When Your Clients are Wealthy and Well Known: An interview with Dr. Holly Daniels, LMFT
Curt and Katie interview Dr. Holly Daniels about working with high profile clients. We talk about the lifestyle factors (like isolation and dehumanization) that come with celebrity as well as the differences when working with famous and powerful people who bring in more common concerns like relationship challenges. We also explore the skills and trustworthiness required to be able to succeed with these clients.
Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.Transcript
An Interview with Dr. Holly Daniels, LMFT
Dr. Holly Daniels is a licensed marriage and family therapist and a Certified Relationship Clini-Coach for high-profile families and individuals. She works with Hollywood A-Listers, tech billionaires, championship athletes and social media superstars all over the world. A trauma-informed therapist with a background in residential eating disorder and substance use disorder treatment, Holly now works primarily as a consultant and coach, helping people optimize their lives and experience fulfilling relationships with family members, lovers, friends, colleagues and themselves. Holly offers immersive coaching packages and individualized concierge intensives, and you can find her at drhollydaniels.com.
In this podcast episode, we talk about what it’s like to work with the rich and famous
Curt and Katie asked Dr. Holly Daniels to talk about her work as a therapist, relationship coach, and consultant for the wealthy and well-known.
What is it like working as a therapist or a coach with the wealthy and well-known?
“The first real interaction that I had with people who had fame, I could recognize right away that they actually felt isolated, that their lives weren’t as glamorous as everybody thought that they were. And that has stayed with me. And I realized that that is the reality of a lot of their lives. And so I don’t have that…desire to cling on or be one of the people in the sphere of influence.” – Dr. Holly Daniels, LMFT
- Seeing the isolation and the reality of their lives
- Making sure to avoid being swept up in the fame
- Understanding the countertransference tendencies (to agree, to be critical)
- Don’t get sucked into aligning with them if it isn’t in their best interest (everyone around them agrees with them)
- Don’t join the power struggle when clients become very dismissive
- Therapists must be emotionally very boundaried and logistically very flexible
- ·When people are this wealthy or well-known, they have to be very cautious and they have a very high bar related to trust – therapists need to know how the difficulty with trust impacts the relationship
- Allow the client to bring the public information into the session, don’t assume their response to what is in the news
How can therapists support clients who have an influential public persona?
“In doing this work [with high profile clients] I really need to be psycho emotionally very boundaried, and logistically very flexible. And I think that’s a hard line to ride sometimes. [When] working with people who have huge lives we can’t necessarily depend on…them signing up for the same time slot, the same hour session, once a week. Clients will not really be able to have…that set time or that set space to meet. And so you have to be logistically flexible. You’re doing a lot of appointment setting and logistics with assistants and office managers. And at the same time, that almost makes it more imperative that the psycho-emotional boundary that I hold is very strong…because I don’t have maybe the comfort of my own office and my own chair all the time to ground myself in.” – Dr. Holly Daniels, LMFT
- Separating your personal self from your public persona
- Looking at these two selves as related, but not the same
- Helping clients to let go of public approval or hate as related to who you are
- The commodity is the public persona, not you
What are the family systems and relationship concerns that come with fame?
- There is a closed, isolated bubble where there can be a lot of enmeshment
- There are different challenges and dynamics unique to being part of a famous person’s life
- Looking at the full family system, including the kids
- Feeling guilty for having mental health concerns because they have so much
- It is important for therapists not to bring in their own political or social agenda
- People dehumanize famous people
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Dr. Holly Daniels website: www.drhollydaniels.com
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
What Can Therapists Say About Celebrities? The ethics of public statements
Speaking Up for Mental Health Awareness: An Interview with Metta World Peace
Family Therapy: Not Just for Kids – An Interview with Adriana Rodriguez, LMFT
Therapy for Executives and Emerging Leaders
What to Know When Providing Therapy for Elite Athletes
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:
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Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:
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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 show up in our practices or things that show up in our profession. And we’ve been diving into some more client focused episodes around the interactions between our clients and the people that they interact with. We’ve had a couple of recent episodes around parasocial relationships, content creators, and kind of within the same universe of things we are joined today by Dr. Holly Daniels to talk about working with the influential, the famous, the big names, the names that you might see all over the place all of the time, and some of the particular issues that show up in therapy with them, some of the issues that might be things that kind of work in the transference countertransference aspects of things and ways that you might bring things into therapy. And we are diving into that today. So thank you very much for joining us.
Dr. Holly Daniels 1:20
Thank you Curt and Katie, I’m so happy to be here. And this is super fun, and not something I usually do. So excited to be here.
Katie Vernoy 1:29
We are so excited to have you. Not only are you amazing, but you’re a wonderful friend of both of ours. And so it’s good to have you here and talking with us. But we’ll get you started with something that we ask all of our interviews, which is who are you? And what are you putting out into the world?
Dr. Holly Daniels 1:45
I am Dr. Holly Daniels. I am a proud Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and I have a PhD in psychology. I’m a certified clini-coach as well. I’m also one of the managing directors at the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. So big shout out to all my fellow California MFTs. I’m here today, though, to talk about my private practice. I’ve had a private practice for over a decade. And I mainly work with high profile people in entertainment and tech and their families. What I’m bringing into the world, wow, what a big question. Peace, harmony and healthy relationships.
Katie Vernoy 2:24
Woo hoo!
Dr. Holly Daniels 2:24
Isn’t what we’re all doing? I hope I am supporting my clients. And, you know, my clients may seem from the outside to have it all and to have everything. But the truth is that they’re very often suffering from a form of isolation or separation, because of their fame or their status. So, I hope I’m helping people heal and experience securely attached relationships with their lovers, their children, their colleagues, their friends, and helping people optimize their lives so that their personal lives feel as successful as their professional lives.
Curt Widhalm 2:59
So, this seems to be kind of a practice that maybe at first glance, a lot of people would be like, I want to work with the wealthy and the influential and the big names and that kind of stuff. And I’m sure that the question that then starts things off is: how do you develop a practice like this? Like, is there some sort of special Psychology Today that influencers and celebrities go to to find therapists like you? Or how do you really start to develop a practice that works with these kinds of people?
Dr. Holly Daniels 3:31
It’s a great question. And it wasn’t ever anything that I set out to do. I was a theater major in college. And right out of college, I worked in local news in Baltimore. And then I moved to LA and I was an actress, mostly in commercials. But I also did, you know, a few small parts and television and film. I was also very psycho emotionally unwell at that time, and went to therapy for the first time in my life when I think I was about 30. And it was life changing. And I think a lot of therapists have this backstory, right? Therapy really saved my life. And going through that process, I really felt like I found my calling, which was to be a therapist and a coach and a helper. So, I went back to school and got my masters and my PhD in psychology and got a license. And then when I started working, the people in my personal sphere, were still my actor and writer and producer friends in Hollywood. And so my client list kind of just grew organically from there, you know, word of mouth. And then I found out that a lot of powerful tech people also hang out with a lot of powerful Hollywood people. So, I started seeing a lot of people from the tech world as well. And yeah, so I don’t have any great advice, unfortunately, for other people who would want to work with this population. It just kind of happened organically for me.
Curt Widhalm 4:52
So, I’m taking out of this develop an entire second career where you meet these kinds of people and it builds from there. Actually, but what I do hear out of this is that it kind of like with any practice, it’s about networking. It’s about people who know you, it’s about the people that they know. And it’s being a great person who exudes kind of some knowledge of being able to know kind of the day to day lives out of populations like this.
Dr. Holly Daniels 5:23
Right, I think that that that is it. And, you know, it’s interesting, because my background is very different from most of the clients I see. I grew up in a very poor socio economic area of the country in the middle of the Allegheny Mountains. And, and so I do have a lot of differences as well. I don’t share all of those different characteristics that a lot of my clients come into the room with. But I do know Hollywood, and you know, I think I’m a creative and kind of neuro divergence person. And I’m highly highly intellectualize. So there is that kind of common ground that we share.
Katie Vernoy 6:01
That leads me to the question of kind of this idea around lived experience. Because it seems like you do have stuff that that’s shared and stuff that is absolutely not shared. There’s big differences in your lives and the lives of the people you work with. How does that impact the work do you think?
Dr. Holly Daniels 6:18
Yeah, that’s a good question. Gosh, I grew up in such a weird environment, almost off the grid in the middle of the woods. And it is really interesting to me that I do not have kind of a chip on my shoulder about famous people. I see their isolation, and maybe I relate to it, that isolated feeling because I grew up isolated. And I don’t have that ‘wow factor.’ I didn’t grow up in any kind of area where I thought that I could interact with the people I saw on TV. And yeah, I haven’t thought about this that much. But it is an interesting dynamic within myself that I noticed that I don’t get caught up in the fame or a lot of the the pieces that I think some people get caught up in as far as wanting the lifestyle or the I guess what I’m saying is the first real interaction that I had with people who had fame, I could recognize right away that they actually felt isolated, that their lives weren’t as glamorous as everybody thought that they were. And that has stayed with me. And I realized that that is the reality of a lot of their lives. And so I don’t have that, that desire to cling on or be one of the the people in the sphere of influence. And I think that’s related to growing up in the middle of the woods, but I’m not sure. Can you guys make those connections for me?
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Curt Widhalm 7:45
How do you suggest maybe other therapists being able to deal with some of those feelings of, Oh, my goodness, I know this person from all over the news and every other conversation that ends up happening, and here they are calling me, sitting in front of me and are dealing with some of that.
Dr. Holly Daniels 8:03
Yeah, I think that unfortunately, I see that happens sometimes with some of our colleagues. I do see that sometimes people really get swept in and swept up in the fame. And I’ve seen some unethical practice that kind of makes me sad with with people who are wealthy and well known. And it is important, you know, my training, my original training was psychoanalytic and psycho dynamic, but toward the psychoanalytic side. And I think that has been really helpful because I do think about the transference and countertransference. You know, there is a pull from these clients when when you work with somebody who is very powerful and very accustomed to people being wowed by them, and and wanting to make them happy. Right? So there’s that pull, and I’m trying to think of what the the transference term is enactments, right? There’s a reenactment of, there’s an expectation from the client that you’re going to align with them fully, and go in the direction they want to go in and give them the answers they want. And you have to be really careful about that. And know, you know, I have to know what what is my stuff and what, what my triggers are and what the pull might feel like for me, and be really clear with myself in the work. You know, I’m not going to get sucked in to aligning with them if it is not in their best interest or not a healthy direction for them to go. There can also I think, be some transference around working with really powerful people, a countertransference of wanting to judge them. Because, you know, they’re very discerning and they’re very used to making judgments and we can kind of get tied into almost a power struggle sometimes or you have to be able to really know yourself, have done your own work to be a therapist with these folks because there will be a lot of challenge and a lot of dismissal from them to you. And so you want to make sure that you’re not being triggered by that and that you can see it for the defense that it is and not get dismissive back.
Katie Vernoy 10:10
Not join the power struggle.
Dr. Holly Daniels 10:12
Exactly, exactly. Yeah.
Katie Vernoy 10:15
One of the questions that we asked usually towards the beginning of the episode as a point of learning is what do therapists get wrong? And I think we’ve already kind of started into this, but when you said that there have been some of our colleagues who’ve done pretty unethical stuff. Can you talk about some of that what that looks like and what therapists should watch out for?
Dr. Holly Daniels 10:34
I like to say that in doing this work, I really need to be psycho emotionally very boundaried, and logistically very flexible. And I think that’s a hard line to ride sometimes. And what I mean by that is, we’re working with people who have huge lives. We can’t necessarily depend on, you know, them signing up for the same time slot, the same hour session, once a week. Clients will not really be able to have, you know, that set time or that set space to meet. And so you have to be logistically flexible. You’re doing a lot of appointment setting, and logistics with assistants and office managers. And at the same time, that almost makes it more imperative that the psycho-emotional boundary that I hold is very strong, right, because I don’t have maybe the the comfort of my own office and my own chair all the time to ground myself in. So, while the logistics are kind of flexible, and all over the place, you really have to be secure in the work that you’re doing, and have a really clear treatment plan, basically, or, you know, forward action plan with the client and so that you can stay aligned, and stay in that healthy trajectory with them. And not get kind of knocked off balance by how flexible the logistics of meeting have to be. It’s also important to know that, I said something along these lines already, but that they are going to be challenging, and they aren’t necessarily going to trust you even if it seems like they trust you. Right, and that their life experience thus far has made it so that their bar for trusting people is very high. And it absolutely needs to be because there are so many people who will take advantage of them if they ca. You don’t want to be like sucked into this false lull of everything’s peachy and great. And always be aware that even though they even want to trust you, and they want to trust the work, there’s always going to be a little suspicion there. And that that’s okay. And you know, for me, I have to say I’m not afraid to bring that into the room and bring that into the sessions to talk about that piece: that it is hard to trust people. And it certainly is difficult to do some of this deeper work with somebody and get vulnerable when you’ve been burned before, when you’ve been vulnerable with people before and you not only got burned interpersonally. But your dirty laundry was aired nationally and internationally for all to see.
Katie Vernoy 13:20
Oh no.
Dr. Holly Daniels 13:20
So, there’s a you know, there’s a really high bar for trust for these clients. And we have to be aware of that. Right? We have to know that going in and know how that impacts the work together.
Curt Widhalm 13:33
When you’re working with clients like this, when there’s around, you know, some of the dirty laundry being aired, or even just being in the news in general. How much do you bring that into the room? You’re talking about keeping boundaries, I’m sure that you’re not like, you know, if somebody’s winning a Grammy, you’re not texting them after the Grammys and being like, hey, congratulations on tonight. Like, I know you well enough that you’re keeping those boundaries. But when there is that stuff that’s coming up that is all over the news. How much do you just kind of either shortcut sessions to be like, are we talking about what’s all over TMZ? Or are we just letting clients be able to step in completely on their own and bring this information in?
Dr. Holly Daniels 14:16
Right, I think that we have to let the clients bring the information in. And that may be you know, this topic maybe falls under what people might get wrong. I think you absolutely cannot have any assumption going in to this work that you know what the client is bringing in or that you know what their struggles are. You have to hear it from them because we don’t know what they’re going on in their personal internal space, no matter what is plastered all over the magazines, you know, or TMZ. And I love the the example that you brought up, Curt, you know, I have had clients who texted me, hey, just won this award. And then absolutely, I’m going to text back: Congratulations. That’s amazing. And and if I’ve been working with somebody for a really long time, and I see something, you know that an accomplishment, I actually might say congratulations. But 99.9% of the time, right, I have to, I’m going to wait for them to bring it in. And actually, one of the questions I ask often is, do you want me to look at that? So somebody will come in and say, Oh, my gosh, this article is nuts, you know, and I’m so upset and I don’t know, I need to process through this. How did this get out? And I would say, Do you want me to read the article? Just that communication, I think is really important. So that, again, this is about the trust thing. I feel like, if I’m reading stuff about my clients, but not explicitly telling them that I am or even asking them, if I should, they are going to not necessarily trust that I’m being fully open with them. Or that, you know, they’re thinking that I’m holding this separate idea of them that isn’t the person I’m talking to in the room. And that is the dynamic that they deal with 24/7: people thinking they know them. And I don’t want to be one of those people who thinks I know them. I want to hear it from them. And I want to ask them, What are you bringing in to session today? What do you want to work on today? Even if I saw something, you know, really wild, in the news, before seeing them, I probably won’t bring it up, unless they do.
Katie Vernoy 16:36
Seems like an interesting line to walk where you’re really focusing on the relationship with them as an individual versus kind of the public persona. And before we were recording, you talked about kind of how you support folks when there’s problems with the the public persona and all of that. Can you share that here? I think it would be very helpful for our listeners to understand some of that.
Dr. Holly Daniels 17:01
For sure, for sure. And this is kind of, you know, in our influencer society of today, I think everybody can maybe benefit from this kind of thinking. As I work with clients a lot about separating their public persona from their personal self. And if you are in the public eye, it is really, I think imperative to be able to do this: to say, I have a public persona, and then I have my personal self. And I like to think of it like they’re siblings. So you’re intimately related to your public persona. But it isn’t you. And so any accolades that that public persona gets, that’s awesome. But you don’t have to take it into your, you know, personal belief system. And any hate that you get out in the public is happening to your public persona, and not to your personal self. And I think that this can be really helpful for people to keep these two separated. And to know that, of course, they’re related. But if we’re holding on to this idea that we’re going to get our love and our validation from our public persona, that is just a recipe for disaster, right? That’s, that’s, we’re never going to be fulfilled in that way. And so we have to keep the focus on the personal self and keeping the personal self boundaried and healthy, and, and knowing how to discern what people in your life really do know you and who was in your inner circle and who your your actual friends are. And then who, you know, everybody in that public sphere is. Bbecause it can get really enmeshed as, as you know. And I know you guys, were just doing a podcast on on influencers and content creators, which I think is awesome, and I can’t wait to hear but, you know, I work with a lot of content creators as well. And it really gets tricky when people are sharing their personal life, right? That they’re, they have a personal brand, that their own life experience is what they’re selling. And you have to be super careful not to become a commodity, even in your own mind. Right? You have to recognize that you’re creating this public persona, that is the commodity, but that’s not you. And you want to really be careful about what you let your public persona share. Because if you are, you know, just opening your heart and being super vulnerable and sharing unprocessed trauma and giving all of yourself to the public persona to share; Well, you know, just know that the public persona is going to have to deal with the love and the hate that comes from that process. And you can’t let that boundary be blurred. Because you’re going to feel those attacks so personally, that it’s going to be impossible to move forward in the world.
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Curt Widhalm 20:07
A lot of what we’ve focused on so far here is kind of around individual work. I also know that you do couple family work with this as well. And I’m venturing guesses, I don’t know, your client roster, but I’m venturing guesses that some of these relationships are where both people hold kind of the status. Sometimes also imagining that this is where one partner holds the status, the other partner holds kind of a more regular role in life, if that exists in this space. What’s the impact in therapy, when you’re working with families or couples in this space?
Dr. Holly Daniels 20:44
I love working with families, and I’m very grateful for my training as a marriage and family therapist. And, you know, it’s there is so much enmeshment in these family systems, with partners and with children and with, you know, the whole extended family. Because there is this kind of forced isolation, fame is forced isolation, because other people can’t necessarily relate to you. And they do have an image of you that isn’t necessarily who you are. And so you have to protect yourself and you become kind of isolated, but everybody in your family system also is isolated with you. You know, I call it there’s this sphere of influence right around around the famous person or the powerful person. And so I feel like any good interpersonal relational work has to include family, has to include the relationships. And, and I actually do some family intensive sometime and do some, you know, structured family work, when there is some discord. Because there’s this really interesting dynamic that occurs that somebody who’s really close to somebody who’s rich and famous, they both are grateful, and guilty, because they’re enjoying all of the benefits that the famous person has around them, but they didn’t necessarily do anything to get those benefits. And they also feel really uncomfortable about that guilt, right? That guilt doesn’t feel good. And then it becomes resentment. And all of these discomforts, and uncomfortable feelings actually end up oftentimes being resentment toward the famous person. And we see this a lot with kids. In a family system, kids of famous people really struggle with this, because they are, again, simultaneously grateful and guilty. And it’s too much emotion to handle, especially if you don’t know where it’s all coming from. And then that discomfort just lends itself to resenting your parents, or your partner. And so all of those emotions have to be teased out in order for these folks to have, you know, healthy feel good relationships. And, and often, I also feel like, it’s hard for these families to reach out and to ask for help. And again, there’s that guilt. It’s almost like a survivor’s guilt. And, you know, people will often come into me and say, like, Yeah, I think I need some help, I need, I think I need some support. But I’m sure there are a lot of other people who need the help more than I do. And why am I taking your time and can’t complain…I can’t complain. Right. And, you know, meanwhile, none of their kids are talking to them, they can’t find a healthy relationship, their blood pressure is through the roof. They have terrible insomnia and anxiety. And they’re still like, but I can’t complain, I can’t complain, because I have so much. You know, some of the family work too, is is helping the partner or the kids recognize that actually, that person who is holding on to all of that stress is really suffering, you know, is really having a hard time. There’s there’s a lot of pressure and a lot of stress for somebody who is powerful, or and/or famous in the world. They know that everything they do impacts a lot of people, they have extremely busy schedules. And it is a tough lifestyle.
Katie Vernoy 24:27
When you’re doing this family work, it seems like there’s a lot of places for you to intervene. And in some cases, it seems like you’re, you know, you talked about this with me before. There’s there’s this element of you’re probably doing more of family and individual work within a family then a typical therapist might. Because of the trust issues, because of how specific these dynamics are. How do you hold the boundaries? How do you how do you work with families that are so insulated, that are so isolated? And and make sure that you’re you’re taking care of those families in a way that helps move them forward?
Dr. Holly Daniels 25:07
It is really difficult to be working with a family system. And or even working with an individual with a really broken or hurting family system. And not only build the trust to do some decent work with that individual, but then say, and I’m going to refer out all of your kids and each all these other people. And then we’re going to work in a treatment team. I mean, for somebody who, who deals with information breaches and lack of trust, you know, all the time. That’s an, that’s a nightmare for them to imagine. And so. So I do work with families, and I work with families in what some other therapists might think, are unconventional ways. And I work with individuals within a family system, and then I work with the family system. And then the one thing that I absolutely am sure to do at all times is to let everybody I’m working with know that this is the plan. And and this is all family work and family system work. And I will even say and I say all the time, there are other therapists who would say that it’s not okay to work with individuals within the family system, and then work with the family system as a whole. And I see it differently. And this is why. And I think that I can help the individuals and the family system by working in this way. And if you ever feel of course, like the way we’re working together isn’t working for you, please let me know. And we will, we will figure that out and, and do things differently. It just doesn’t seem to work any other way. And I and I do think about it a lot. I think you know, I’ve shared this with you, Katie, too, it is difficult, because there is kind of a stigma around working with really wealthy and well known people. And we can talk about that, too. It’s actually difficult for me, too, to find other colleagues who work with these populations, who I think are ethical. And I would love to have a more robust referral system as well. And I’m working on that. And, you know, we can talk later maybe about how to how to do that, or how we could make that happen. But I kind of feel isolated as well, as a clinician and I have had times when I have referred out, and it has gone badly, you know? So I feel like I don’t want to naysay any of my colleagues, but I have come across, you know, colleagues who don’t keep it professional and do create dual relationships with their clients, and do, you know, want to use their clients fame or status for their own benefit. So all that to say, I do often work within a family system and keep it closed in that way. And it seems to work pretty well. I’ve done a lot of good work with a lot of families in that direction. But I know that it can be controversial.
Curt Widhalm 28:27
We’ve shared kind of some of overlap in some of this and, and my practice focuses a lot more on teens. And so I end up with more of the kids in this. And I’m trying to keep this as more of an episode for you and the focus on your practice. Maybe we’ll dive into working with the family members, and I’ll talk about that on a different episode here. But I often find that coming from the kids side of things that it’s also not just including people in the family in some of these sessions, but it’s nannies and it’s assistants that sometimes end up becoming part of this larger family system, kind of who’s sitting on the couch one week or another might be dependent just based on all of the different relationships that kind of come up in some of that flexibility that’s required on our part there.
Dr. Holly Daniels 29:16
Agreed, agreed. And and yeah, thank you for saying that Curt so I don’t feel all alone here. Yeah, I think we have to be flexible. I think we have to meet our clients where they are and we have to take into account that our clients do have really unique life circumstances. And and they need help and support and I think it’s unethical to not meet them where they are and and find ways to effectively help them.
Katie Vernoy 29:51
You mentioned that there’s a stigma around working with the wealthy and well known or the rich and powerful or whatever, however we want to describe them, and I know that there are probably some of our audience members who are like, you know, you should use your influence to change the world or, you know, there’s like there’s, there’s some really strong feelings I think people have about working with this population. How do you navigate that?
Dr. Holly Daniels 30:13
Yeah, it’s a tough one. I think we really have to be able to understand that the systems that we’re all working to change and should be working to change are separate from and distinct from the individuals who are living within the system. And I am an individual therapist, you know, I am somebody who works with individuals and couples and families, but I’m working on that individual plane. And, and so I absolutely cannot bring in my social or political agenda into the work that I do with any clients, including the clients who are more powerful or famous, or what have you. So, so I understand that, you know, people might feel that way. And I definitely have had people say that, you know, to me, like, oh, what influence can I exert to make the world a better place, because I’m working with people who influence a lot of big decisions. And I just absolutely can’t imagine that I would do that. It just feels so inherently unethical to bring my agenda into the into that work. And, and of course, I have my biases. I have my lenses. We all do, right. We’re all working from our particular standpoint. So I’m not saying I’m completely unbiased or un-agenda-d. None of us is, but but that can’t be how I interact with my clients. That just that just doesn’t have a place there.
Katie Vernoy 31:51
And it sounds like what you’re you’ve described is your clients wouldn’t continue to work with you. If they even whiffed that at all. That they’re so used to people around them, having agendas, having having bias, you know, wanting to, you know, do something about the fact that they’re so powerful and have such, you know, a known place in the world. So, to me, it seems like that you’re handling it very well, I think the other part is kind of how do you handle it with colleagues? Because it seems like that would be that would be tough to have folks go like, wow, why can’t you know, you’re just you must just be doing it for the money or you like, you must just, you know, whatever, how can you even stand to be around people that are rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, you know, like, there’s such negativity around these folks. And what you’ve really described are folks who are very isolated with the same issues that we all have, they just have one area of their life that they succeed and are seen for. And so…
Dr. Holly Daniels 32:45
Yeah.
Katie Vernoy 32:46
So, how do you navigate…?
Dr. Holly Daniels 32:47
It’s hard. It is difficult. And you know, this is I do feel isolated. And you know, yeah, Curt and Katie, you know, we have we have shared clients, and I love you both, and I’m so…
Katie Vernoy 32:58
And we love you!
Curt Widhalm 32:59
Yeah!
Dr. Holly Daniels 33:00
You know, and I’m so glad to be, you know, working with you all. But I wish there were more of us, you know, I do have this dream of like, creating a consultation group of sorts, maybe who works with the population I work with. And, and so thinking about that, you know, down the road. But it is hard. And and, and it’s so interesting, because what what’s happening is that we are, people are dehumanizing, famous people. That that’s what it is. It’s like they’re, they’re not seeing the clients I’m working with as people they’re seeing them as as a symbol or a commodity. I usually get a healthy and kind response once I bring that to people’s attention. If they say to me, like, oh, how could you work with, you know, some of these people? And it’s like, well, they’re people, right? Like, what is your imagination of who they are or what they, what they’re worried about or struggling with. It’s like, they are human beings and, you know, loneliness and depression and anxiety and insecure attachments, you know, do not discriminate. We all, we all struggle in that way.
Curt Widhalm 34:14
Where can people find out more about you and your practice?
Dr. Holly Daniels 34:17
You can absolutely find me at DrHollyDaniels.com You can email me at Holly @ DrHollyDaniels.com, please find me there. And I’m just happy to be a little more public about what I do. So, I appreciate you know, you two ask me on and this isn’t something I would normally do. But I was like, Yeah, I think it’s okay to talk about this a little bit more because they’re is a stigma and and I want to try to decrease the stigma. And recognize, you know, there is a shared humanity even with people who may be a little more well known or more influential. They’re still people. We’re all, we all are. So.
Katie Vernoy 34:57
And if you’re, if you’re, if folks are you still having a problem with the impact that you’re having on the world I would argue that by seeing folks who have such big roles in how our society works as humans, and helping them to be human better, I think you’re doing a lot. So I really appreciate the work that you’re doing.
Dr. Holly Daniels 35:16
Thank you. I appreciate you. Yeah, that’s what I say, you know, that can’t be my agenda. But yes, if every leader or every influential person was securely attached and felt happy and healthy inside, would the world be a better place?
Katie Vernoy 35:30
Absolutely.
Dr. Holly Daniels 35:31
Absolutely.
Curt Widhalm 35:33
We will include wigs to Dr. Holly Daniels website in our show notes. You can find those over at mtsgpodcast.com. Please follow us on our social media. Join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapists Group to continue on with this conversation. And until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Dr. Holly Daniels.
… 35:52
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