Reacting to Regime Change: How Therapists Can Advocate for our Clients and Communities
Curt and Katie chat about how the United States has shifted since the inauguration of President Trump. We look at how therapists can advocate for their clients and the communities they serve and/or live in. We look at strategies for therapists to stay informed, provide vetted resources, and be present for clients who may be struggling with the changes.
Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.Transcript
Show notes are created in collaboration with otter.ai and ChatGPT.
In this podcast episode we talk about the impact of political shifts on mental health care
With ongoing changes in healthcare policy, therapists must navigate how legislative decisions impact their clients and their own practice. In this episode, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy discuss the Trump administration’s influence on mental health care, the importance of accurate information and advocacy, and strategies for balancing personal well-being with professional responsibilities.
What do therapists need to know about political changes in healthcare?
- The Trump administration’s policies and their impact on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Medicaid.
- The role of therapists in ensuring clients receive accurate healthcare information.
- How legislative decisions affect funding for mental health services.
- Why advocacy and political awareness are essential for protecting mental health access.
- The ethical considerations of discussing politics with clients while maintaining professional boundaries.
How Therapists Can Take Action to Protect Healthcare Access
“This is really a space where all of us have to take more of a responsibility in being able to address some of the things that we had relied on the system just being able to be there and be comforting and be predictable.” – Curt Widhalm, LMFT
- Educate yourself and your clients on state-specific programs and available resources.
- Provide information in your practice on how clients can contact their legislators.
- Spend 15 minutes a day making calls to representatives to advocate for mental health care.
- Encourage, but don’t pressure, clients to take action in ways that align with their own values.
- Share neutral, fact-based sources to help clients stay informed without unnecessary anxiety.
The Emotional Toll of Advocacy and How to Manage It
- Navigating personal feelings while supporting clients through political uncertainty.
- Avoiding doom-scrolling and setting boundaries around media consumption.
- Finding support within the therapist community to prevent burnout.
- Understanding personal capacity and choosing advocacy efforts that are sustainable.
The Role of Therapists in Community Support
“As therapists, we do have a lot of impact, especially for clients we’re seeing at least once a week. We’re part of their mood regulation system in some ways, and so being able to work with them to understand their goals on how they take care of themselves during these uncertain times, I think, is really important.” – Katie Vernoy, LMFT
- Helping clients feel empowered rather than helpless in the face of policy changes.
- Creating space in sessions for conversations about uncertainty and anxiety related to healthcare access.
- Challenging therapists to step outside their comfort zone and take meaningful action.
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!
Katie’s Facebook Post: Where are you getting your news?
Reddit Post by u/STEMpsych: All American therapists need to be a little bit social workers now: what we can do to protect access to healthcare in the US
Reddit Post Curt mentioned about Republican callers outnumber Democrat callers 4-1
How to contact your legislators:
Find and contact elected officials: usa.gov
Resources for Healthcare programs:
Health and Human Services: Programs and Services
Medicaid: Resources for States
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services: www.cms.gov
Health Resources and Services Administration: www.hrsa.gov
State Health Insurance Assistance Program: acl.gov (Administration for Community Living)
Therapist Advocacy Groups:
NAMI | National Alliance on Mental Illness: Advocacy & Support Groups
ACA | American Counseling Association: Advocacy Resources
APA | American Psychological Association: Advocacy
AAMFT | American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists: ADVANCE the Profession
NBCC | National Board for Certified Counselors: Government Affairs
NASW | National Association for Social Workers: Advocacy
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
Therapy as a Political Act: An Interview with Dr. Travis Heath
Decolonizing Therapy: A Movement – An Interview with Dr. Jennifer Mullan
Stop Wasting Your Time on Awareness Campaigns
Topic: Advocacy
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.
Stay in Touch with Curt, Katie, and the whole Therapy Reimagined #TherapyMovement:
Consultation services with Curt Widhalm or Katie Vernoy:
Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:
Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group
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 Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast for therapists about things that we do in our practices, the things that we do in our lives, the things that we do in the mental health world. And this is a podcast that I’m just gonna say is inspired by r/Therapist’s subreddit, and in particular, a post from a couple of weeks ago by u/STEMpsych. And the title of this post is all American therapists need to be a little bit social workers right now: What we can do to protect access to healthcare in the US. And we will link to this in our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com. But in the spirit of our episode from a couple of weeks ago about not just enough to raise awareness. This is more of a follow up as far as some of the call to actionthings that we can do, and ways that as the changing health care world, the changing mental health care worlds, continues to evolve under the Trump administration, with many of the things that have already changed by the time that we recorded this episode, and just due to our production time, all future changes that have happened since we’ve recorded and until you’re listening to this. So this is really kind of some practical step kinds of things, and some things that hopefully challenge you as our listeners to follow up on not just raising awareness.
Katie Vernoy 1:46
I think that’s a great idea. I think the the big piece for me is how to do that without harming my own mental health. I put a post up in our Facebook group where are people getting news, and it’s a very long post. I guess we could actually link to that in our show notes at at mtsgpodcast.com, too. And I think what I started to see was that people were trying to titrate down from Doom scrolling and potentially find aggregators or more neutral information sources, people or organizations who are trying to come out with just the facts and kind of some more neutral observations. And I think that can be very helpful to get away from the drama and the click bait titles and the outrage at times. I think sometimes it’s good to feel that too, but I think getting to a place where we’re able to get just the information that we need so that we can be informed and help our clients. But I’ve been working really hard to try to step away from holding a lot of anxiety. I’ve been trying to step away from moving in all different directions, trying to sort through, what is it, can I do? What can I do? What can I do? And I’m excited about this episode because I think it gives us a sense of what can we do when we have our therapist hat on, because it feels important right now to be able to support our clients effectively. And it also feels pretty daunting, because of how much information is coming so quickly with, you know, such an uproar around it. And so to me, I think being able to give a little bit of advice and some some practical steps, I think, is I’m hoping will be helpful.
Curt Widhalm 3:35
Now this is a lengthy post by u/STEMpsych. I’m going to drop some pieces of this throughout this episode. I’m not going to read it in its entirety, and this is obviously something that is addressed very much at our American audience here, but as much of the world watches us do whatever it is the hell that we’re doing here the next couple of years, this is some of the ways to return some of the locus of control of what’s going on into us and our practices. So just starting with the top of this article: “Someone recently posted here about Trump attacking the Affordable Care Act subsidies. That’s, of course, just the beginning. Trump and the rest of the Republican Party has been very clear that they want the ACA gone. They want Medicaid minimized or eradicated, and if they thought they could get away with it, they’d get rid of Medicare as well. Trump will be going after healthcare access in several ways. Obviously, they will be attempting to directly dismantle programs legislatively and by executive order. But far fewer people know that one of the ways that trumpists and those who preceded them attack social programs in the past, including things like the ACA, was by doing things that make it hard for people who are qualified for things to find out what they are qualified for,” end quote. So not only has the previous Trump administration, but other previous Republican administrations in the past tried to dismantle programs from the top down, they also take them from the bottom up. And as u/STEMpsych is saying here, they do that by limiting the available information. And at least as the time of recording here, we’ve already seen several websites across a number of different departments go offline, be taken down, have restricted access to them, and I imagine by the time that this airs that we are also going to see several more of those things happen. I have already had a personal relationship of mine who works in a rural hospital in middle of America communicate to me as well that they’ve already had threats of federal funding if they release Community Health updates out into the community about diseases that could be spreading around. So this is very much already in place, that information is being limited. It’s where we come in.
Katie Vernoy 6:13
That’s what we hope to come in. I think this is something that we’ve been working on. We’re reaching out to experts, we know experts in the world that can help us find some of this information, as well as share some perspectives from experts in some of these different areas that are under, under siege? Is that too dramatic to say? But we hope to be putting out some extra episodes about some of the topics that have been immediately taken away from the government websites, but also the things that we’re all talking about, this is still very much in process, so I’ll leave that there. But I think it’s something that if you have a topic or an area of expertise or an area of concern that you want us to seek out an expert and get some more information onto our website, please reach out to us at podcast @ therapy reimagined.com and we can start adding more to our quote, unquote Survival Guide for everybody.
Curt Widhalm 7:11
Back to u/STEMpsych. “They do this by maneuvers like slashing outreach and program advertising budgets so people never find out about their programs” as already reinforced by my friend “slashing the budget for customer service agents who answer the phone so wait times escalate, cutting the budget for maintaining websites. They also do things like narrow windows for opportunity, such as when Trump, last time around, reduced the number of days for open enrollment on health insurance exchanges, so more people who would have qualified miss out on the opportunity.” And I remember during the first Trump administration, talking with students in a class that I was teaching at that time about there being one of the student loan processing companies where agents who were answering the phones had very strict amounts of time that calls could be answered and spoken through. And it was something ridiculous, like four and a half minutes was the average amount of time, and some of the protocols that they would have to follow would be scripts that would take up two and a half to three minutes. Here’s background information. Please give me more information. What’s your account number and operating on very slow computer systems that would take up most of the call window time. So you have phone service agents who are under threat of being fired, having to meet their quotas while also having to go through very burdensome steps on their end, making it a nearly impossible task to service people who actually need help.
Katie Vernoy 8:40
Not only is that awful on a customer service basis, as well as actually doing their job, which is providing information, I would imagine those workers would be going through a lot of moral injury. Their job is to help give information to people, and they are being actively prohibited from doing it. So it seems like there would be a lot of frustration all the way around, and people would stop calling, which I think is the whole point.
… 9:06
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Curt Widhalm 9:06
So, I have a private practice that is not insurance based. I’m outside of a lot of these systems myself, and part of trying to take this article into spirit is looking at what are some of the ways that we can actually help to serve our communities? I’m not as directly impacted by things like waiting for Medicare reimbursements or serving Medicaid populations, which I know that a lot of our audience does work in agencies that are affected by that and have been affected by federal funding freezes, and who knows what other Hi Jinks have happened between recording time and you listening but, but this is really a space where all of us have to take more of a responsibility in being able to address some of the things that we had relied on the system just being able to be there and be comforting and be predictable.And it not being a time of predictability u/STEMpsych says if you really want to do things, you have to be able to get people information. And I know that this kind of goes a little bit against the spirit of what we were talking about a couple of weeks ago, as far as raising awareness. But this is actually have some action steps when you are raising awareness. This is where having some of your energy directed to, for example, if you are an insurance provider, knowing more about how your state’s health insurance exchange works, how your state’s Medicaid program works, anything that is state specific, that you can communicate to your clients, because if the difference is, hey, you’ve got 10 days to be able to get this done, make sure that you get this done, otherwise you’re not going to have reimbursable services. It helps to be able to have those clients be able to take action steps on their own.
Katie Vernoy 11:09
I think another point that just came to mind having gone through some similar things when I was working in community mental health, this is the time when placing your anger in the right spot can be very helpful. I remember a time when funding sources completely changed, so this was a little bit different, but has some similarities that I think are relevant and frontline staff, the therapists, the case managers, the, you know, coping skills, specialists, those folks were very frustrated and angry about all the changes, while the supervisors and managers and directors, all the people all the way up to the top were frantically working to try to find funding, to try to sort through what could be done, and were taking the brunt of the anger from the front line workers. I think yes, there is a differential power structure. There are potentially folks in high levels and agencies who are greedy and see therapists as cogs in machines, all those things. And there are folks who are madly trying to work to save your jobs because of these funding freezes and different things. And so I think being able to place your anger in the right spot at the federal government level, if that’s what’s happening, or at the state level, whatever it is, versus at your supervisor or the manager above them, who is stressing out right now trying to sort through how you’re going to get paid and keep your job. Obviously, I’m speaking to the therapist there, but also for supervisors and managers, this is stressful for everyone make sure you’re taking care of yourself and that you’re not getting angry at therapists for not understanding what’s going on. Because this is where the divisiveness can happen, where we start getting mad at each other versus trying to collaborate and get creative on how do we work with what is and not blame each other for what is? Because it’s not our fault. We’re doing what we can to help the clients and communities we serve.
Curt Widhalm 13:03
And speaking to agency kinds of situations or group practices, one of the words I think you’re going to hear us talk about a lot is capacity, and whether this is individual, whether this is in agencies or in group practices, part of being able to address some of the capacity is make the space for this to happen, because it’s going to happen anyway. My practice, we met last week as an entire team. We talked about, hey, this is the changing course of mental health care right now. There are people in our communities who are going to be affected by this, some of whom may be served by our practice, some of whom may be served elsewhere. But let’s create some space to talk about our own feelings about this and our feelings about the system, so that way we can all be on the same page about this, rather than it just continuing to potentially bubble under the surface. I think being able to have some directed space around this helps to not just make it feel like each one of us are cogs in an entire system, but that we are cogs that work together as part of the system. And I think that extending some of this capacity talk is: you don’t have to do everything for your clients that we’re suggesting here, but even being able to help source and provide more resources to other places that are doing the stuff, if that’s an extra step that you can take. Hey, adding a space on our website for here’s referrals to immigration attorneys. So that way clients who know that they might be potentially running into immigration or Customs Enforcement, that they’ve got resources that they can turn to, that you are a place of trusted information amongst all of these changes, rather than listening to whatever bias news source just happens to be the most available.
Katie Vernoy 14:59
Yeah, I think that it’s important to acknowledge here that standing up and putting out information or taking stands can feel dangerous and may not be available to everyone. I think for me, there’s some things that I’ll probably end up putting on my website, and I think there are also conversations that I can have in the confidential, private space with clients that can also be impactful without the information needing to be in public spaces. And I think for some clinicians, especially, there’s their own oppression, marginalization, targeting that they may want to pay attention to when they think about how they can take action. And so I think it’s an assessment that each of us needs to make, what are our capacities to stand up, and where do we stand up, and what can we do? There’s some posts going around. If I find one that’s public, I can also link this in the show notes as well. But if we’re thinking about our own individual actions as humans, I think that there’s a lot of advice around how to speak to legislators, how to do those things and and before we got on Curt like we got to tell them call, don’t email your legislators, especially if you have a legislator that’s in a position of power.
Curt Widhalm 16:17
In the party of the position of power.
Katie Vernoy 16:19
Then the party of power, whether in your state or in the federal government, to make some changes, to follow up on things. But know that each of us can play a different role and still be doing something. And you don’t need to do all the things. You can do the five or six calls a day, or you can do different things that are effective for your clients and for yourself. You have to look at your own capacity.
Curt Widhalm 16:44
To expand on that point that calling takes somebody’s time in in those offices, it takes a staffers time, and many of the representatives that Katie and I have come across in our advocacy work over the years, they’re not young people. They are people who tend to operate in ways that the systems have worked oftentimes before, which is largely to say that sending an email, putting an online form, that stuff gets deleted rather quickly, making a phone call takes up somebody’s time, and oftentimes what happens in those offices is the representative, or the chief of staff, or whoever it is, will talk to the staffers that day and say, what are the things that people are calling about today? And they’ll listen to about the first two or three things on the list. This is what’s important enough for people to call in. You can be one of those people and…
Katie Vernoy 17:46
And it’s about numbers too. It doesn’t have to be some eloquent thing that you’re saying. It’s about this is of concern for me. This is the position I want my legislator to take.
Curt Widhalm 17:55
And you should be calling both the DC offices as well as the local offices for both of your senators and your congressional representative, at least as far as a federal level goes, as well as calling the state office and the local office for your local legislators. So this could be up to 12 calls a day. You might not have the capacity to do that, but especially as you’re hearing clients talk about having their issues be affected by some of the ongoing changes, if you can get some of your clients to also call these people, then maybe you’re only able to make four calls a day, but if you get somebody else to also make four calls a day, you’re doing better than zero calls per day. And even just being able to provide some information on your website, your social media, your waiting room, hey, here’s how to contact your legislators in order to be able to affect the programs that are affecting you. This is empowering people with the knowledge to take action themselves, and that is being able to help your clients, not just in their own individual world, but also become advocates for themselves.
Katie Vernoy 19:08
I like putting caveats on what you’re saying, so I’m going to go to a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, and we’ve talked about this other places. So those episodes will be linked over in the show notes too. But some clients will need that information. Will want that information. How can I advocate? What can I do? They’ll be bringing in the topic of the news cycle, and that will be what you’re talking about. And some clients won’t some clients will also hold different political perspectives from you. And so this is just do good therapy, but it’s sorting through who wants to talk about their own personal crises, who wants to talk about what’s going on in the news, and sometimes you have to introduce that as a potential topic, because they don’t know that you’re open in a safe space to talk about politics with and how do you take care of clients without either pushing them to feel like they need to advocate or being part of the therapy is an opiate for the masses, and how do you cope and calm down and kind of dim their fire? This is a way longer conversation than just this right now, but as therapists, we do have a lot of impact, especially for clients we’re seeing at least once a week. We’re part of their mood regulation system in some ways, and so being able to work with them to understand their goals on how they take care of themselves during these uncertain times, I think, is really important, and also making sure that you’re not pushing your own quote, unquote agenda, or that they feel that you’re pushing your agenda, even if you’re just trying to open a conversation they don’t normally have. So way longer conversation is needed on that, I’m assuming, and I think we’ve done that a few different times, so I will try to find those and put those in the show notes. But as a clinician, your responsibility isn’t to activate your clients, but if they are feeling hopeless, that can be a coping strategy, and having the tools to help them be an advocate can be very helpful too.
Curt Widhalm 21:00
That’s really about being able to help return some locus of control to people who feel that the world is devolving around them. And I think that there’s a difference in our ethics codes between imposing our values on people and providing information on here’s how to contact your legislators and what they actually listen to.
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Curt Widhalm 21:24
I saw something recently, and if I can pull it up again, we’ll put it in the show notes. Otherwise, you just anecdotally have to trust what I came across. But it said that Republican callers tend to outnumber democratic callers by about eight to one. And if that is something that helps to maybe activate and encourage people a little bit more, you know, rather than posting something on a congressional members Facebook page, I’ve looked at a handful of congressional Facebook page announcements over the time that we’ve worked in advocacy the last, I don’t know, 12-15, years or so, and I don’t think that I’ve really seen a whole lot of people who are in agreement with the policies that some of these people are espousing really posting and commenting. It’s usually people who are diametrically opposite who are posting there, so I can see that that is largely ignored. But once again, my call is provide people with information on how to actively do this, so that way some of this locus of control being able to use our knowledge about how these systems works ends up being able to take action. When I used to teach a policy and advocacy class, one of my assignments was call your congressional rep and ask them to take a stance on something that was the assignment and write about it. And it was probably one of the most procrastinated assignments that I’ve had in any of the classes that I’ve had, but resoundingly, most of my students found that was actually pretty easy. They actually took some time to listen to me. They took down some information, and in some cases, they got follow up calls weeks or months later that said, Hey, your representative has signed on to the legislation. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. So this stuff does work, but I think it’s sometimes where, amongst all of the anxieties that we can have, normalizing that, Hey, this is something that we can do. You don’t have to agree with me, but if you are having concerns about your life and the way that this stuff happens, I can listen to you, and I can validate your feelings, and I can help you work with things, but part of taking the behavioral action on this stuff is, let’s actually do this. In fact, what if we try right now in session? Exposure.
Katie Vernoy 23:58
Exposure. Yeah, I think a lot of folks don’t like making phone calls, so I understand the procrastination, and I think if somebody feels strongly and has the words to say, the things to bring up, it can be hugely empowering and potentially very effective to be able to support clients in regaining some sense of control, some locus of control.
Curt Widhalm 24:21
There is a part in here that I do really like about what u/STEMpsych wrote quote, “Maybe the best part about it, from our therapist viewpoint, is that it role models the idea that we take care of us. It is another form of caring and looking out for our neighbors that we are demonstrating. Doing this, we are role modeling compassion and action, you’re demonstrating that one of the ways to help people is sharing good, accurate, factual information. We answer the question, ,How can one respond to such an attack on the social fabric of our country?” with “By looking out for one another, and reweaving it.'” We have to take action. It might be something that you’re used to, relying onfederal stuff, act locally. Make sure that you’re looking out for the people in your community. Provide information. And you might run into people who do have different political viewpoints than you, and you in your education, your position of privilege of knowledge about how some of these systems work can use that privilege to benefit all people, whether it’s people who are taking advantage of programs, whether they support the party that funded those programs in the first place or not. But one of the things that we’ve seen already under the Trump administration is many people who have voted for Trump who are immediately regretting it. And while there might be some personal satisfaction in taking some joy and seeing, Oh, right, you’re getting your just desserts, this is what you voted for. That’s not helpful from our professional positions. What is helpful is, if you want things to change, there are action steps that you have to take in order to do this. In order for us to really be the trusted members of our community, it’s serving all people, and it’s being able to do that in a way that is understanding that not everybody is going to be verbally happy with what you’re doing, but when we understand that addressing things like systemic poverty, systemic racism, that we can have some sort of influence on the larger systems in order to be able to change it. That’s really what our call to action is right now.
Katie Vernoy 26:39
Yes, and I want to go back to two points; one is understand your own capacity. There are therapists who are being threatened, their lives, their livelihoods, their way of being, their identities, and it can be hard to hold space for folks who voted differently than you, who are not regretting the vote that they had or are celebrating in the aftermath of this regime change. So I think being able to understand your capacity, to be able to understand how you can best take care of yourself and support clients and communities that you’re able to support. I think that’s important. People can be angry. I get it. I’ve got some anger too. I’ve got some of my own feelings, and I feel able, in my relative privilege, to be able to work with folks and talk with folks who voted differently than I did and who believe differently than I do. Not everyone has that capacity, and we recognize that, and we have a whole conversation about bias and discrimination, like think a couple of them, actually. So we’ll put those in the show notes. And so I think this is where you and I differ alittle bit Curt. I understand this there is…
Curt Widhalm 27:54
I’m waiting my turn on this one.
Katie Vernoy 27:56
I understand that there is a need for therapists in our professional roles to be able to support folks, and we’re not in every single minute of our days in our professional roles. And we all have capacity issues that we need to pay attention to, and that potentially our capacities are less in this time of crisis for many folks, and I want to honor that and not say that they can’t be therapists because they can’t work with somebody who would seek to harm them.
Curt Widhalm 28:28
And I want to challenge that, that all of the times that I’ve heard people use that reasoning to not take action might be why we’re in the position that we’re in. You know, how many times have we raised the flag on this very podcast about this is coming down the pike. This is information that’s coming and 6, 12, 18, 24, months later, larger community is, oh, somebody should have done something. And I’m saying that right now is a time where, sure, you don’t need to drop everything that you do, but spend 15 minutes a day making a couple of phone calls, do a little bit more than what you have been doing. The resistance isn’t going to be you know, during the revolution, the resistance starts with being able to do good community work. And if it takes even just a little bit more right now, do a little bit more. But I think it’s so easy in our places of privilege to say that’s not affecting me yet, that we don’t do anything until it’s too late. This is a time where, hey, we really, actually do need to do some things. Because when the system, a system that you and I have advocated, yes, definitely gains a lot of changes. We’ve done this for years. I’ve wanted to throw out entire parts of the system before, not like this. And I think that this is something where doing more than what you normally do doesn’t have to be in great likes, yes, I respect people have capacities. But stop pearl clutching. Start saying somebody should do something and be the somebody who’s starting to do something.
Katie Vernoy 30:10
And I don’t think we were in disagreement with that. I think potentially, the point I made earlier wasn’t clear. I’m saying, if you feel harmed by someone, you don’t need to be their therapist and find the way to get to the capacity to do the things that are going to be effective. So it was a yes and, Curt. It wasn’t saying, don’t do anything if you can’t. It’s saying, understand your capacity and design it to do things that are effective. Does that work better?
Curt Widhalm 30:37
Take action, people.
Katie Vernoy 30:38
All right. All right.
Curt Widhalm 30:40
We will have our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com. Follow us on our social media. Katie and I are going to try to be doing some stuff in our MTSG/Therapy Reimagined universe that helps to be able to convey some of this stuff and be able to provide some more information. I’m starting to put some of that stuff in place in my practice to be able to serve my community. And we would love for you to join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group, to continue on conversations like this and until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy.
… 31:13
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Announcer 31:14
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