How Therapists Can Deal with the Crisis of the Week

Curt and Katie chat about a typical dynamic that can happen in therapy sessions, namely the “crisis of the week.” We look at how this dynamic comes up and what therapists can do to deal with it more effectively. We identify both clinician and client factors and suggest strategies to improve therapy sessions.

Transcript

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In this podcast episode we explore how therapy can get stuck responding to the crisis of the week

During one of our Patreon coffee hour/Q+A sessions, we got a request from a patron to talk about how to navigate client sessions that were mostly focused on worrisome incidences from the week, rather than on treatment goals.

What is “Crisis of the Week?”

• When therapy gets stuck with only talking about what has happened in the week
• Crises take precedent over treatment goals
• There are also biases in how this topic has been brought up during training or supervision for early career clinicians

How do therapists determine whether the “crisis of the week” conversations are helpful

• If conversations are repetitive or there is little progress made, these conversations are likely not helpful
• “Crisis of the week” can be conversations from clients and (for kids) their parents
• If the conversations align with treatment goals, they are more likely to be helpful

How can therapists mitigate the concerns related to “crisis of the week”?

“You don’t want to dismiss this as ‘you need to stop talking about the thing that’s most present on your mind,’ because I think a lot of people would feel invalidated by that…I think the conversation is, how do we help this to be less distressing to you? Or how do we help to avoid these crises? Or how do we move into a place that we’re actually working on what you came to therapy for?” – Katie Vernoy, LMFT

• Making sure to talk about the therapy and determine whether the treatment goals are appropriate for the client
• Providing structure on how to work on therapy goals can help make therapy more effective
• Making sure that you’re hearing the client and then redirect to treatment goals or the client’s hopes for therapy
• Making sure that everyone is on the same page with how the treatment progresses
• Insight into why there is a tendency to go to the crisis of the week

What are the clinician factors in getting stuck in a “crisis of the week” conversation?

• Feeling uncomfortable with structuring therapy
• Allowing the client to lead, when they are not ready to do so
• Potentially not taking responsibility for the session due to laziness, burnout, or other concern
• Therapists not clarifying expectations early enough in treatment

What are the client factors in getting stuck in a “crisis of the week” conversation?

• Clients are fearful and potentially using a decoy issue to avoid discussing a more relevant
• Clients may be having a trauma response that leads to speaking about safer topics
• Clients are not yet comfortable enough with the therapist to dig deeper
• Clients do not have the skills to manage the topic
• Cultural factors could impact communication and expectations

What conversations can therapists have with clients related to avoiding crisis of the week?

“How do you bring this up with clients? Is [this] really something where there’s kind of a disagreement or lack of agreement on what you’re actually able to do in treatment together? Is the idea of what therapy is the same on both sides of the therapy room?” – Curt Widhalm, LMFT

• Setting up structure for sessions
• Addressing the relational elements related to attachment and getting to the clinical work
• Identifying how to address it when “crisis of the week” happens
• Determining how best to start your session with each client

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!

Our Linktree: https://linktr.ee/therapyreimagined

 

Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:

What to do When Clients Get in Their Own Way

What Can Therapists Do When Clients Don’t Get Better?

 

Who we are:

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

Katie 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 0:15
Welcome back modern therapists, this is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm, with Katie Vernoy. And this is the podcast for therapists about the things that happen in our practices, the ways that we work with our clients. And this is an episode about dealing with crisis of the week.

Katie Vernoy 0:32
Crisis of the week.

Curt Widhalm 0:35
So this was brought up in one of our Patreon coffee hours by one of our patron members. And we are so excited to actually be engaging with our little modern therapists community in a lot of ways and taking some of the things that we discuss when we run into people and being able to say, you know, here’s our perspectives, and maybe sharing this with all of our listeners. So wherever you’re at in your career, you’ve probably ended up running into those sessions with clients where it just seems to be like, you know, we set an idea of what we’re supposed to be working on, but every week, client comes in, and there’s just not that. Katie, and I wanted to talk about just kind of, historically, how crisis of the week has been talked about in our field, the way that that has not necessarily benefited a lot of the discussions, and maybe leave you with some practical ways of identifying and being able to deal with this when it comes up in your work with clients. So, Katie, I know in our little pre recording that we did for preparation for our Patreon members, I talked a little bit about my experience, I’ll share that here in just a moment. But how was crisis of the week, kind of brought up to you in the early stages of your career?

Katie Vernoy 2:03
I think it was when I was in community mental health, for sure that the idea of crisis of the week was paired in some ways with the doorknob confession. And so oftentimes, folks would come in with all consuming situational issues; they got an eviction notice, they were running out of money at the end of the month, they were having actual kind of survival issues. And so we would talk about those things week after week after week, or it would be my kid acted up in this way or that way. And every week, same thing, same thing. And it, it felt like it was we were processing it, but not getting to any resolution. And it was the same conversation almost every week. And then every once in a while they would say something inflammatory, like Oh, I forgot I was going to talk to you about x as their doorknob confession. And x, of course, was way more interesting and way more aligned with the treatment goals. And so to me, I think with with crisis of the week, I started to recognize that there were different reasons for it, and and shift those things, which we’ll get into, but I think it felt like, especially when I was very early in my career, these were such important things, they were there was so much emotion behind them, how could I stop this processing, and later, this venting to to jump into this other stuff. And I felt like it was, it was hard to make the shift to actually get to something that was effective for some of my clients. I think a lot of my clients, we were able to do it, but like some of my clients were just so dysregulated, so overwhelmed, so consumed by, you know, situations in their life that it was hard to actually get to what we might call is good therapy.

Curt Widhalm 3:57
Mine was brought up earlier, by one of my professors. I think it was my first it might have been my second semester of grad school.

Katie Vernoy 4:05
Oh, wow, that’s, that’s super early. So not even practical.

Curt Widhalm 4:09
Not even practical, but it was done as a sign. And I don’t remember the exact words that she used. But I can picture pretty much the class because this got referenced both sarcastically but also kind of at face value by some of my classmates throughout grad school. But that if you’re facing a client who’s always dealing with a crisis of the week, you need to consider if you’re working with somebody with borderline personality disorder. And in retrospect, I’m like that was pretty terrible advice to give to grad students because not really understanding all of the nuances of what this means. Your description here sounds pretty, like thoughtful and respectful in comparison to the way that it was suggested to us. But really in identifying what a crisis of the week is, it’s just kind of those things that come up that seem to interfere with treatment, and not necessarily in the same way of therapy interfering behaviors. We’ve discussed that in the past, it could be one of those things from the world of DBT. But those things that seem to be all encompassing in a client’s life that detract from the overall therapeutic goals. Now, in your experience, and in your practice, how do you identify what’s just kind of what’s important in the week, and that’s kind of what ends up coming up versus this is a crisis of the week situation that’s just totally detracting from therapy.

Katie Vernoy 5:47
When the conversation is really repetitive, there’s not progress made in that conversation and the client’s experience of it and the way they manage these crises are unchanged by having talked with me about it. Regardless if its quote, unquote, crisis of the week, it’s clear that it’s not that we’re not affecting change, like there’s not something that’s happening effectively in therapy, to be able to improve their capacity to weather whatever their crises are each week. And so to me, whether it’s a quote unquote, crisis of the week, you know, which, what I’m thinking about the kind of it’s a borderline, it’s therapy interfering behaviors, those kinds of things that really suggest that it’s a some sort of issue with the client. Versus it’s an issue with the therapy. And so to me, like I am getting caught with that right now. And so I’m trying to put all these thoughts together. But if it’s something where there’s not progress being made, I need to address the therapy, versus this is a client that just has a lot of stuff going on. And we need to find a different way to get to what we’re actually supposed to be working on. I don’t know if I explained that well, so maybe, maybe you can jump in and help me get back on track with this.

Curt Widhalm 7:07
Yeah, I find that when treatment doesn’t seem to be addressing what we agreed to work on. In other words, if I’m working with somebody and their family around preparing them to work through former trauma sort of stuff, but everything that keeps being brought up in session is about, you know, recurrent behavioral stuff. I work with a lot of families, a lot of teens, that kind of stuff. So if I’m having a family that comes in, and like, hey, we want our team working on, you know, this trauma stuff that is the cause of all of these behaviors, but we’re gonna dominate every session with here’s how our team is acting up this week, then I’m going to point out, Hey, we agreed that we’re going to work on something, but it seems like all of our time is being spent talking about something completely different. And this can happen for a number of reasons, you identified some in your practice. But what this really seems to come down to is, a lot of times making sure that everybody’s on the same page as far as what the treatment plan actually is. And a lot of times this comes down to how well are we as therapists managing sessions, managing in setting expectations for what therapy is supposed to be, what we’re actually able to accomplish in therapy, rather than just talking about, here’s the things this week that brought up big emotions for me. And that’s, I think, a lot of times where it’s very easy to get trapped into the content of what clients are talking about. And as we’re both kind of pointing out here, one of the ways of managing it is getting back to talking about the therapy. And here’s kind of that pitch for one of the best ways to talk about the therapy is have your clients fill out session rating scales and be able to more easily structure Hey, are we talking about what we actually want to talk about and work on our goals, so that way we can identify this stuff even earlier?

Katie Vernoy 9:12
Sure, I mean, I really hate ORS and SRS. Like as a client, I just hated it. And my therapist finally stopped doing it. But I think there’s that element of

Curt Widhalm 9:21
But did you do ORSs about ORSs?

Katie Vernoy 9:25
No, I did not. But I think the concept is good of being able to talk about the therapy and I think a lot of folks, especially when the content is really highly emotionally charged, I think have trouble shifting gears to Hey, are we working on what you want to work on? Because there is: What are the agreed upon treatment goals? But then there’s also like, are those the right treatment goals? If this is what you’re bringing every week, do we need to shift the treatment goals? So I think it’s not just always like go back to the treatment goals. It may be let’s reassess if this is the right treatment goal, or what the right stage in the treatment goal, because when you’re saying I want to work on helping my kid to do X, Y, and Z, and they come in and talk about what their kids doing, I don’t see that as, arguably something that they may know is not part of what the treatment is. Right? And so it’s really providing a lot more structure on how do we talk about these things. Most people, most clients know how to vent because they vent to their friends, but actively getting into therapy and doing the things that help. That’s where we come in. And I think this is why talking about it as client based issues is really, really limited.

Curt Widhalm 10:39
Right.

Katie Vernoy 10:40
Right? And so it really is the onus of the therapist to really set the stage for what is therapy? How are we going to be in therapy? And and how do we determine what the goals are? How do we work together collaboratively to make sure that we’re working on those goals? And how do we assess that those those goals are the right goals? But to me, it’s, it’s hard when you’re a clinician and someone is really activated and emotional and having those moments to say, Wait, this is what we really wanted to talk about? But I think it’s important that we do that, I think you do all your therapist skills, you get to a place of bringing the session into a space that you can actually talk about the therapy, helping the client to self soothe, you know, addressing whatever they’re talking about to the point that they can move on. So you don’t feel like you’re completely disregarding them, or not allowing them to speak their truth or whatever that is, you don’t want to dismiss this as like, well, you need to stop talking about the thing that’s most present on your mind, because I think a lot of people would feel invalidated by that. But it’s once you’re able to get to that place where you can actually talk about it. I think the conversation is, how do we help this to be less distressing to you? Or how do we how do we help to avoid these crises? Or how do we move into a place that we’re actually working on what you came to therapy for?

… 12:03
(Advertisement Break)

Curt Widhalm 12:05
Yeah, it’s doing good therapy. And even by doing that, what you’re describing is going back to what the treatment goals are, it’s…

Katie Vernoy 12:13
Sure.

Curt Widhalm 12:13
And making sure that everybody’s on the same page. Because in managing that, it doesn’t necessarily mean that, hey, we need to go back to the treatment goals that we agreed upon a month ago, it’s, as you’re describing its are the treatment goals, have they changed to, here’s what we’re able to actually accomplish here, I’m not able to go and take that eviction notice off of the door for you, I’m able to talk about being able to get you to a space of not coming from a place of emotional reactivity to that. So that way, you’re better able to be stabilized through the process of managing being evicted or whatever else it is. So what you’re describing is still going back to what the treatment plan goals are. And for the more insight oriented aspects of treatment, it’s also being able to get into what’s making us susceptible to having that be the focus of the sessions, even when we’ve agreed that what we’re supposed to work on is something else. Now, most of the time, I see this as these are clinician factors that end up allowing for this to happen. And that can be anything from not really recognizing it, not really having the confidence to be able to talk with clients, especially early career kind of mistakes, but just being able to say, hey, this seems important to you and it’s outside of what we had already talked about. That there’s a space to really supportively just talk about the therapy because how many times have either you run into this with clients in your career or had people consult with you, in supervision this comes up with me that all of a sudden clients are upset a couple of months into treatment, like you’re not even a helpful therapist, because we’ve never even reached our goals. We’ve never even talked about what we set out to do.

Katie Vernoy 14:19
Yeah. Oh, for sure. And I think oftentimes, it’s something where taking the clients lead feels very appropriate. And I think sometimes we actually are mistaking a client wandering in the wilderness with them taking the lead. I think there’s there’s an element of this where we really have to take responsibility for for the shape of the session. And maybe it’s not a full agenda but I think it’s it’s even for some clients switching from How are you doing today? or How’d the week go? to What’s most helpful to talk about today?

Curt Widhalm 14:58
And even if you are a non directive therapist, you’re still expected to have some sort of treatment plan in place that your client knows about, you’re supposed to when he visited every so often. So that way, this kind of stuff doesn’t end up happening. And much like my professor in grad school can end up leading us into a space where our laziness, our lack of ability to be able to structure therapy, even in unstructured theories, ends up being something that labels people with very potentially damaging diagnostics that can follow them throughout their lives, when really what they’re doing is reacting to your piss poor management of therapy.

Katie Vernoy 15:46
Well, I think there’s there’s other elements of this that I think are important, I think, yes, therapists need to manage their sessions. And I think that there’s an element of this, that could be laziness, or overwhelm, or burnout, or all of the pieces where you’re not actively engaging your client in a way that that allows for moving past whatever the crisis of the week is into the real parts of the session. I think that there are there are client factors, though. I don’t know that it’s borderline, I never had heard that. That’s so weird. It just feels very, very judgmental and negative. And I get that. It seems like at some point, anything that therapy clients did that was hard to deal with, you know, if they’re too defensive, if you feel like they’re pushing you and pulling away, or whatever it is, like any of these things like oh, well, they must be borderline. So I think we’ve made that point. But it just it’s it still frustrates me that…

Curt Widhalm 16:48
Oh, she doubled down, you know, it was, these are the kinds of clients that always seem to have car trouble.

Katie Vernoy 16:58
Okay, so so I think we have a whole other conversation.

Curt Widhalm 17:01
I’m beginning to think that my entire graduate education was just like some sort of experimental like we were in the control group of some greater scheme of things. How well do people actually turn out with just a bunch of not great education?

Katie Vernoy 17:17
I think you were being punked, honestly. So I think we actually have another conversation that we need to record about personality disorders, whether or not borderline or narcissism or any of that stuff is as helpful as people seem to think it is. But let’s talk about the client factors that therapists need to be aware of, because it’s still a therapist factor, but it’s a client factor that therapists need to manage. And so I talked briefly about the doorknob confessions, I think this is where the client is talking about anything and everything, to not talk about the real topic. And I’ve definitely had these clients where they just are terrified to talk about the real thing. And so they have something else that’s that’s the, the decoy, the decoy issue. And I think therapists need to figure that out in the way that I do that is, so this is really interesting. What are we not talking about?

Curt Widhalm 18:20
And this can be something where and again, within the broader borderline personality disorder topic that we’ll come out with an episode on that fairly soon, but it’s something that could be a sign of trauma of…

Katie Vernoy 18:38
Oh, absolutely.

Curt Widhalm 18:39
…not really, either having the skills or the desire to actually talk about the causes of a lot of these feelings. And so it’s from a client’s perspective, it’s easier, it’s, it’s, dare I say, safer to talk about whatever is happening during the week, rather than some of the root causes of this kind of stuff. I think that there’s a fair amount of historical literature that does talk about this from a trauma perspective as well. And, you know, depending on how far you go back, some of it does loop back into just blaming it on, quote, unquote, the border line, but this is something that is, as you’re describing something that can be managed by what is it that we’re not talking about? You know, it seems like whenever we get close to this, this is when the conversation ends up shifting to something else. And once again, the answer is talking about what’s happening in the therapy room and being present to what is happening in the here and now.

Katie Vernoy 19:43
And I think it’s also this, this element of really trusting in the relationship and the depth of the relationship to be able to have those conversations, right. I mean, it’s, it’s something where, maybe session two or three, we can have that conversation, but I feel like I’m still getting to know the client, they’re still getting to know me. I mean, some of these interventions are session eight, session ten, you know that where you’re really digging deeply into, I know you. And there’s something else going on here. Because I think we can’t assume with someone we first met, that the reason that they’re talking about something on a surface level is because they’re avoiding talking about something else. I think it’s, it’s something where it’s the responsibility of the therapist to really get to know the client and their patterns so that we can cut them off at the pass.

… 20:38
(Advertisement Break)

Curt Widhalm 20:42
You know, when I usually bring this up with clients, it’s a few sessions in maybe before I know, somebody in that, you know, two to three months sort of range. But part of what setting the expectations for therapy from the very beginning is about what it’s like to work with you as the therapist. And sometimes by eight or ten sessions in there’s the implicit agreement that’s been established as part of the therapeutic alliance that might not make that as effective as bringing it up earlier. You know, you can, you can still explore it…

Katie Vernoy 21:16
Bringing it up as a relational issue is later. I think bringing it up as a structural issue is at the beginning. That was a distinction I was trying to make.

Curt Widhalm 21:22
Sure. And I think that that’s why it’s important to bring it up earlier and with curiosity, not as kind of an assignment of this is why it’s happening. And I think that that’s the way of managing it is, Hey, I noticed this when not, here’s why this is happening. I think that that why piece is what you’re talking about, the interpretive piece of this is once you’ve gotten to know somebody earlier, but sometimes just being able to explore it from a curious sort of standpoint allows us to bring in actually some of the client factors that may do this, it might be, oh, I need more skills to be able to talk about that. And that can then adjust what your treatment plan is, as far as being able to work on distress tolerance, or any of those kinds of things. It might be something where there’s cultural factors, were talking indirectly about something ends up being the way to bring up more difficult things at first. It might be a language barrier sort of thing, if there’s cross cultural differences between therapist and client. It might just be a very literal sort of aspect. Well, you asked me what happened this week. And that’s why I’m talking about Vanderpump Rules. And…

Katie Vernoy 21:48
But I think there’s there’s that other element with the the literal or you are the expert so I’m following your directions that I think speaks to the structural bringing this up. How I’m trying to distinguish this is at the very beginning, it’s really saying, This is what therapy is, and this is how we’re going to run the sessions versus trying to assign the client, you know, or even necessarily explore the client factors before you know how they’re going to respond to the structure that’s been set in place.

Curt Widhalm 23:16
And that structural sort of discussion allows for the two of you to be able to plan for all right, when this happens when we notice this happening, is this something that we want to be able to address directly every single time that it comes up? Or is this something that just didn’t noticing this, this is how we identify, alright, you’re going to a soothing type of conversation or soothing type of behavior, because that’s what you need in that particular moment. But being able to identify it with the clients and with the clients permission of what to do with it ends up being kind of our responsiveness. Some of that’s going to be guided by theory and the agency that you work in and all of that kind of stuff. But the big important piece of this is, how do we want to address it when it’s coming up so that way we know what we’re doing.

Katie Vernoy 24:12
Yes, and I think with the the caveat that not everyone is going to have this issue. Some folks are going to be very laser focused on whatever the treatment goals are. And some folks may only mildly do this crisis of the week. And I think directly addressing it, having the deeper conversations is really valuable work. I think there’s also a mechanism in place for transitioning into whatever the clinical content is. So how are you doing this week? What’s going on? crisis, crisis, crisis, resolve a little bit, tie it back to the treatment goal, work on the treatment goal. Like I don’t think it needs to be something hugely relational every single time. It can be This is how we look for the fodder, the clinical fodder. Because I mean, I think that’s with a lot of my clients, it’s how the week go. And they talk with me about it for a few minutes, five minutes maybe. And then we go into the dynamics, the patterns, the things and use that as fodder for the treatment goals.

Curt Widhalm 25:25
What you’re talking about is conversation about the week not crisis of the week type things, at least as far as I’m hearing what you’re describing.

Katie Vernoy 25:35
I think the distinction is, is that I feel like some of those conversations could turn into crisis of the week, if I treated them as the clinical material versus the opening gambit. I don’t dig too deeply into them, I let them kind of run through what they’re what they’re bringing to session versus processing it and going deeper into, and how did that make you feel? And what’s going on? Like I really, at the very beginning, don’t don’t get into the fray there. And I wait. Because when I used to get into the fray, that’s all we would talk about.

Curt Widhalm 26:11
Can you give me an example of how that five minute mark ends up changing? Is it something that you’re saying? Is it something that the client saying?

Katie Vernoy 26:20
At five minutes or 10 minutes, or whatever it is, I do a short summary. And I say, Okay, which of these things would be most helpful for us to talk about? Or I’m noticing this, and this is one of the things that we wanted to work on, is what do you think about talking about that today?

Curt Widhalm 26:36
So even some of the structural pieces of this is how do you end up starting sessions?

Katie Vernoy 26:42
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That’s, that’s the point I’m making. Thank you. That’s where I was trying to get to.

Curt Widhalm 26:50
I mean, maybe this is a much bigger and deeper conversation in and of itself. But there’s even a difference between a hey, we left off last session with this is that where you want to dive in? Versus kind of that more relational like, Hey, what’s going on with you this week? Or any of those kinds of things that ends up being something that you structure as the therapist yourself, that can also help to set this up in a way that makes it to where you’re less likely to fall into this kind of a trap?

Katie Vernoy 27:24
Yeah, I think there’s some clients where we’re working on specific things that yes, we were talking about this at the end of last week, is that where you want to start today? I think there are a lot of clients, especially in longer term attachment based work, where it’s kind of what’s going on? And I have to make sure I don’t get into the content and spend 15-20 minutes getting caught up on who they’re dating, what’s going on, what and so and so say, did you get that promotion? Like I think it can, some of those things can be very powerful and enriching. And some of them are just me being curious. And wanting to know what’s going on with my client. So and that’s not crisis to the day necessarily. But I think that there’s that element of being able within the relationship to determine how to you switch gears into the work versus the connection, and the the touch base, the initial kind of check in, so to speak. If you do a check in which I guess is more to the point of everybody kind of does these things differently.

Curt Widhalm 28:24
So maybe kind of looking at this in a way that has some takeaways and some calls to action is number one, look at the ways that this is showing up in session, some of this is going to be dependent on where you’re at in treatment, early stages versus middle stages and that kind of stuff. Two is how do you bring this up with clients? And if this is really something where there’s kind of a disagreement or lack of agreement on what you’re actually able to do in treatment together. Is the idea of what therapy is the same on both sides of the therapy room?

Katie Vernoy 29:05
Yes, yeah.

Curt Widhalm 29:08
And then it’s How do you bring this up once you’ve identified that it’s happened? And really, what I’m hearing is most of the time, it’s just coming back to Do we need to adjust what our treatment plan is?

Katie Vernoy 29:22
Or even, I mean, I think jumping all the way to Do we need to adjust our treatment plan, I think is is that’s like step four, or five. I think the first one is, is this what you’re wanting to talk about today? Is this what you’re wanting to work on today? I think when you identify the problem, maybe it’s been a couple of sessions. And it’s not necessarily like let’s have this gigantic conversation about therapy. It could be can I do an intervention in the moment to switch how we’re working? And then you jump to do we need to change how we’re working? Do we need to address our treatment goals, you know, and make them different because you keep bringing this stuff up? You know, I think it’s I think it’s it staged, I don’t know, you know, or stages, I don’t think it’s one particular like, Okay, now we have to discuss the whole relationship because the last three weeks, you’ve talked about the same crisis over and over again.

Curt Widhalm 30:11
We would love to hear from all of you how you see crisis of the week developing what you do to manage it. You can do that by commenting on our social media and following us on those platforms, as well as joining our Facebook group, the Modern Therapists Group to continue having this conversation. And please consider becoming a patron member or supporting us through Buy Me a Coffee. And as you can see, we make contents out of the conversations that we interact with our patrons.

Katie Vernoy 30:43
And you can actually ask these questions and have in depth conversations on your particular situation.

Curt Widhalm 30:48
Yes, and you can find our website over at mtsgpodcast.com and until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm. With Katie Vernoy.

… 30:58
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Announcer 30:59
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