris Wilson-Farley, who in her process of self-discovery realized that her career was misaligned. She is now pursuing a degree in counseling.

The motivation to transition careers from HR to Therapy

Iris shares how her personal journey as a trans woman and her positive counseling experiences inspired her to pursue a more meaningful career in therapy, focusing on giving back to the LGBTQ+ community, particularly older adults.

“I’ve been in corporate America for 32 years, and there’s always been this nagging dissatisfaction with that, a sense of wanting to give in more meaningful ways to society.” – Iris Wilson-Farley

The challenges and surprises in an online graduate program for therapists

Iris discusses the challenges of adjusting to an asynchronous online program, balancing studies with her HR job, and the valuable multicultural and social justice emphasis in her curriculum.

The perspective gained from entering therapy grad school as a second career clinician

She highlights the wisdom, emotional intelligence, and lived experiences she brings as a second-career student, including her unique insights from being a client herself.

Discussing safety concerns and multicultural awareness in the mental health profession
Iris reflects on addressing safety concerns as a trans therapist, particularly in the face of potential discrimination, and shares her commitment to finding a supportive and affirming work environment.

How is AI and technology addressed in therapist graduate school?

Drawing from her corporate experience, Iris explores the integration of technology and AI in therapy, advocating for its potential to enhance the field while emphasizing the need for ethical considerations.

What additional training can be helpful when starting out as a therapist?

Iris expresses interest in pursuing additional certifications in sex therapy and religious trauma to better serve the LGBTQ+ community and address gaps in her training.

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 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!

Iris Wilson-Farley’s LinkedIn

 

Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:

I Just Graduated, Now What? – Career Advice for New Mental Health Clinicians

Career Trekking with MTSG: Interview with Marissa Esquibel, LMFT

An Incomplete List of Everything Wrong with Therapist Education, An Interview with Diane Gehart, LMFT

Welcome to Therapist Grad School!

Why Therapists Shouldn’t Be Taught Business in Grad School

The Clinical Supervision Crisis for Early Career Therapists: An Interview with Dr. Amy Parks

Agency and School Drama

Topic: Therapist Education

 

3 Things I Wish I Knew Starting Out (blog post)

 

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. Katie is also a former 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.

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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 0:12
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast for therapists about the things that go on in our profession, the things that go on with the people in it. We’re joining into it. And this is part of our series around talking with current grad students and doing some check ins about what the state of grad student education is like in our field and some of the people who are in it. And we are joined today by Iris Wilson-Farley, and she is here to help us to continue on with this conversation. And thank you so much for joining us and sharing about your experience.

Iris Wilson-Farley 0:56
Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Katie Vernoy 0:59
So the question that I’ve come up with for this series is, who are you and why do you want to be a therapist?

Iris Wilson-Farley 1:07
On the one hand, so who I am, Iris Wilson-Farley, I am a 54 year old transgender woman. I have been over the last five years through a journey of coming out to myself and to others and transitioning. And I suppose the trite answer to your question about why I want to be a therapist is that I have a counselor who has absolutely been instrumental in that process. So it’s that sort of I gained a lot from therapy, and now I want to give back. The more complicated answer, I think, is that I’ve been in corporate America for 32 years, and there’s always been this nagging dissatisfaction with that, a sense of wanting to give in more meaningful ways to society. And, you know, always kind of looking for the compromise that helps me continue to go to work every day and do what I do. There have been a lot of very good things that have come out of that, and a lot of very good reasons to do it. But there came a point connected to my transition, actually, where I looked around and I said, Okay, I’ve got a better handle than I’ve ever had on who I am and who I want to be in the world. And then I turned my sights to how am I spending my days, and does that feel as integrated as the rest of me is starting to feel, and that caused me to start really looking at it and saying, This could be a really meaningful, viable second career for me that would give back, that would allow me to participate in advocacy. I was looking for a way to do that. You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about advocacy lately, and coming down to this is what the fight looks like for me is to move into this field and work within and on behalf of my community.

Curt Widhalm 3:13
Can you help position this episode by describing your grad school set up, what kind of a degree license that you’re going for here, too.

Iris Wilson-Farley 3:22
I am in the Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. I attend their online campus, so that’s right now, allowing me to continue to do my day job while also effectively a full time student. Which is interesting, it’s not what I thought it was, and in that online training is something that is new to me. The last time I was in a formal degree progra, we all gathered in classrooms and things like discussion posts and responses and the occasional virtual session has really been an adjustment for me. I think some of it’s generational, but some of it’s just experiential.

Katie Vernoy 4:13
So what were your expectations when you decided to go back to school? And how is your experience compared to what you were expecting?

Iris Wilson-Farley 4:22
It’s really interesting, because I knew I was going to be online, and yet somewhere in my head, I had this picture of gathering around tables with classmates, and knew that we could accomplish that virtually. So I thought there would be more virtual time, virtual synchronous time, where we were in a space together, exchanging ideas. There’s been a lot more writing, which is no problem. I like doing that. But I’ve had to learn academic writing because my two previous degrees were in English literature, where you know, if you cited a source that was usually because somebody said it better than you could and they were supporting your argument. That was undergrad, and then I got an MBA, and we didn’t do academic writing in my MBA course. I would say academic writing was one adjustment, and the adjustment to what is primarily an asynchronous learning format. Those have been the big adjustments, because in my head, I still had the idea of what I had experienced before, which was virtually or otherwise gathering around a table and actively exchanging ideas in the moment. I just actually came off a weekend, a three day intensive weekend at the Chicago school. So I got that itch scratched, which was really, really nice, and was able to make some of those connections that I felt I really wanted but hadn’t yet had a chance to experience. So there’s an element of it, but again, somewhere in my head, despite knowing that I was going into the online campus, I still was just like, when do we get to be together? When do we get to sort of debate and discuss in a room with each other? So there’s not as much of that as I thought there was going to be. But like I say, it was just an adjustment of expectations.

Katie Vernoy 6:19
What year are you in? Where are you are in your program?

Iris Wilson-Farley 6:23
I’m just wrapping up my first year. So what December 8, I’ll be through my first year, and I will rest for four weeks.

Curt Widhalm 6:33
In addition to kind of the expectations about being in person or exchanging ideas, what were your expectations about the content that you would have been learning in your first year?

Iris Wilson-Farley 6:47
My expectations were first off that we would be working a lot with multiculturalism and social justice, and that absolutely has been the case, which has been very, very gratifying. And I would say learning about theoretical orientations was something I expected I would do. Again, I didn’t come into this with anything more than a Psych 101, class in undergrad, many, many years ago. There’s some catching up that I have to do, that some of my peers don’t because they’re coming in either with that degree or with direct experience in clinics in one way or another. And so I’m coming in trying to catch up on some of those things. So getting a good grounding in theory, ethics, those kinds of things, the curriculum has made a lot of sense to me and has really helped guide me along, and I feel like it’s allowed me to catch up on some of those core, fundamental ideas that I just never had exposure to before. But the social justice piece for me, I remember being on a plane just for a vacation, and it was right when, it was weird timing that my first term started, and two days later, I got on a plane because we had already planned this vacation before I knew what the class schedule was going to be, and so I’m working on my first sort of reading and my first discussion post on the plane. But it was, it was an ethics course, and so I was looking at the American Counseling Association’s code of ethics, and I’m reading like it was so encouraging for me, because in my corporate roles in the past, I’ve worked in the HR space, I’ve had the opportunity to build out our diversity, equity and inclusion strategy, the first one that our company had. It’s been a joy to do that work, but it’s also been very challenging at times, and there’s always been this sort of, how are we going to justify devoting resources in the corporate space? And that’s that challenge is maybe more acute now than it’s than it’s ever been in the last 20 years or so. But here I was reading a textbook that was saying No, no, not only do you get to do this work that you’ve been so excited about, you’re supposed to and we expect you to be thinking in these ways. And that was really, really exciting, more than what I expected. And the fact that it was hitting me like two days in was really affirming.

Katie Vernoy 9:24
As a second career, there’s, it sounds like some catching up to do, because there’s folks coming off their bachelor’s with lots of courses and things under their belt. And there’s also, I think, the lived experience and the, I’ll call it wisdom, that comes from having a whole other life before becoming a therapist. What, what would you say has been the impact of being a second career student?

Iris Wilson-Farley 9:53
I feel what you just said. I mean, there was, like I said, there was some catching up, but, but there is, I mean, in most classes I’ve been in, I can look around the room and say, Yeah, I’m the oldest person here, which isn’t necessarily a thing. It’s not a thing in a negative way. It comes up, as you alluded to, in terms of the lived experience, and in terms of, I think, just things that I sometimes see people getting worked up about or stressed out about, and I’m a little easier on it just because perspective, I suppose. I do think there’s an element of wisdom. I do think there’s an element, if I may say so. I think there’s an element of just, there’s an element related to having done work on myself as a client. And that’s that’s been a surprise to me, that not everybody that I’m in class with has done that work. And I’m not talking about the quality of of inner work anybody’s done. I’m saying literally, have never been a client, and it’s hard for me to imagine stepping into this without having some sense of what it looks and feels like. So I’ve got that going for me. And yeah, I mean, I’ve got decades of life behind me where I’m able to look and say, okay, things pass, and you know the thing that feels really, really important and stressful now, my therapist still reminds me that bees get degrees. I can still go be uptight about my grades sometimes, but I do try to keep that sort of even keeled emotional intelligence in the classroom setting. I’ve been able to bring that in the practice sessions that we’re doing more of now, which has been great. I’m getting people saying, How long have you been doing this? And I’m like, I haven’t, but in my role as an HR professional, I’ve been coaching people for years. You know, I’ve been doing things that I remember saying to a colleague at work just before I really dug in and researched and started to apply to schools, and I had said, you know, there’s always that line when you’re coaching somebody in a professional setting where you have to be aware that you’re about to go into like, a light version of therapy, and you have to know where that point is that you’re going to refer them to professional care with a licensed therapist. I said, because I don’t have that training, I don’t have that skill set, and this, this colleague of mine said, Yeah. I’m like, what? And she’s like, Yeah, I just have a feeling about you, and it was, it was the very slight nudge that I needed.

Katie Vernoy 13:07
That’s awesome.

Iris Wilson-Farley 13:07
That would be, but I do think there are things like that that I’ve been able to bring in that are benefits of my years, my experience, hopefully, my maturity.

… 13:19
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Curt Widhalm 13:21
I’m trying to imagine an online school that teaches people how to be therapists in an asynchronous way, and teaching people how to interact with people in this way. So I’m wondering, you know, as you’re doing the things that in our spaces where I was in person, as an educator and as a student, we do a lot of role plays. So wondering what that piece of your education looks like in an online school like this.

Iris Wilson-Farley 13:50
So we’re just, we’re getting into role plays. So the the course I’m in at the moment is the first one where we’re doing just a lot of role play, a lot of work around counseling skills. This course has four, three hour synchronous sessions where we work with each other. So that’s all online, but we’re at least live. And then I mentioned the three day intensive session that I just came back from. So those have been opportunities to do a lot of role play work. Prior to that, I really had one video role play that I did with a peer, and that was around career counseling. So we’ve been slowly ramping into it. I don’t know what year two is going to hold with regard to that, I expect we’ll do more of it. I’m starting to understand the method to the madness in terms of how the courses are organized, and there was a lot of foundational work in the early part of this year to get to this point. I’m expecting that as I go into year two, now that we’re at this point, there’ll be a lot more of the role play, and I anticipate it’ll be done online via zoom, synchronous format, because to your point, I mean, they kind of put it out there that the discussion posts that we do most weeks are supposed to be like that. They’re really not. I mean, you know, you write this thing that feels like a short paper, and then people jump in, and the only time I’ve really felt like there was learning going on about how to connect with people was because somebody said something really out of line. And it’s about, how am I going to respond to this situation? The two times it’s happened to me, it’s usually been about my transition, where it’s like, yeah, I invite pretty much everything when it comes to questions, but you just went there. So let me think about how I’m going to respond to this, and to some extent, demonstrate what an emotionally intelligent response would look like.

Katie Vernoy 16:08
It seems like, especially for those of us who did not grow up with this type of technology, that it would be not as conducive to our learning, anyway.

Iris Wilson-Farley 16:21
I hit a point about halfway through this year where I was super frustrated. I was in a lifespan development class, really, really dense reading, and the notion that there were going to be 100 multiple choice questions coming out of really a dense 350 pages. I never learned how to study for a test like that, and I bombed the midterm. I was, I was super frustrated. And I remember, you know, reaching out to various resources, my professor, a student advisor that I have and say, Help me with this, because this right now feels like a glorified correspondence course, and I’m struggling with that. And part of what they did was say, well, just wait for residency, because it’s going to feel more like a class than it did, and that’s fine. But there was a lot of it too, where I went to my counselor and said, because I recognized that part of it was for all of her saying, Bs get degrees, I was still really, really fixated on those grades and how do I demonstrate what I can do? And so, you know, there are personal things that I’m continuing to work on that are related, to related to my education, and it’s been good to have my counselor as a resource for that.

Curt Widhalm 17:51
As you’re looking at the next phases of practicums and internships and those kinds of more practical experiences of your education. During the pre interview, you were telling me that this means a pretty drastic shift to your life, where you’re located, and can you talk about what your process is like around that, how you’re going about your decision making as far as what you’re looking to do.

Iris Wilson-Farley 18:20
So, one of the things I know I want to do is I want to work with the LGBTQ community. I know that I want to, as part of that, work with older adults within the community, not exclusively, but I want to be able to do that work. So I’ve got an idea of where I want to go. When I’m thinking about practicum and field work, it’s been very much on my mind, like, what is it that what experience do I want to get that might be different than and might bolster the breadth of my experience as I go into my work after licensure. So one of the things, Katie, that I’ve heard you talk about before on the podcast is your work in community agency settings. And I I’ve not done that before. Based on everything I’ve heard and everything I’ve read, I’ve gathered it’s hard work, um, and it feels like it could be really valuable work to do, rather than as an example, going to somebody who I know who has is is trans, and has set up a private practice of trans counselors working with trans clients. That might be a thing I wanted to, it actually sounds like it would be a really great thing to be able to do once I’m licensed, but I don’t know that I necessarily want to jump there for field work. So I’m going througha lot of those kinds of mental gymnastics, trying to research and think about what’s going to be the right path that’s going to set me up for success in this new career. Yeah, so it’s been, it’s been a lot of of those kinds of thoughts. There is a marketability element that has me the slightest bit concerned, I guess, is what I want to say. But it’s less and less of a concern and just more of a consideration, I suppose. And that is, and it’s one of the things that has me interested in being in a community setting for my field work, is being in a space where we don’t get to choose each other. And I realize that’s probably got great things and not so great things, but one of the things that I have some concern with is that person who walks in and either saw a picture of me on a website and didn’t realize I was trans, or like, does somebody come in and they’re a one on one and done? Because as soon as I open my mouth and start talking, they’re like, Oh, this is not what I thought. This is not who I want to work with. In the community, I think I’ll be fine. And specifically, if it’s a practice that’s working with trans clients. I know there’s some good research that’s coming out in the last few years that says, you know, they’re validating the positive outcomes of trans clients, being able to work with trans counselors, in terms of being able to see somebody thriving, and all that sort of thing. That’s I want to be a part of that at a point, but I’m also aware, practically speaking, I need to get a certain number of hours, and I don’t want to put that at risk. So there are all these sort of, like quasi marketing considerations that are in my head as I think about that and and I guess I’ll pick up on the phrase in my head. I’m in my head about it, and I really need to get out of my head and talk to some more people. And now that I’m through year one, that’s what I’ll be jumping into in January and beyond, to really start to assess what of the considerations that are in my head right now are real and really need to be things I’m worried about, and what are things that, just because I don’t know, I’m maybe jumping at shadows.

… 22:35
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Katie Vernoy 22:37
When you’re talking about your experience in grad school and then this marketing concern as you move forward, the thing that comes to mind is safety. It sounds like you’ve already had colleagues who have approached you inappropriately, and potentially you might have situations where the one and done , right, or those types of things, or potentially employers who are concerned about it and don’t give you an opportunity. And so broadly, I guess my question is, how is the concept of safety impacting your decision making as you move through the profession?

Iris Wilson-Farley 23:14
That’s a great question. I would say it’s a question that I’ve been taking head on. Last term I had a multicultural counseling course and and there was a point where one of our discussion posts, it was about people from religious, marginalized religious communities, and I brought up the fact I’m like, Look, I right now, given where things are in the world, I have a bias that I need to acknowledge against religious conservatives. And it isn’t that I don’t want to work with them, and it isn’t that I couldn’t work with them, but I absolutely am approaching somebody if they let on to me that they’re coming from a conservative religious bent, I’m wary about what that might mean for my safety, either emotionally and psychologically or potentially physically. And so some of the work I’ve I’ve been doing and things I’ve been discussing with peers in my classes and with my professors is Okay, so where is the line in terms of, I know ethically, you don’t just, you know, turn and refer immediately, but where’s that line? Where, where does it become an unsafe situation? And I do want to have a plan for what, what happens if it, if it’s starting to feel physically unsafe, in particular. I think if it’s more emotional psychological, then, you know, that’s where I need to decide when to invoke a referral type of process down the line. It. It was a question I was able to ask a few people about when I went to the SAGE conference. And I I apologize because I am not going to be able to rattle off the full name of that acronym, but it is the LGBTQIA+ division within the American Counseling Association. So I went to their annual conference in October, and it was a good opportunity to talk to some folks who are practicing as trans counselors, and just kind of say, what does this look like? Is, is this a thing that I need to be needs to be front of mind for me? And some of them said, Yeah, you know. And the line is, you don’t take any of it. I’m like, Well, I don’t know. It’s a really interesting space, and I’m trying to learn more about it, talk to more people about it, and get to a place where, where I know that my safety will be secured. And I also need to keep in mind that if I find that right place to do work, that right employer, it’s not just on me to do that. That right employer is going to be an employer that is supporting me in that development of a safety plan, and in knowing you know how we handle these kinds of situations.

Curt Widhalm 26:22
In your education so far, how is the current world being discussed in in curriculum? You’re talking very wonderfully about trans issues and how that might look in the therapy world. Just expanding beyond that, how are things like the job market and the way that technology and artificial intelligence are being incorporated into our field, is that stuff that’s coming up in your education?

Iris Wilson-Farley 26:52
Let me take those bit by bit. So the job market has come up in some of our assignments, like go and look at what the job market looks like. You know, look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data and that sort of thing. I call that pretty cursory, because it’s at a pretty high level. It’s looking at what therapists pick in Chicago. Okay, we aren’t digging in at this point. I think it’s really left to the individual to dig into, what does the market and the demand for counselors focusing on older adults in the LGBTQIA community look like? That’s more on on me to get to that level of of depth. I think generally, the the spirit of what I hear is, oh, you’re going to be fine. There’s such a demand. There’ll always be a demand for this, that or the other. And especially with some of the groups I want to work with, I feel like as soon as I say that’s who I want to work with, I get some version of, Oh, you’ll never go hungry. Which is fine, little dismissive, but, you know, it means that I’m going to have to dig into it a bit more to really assess what what it is that I’m looking at, and what type of practice or community agency or whatever it might be, is that it’s going to serve both me and those clients best. The technology piece is really interesting to me, because that’s actually a big part of what I do in my day job, right now. I’m the vice president of HR innovation for a manufacturing company, and so my days are spent looking at how we can better apply technology, including AI. So I’m tinkering with AI all the time, and really when I’m thinking of discussion posts, because that’s where it’s come up. But those are where I was kind of bagging on discussion posts a little bit ago. What’s great about them is they give me an opportunity to bring up topics that aren’t necessarily part of the syllabus. And there was a question about technology, most people ended up posting about things like electronic medical record keeping and such. But I really went there with AI because it’s like, let’s talk about this, because it is real and it is here in some ways. I know you’ve had several episodes about it and but I mean, even, even with this counseling skills practice that I’m doing in the in the course I’m currently in, I fired up ChatGPT, and said, Hey, I’d like to practice reflections of meaning. And like, okay, you know, here, here’s the scenario. Would you like to practice? And that took about three seconds, and, you know, something like that. I’m not worried about the ethics of it in terms of being a real client, but it was literally I, I put on the voice feature, said the words and little bubbles popped up, and three seconds later, it had come up with a scenario. It was ready to play the client in the scenario, and will evaluate me on what I’m what that particular skill I’m practicing. And so I’ve been kind of within my classes, being an advocate for, hey, we could use this. We have to, obviously be very, very careful, and we need to be mindful about how is it being used, and how attractive could that be to insurance companies and other interests to, you know, not be paying therapists to do the work that AI could do. I mean, all of those issues are real issues. I’m dipping a toe into it and trying to be a bit of a provocateur.

Katie Vernoy 30:36
It’s so interesting that you’re the one that’s needing to bring it up, though, I think that was the suspicion that Curt and I had that schools aren’t really ready for AI. Their curriculums don’t include it. And so I’m, I’m excited that you’re doing that Iris, because I think it’s, it’s needed, and hopefully your grad program will take, take heed of what you’re bringing up and maybe add it to the curriculum for for other folks.

Iris Wilson-Farley 31:05
Yeah, I hope so. I think, you know, when I look at the curriculum and the electives, I mean, telehealth is an elective.

Katie Vernoy 31:12
It’s an elective?

Iris Wilson-Farley 31:14
It’s an elective. So, so, you know, it’s, I think it’s, it’s catching up, and most people I know are planning on taking telehealth as one of their electives. But it does speak to the need to embed it. One of the things my school does wonderfully is embedding multicultural counseling and social justice issues in every class, almost every assignment, bringing the tech into it would be a really good next step.

Curt Widhalm 31:44
Is there anything else that you want to make sure that we cover?

Iris Wilson-Farley 31:48
I don’t think so right now. I think I really am, I’m excited and interested to see where the next year takes me, because it’s been a lot of growth in this this first year for me. And some of it, like I said, has been practical. It’s just learning how to learn in this structure, going back to school again at this point in my life. But there’s a lot of it that is, like I said, I didn’t have this background, so getting the foundation and now getting to role play and practice. I keep the, with the word affirming keeps coming up in conversations with people. It It reaffirms that this is the right path for me, and I can see myself doing the work, which I’m super excited about. I think the only other thing is that I’ll mention that I’ve been giving a lot of thought to additional training down the line. So things like, once I’m in field work and I can no longer do my day job because of the hourly demands there, it’s going to free up some time. So I’m thinking about things like certification as a sex therapist, because, similar to technology, human sexuality is an elective course. It’s a seven week course, and if I’m going to be working with clients in a community who, in part, define themselves by their sexuality and their sexual diversity. I just feel like more than seven weeks would be a really good thing to have. And again, I look at my counselor, who was in many ways an inspiration for me to think about doing this. That’s a background that she has, and so we’ve had a chance to talk a lot about that. The other area that I want to dig into is religious trauma. For the same reason, I know it’s rife in the LGBTQIA+ community, and so being prepared to work with trauma generally, but religious trauma specifically feels very important to me.

Curt Widhalm 34:00
Thank you very much for spending some time with us this morning and sharing your experience. And I really look forward to checking in with you in a year and seeing where you’re at and how things are changing. And for anybody who’s listening to this, please follow us on our social media, join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group, to continue on with these conversations, and until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Iris Wilson-Farley.

… 34:30
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(Transcribed in collaboration with Otter.ai)

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