Being in therapy as a therapist, and being a therapist for therapists, is a bit like magicians trying to entertain each other. We’ve studied the tricks and techniques. We’ve seen behind the curtain and we can’t pretend otherwise.

Why is it so hard to be in therapy as a therapist? Why is it so hard sometimes to be a therapist for other therapists? I’ve been wanting to do an episode on therapists as clients since I conceived of this show, so I’m excited to share my conversation with Dr. Elena Herrera today.

I’m digging into why it feels so vulnerable to share our life circumstances with our clients, why our fears of rupture when we have to might be exaggerated, and how cultural expectations of therapists as aspirational figures impact how our clients perceive us and what we do.

What opportunities for connection with our clients are being lost when we perform what today’s guests describe as a “constructed state of perpetual well-being?”

When you set out to look at the topic of setting goals in therapy in anything more than a superficial light, you relatively quickly start running into the question of what therapy is.

Silvana Espinoza Lau and I talk about how we determine and assess where we’re actually trying to go with clients, the importance of paying attention to all of the different agendas that inform a client’s stated goals, and how we can use connection and curiosity as our guideposts.

I’m becoming more aware of how important I think it is that as therapists–all of us, clinical supervisors or not–we cultivate an understanding of ourselves as makers of culture.

Dr. K Hixson has made clinical supervision and training supervisors a cornerstone of their practice, and the conversation you're going to hear us having today is born out of a shared vision for what clinical supervision has the potential to be.

On episode 15, creative director and brand strategist Rachael Kay Albers said something that I have been turning over and over in my mind since: Marketing artificially accelerates the pace of human relationships.

How do we market ethically? What does it actually mean to be authentic in our marketing? Is there any way to do this without feeling icky or like we’re selling ourselves?

My tribute to my teacher, and one of my most significant personal and professional influences, Dr. David Schnarch.

An important conversation about some difficult truths relating to how therapists see each other and treat each other, and what it really means to conduct our collegiate relationships ethically.