What Should Not Be Normalized in Our Profession?
Curt and Katie chat about a discussion that came up in the Modern Therapists Facebook group – What is something that you wish other therapists would stop pretending is normal. We explore the normalization of waiting until license renewal for CE, balancing accountability without chastising clients, and acknowledging countertransference in therapy. We also tackle the high costs of specialized training, the problems of treating children in isolation without family involvement, and the systemic issue of unpaid internships and low therapist wages.
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Show notes are created in collaboration with otter.ai and ChatGPT.
In this podcast episode we explore frustrations modern therapists have with our profession
Curt and Katie dive into some of the things that therapists normalize that maybe they shouldn’t, gathered from discussions in the Modern Therapist Facebook Group.
What are struggles that are normalized for therapists?
- Waiting until right before license renewal to complete continuing education (CE)
- Not figuring out the difference between holding clients accountable vs. chastising or bullying them
“If bullying worked, then that’s what our field would be doing. And this just seems to not be something that I was ever taught seems to be an effective therapy strategy.” – Curt Wildhalm, LMFT
- Failing to acknowledge countertransference and true emotions in therapy
- The high costs of specialized training
- Not recognizing the importance of family involvement in child therapy
- The impact of unpaid internships and low wages for therapists
Is the therapy profession setting itself up for burnout and financial struggle?
- Many therapists procrastinate CE requirements, leading to unnecessary stress.
- Holding clients accountable is important, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of rapport or shame.
- Denying countertransference is unrealistic — therapists have emotions too!
- Expensive training creates barriers to specialization, limiting accessibility.
- Therapists treating children without involving family may not be setting up the child for success.
- Unpaid internships and low wages continue to undervalue therapists’ work, making financial stability difficult.
“[Concerning therapist pay] I think that there’s the systemic stuff, which I think is really important, because that’s where advocacy needs to happen. But some of the advocacy has to begin with all of us recognizing that what we do is valuable and that we deserve to have a livable wage at a minimum.” – Katie Vernoy, LMFT
What can therapists do to improve their profession?
- Plan CE credits early to avoid last-minute stress.
- Frame accountability in a way that supports clients and aligns with their stated goals rather than chastises them.
- Acknowledge emotions in therapy without making sessions about the therapist.
- Seek out reasonably priced training options and advocate for more affordable education.
- Encourage family involvement when working with children (when appropriate).
“I get one hour out of the week with your child, and you get 167 hours out of the week with your child. And in order for me to be most effective in the treatment that we’re doing, we want you to be able to reinforce with the cooperation of the child as part of the treatment plan.” – Curt Wildhalm, LMFT
- Push for industry-wide changes in pay and internship standards.
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!
Modern Therapists Group Facebook Post: What is something that you wish other therapists would stop pretending is normal?
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
Family Therapy: Not Just for Kids – An Interview with Adriana Rodriguez, LMFT
Dissociation in Therapy: An Interview with Dr. Jamie Marich
The Balance Between Boundaries and Humanity, An Interview with Jamie Marich, Ph.D.
Navigating Religious Trauma, Spiritual Abuse, and Lies About God: An interview with Dr. Jamie Marich
Are Therapist Conferences Elitist? An interview with Linda Thai, LMSW
A Living Wage for Prelicensees
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 0:12
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 practices, the things that go on in our profession. And we have a Facebook group called the Modern Therapist Group that we have been posting some questions and getting some engagement on lately. And we’ve also recognized that our content calendar has been very serious for quite a while here, and we wanted to lighten the mood just a little bit. So we wanted to highlight our Modern Therapist’s Community here a little bit with some of the responses to one of the discussion questions that we had. And if you are not yet a member of the Modern Therapists Group on Facebook come over and join us, so that way you can participate in these as well. The question that we had posed is: What is something that you wish other therapists would stop pretending is normal?
Curt Widhalm 0:13
I liked that question.
Curt Widhalm 0:20
Oh, got a lot of people commenting on things, got a lot of reactions, and we wanted to highlight the top five most reacted to comments in that. Offer a little bit of expansion on some of the discussion here. We talked before we started recording the episode on whether or not we credit the individuals who come up with the different posts that we’re gonna cite here, we’re ultimately deciding not to, because we do recognize that some people’s Facebook names are not the actual names that they go by in real life, whether it be for their own privacy reasons. So know that we are crediting you in the goodness of our hearts, just not officially by name here. So.
Curt Widhalm 0:25
And we’ll put the link to the post in our show notes over at mtsupodcast.com.
Curt Widhalm 2:09
So I am disappointed to say that my first answer on this did not make the top five, so I’m gonna just retroactively give myself honorable mention here, and I had originally posted that something that I wish that wasn’t so normalized, is waiting until your license renewal to complete your CEs.
Katie Vernoy 2:31
I agree on that one, and I recognized when I got licensed in Arizona, I didn’t know until I did my license renewal that there were some slightly different requirements for Arizona. So I was in the last couple of months before that renewal, doing some extra CEs. But now for my California license, I’m good to go. And so I can’t I don’t want to do any CEs until like July 1, because that’s when the next cycle opens. So I don’t want to waste all the perfectly good CEs on the renewals that are already in process.
Curt Widhalm 3:09
I have just seen too many people over the years who are saying my license renews in two weeks. I have 36 CEs that I need to get through in two weeks. And then there’s always, at least in California, the publication of the number of people who just lie to the board that say that they’ve got them all done, and ultimately, don’t.
Katie Vernoy 3:34
Well, and what’s really interesting that I found out from California, pretty much a an honor system. In Arizona, you actually have to at least put the information on the CEs that you attended, if not the actual certificates if you get audited. So I was like, I’m gonna just put them all in now. My license was renewed, just fine. But yeah, you, you can’t lie everywhere.
Curt Widhalm 4:02
And California does audit people, even after you’ve renewed. It’s not an automatic thing that pops up. So don’t lie in California.
Katie Vernoy 4:11
Don’t lie anywhere. Like just do the CEs.
Curt Widhalm 4:15
All right, to people who actually had the top five most reacted to comments here, coming in at number five is chastising clients and calling it holding them accountable.
Katie Vernoy 4:28
That’s such an interesting one. How did you take that in when you first read it?
Curt Widhalm 4:33
I think that this might be to a couple of particular types of treatment. I’ve seen this portrayed in a lot of media, particularly in instances such as substance abuse treatment, where it’s kind of bullying clients into behaving in a certain way or facing their issues. I know that there are some therapists out there that try to match the affect of what’s happening in the room that ends up being something where it’s kind of getting into a retaliatory or a same heightened level of affect. But I guess I look at this as if bullying worked, then that’s what our field would be doing. And this just seems to not be something that I was ever taught seems to be an effective therapy strategy.
Katie Vernoy 5:33
I hear you, and where I went was actually things that we call accountability. And so I’m thinking about DBT diary cards, CBT homework. I’m thinking about things that folks are given, and then if they don’t do them, it is, it kind of feels like you’re being chastised. Why didn’t you do your homework? Now we have to spend the whole session on talking about why you didn’t do the homework. So to me, that’s where my mind went. Was accountability sometimes is not treatment driven in the sense that it’s not what the client’s goals are, it’s what the evidence based practice says that you’re supposed to be doing. And I could see a lot of therapy clients and therapists who are following some of these models, if they aren’t paying attention to the differences of the person in front of them, they may be pushing back and saying, You’re not doing the work, when in fact, the work is not what they want to be doing and isn’t aligned for them.
Curt Widhalm 6:36
I had a session somewhat recently with a client that we’ve been working together for quite a while. We have great rapport. And a question was brought up around, what should I be doing? And I brought up the their presenting reason for treatment, as far as, hey, you know, you came in here and you said that you really wanted to do this. The client kind of stood up and mock walked out of the room and said, You know, I knew you were going to bring up something like that. Maybe it’s time that I changed my reason for being in therapy. And…
Katie Vernoy 7:13
I think this is an awesome conversation. I love it.
Curt Widhalm 7:16
So, it was hilarious for both of us. But, you know, part of I guess the way that I read this is and hearing your responses, there’s accountability, and then there’s chastising, and I think that there’s, there’s a pretty big difference in the delivery of the two of them. I think that you can hold clients accountable without being negative.
Katie Vernoy 7:37
Yeah. Understanding that some clients, whether it’s rejection sensitivity dysphoria or pervasive demand avoidance or some of the things that may impede them either telling you how they’re feeling or what they feel comfortable with, or in getting the homework done, those are valid clinical things to explore and support, and aren’t necessarily even served by accountability, and they can feel chastised if they come into session and haven’t done what you think they should have done. So it’s interesting. It’s interesting to thing to try to hold, and maybe that’s a another whole conversation on how to hold clients accountable within their treatment plan, or maybe that’s just how we say it is that make sure you you’re in agreement with your client before you hold them accountable to something.
Curt Widhalm 8:32
Moving on to number four in the reaction list, pretending that you don’t experience feelings in session.
Katie Vernoy 8:41
Or counter transference.
Curt Widhalm 8:43
Or counter transference. We had done a CE somewhat recently where we went into a case study, and we didn’t talk about it on that CE episode, because there was a number of other things that was going on, but in the disciplinary action write up from that particular case, one of the things that happened was that the respondent was interviewed and asked about what was their feelings in response to what the client was bringing in, and the respondent had said, I didn’t really have any strong feelings about it. And the California Board of Psychology said it is impossible to not have counter transference, even if it’s useful, that you do need to have counter transference, and that was one of the citations amongst the discipline there. We’ll cite to that episode over in our show notes at mtsgpodcast.com. I know that there has been varying discussion in certain aspects of our field, around counter transference, being a theory specific word, and while it might be something that is leaned into more in specific theories, it doesn’t change that we are humans, and we do have human reactions to things.
Katie Vernoy 9:59
Yeah, we have a whole episode on counter transference that we’ll also link over in the show notes. For me, this kind of brings up two different things. It’s feelings and counter transference. And counter transference in my understanding, is things in my own life that I’m putting into this space based on the interactions I have with the client, and so that’s more my stuff. Feelings sometimes are just how I’m feeling in the room. It’s not necessarily counter transference. It’s the client said something, and I’m sad for them, with them, this is an authentic human interaction. I know for myself that there are times when the emotions I have, I’m not always able to completely identify what they are in the room, and I try to be authentic with it in whatever way, and not put the focus on myself and all of those things. But there are definitely times when I have tried to really contain my emotions to such a degree that my clients have been confused, and that’s led to really good conversations. But I think it’s something where, depending on how your brain works, depending on how you your relationship to emotions, all of those things, I think this one can be a challenge regardless, and I agree we should push back on blank slate. I should. I agree that we push back on we’re completely objective in, you know, kind of this clinical, sterile environment in which to, you know, container for folks to have their own experience. And I know that it’s not easy for everyone to be able to navigate counter transference or their own feelings in session, so I just want to honor that part of it.
Curt Widhalm 11:48
And I want to extend this one just a little bit here too, which we’re talking about this in terms of counter transference and feelings that are happening in the room, but also acknowledging and modeling that we might have stuff going on in the rest of our life that might be feelings that are being brought in. One clinician somewhat recently, was telling me that they’d gotten into a fender bender on their way into the office, and nothing that was particularly harmful or a little bit of auto body work, but not a whole lot of danger to self, but it was just kind of something that they were rattled. And we just happened to be chatting before they went into session, and they were saying, Do I tell a client? Hey, I was just at a car accident. I might be a little bit agitated settling down in here. And we talked about whether or not it was appropriate for that particular client, and ultimately they decided that it was feelings that they had to set aside. But there are totally clients where if something is sitting in the background of your mind, and it’s something where you’re having a hard time settling and attuning, it might be more helpful to model there is a process that we can go through to be able to set things down and set aside in a very healthy way that’s part of that particular client’s treatment plan.
Katie Vernoy 13:10
I completely agree.
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Curt Widhalm 13:13
Number three on the list: paying 1000s of dollars for specialized trainings.
Katie Vernoy 13:18
I would co sign on that a million times. There are so many trainings that are so expensive, and some of them, I think, do line up with this is a bazillion hours. There’s a lot of hands on, there’s consultation, there’s all the things, and some of them just feel like price gouging.
Curt Widhalm 13:41
I struggle with this one a little bit on both sides. On one hand, as a consumer, there are things where I have not gone to trainings because it feels like price gouging.
Katie Vernoy 13:54
Yes.
Curt Widhalm 13:54
And on the content, end of things where we’ve created content, we’ve created workshops. I also want people to get paid for their time and their work and expertise in training and consulting. And where the answer is that makes both parties happy is probably a place that doesn’t actually exist in real life.
Katie Vernoy 14:21
I know that when we were putting together the conference, and the things that we were trying to do, even getting to a price that made sense at all, was really hard based on all the costs that we had and all the things that were going on. So it’s hard. It’s very hard. I think, for me, the pieces that I look at with the paying 1000s for specialized training, the ones that have hit critical mass, that everyone has to have, that the big founding organizations of these trainings charge so much or have a lottery, and that you just have to pray that you get in, and then if you have permission to get in, it’s 1000s and 1000s of dollars and tons and tons of time, and you have to decide if it’s worth it for you. And I think some of these organizations aren’t figuring out how to do them cost effectively. They’re, you know, participating in the the market, and this is what, what the cost that people will bear. And I think it makes inaccessible to a lot of folks, because they’re so expensive and so time consuming.
Curt Widhalm 15:34
We’ve talked before in a number of episodes about how only the privileged can attend certain kinds of conferences, and there’s just a lot of shows that we’re gonna put in the show notes here.
Katie Vernoy 15:45
So many.
Curt Widhalm 15:46
But I think it does become something of a barrier where, when you get shoved through grad school, and you’re kind of a little bit prepared on a number of things, and you get out of grad school, and then the zeitgeist, the current trends, the more advanced trainings that everyone says that you must do, makes it to where, when you look at the price tag of those, it really does make this field even more like the haves and the have nots.
Katie Vernoy 16:22
Oh, for sure.
Curt Widhalm 16:24
I’ve been fortunate enough for her, I’ve been able to participate in more than my fair share of trainings that I think that a lot of other people, unfortunately don’t have access to. And I can say that: Do they add to my practice? Yeah, and I’ve also been to ones that I have paid a lot of money for that have not added to my practice, and that there is something that, if we want to normalize something back to this particular comment, I think the counterbalance normalization is investing in things that are going to make sense for your practice and being okay with missing out on the things that are in the zeitgeist just because they’re things that are in the zeitgeist.
Katie Vernoy 17:11
Yeah, I just think it’s so hard. I know that there are some newer continuing education providers or trainers who have come along, and they really have identified ways to make things more accessible. They have very reasonable price points. They have ways to access content, even if it’s not in the intensive way that at least gives you an idea if it’s something that you want to dig deeper into so that you can selectively invest in training that will positively impact your practice, that will align with what you want to do, the people that you see those kinds of things. So we’ll link to some of the episodes that have some of those training providers on them, so you’ll have a sense of who we’re talking about. But I do think that there are ways to get some, at least good foundational training without spending the 1000s of dollars. And so that you can identify: Is this where I want to spend my bazillion dollars?
Curt Widhalm 18:12
I do think that there are a number of places where you can go for CEs that do offer some of these trainings, and do offer payments to the particular speakers who might be presenting for them. And Katie and I have participated in some of these over the course of our career. And what ends up happening is that for the presenters, they get a fractional amount of whatever the cost of a workshop is: one hour CE on platform therapist, ce maker.org.net, whatever it is. And my fear is that that ends up creating a system where the people who are presenting are now enticed to just be feeding come and buy through my link, and it pushes them into being more into the influencer type role than it does really in necessarily the educator role. It makes things more accessible, absolutely. But does it end up inadvertently creating systems that end up pushing people further from doing client work and teaching people how to do good client work and more into just the business of selling CEs.
Katie Vernoy 19:34
I actually feel like it’s the opposite. When you’re a content creator of some sort, an educator of some sort, and you have to do all of the pieces. You have to market yourself, get yourself on stages or to organizations or create your own learning platform, then you’re in the business of selling yourself, whereas, if there is a mechanism where you can get someone else marketing your stuff, yeah, you can send them to the link, but you can focus on the actual learning materials and putting those things together and potentially having some infrastructure that you don’t have on your own. So I actually am okay with that for those types of things. I was I was talking more about people that were more independent, but I do believe that it’s a balance, and my hope is that there’s array of training opportunities for people to be able to access content at different price points, so that folks at least have a sense of where they want to focus their attention. And then from the speaker side, they can have a variety of opportunities to get their work out. I think that actually isn’t, I don’t see that as a bad thing.
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Curt Widhalm 20:47
Moving on to number two on this list, and this is actually the single most reacted to comment on this, and that’s because our number one there was a few different comments that all fall under the same category that put it at number one.
Katie Vernoy 21:02
Okay.
Curt Widhalm 21:02
But the number one most voted, most reacted to comment on here. We’ll call this the the one, 1b winner in this particular…
Katie Vernoy 21:14
So like a tie between one and one and two.
Curt Widhalm 21:18
Attempting to treat children in isolation, without any of their family system or support systems involved.
Katie Vernoy 21:27
Yeah, that’s a that’s a real tough one. In most situations I completely agree. I think you need to treat the system sometimes only working with parents and not kids just depending on the age and the presenting issues for the family. And I do recognize that there are some kids whose parents or caregivers, family members, support system, don’t approve of their identity, potentially, don’t approve of therapy, think that the kid is acting out and in different states at different ages, kids can opt in for treatment and potentially know themselves better than anyone in their support system, and actually should be able to be treated in isolation. So I guess there’s the the exception for me, but generally, I believe that kids with an intact support system, a helpful, healthy support system, should have those folks involved, and the folks that have a really challenged support system, if they’re open to the work, I think should also be involved. So I mostly agree. I just worry that if we have like these definitive statements, then all of a sudden folks are going to feel a certain way or potentially take it the wrong way. So I always like to clarify.
Curt Widhalm 22:51
In my practice, where we serve a lot of children and teens, we make it as a practice habit to talk with families to say something to the effect of, I get one hour out of the week with your child, and you get 167 hours out of the week with your child. And in order for me to be most effective in the treatment that we’re doing, we want you to be able to reinforce with the cooperation of the child as part of the treatment plan, we are nearly all Marriage and Family Therapists by training in our practice that our ultimate goal is to launch the child back into the family system successfully, and that does end up involving family systems work. There are the caveats that we do take into account, as you described, and typically, that is going to be something that is looked at with, usually older children. And in California, 12 and up can consent to their own treatment. And we kind of use a, I don’t know a shorthand guideline that if you take the child’s age and you put it as a fraction over 18, that’s the independence that we really give them. 17 out of 18 year olds, they’re going to be moving into a place where there’s a lot more independent decisions. Four year olds, I personally, at this point in my career, can’t imagine not including the parents in some sort of way around the progress. And part of this is being able to set these expectations from the very beginning of treatment. Are there lots of difficult caveats? When we were talking on our team recently about there’s a lot of family systems theories that when we were going through school, did not acknowledge divorce into household systems as a factor in working with children whatsoever, and that ends up becoming an extra barrier to treatment. So I love this comment. I think that it’s fantastic. It’s something that is going to be an expanded conversation in our treatment team meetings about how to communicate this more effectively to everybody. This is one of my favorite comments, and one that I was really happy got put in there. So very happy that this is on the list.
Katie Vernoy 25:18
I agree. I think there’s thought that needs to go into it, but I really cannot imagine working with most folks without having some sense of their support system and potentially inviting the system in. We had the conversation with Adriana about family therapy for adults and potentially bringing support systems in for adult clients. I feel like we can’t help but work relationally, partly because of our license, but partly because that’s just how we are as humans and kids really are very reliant on their support system.
Curt Widhalm 25:53
Number one, there’s a few different comments and reactions. This is not a scientific poll people. So multiple people probably reacted to multiple of these comments, but in aggregate, the largest reactions came down to being paid poorly and unpaid internships. And I don’t think that that is a surprise, that this tops our list.
Katie Vernoy 26:18
No, not a surprise at all. And I think that they actually are two different things. They’re very closely related, but they are two different things. And I think some of the comments I saw were about lower fees or or sliding scale. Some of the things I saw were about insurance and how poorly they pay in a lot of instances. And then there’s the unpaid internships or practicums, those types of things. And they’re all evidence of us not getting paid well. But I think they’re all very different stages and different I think about it as different advocacy, getting paid internships or early career, making sure that folks are getting paid before they get licensed. That is one element that is very different in a lot of ways, than making sure that insurance companies have competitive rates and that folks charge a decent private practice private pay fee. So we talked about this in a lot of different places. I don’t know if there’s much to be said, except we need to be paid better. We need a livable wage. What are your thoughts on the things to add in this particular conversation about the normalization of it, I guess?
Curt Widhalm 27:37
This is one that we have spoken about a number of times, and I will encourage people to continue to advocate on this and recognizing who you need to advocate to. When Katie and I were on the board of directors for the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, we were instrumental in passing, the first of the major professional organizations to release a statement that the best practices of supervision include paying a livable wage, and we will not only include links to the episodes about advocacy and about the advocacy around that issue in particular, but also to that statement, so that way you can start to pressure the other professional organizations to release a similar type statement. It is something that has been a very passionate thing for myself, for Katie, for a number of our other close friends, to be able to implement some change around making this a profession that is not just by the rich and for the rich, and it does include a lot of directed advocacy work. And I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment on this. I wholeheartedly want people to know that action can be taken on this kind of stuff. And in the same breath, I want to say when you do get to a position where you can either within your organization or once you get licensed, and this no longer applies to you, that this can and should be something that you continue to advocate for, because a rising tide does raise all boats, especially in our field.
Katie Vernoy 29:29
And I think that’s the second piece of it, the systemic pieces of not getting paid well, whether it’s normalizing that there’s interns that are not paid or very poorly paid, or even required to pay for quote, unquote training while they’re working. I think that there’s this other element of how we as clinicians and colleagues frame the payment issue. I’m doing this not for the money, for the outcomes, not the incomes. We’ve had this conversation so many times. But for me, I think that there’s the systemic stuff, which I think is really important, because that’s where advocacy needs to happen. But some of the advocacy has to begin with all of us recognizing that what we do is valuable and that we deserve to have a livable wage at a minimum, but also deserve to get paid well. We’ve had other conversations about, you know, charge your worth, and why that’s ridiculous and not something that we endorse, but charge what you need to get paid to live the life that you’re putting together. Don’t sign up for services that are going to pay you very little. Don’t work for organizations that pay you very little if you have choices. And so this is a tough one, because it’s so systemic, both in the larger system, but also there’s this kind of internalized I must be poor to do this work, because it’s akin to charity work.
Curt Widhalm 31:19
We would love for all of our audience to join the Modern Therapist Group, to continue contributing to our community and to continue to help to further along these conversations. And as you can see, we do listen to you, and we do help to amplify some of the things that you would like to see change, and some of it aligns with what Katie and I are already doing. And that makes it even easier when we are able to say, hey, our modern therapist community really wants to be able to change the norms about something like this. So join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group, follow us on our social media to continue to interact with us. You can check out our show notes, where we’re going to link a bunch of our past episodes over at mtsgpodcast.com. And until next time I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy.
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Announcer 32:12
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