Episode 152: Therapy: Committing to Doing it Differently
In this episode, I’m talking with therapist Riva Stoudt, about therapy committing to doing therapy differently.
I didn’t always know I wanted to be a therapist. It took me a while to ADMIT it out loud that I wanted to be a therapist (I was 34 before I got my license). I honestly have a love-hate relationship with the world of therapy and psychology. It endlessly fascinates me—and yet the industry as a whole is notoriously dysfunctional and, at times, archaic.
At 25, I was getting ready to start my second year of my Master’s in Counseling. I had registered for classes and was less than a week from starting when out of the blue, I decided to drop out. I still remember walking from my apartment to the registrar’s office to withdraw. It was a totally irrational decision and 100% based on my gut which was SCREAMING at me to withdraw. I didn’t know why… I just knew I couldn’t go back and continue my studies.
Seven years later, 4 different jobs, and after completing a different Masters’ Degree, I decided to complete my studies and earn my Master’s in Community Counseling. This was also a gut decision—and a particularly amazing one because miraculously, I re-enrolled just under the deadline where I would have had to start my studies over.
What happened in those 7 years? A lot of my own work, my own soul searching, my own therapy and a commitment to doing it differently. Committing to doing therapy differently was how I could ultimately make the choice to continue the work and it’s why I’m here today.
It’s rare that I meet another therapist who has this same commitment which is why I was so excited to bring you my conversation with Riva Stoudt of Into the Woods Counseling.
Listen to the full episode to find out:
What inspired Riva to become a therapist
The changes we both would like to see in the therapy profession
Positivity culture and how it can keep people from healing and making progress
Some tips on finding a good therapist
Resources mentioned:
+ Read the Transcript
Transcript:
Riva: It's hard to say things like I was being passive aggressive. Everybody does that, but to say it and to just acknowledge it and sit with it, even at that level is so hard. And so , if we can't do that for ourselves in our own relationships, in our own lives and look at those impulses that we have and how we do or don't succeed in managing them, how are we possibly going to sit with our clients when they tell us some awful story about something they did?
And if they're be isn't the place for that, then.
Nancy: I didn't always know I wanted to be a therapist. It took me a while to actually admit it out loud that I wanted to be a therapist. I was 34 before I even got my license. I honestly have a love, hate relationship with the world of therapy and psychology. It endlessly fascinates me.
And yet the industry as a whole is notoriously dysfunctional. And at times, arcade. At 25, I was getting ready to start. My second year of my masters in counseling, I had registered for classes and was less than a week from starting when, out of the blue, I decided to drop out. I still remember walking from my apartment to the registrar's office to withdraw.
It was a totally irrational decision and a 100% based on my gut, which was scary, screaming at me to withdraw. I didn't know why I just knew I couldn't go back and continue. My studies seven years later, four different jobs. And after completing a different master's degree, I decided to complete my studies and earn, and my master's in community counseling.
This was also a gut decision and a particularly amazing one because miraculously, I re-enrolled just under the deadline where I would have had to start my studies over. What happened in those seven years, a lot of my own work, my own soul, searching my own therapy and a commitment to doing it differently.
You're listening to the happier approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed hustle on the cheap at the price of our inner peace in relationships. And I'm your host, Nancy Jane Smith. Yep. Committing to doing therapy was how I could ultimately make the choice to continue the work.
And it's why I'm here today. It's rare. I meet another therapist who has this commitment, which is why I was so excited to bring you my conversation with Riva stout of, into the woods counseling Riva. And I dive into all things therapy. We talk about what inspired her to be a therapist, the changes we would like to see in the therapy profession, positivity culture, and how it can keep people from healing and making progress and tips on finding a good therapist.
Riva inspired me so much. A few takeaways I hope will inspire you. No one has the answers for your life. A therapist's role is to listen and help you get to know yourself better. Their job is not to tell you what to do, have all the answers or heal your past their job is to help you find the tools that work best for you to unpeel the onion that is your life.
We are all human. We all have blind spots, traumas, and places we need help. And it reminds me of a quote by rom Doss that guides my work with clients. We are all just walking each other. I'm so excited today to bring to you Riva stout. She and I are going to be talking about all things therapy, which is just going to be awesome.
And I think in a, be a little eye opening for a lot of us. So Riva, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Okay. I hear from your bio, you are a third generation therapist and it is part of your family business. Tell me what drew you to becoming a therapist?
Riva: , so I actually was determined not to cause I was going to forge my own identity and my own path.
So my mom's parents, so both my grandparents were actually psychiatrists. Back in the day when psychiatrists were the ones who did therapy and no one else did therapy in the sixties. So they, they did that. And then my mom was a school counselor and worked with kids of all ages throughout her career.
And we had all sorts of books lying around the house about psychology and trauma, which was, in the early nineties, trauma was like a very cutting edge idea, and read a lot of these books probably before it was age appropriate for me but it gave me a head start. And then when I went away to college, I was like, no, I'm, I'm going to be an artist. I don't want to, I don't want to follow this path. That that is. What my family has done before I wanted to do my own thing, but you can't get rid of that interest in people, and they're everywhere and it's fascinating.
And I took a few psychology classes and social psychology, which I still think is a major influence for me as a therapist too. And then I had this moment in my twenties where I was talking to a friend about a relationship that he was in, where you know the person that he was in the relationship with was treating him really badly.
And my friend kept talking about all these reasons why he thought if he just stuck around long enough, it could change and all of this. And so at some point I was trying to, snap him out of this relationship trans that he was in.
And I said something about how we teach people, how it's okay to treat us, and that he was teaching this person that it was okay to treat him like shit, basically. And there was this pause and then my friend looked at me and said, I never thought about it like that before. And that was the moment.
It was like, it was really like a single moment where it was like, I heard that and the clouds parted and it was like, this is what I want to do. I want to help people see things in a new way and change their perspective and in a way that really impacts how they live their lives. That was that. And then I, that summer.
Started, signing up for classes that I needed for prerequisites for grad school and all of that stuff, all of the hoops that we have to jump through so many hoops and never looked back after that.
Nancy: And then did you just go right to private practice?
Riva: No, actually worked in crisis for a while first.
. And I feel like every year in crisis intervention is like five years in regular I'm sure. . That for a couple of years and then started my private practice overlapping while I was still doing some work on the crisis team and then shifted over.
Nancy: That's one of my so I call the inner critic a monger and one of my monger messages, I went right out of grad school into private practice. And one of my Monger messages is I am not a real therapist cause I've never done crisis work because that's what real therapists do
Riva: All right. Oh, that's so funny because it's just, so it's such a different mindset, like to switch over from crisis to private practice, even though private practice is what I always wanted to do.
And that was the ultimate goal. It was such a weird mindset shift from okay, how do I help this person through the next 12 to 48 hours? To actually, sitting with somebody on an ongoing basis and making some major life changes. So . It's not, of course there's transferable skills, many transferable skills, but at the same time, it's a whole different world, so .
Nancy: Very different job. . Okay, so this is going to start us off in this competition. And this is a very broad question. What do you wish you could change about the therapy industry?
Riva: What do I wish I could change about the therapy industry? So many things. Starting from the super broad wide angle lens, I wish that we had universal health care in America.
So that being the first thing that I am always, as much as I think so many of us try to make ourselves accessible through, having sliding scale or pro bono or donating our time or advocacy work or whatever. It's not an individual problem, any one of us can solve that, like that access to therapy is is so limited.
And so that is something that always nags at me is I wish more people had access to good therapy more of the time. So that, that being the backdrop of everything and then, within the field I really would like to see, and I think to some degree this is happening but I would really like to see the field just moving towards a more social justice informed, racism, informed sexism and informed.
All of that bringing that lens to our therapeutic work and understanding more about the context we're situated in, moving away from this idea that we can still get into of humans as these atomized individuals who it's all within. It's all, everything is a matter of individual choice and mindset.
And if you just change that, then you know, then that you'll be fine, looking more at the systems and the material conditions. I think also too I think therapists, So many of us come from a background where there's a lot of family trauma, family dysfunction, and I think sometimes we really bring that to the way we relate to each other.
I think there's simultaneously within the field, there can be a real fear of conflict and it needs to be nice all the time. And then at the same time, when conflict does emerge, then it's just like this knock-down drag-out, aggressive, like everybody hating each other, especially with now with social media.
I think that this is very it's an outlet for that kind of energy. And so I think we're not good at disagreeing with each other and being in relationship with each other at the same time, just in the field. And so I would really like to see us developing more of a culture of vigorous debate, vigorous disagreement, where we're also not just throwing each other away all the time.
. So I that's an evolution I would like to see. And I think that the therapy industry has that in common with many others. Right now that's a place we need to get better,
Nancy: . for sure. . Definitely. It is a toxic culture and that is, like I related so much to your story, of how you got started.
I actually started my graduate school and then dropped out because I was like, I can't deal with this culture. Like it was so competitive yet supportive yet passive aggressive, that weird mix. And I was, and it wasn't until I entered, I was in my thirties when I finally went back because I was like, I'm strong enough in myself that I'm not looking that I can forge my own path.
I'm not looking. To this group to be mentors to me and help me figure it out. Because when I was, it was : bad.
Riva: Totally. . That's super relatable to me. I went back. So I did my undergrad at the usual, I went at 18 and finished at 22 and then I went to grad school. I started just about a month before my 30th birthday.
And I feel like having waited a little bit was. So much better because just as you said, I felt very much more settled in myself. I wasn't looking for validation and mentorship in that environment nearly as much. And it made getting through well. And when you combine the therapy industry with academia, like those two cultures collide all kinds of craziness. So , I think you need some inner strength to get through that intact,
Nancy: but you're right in this, that is, that is a stereotype that all therapists, most therapists have come from their own trauma and that's why, but I think it's accurate because why else would you be drawn?
To this world of listening to people's problems and helping them figure it out, if you weren't a little broken,
Riva: Intense interest, I it's, it doesn't just come to people like randomly. I don't think at all. I think it's very much we have a lot of us have a lot of early experiences in common, I think.
Nancy: Yes. . And I was actually just reading, which is a really old school book the drama of the gifted child. And I was just pick that up and was reading it and it just, she talks about that very fact that we are all and then the danger comes, which I see all the time that we reenact our, we become to our clients, the parent that we had.
And, like we want that the support from our clients. I am not saying that right.
Riva: No. . I get what, , it's an incredible book. She, , the way she talks about just the reproduction of those cycles and then . That we learn that like level of attunement to other people from having had to attune that way to our own parents and then, oh my God, that just comes into the therapy room in a million different ways, have you ever read her sons and work? , I haven't.
Nancy: I haven't picked up the book.
Riva: It’s fascinating. I, cause he's also a psychotherapist and his perspective is so interesting just in that, he says about how she did not succeed as a mother and being, breaking that cycle that she describes in the book.
And yet it was her work and her insight that also helped give him the freedom to understand and to try to break out of that cycle himself. , super fascinating. And just, I think an example of just how freaking complex everything is with all this stuff.
Nancy: And that's where I think if we're not owning that as therapists that, like I know part of what makes me really good at my job is I'm in there with them.
Not, I'm not, I'm saying like I am, I, I'm working on my own anxiety. I'm trying to heal my own mongers, everything I'm saying to my clients to do, I'm doing it to it's not like I've been healed, but I've, I've gone to therapy my entire life. I've been around a lot of therapists who act like they are.
Riva:
. My, my motto is just to try to stay one step ahead in my own healing. And just to try to keep up with that process so that I'm not I'm not lagging, but also at the same time. It doesn't get done. It's not oh, here's my, I'm going to look up my solution and my solutions book and give it to you.
And I think like when you're doing good therapy, you're actually asking your clients to do some really hard things. And how do we have the right to ask that, if we're not willing to do that ourselves.
Nancy: . Preach. Amen. I totally agree. Okay. Which that brings me to one of my biggest pet peeves.
And I think it's up there with you on, in the therapy industry and. Coaching the whole freaking self-help transformational, whatever. And I don't, and I'm not as firm. I guess I don't, I didn't know it was a problem in the therapy industry. I'm talking about positive thinking and positive psychology.
I didn't realize it was such a problem in a therapy industry until I heard you talking about that. So share more about your thoughts on that.
Riva: , it's interesting because I think I think there's so many layers to positivity culture, like I think the most obvious layer being this sort of very simplified, like the secret, like you control your thoughts and manifest and everything, positive will come to you and all of that.
And in those aspects of various cultures and subcultures that really shut down any expression of difficult emotion, painful emotion, et cetera. And I do think that, hopefully we don't see a lot of therapists doing that. But I do think there's a deeper layer where we are so locked in as a culture, I think as a broader culture to this black and white thinking of like good and bad people, wanting to toss people in one basket or another.
And I think as therapists, we like to think that we don't do that. But then I think we often don't show a willingness to really acknowledge and. And talk about and sit honestly, with just what it really means to be just a mixed bag as a person, which we all are, we're all a mixed bag.
And so how I see it playing out often is that therapists want to put a positive spin or like an understanding a spin of kind of. Understanding certain kinds of behaviors as the result of trauma or is the result of previous harm in a way that skirts really close to minimizing or even excusing them sometimes.
I don't know what your experience is working with therapists as clients that's a whole, that could be its whole own episode. But I noticed that when I have therapists as clients and they come in talking about relationships that they've had or family experiences where somebody has really harmed them is immediately followed by this explanation where the therapist that takes this takes the person's perspective and is but I understand, that as a kid, they went through all this stuff and it was really hard.
And I'm like, okay, that may all very well be true, but like, why are we just sailing right past the impact that it had on you and the harm that was done, and the, the perhaps negative intentions that came from that person, whether or not they were a result of trauma, that's real. And I, and so I notice it, with people who are our therapists when they are my clients, but also I think I see it happening with therapists with their own clients.
Especially I see this a lot with couples actually, where there's a member of the couple is getting away with some really like egregious provocative kind of behavior. And that's. That's, people get under each other's skin that is that is part of relationships and like people needle each other and they get into power struggles and all of that.
And I see often with couples therapy, that sometimes I find couples, therapists want to put the best, most positive spin on that partner's behavior. Or even both partner's behavior instead of really confronting. You're being an asshole right now. You're getting away with it, there's just some letting off the hook that happens. And I've had, I've had clients come to me to work on childhood trauma where they talked about, my last therapist just kept talking about how my dad was like that because of the trauma he'd experienced as a kid.
And it's that's not really that. , it's not enough. It doesn't actually help that client undo the impact of the trauma that was per petrated against them. And I think that to some degree how I see it is I think that it's a. I think it can be a defense mechanism against some of the secondary trauma we experience and the stories that we hear.
I think that we, when I think back on some of the stuff I've heard, I've, I, of course, like you, we hear hair raising stuff in this work and I've heard, I've had clients tell me about stuff that they've done that is really upsetting. And I think in that context, it's easier to S to go to the explanation and say it's because of this this childhood trauma it's because of this other thing, et cetera, et cetera.
Rather than really sitting with wow. My client did something really mean and sadistic to their kid or my, client's partner is, making their lives. Really unpleasant purpose, that's, it's hard to sit with that.
Nancy: , because I also noticed they get, sometimes I'll have clients that'll come in, a lot of my clients love dropping the narcissism, like I saw, my husband's and our husbands and my brother's a narcissist, but and I, but, and they get really caught up in the diagnosis and doing all the research and figuring out, naming the stories and seeing the connections and intellectualizing that process.
And sometimes they're jumping from therapist to gather all the narcissism information they can. . But I don't really care about the diagnosis. Let's talk about how you feel and you know what that's doing for you, about the impact.
Riva: And the actual behavior versus okay, we can put the, NPD stamp on this person. What does that do? . Yes.
Nancy: . What do we have there? But that is, but I think there is this problem of intellectualizing everything, change your story, get a different mindset, look at it from a different lens.
Rather than, and much of what I'm working with my clients on, and I think is general good therapy is how do I build a self loyalty to myself taking in the larger cultural . Conditions I've been raised with and have affected how I see the world.
Riva: Yes. I love what you just said about I love the self loyalty piece and I love what you just said about the change, your story idea, because I think I think actually, of course, many of my clients, I think very much do need to change their story, but I think that's because they need it to be their story needs to reflect the truth better.
Not because they need to pick a a nicer story, and I very well said, I think that we, or let me backtrack a second there. So I think I actually often find myself saying to clients when we're going through some of the trauma, especially the relational trauma is I think I often say something right.
I think you are, telling me the, the most flattering version or the best version of this story, but I don't know if that's the most true, truthful version, and here's what does it mean if we actually look at some of the other versions of the story that feel harder to look at more painful, but actually might be a better reflection of the truth.
And I think that can be a much more freeing Point of view to look at one's narrative from because then there's, you're not engaged in that avoidance process. It's not oh, I have to construct this narrative that makes everybody look as good as possible. That's the one I'd be more comfortable with it's okay.
How do I sit in the real truth of all of this? And I think that comes back to the self loyalty piece to me, because then if I'm willing to really look at myself, the people in my life, my actions, my history from a really truthful to the best that I can accomplish from a really truthful point of view, then I think that's a way of really embodying that allyship to oneself that I'm not going to, I'm not going to avoid the truth for the sake of, making myself comfortable.
I'm going to sit with myself. And the difficulty of all that is and has been, which is a big task for all of us, but I think more genuinely transformative one..
Nancy. So the idea change your story. I say in air quotes to be look at it. That's used largely in the context of make it be more positive.
Let's explain this away and you're saying change your story. Look at it. A different lens. Let's go a little deeper on this. Look at the yucky stuff that we're trying to, that you're, we're trying to intellectualize a way in dive into those feelings, which is what I found was so fascinating about Alice Miller.
Is that her name that here she's written this phenomenal book back to the drama of a gifted child. She's written this phenomenal book about reprogramming childhood trauma and, or the need to do she doesn't, it's not really a how to, but she. Couldn't do it completely in her life and ended up passing it onto her son, which is what she rails against in the book.
And it's just, is the, in some ways in reading the book, it's so disappointing to go oh crap. No matter how much I look at this, I still am going to have blind spots. But I definitely think her, had she not, and I'm not saying, oh my gosh, she was an amazing person.
So it doesn't matter that she abused her son. That's not what I'm saying, but but she did some amazing work. In unhooking as much as she could.
Riva: And I think she, I really believe that , it was very much before her time, like writing about that kind of stuff, in the mid 20th century, I think was I don't think there was a real culture among people who were involved in psychology at the time who could really receive the weight of what she was getting across.
I think that it having been a very male dominated field up to that point and, just the influence of Freud and all the. The prominent male thinkers. And then, it's not that there, of course wasn't an emphasis on childhood at that time. Of course there was, but it felt very much there was a, there was even at that point, that sort of intellectualized rarefied, we're going to talk about it in terms of complexes.
And I, I think Alice Miller was really ahead of her time in talking about, I'm going to look at what's actually happening. What is the what's actually happening between parent and child. And I think about that book now. One of my most important influences and teachers around this stuff that we're talking about now is David Schnarch.
I don't know if you're super familiar with him. So he's a couples therapist primarily. And how do you spell his name? So it's S C H N a R C H. And so he's primarily in the couples worlds but he has recently done this incredible deep dive into the neurobiology of trauma and how the brain and has this incredible book brain talk that I'm just constantly I bought copies to give to people.
So I'm constantly pushing that book and I use a lot of his model inside my practice with my clients. And. And he talks a lot about this idea of mind mapping, how we internalize maps of other people's minds. And sometimes the pictures that we internalize of other people's minds can be pretty terrifying.
And awful, and how you can observe these dynamics playing out between people. And when I think about Alice Mueller's book and some of the examples she gave in the book, I'm like, wow, this is exactly what he's talking about now using this neuro-biological lens that she had no way of having at the time, because neurology was barely a thing.
So , so I think in some ways she was a little bit personally disadvantaged because she could see all of this stuff. And then there was no context for then what do you do with it? Zero at the time, there was no trauma therapy. There was nothing. So . Hopefully if she had lived in 2020, it would have been a different outcome, but who knows?
Nancy: So we've we were talking before I hit record about kind of the changes in therapy in, just in the differences in our generations or our worlds and how you were saying, oh, like the mask of the therapist is, this is a, a blank slate. And then and I was saying that a lot of my colleagues still do the blank slate right world.
And how I, that I just think that is just. Aw drives me crazy because I just don't feel like that is how good therapy works.
Riva: It's also just not possible. Always communicating something about who you are.
Nancy: Yes. And so I think, and still to this day, even though clients will say to me, because I share of my own life, like stuff that's happening not a ton, but I do even now see, I have a huge complex.
Riva: It's so hard to even say that we go against this norm.
Nancy: . The norm is so strong. Like it is…Strong. And so the fact that I share stories with clients, I'll be like, oh, I'm such a terrible therapist, even though they're like, that was so helpful. Thank you for letting me know only one or whatever it still is, put into us not to do that.
So I wanted to hear just what, how you see therapy changing with your peers and the differences that you're seeing and how it's hopefully.
Riva: . So I went to Lewis and Clark for grad school. And it's has its issues like any institution and academia, again, a whole, we're rural. But one of the great things about the program is that it is explicitly a social justice program.
. So we, that idea of the blank slate was thrown out from the very beginning. And they really did make it a norm in the program to incorporate, that each class it's not oh, you go to all the classes and then here's the social justice class. Every teacher was expected to be incorporating that into their curriculum to varying levels of success.
It was very much like lip service, but some of the professors really did, I think, especially, I just have to give so much credit to the adjuncts who are working for so little pay. They love it and are practicing it and really made an effort to bring in relevant material about actually, what does it look like to incorporate social justice into your practice, not your theoretical practice that you haven't been doing for three weeks.
And so that was a great. Place to be an emerging therapist, because we were really encouraged to think about our own personal history is not just, family and and immediate relationships, but what does it mean to be white? What does it mean to be a person of color as a therapist with white clients?
What does it mean to be a white therapist with clients of color or, and any variety of combinations? Like how do, how does it change what's happening in the therapy room when, each of those pieces is different. And and I live in Portland there's a strong social justice therapist community here, which is great that people who are really aware of the impact of power and privilege and identity on the therapeutic process.
And so I think I, I'm sure I, to some degree I live in a bit of a bubble because I'm like, oh, things are changing. This is really good, to some degree, that's, I'm sure, just part of the community that I'm working within. But I do see, people talking about that even in the larger therapist community, I think more than certainly 10 years ago or 20 years ago, And so I'm excited by that, just from the standpoint of honestly if nothing else, it helps you do better therapy.
When I I felt so grateful just during this past summer. So of course we're in this moment where black lives matter has really erupted in a new way and it's really powerful movement. And I saw a lot of white therapists really scrambling to know how to, how what do we do? How do I address this?
Like how I don't feel like it's okay for me to not say anything, especially if I am a white therapist working with black clients, but then what do I say? And I felt I felt really lucky not just in terms of my grad school education, but just in terms of having had a background in activism and.
Learn from a lot of really amazing black and people of color activists around being less fearful and talking about this stuff, so I just felt so much more equipped going into session, last month with my clients of color and really saying I know this must be affecting you, let's talk about like how this is bringing up racial trauma, if you want to.
And if not, we'll just continue with what we were doing before, but and not really missing a beat. And so if only for that reason, right? To be a blank slate in that moment would have been w it would have created a therapeutic rupture rather than to go in and say Okay. , like I'm a white therapist and this is like a situation we're positioned differently.
And we're going to navigate this explicitly and talk about it and create a space where that's the fullness of you as a person, as being welcomed into the room. And I'm not pretending that's irrelevant, right? . .
Nancy: Because that was interesting. And even some of my some of my white clients.
When they would bring up what was happening and then I would engage and we would start talking. They were like, oh, I didn't know. And I'm like, , this is the work. And I think that's an interesting stereotype of I'm just talking about individual, like I love how you're saying we need to be expanding this beyond just I'm an individual and I'm make individual actions, or to my family of origin, but to the larger cultural, patriarchal norms that we are living and that are affecting us.
And how that shows up.
Riva: And as individuals, we carry all that stuff with us. . It's not like in a box somewhere else. .
Nancy: Which has been interesting, and I, so getting into more of this, the politics. I think that's been something I've noticed in my space, especially since Trump was elected that people would come into my office.
People would talk to me before they went down. We went into therapy and more than not, they were asking me why I political my politics, which I just was, and I live in Ohio, this is a red state. Like we are Trump country. There's blue and then red, but yes,
Riva: It's just that our population is all concentrated in those areas. . But,
Nancy: That had never happened to me where someone, ask and would say, I don't think I'd feel safe talking to someone who, voted for Trump or supported him which was just really interesting. And I also ran into the opposite where a client. I was pretty vocal about in session, especially about who I was, who I was voting for. And in a group I was running at the time, just assumed everyone was going to vote for Hillary and got into trouble when I had individual client. And then they had individual sessions and one of them had voted for Trump and we took much of the session was discussing that.
And I don't, and I don't know that I would have, I probably wouldn't have assumed that everyone was going to vote for Hillary, but I don't think I, I doing an over, I probably wouldn't, have made the assumption, but I still would have shared my own viewpoint in there because that's what she was upset about is that I assumed.
Riva: Okay. Okay. Gotcha. .
Nancy: . because she in her mind had really good reasons for voting
Nancy: Why wouldn't, of course, that's right. That's where we do it. But I think that, that is interesting, that to me was the first time that politics entered the therapy room. But in reality, they're there all the time.
Riva: Exactly. Exactly. . And I think that's, what's been so interesting about the past, almost four years wild is that, I think we're starting to see more and more the way. With that election and the way things have gone since then people are starting to make more of that connection where it's oh, it's not who you vote for.
And then, like you think about that once every four years and that's politics, right? It's the context of our lives, where that occurs and it's not it's again, it's just not something you put in a box and set aside. It's something that is really impacting people's lives and all of our relationships.
And it's pulling the veil off, I think in that way of how we think about what politics are and how they're integrated into our lives or not, and how they're integrated then into therapy or not. ,
Nancy: the holistic. Viewpoint of it, it's fascinating to me. So this, I just had this thought, which is not related to anything. I'm going to go back to positive thinking and going into the dark side, because I think the challenge with that is if you don't have a therapy, a therapist who is in therapy and doing their own work, it's very hard for that therapist or anyone to hold the empathy space that is needed.
Yes. And not jump in and try to rescue someone who's going into that door. Space. Yes,
Riva: I that's absolutely true. And they need to be doing not only doing the work, but doing the right work themselves, and yes, I think that's, it's what you said about going into the empathy space and really holding that is, is something I've thought about a lot.
With respect to this question of kind of the darker side of human nature, human behavior, however you want to frame it. And because again, it goes back to that sort of black and white thinking. Good and bad kind of thinking where, okay, I'm going to if say I have a client who's sitting in front of me describing something they did, that was really shitty and really driven by some, crappy motives and some intent harmful intent.
Let's say so I could, one of the things I could do is I could lean away from it and try to put this like childhood trauma, spin on it or whatever, whatever version. And I could talk with them about why they think they did that. What happened in their past that made them want to whatever.
And that to me is bypassing it maybe to get there eventually. Sure. But to just jump to that is bypassing or I could bypass it by, maybe I just write them off as they're narcissist and they have, this, whatever diagnosis, then they're just an asshole and that's it, which is another way of bypassing it.
So to really, but to really sit to sit and really see someone in their worst behavior to see someone at their worst, or to see someone describing themselves when they are at their worst and to really sit with it and to not throw the person away and to be invested in helping them become better. And to have the level of compassion and the level of accountability and the level of courage to be in that space with someone is incredibly difficult. And I certainly have not succeeded at it. In all the opportunities that I have had like we, we are confronted with those opportunities, somewhat regularly, I think.
Hopefully and we're not going to succeed in all of them, but to do that, to succeed some of the time and to succeed, hopefully more of the time as we go along really does mean in my experience that I have to learn to sit with and hold that stuff within myself and within my own relationships and within my own marriage, and I'm about to I'm six months pregnant.
So in my parenting, so that will be a whole new ball game of that, and to and we don't have a lot of encouragement and support and doing that. I think it's hard for people. And I see this every day with clients, but just in any body in general, it's hard to say things like, oh, I, I was being passive aggressive.
Like I did XYZ, like my husband and I were arguing about the dishes or whatever. And then I did XYZ because I was being passive aggressive and I wanted to get back at him. Everybody does that stuff, but to say it and to just acknowledge it and sit with it, even at that level is so hard.
And so , if we can't do that for ourselves in our own relationships, in our own lives and look at those impulses that we have and how we, do or don't succeed in managing them. . How are we possibly going to sit with our clients when they tell us some awful story about something they did and if they're happy, isn't the place for that then what is?
Nancy: But that's when I started becoming a really great therapist, if I do say so myself was when I started really showing up for myself when I really started recognizing, okay, there is no perfect here and owning with clients of, oh, I didn't do that. I, I don't have to be like Oh I intellectually bypassed you, but I, but the next week when they come in to be like, let's start here.
Riva: I think I think I went by something it's gone by. . . Totally.
Nancy: . I think that is so important to recognize that I'm going to mess it up, but I got to circle back. You have the ability to notice when I messed up and how can I fix that if it's possible and what do I need to do? And that only happens in the therapy room when you've done it in your own life.
Yes, exactly.
Riva: Exactly. Like it's if you're starting to get into that practice of better self confrontation and it gives you that, it's like anything else, it's that muscle you're exercising and then you're more able to do it with clients. You're more able to confront yourself with them and to confront them and to encourage them to confront themselves, which is to me where so much of the power of really good therapy comes from.
.
Nancy: , definitely. I totally agree. Okay. So if someone is looking to. And I get that. I get this question all the time. Like I want to work with a therapist on something that's not in my wheelhouse, how do I start? Where do I start? How do I do this? And so then you go to psychology today and you see the 50 billion people that are doing it.
How would you recommend someone? What are your tips ?
Riva: On finding like the right therapist for finding a good therapist? I think, I really think it's so hard and I am just the aside is that I just wish that Therapists were, I think this is another area of courage, just better at writing their profiles and websites to reflect who they authentically are.
And I don't know. Do you know Laura Long at all now she has a great program called your badass therapy practice that I went through at the beginning of 2019. And there's so much encouragement around showing up authentically in your marketing. And it's so easy to create that to do that from like a cynical oh, it's the marketing, it's all about the money perspective, but truly since I have improved my marketing, the, my best fit clients find me so much more easily.
And so I think there's so much we need to do on the therapist side of that. But in terms of, in the absence of that for now, in terms of a good fit I think there is so much about the more willing you are as a client to show up courageously like in the consult or like in the first session and really lay on the line, what it is you're dealing with, which I know is terrifying.
I'm a client too. I know how easy it is to even when we're seeking therapy, to go in and want to put our best face forward. For some reason, even though we're there to theoretically dump out all our crap and figure out what to do with it. But I think to go in. Really willing to lay it on the line as much as you can and see if the therapist seems like they're able to contain that.
I think that we there's so many lists of questions, right? I'm sure there's. I can tell when a potential client has Googled it and is reading the bullets and questions about what to ask a potential therapist. And it's very cute and I totally get it. And I, it's like when I was looking for a midwife, I Googled the list of questions.
You ask a midwife. But I think sometimes we give our intuition short shrift. If you go in and lay it all on the line and you have someone who can really see that you can really see they're sitting with all that you brought in and then. Not afraid of it. They're not weird about it.
They're not shrinking away from it. They're just really leaning towards you and ready to take it on. Then I, that to me is a better sign of a good fit than any particular answer that you could that you could get to any particular question. I think also having said all that, the the particular question that I think should be should the therapist should have a good answer for if you go in and say like, how would you approach X, if the therapist doesn't have a good answer or they're not willing to say, I don't know, that's not a great sign to me, we should be able to, I think a therapist that's the right fit for somebody.
We'll be able to say not like here's steps a through Z to say here's where I'd go in. Here's the Trailhead. I see, I have internal family systems training. We talk a lot about trail heads. And so if I'm sitting with a client in a consult and I don't see trail heads, like that's probably not the right client, and so I should be able to articulate what those are and say here's, here are some places we might start. And so I think that's a, that's an important an important sign. If you go into a consultor for a session with someone that they are able to articulate something about their sense of direction that the therapist is and then it's like, when I have a consult with someone and there's somebody comes in I don't do OCD, for example, like that's just not my specialty.
And I think it needs, specialty approach. And so somebody comes in and says I need help with OCD. And what would you do for that? I would be like, I will get you a great referral, so that's that's important too.
Nancy: , because I love what you said about trusting your intuition because I think too often, we cause I've, totally done this in picking a therapist, we go in and think, oh, the therapist knows everything. And I'm just the lowly person and ignore. And I'm talking from how quickly they return your phone call to how quickly they set up. If they have a con consult or, all of the things that emails they send you the, what their message says, like paying attention to all the little clues and being like, does this fit me?
And even if you don't know what that means to be to get grounded enough to be like, this is a person I'm going to be spewing my guts to. So I better have a connection. And if I go in there being like, Ooh, they have to know everything, then it's going to be a pro.
Riva: Totally. . And just the reality of knowing that.
We aren't the right fit for everybody. We aren't everything to everyone. And I think that, that's another thing that I think sometimes we give lip service to, but then, I do think therapists often try to be everything to everyone. And we just aren't. I know, and I, and increasingly, as my practice matures and I mature as a therapist I have a stronger sense of who are the people that I really that I am at my best with, and that.
Be at their best with me. That's not the same as who it's going to be for another therapist, which is great. There's, , exactly.
Nancy: That's the, , because I know when when a client comes in and is talking about severe trauma from their childhood and I'm like, you need to go work with someone that works with that.
And I think a lot of therapists have the why, therapy, trauma, that's what we do.
Riva: . Totally. Or, . , for sure. Or I should be able to, work with every personality type or whatever, and it's actually it's funny the thinking about that's what we do as therapists.
So another thing right. Is like depression is that's what therapists treat depression or whatever. I actually really don't do severe depression. And I actually don't. Work well with clients who are severely depressed. And that unfortunately is something I had to learn by working with clients who were severely depressed early on and realizing actually this is not I'm not doing a great job.
This is not the best scenario for me to apply my skills. And there are great therapists out there who specialize in severe depression, and that is where these clients belong. And I'm so grateful that there are people out there who work well with people who have severe depression, who I now can send folks to, if that's how they're showing up.
And then I can work with the people who are coming in with the stuff that. It's the right puzzle piece for what I do, right?
Nancy: .Because I remember that a lot of people would be like, I remember, because I had a very similar experience and I was like, this is, I should be able to do this.
Like I really was like, depression and anxiety they go together and then I'm like, we are very different in how they present and the behaviors that go with and someone else needs to be working with this
Riva: , the complexity. I think another challenge around that is then how clients describe their experience is not the same as how we described their experience.
So I still have to say right that I depression. And it's not that I don't, of course everybody, I think personally, I think everybody goes through a depressive period at some point in their lives, so of course there is some of that depressed mood showing up among people in my practice, of course, but so many people will come in and say my problem is depression.
And it's really not, from a clinical perspective, that's not what it is. And so it's like we have to do so much translating of how clients use language to how we would use language and then filter out and in people. Based on, finding the shared meaning under the different words, we're all using for stuff, right?
Nancy: Yes. , absolutely. . Okay. I could talk forever about this stuff. I don't know that people want to listen to it forever, but thank you so much for taking time out of your day to chat with us. And I think this, I think anytime we can, I think therapy has such a Vale for some reason, and anytime we can remove that veil and make it more accessible, we're doing a service to the industry.
Riva: Absolutely. Yes. I completely agree. And it was such a delight to talk to you about all this stuff. Thanks so much for having me.