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Episode 5: Burnout is not a badge of honor · Clinically Chaotic

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to Clinically Chaotic Podcast with Tara and Erica.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Good morning, everyone.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: I say good morning because we're recording this podcast at 9 a.m.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: today.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: So happy to have you all here with us.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: So early in the morning, and then we both get to go to work after this.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Just live and laugh and love and that's a great description for it.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think doing our best with what we've got with the knowledge that this is sometimes what our field looks like and nobody prepares you for it.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know recently we discussed on Instagram kind of just how underprepared you can be and essentially how the field is not setting people up for success in knowing what they're getting themselves into fully.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I did want to read you one response because I think it was my favorite response of things that people wish they knew prior to becoming a therapist.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was just summed up so accurately in our field.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: So this person said that being burned out isn't a badge of honor, which I think is important to address.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it does feel like that's the expectation.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you've experienced that in your work setting.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: I have not as much in my previous private practice, but now that I'm transitioning into a new space, it seems like being available at all times is more of the expectation.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine this just varies from place to place.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe I just got really lucky at the first practice I ever worked for.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: That is something I typically see, especially in my past several jobs, that it does feel like the harder you work, the more you stretch yourself, the more you kind of like overgive in this field, the more recognize you get or recognition you get, the more praise you get.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm definitely someone who thrives off praise.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I first started working in this field in my early 20s, I was just constantly burnt out.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it was not something that I saw as a negative.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: If anything, I think I thought that I was working really hard and doing my job great and being super present and consistent for my job.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: When now being more grown and having more experience as a therapist, I can see that allowing myself to reach that level of burnout in the first couple of years of my career was actually, you know, some form of self-abandonment.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: I can't really be a good therapist or clinician to my clients if I'm not, you know, first taking care of myself and my own needs and becoming aware of when burnout is, you know, creeping up for me.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so those are kind of my thoughts.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think in our early 20s, neither of us had that awareness.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: But should you work so hard that you burn out in two years?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: After working there for three years, I was like third in line in seniority, which is a really big sign that something is not right at an agency.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: But additionally, like you said, we got praised, right?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: You were the staff member who could handle anything.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: If anybody needed anything, they'd call you.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure your situation was similar.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: You'd spend 60 hours a week there and it's normal, and you'd fill in overnight.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: We both managed medication for our clients for quite some time.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know about you, but prior to going on a vacation, I would take the day before off, but then I would come into work and do all of the medication management for the week and write people little notes in case anything happened.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Even though technically there were a couple of other people that they could talk to about these things, but I felt the obligation to do it.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if I didn't, people were upset with me, even though that information was available elsewhere.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Something that I think about, especially in that job we were in together working in residential, when we're talking about burnout or our expectations or kind of the pressure to always be present, always be there, constantly be overworking ourselves.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think back to who my supervisor was at that time.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Since then, I've had six, seven super clinical supervisors.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: I have kind of reflected back on that time in my life and really just felt some type of rage around the supervision that I was provided in that job because I do remember feeling the pressure and responsibility and always being the person called to pick up shifts or cover or problem solve even when I'm not on the clock.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: If I had a supervisor at that time that could kind of help ground me and say, hey, Tara, you actually can't get everything done.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Get what you can done, but then know that there are other people who can take care of the rest and pick up the pieces and things will be okay if you're not here.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like in some way my supervisor was responsible for helping me learn those therapeutic boundaries for myself.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: And instead, it became praising me constantly when I was overworking myself and it almost shadowed kind of my own perspective of who I am as a professional, as a therapist, because when you're burnt out, you don't show up the same way to work.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize it at the time, but now looking back, I can see that my work being done at that time was not great.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because one, I wasn't taking care of myself, I was too burnt out.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: But two, I didn't have a clinical supervisor who was aware of the burnout or could acknowledge and support me and help me problem solve how to kind of grow through that at the time.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: I also think a huge barrier in that situation was that a lot of our supervisors were really young.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them, even though the drug requirement said they needed a master's degree, did not have it.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so they were filling these roles without the education that the role states that it needs.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: That really set them up for failure as well.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: That they just didn't have the knowledge to be able to adequately support a team who needed it.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: How are you supposed to teach other people if you don't have the understanding in the first place?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: I know part of that was circumstance, right?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people did not want to do our job.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: We surely did not get paid enough for what we did.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine that makes it hard to retain a supervisor.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And simultaneously by not holding out or having interim supervisors while you look for somebody who actually has the ability to support.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think it just trickled down from that point in time.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's good perspective, absolutely.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: In in my most grounded energy, I can acknowledge that everyone at that job truly was just doing the best that they could with what we had, the people we had, the tools we had at that time.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: It was such a hard and challenging, complex job.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, I constantly talk about when people ask me about my training or education or kind of where I got my start, my mind immediately goes back to that residential center.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Cause as hard as it was, I think it definitely served as the biggest kind of growth chapter in my early career.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: The way that we had to learn things on the spot and without a lot of support gave us the opportunity to really figure things out.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I will always say the best professional advice I've ever received was actually at that job.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it carried me through grad school.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think I had just been punched at least nine times for the third or fourth time in that day.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I wish I remember who said it to me now.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Cause I can picture where it was said, right?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm standing on like the edge of the playground up next to the school.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody looked at me and said, this is terrible.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: The only way that I continue to move forward is to remind myself this moment is just a moment.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to end.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: You get to walk away eventually.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I got through grad school and working several jobs and all of the things that they truly don't tell you or prepare you for in that line as well.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: When you think about grad school and going into it, what was your expectation?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of what the process would be like and what it would mean to be a therapist after grad school.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I have lots of thoughts about grad school and my perspective of what I thought grad school would be like versus what it felt like during the process.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as I look back, kind of what my thoughts are.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: But like straight off the bat, I was super intimidated by grad school.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was a kid growing up that seemed to always kind of struggle academically.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: When I did my undergrad, I struggled immensely.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up having to take a fifth year because I flunked out of my freshman year.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was definitely fixated more on the social aspects of school rather than like the academic work when I went to my freshman year of college.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so learning lessons, sorry, mom and dad, just flew a bunch of money in my freshman year.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Nonetheless, once I got my bachelor's, I remember just feeling so proud of myself.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time, I didn't really anticipate going back to get my master's.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: That wasn't really in my plans.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: When I took this job at the residential center, that had ignited some motivation around exploring the possibility of going back to school to become a therapist.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Initially, when I applied and found out that I got accepted, I just felt so overwhelmed by the fear of signing up for a program that eventually would lead me to become a professional.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't think I had it the slightest amount of confidence.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of just, like anything in my life, went into the program thinking, I'll wing it.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'll figure it out the best I can.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if I can't, then at least I tried.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was like super intimidated, very fearful that I would not be able to keep up in the program academically or with any of the requirements.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now looking back on the program, I can completely say that grad school might have been the only time in the past 31 years of my life where I genuinely felt like competent.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I passed grad school with flying colors, and I remember feeling really smart and getting a lot of praise on my papers and assignments.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like finally I'm in this learning environment where everything makes sense and I understand the information and it feels natural for me.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas like my bachelor's and anything that came before that in school honestly just felt kind of overwhelming and confusing for me.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was such a foreign concept.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: For people who don't know, me and Tara did our master's degree at the same school, but both online because girls have to work.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of kind of feeling beaten down from working in residential, being told you're not doing enough, you're not smart enough, you need to think about different perspectives, this could have been done so much better constantly.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then transitioning into a space where for me, I quickly found out that we had a lot more experience than most people entering grad school, specifically to become therapists.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, wait a second, I actually know these skills.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're learning about them, we practice them regularly.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was really helpful to have them.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was just so weird to then receive praise for using them correctly.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that probably goes back to the fact that our supervisors just weren't qualified to be supervisors.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of competency, like you said, and self-confidence was built in that space that it was an easier time to do those things.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: That being said, I also did them because it was one accelerated course and they were eight weeks long.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I did it while working 60 hours at first.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I made it through, but not with flying colors.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Then COVID hits and I become a star student because there's literally nothing else to do.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I've already baked everything on my Pinterest board.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess I've got to like do this school that I signed up for now.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: I am really grateful not for the pandemic because that's awful and it was terrible for a lot of people, but to be in a space where I actually got to lock in fully and give school the time that I think it deserves that so many of us aren't able to give to school because we have so many competing obligations, right?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in school for four more years, but I still want to be a good friend.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Most of my friends are not in grad programs.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: So they're all social and enjoying their life.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I hate to be the person who's like, I can't go out, I can't celebrate your birthday, I can't listen to your problem because I've got to do homework and it's due by midnight.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Just like the overwhelming, taxing experience of having to juggle a job, your schoolwork, your assignments.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: We we did similar programs.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we went to the same school, but we we went to two different programs.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Is that correct?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a great question.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: What is your degree?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Mine is clinical mental health counseling with a focus in children and adolescents.
• 14:05
  unknown: Okay.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm clinical mental health counseling with an emphasis on family and marriage therapy.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: So similar programs, and the structure of my program was once your internship started, you had one class a week where you would virtually get on with your entire cohort.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: In addition to that, you'd have assignments due, I think, on like Mondays or Wednesday nights, something along those lines.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: You'd have discussion boards that you're logging on every couple of days throughout the week to engage with.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Then you also have your job that you are normally working at.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it becomes this just like, honestly, for lack of better words, shit show of chaos in your daily schedule for nearly a year when you're in your internship.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: I had a very similar experience.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it was while trying to make it all work, the reality that you would work a full day and sometimes more than a full day, and then go home and do homework for an hour plus.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: I started really uh creating a system.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: When I look back now, I understand why I had to do it, but I think it also led to the feeling of being exhausted by grad school at the end.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: On Sunday, my one day off a week, I would just sit down and do all my homework for the week.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: That also meant that now my one day to spend with friends is a half day.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's just what I've got.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And heaven forbid I need to take care of myself or do anything else because that also has to fit into that half day.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: It is the constant sacrifice or lack of trying to balance things that make you feel good, taking care of yourself while also having to keep up on the structure, the deadlines, all the things so that you're not getting behind because it's almost like a domino effect.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: When you're in grad school or doing your internship, if you get behind on your notes or you're missing hours, or you you're not showing up to your practicum sessions or whatever it is, like one little tick that falls out of line creates this domino effect of you becoming behind or even more overwhelmed.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: It is such a stressful experience.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the last thing you want to do is fail your internship through school, not at the site, and then have to redo it for another six months added on to the year that you've already spent.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe your situation was different.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was unpaid.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm commuting 40 minutes from my house, in addition to my full-time job and my extra side job, to work for someone else who is profiting off of my labor and trying to make all of that work together and knowing that I'm also gonna have to pay all the bills while somehow making everything work.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody really prompts you of kind of the chaos of how it all happens together, but I was in the exact same boat.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I had my internship that took place twice a week, unpaid.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: I will say I had such a positive internship experience that I feel like the site really served me.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: It seemed like really quickly, the kind of frustration around having to spend two days a week doing something, providing the service to others without getting any type of tangible compensation at that time was triggering.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Those kind of feelings faded away super quickly once I was in my internship because I got really lucky what when it came to my internship.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I loved my supervisor and the group practice that I was working for really served me in a lot of ways.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think if I didn't have such a positive experience, which I know many people have crappy experiences in their internships, so I feel very grateful that I had a good one.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Having a negative internship experience would have just been an extra layer of challenging in keeping up with everything.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I can speak to that.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I loved specifically the setting of my office.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was in downtown Woodenville, it was beautiful.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Me and my supervisor were clearly very different people.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: She was clearly very type B, and that doesn't always work with me.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: As an intern, I need somebody who is going to be a little bit proactive with communication because I'm trying to figure everything out.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: That was not the case.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a huge additional stressor on top of everything combined.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: I will say though, our cohort, and specifically the instructor, although a very different person from me, is somebody that I really valued.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: She made that experience a lot easier.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the learning that I did in the field, I think was through her.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really, really appreciative that I had someone to be a good model for what this should look like in this transition.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: If I like really think about something, like I was pondering this question last night when you asked me about things that I wish I had known before becoming a therapist or going to grad school.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, the first thought that came to my mind was start looking for an internship sooner than you think.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because I remember not really understanding the program.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: I understood at some point, once I got my classes, kind of the natural pattern or flow of how our school program would work.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: I remember coming to the end of my second year in the program and our internship supervisor starting to talk about, you know, starting to prompt us and say, everyone needs to get out and start looking for an internship, exploring options in your area.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it felt like I had a lot of time.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think I had like nine months to locate an internship site or something at this point.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: I could not believe how challenging it was.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was completing my grad school virtually, but I was living in a huge city.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And there were so many options for different mental health practices or environments or populations that I could have worked with.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: It felt absolutely unbearable applying for internships and one after the other being declined for not having space or asking to be involved in an internship program at the wrong time of year, or timing always seemed to be off.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: It became this overwhelming kind of barrier just towards the end of my second year of school.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: I remember graduation even got pushed back a little bit because there was a delay in identifying where I was going to do my internship.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I was thinking about things that I wish I had known, I was kind of just sitting here almost like annoyed again.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, gosh, I wish somebody would have told me start looking for your internship a year prior to when they ask you to start looking to for your internship, because it really will help things flow a little better.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: I had a similar experience in that, and unfortunately, my supervisor, teacher, where whoever the fuck does that.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, sorry, am I allowed to say fuck?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I'm not.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now you are.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're doing it now.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: They told me three months in advance to start looking for internships.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, okay, and we live in Seattle, so this should be easy.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's everything here.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Mental health is like our thing aside from hiking, but it's all one when people think about it.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hiking, coffee, and rain.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And mental health.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh like the melting pot of Seattle.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, oh, this will be so easy.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be great.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have so many options.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I start interviewing and within about a month and a half, finally find a place, but I had to apply to like 40 plus places.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it goes well.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've got Couple rounds of interviews, and they're like, Okay, this sounds great.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: We know that your starting date isn't for a month, so we'll reach out closer to that time.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Cool.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So two weeks before, still haven't heard from them.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let me send an email.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: A week goes by, send another email because it's a week before I'm supposed to start, and I've heard from no one.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: They ghost me completely after offering me a position, which I didn't even know you could do as a supervisor of interns.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, I'm gonna offer you this internship and then I'm gonna leave or not tell anybody about it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all gonna fall through, which for me is really messed up because I'm like, you had to go through this process too.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you understand how stressful it was to have worked for years in school to really just need this one thing to graduate.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had to push out my internship another three months because that's what our school required, that block before I could then start again.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Even then, frantically, I applied to like a hundred internships that might be a little bit dramatic, but it felt like it before I finally lined something up.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, I don't think I had it set until maybe three weeks before I was supposed to start.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was so incredibly stressful.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I had volunteered or there had been a class early on that talked about building connections in the community so that when this time occurred, you had something.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I was also coming from a place of being so burnt out by our previous job that I had taken a fun job to finish grad school so that I could just be a present therapist when I started.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: But in some ways, while that was great for my mental health, it also screwed me within having connections in the field early on.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you were working at a daycare during your, was it?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: With infants, it was wonderful and very relaxing.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow, shocker, I know, did not set me up to have any kind of connection to be able to say, Hey, I know you run your own practice, or hey, I volunteered here and we're mutually aligned.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like you have to network so heavily to get internships if you don't want to apply for 900 plus internships.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's completely true.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think about kind of if we're talking about networking and having kind of peer resources or colleagues that you're close close with to collaborate with afterwards.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I I was thinking about this last night, things that I wish I had known.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And something that came up for me is I started grad school right when COVID, I think you were a little ahead of me.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: So right when we went into lockdown is when I signed up for school and my classes started.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Before starting the program, I remember feeling super skeptical about the fact that it was a virtual program.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: I remember thinking, I have too much ADHD, I'm not going to be able to pay attention to classes online, I'm not going to get the same information or experience or really be able to retain as much if I'm doing this program online versus getting to go in person.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: I will say that now looking back on the program, the online option, being able to do the program virtually was absolutely what served me.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Even if it hadn't been COVID and we weren't in a lockdown, I think the program structure and how it's set up really how I was able to thrive so well in grad school.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now looking back, I am so appreciative that I wasn't in person in grad school.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: However, with that, everyone that was in my cohort is from all over the country.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so now, of course, I have connections and friends to other clinicians who live in Las Vegas or Arizona or Florida or Hawaii.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: There were so many people from different places in my cohort.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: But that also didn't give us the opportunity to go meet up for coffee with people who graduated from the same cohort or refer clients to or collaborate with.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: So of course I had the option to connect with those people virtually, but there is something to be said about how when you graduate, you kind of need to have community in this field, in this career.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you're you're doing your program virtually, you kind of have an extra step added on of really networking and kind of exploring what people you can collaborate with in your area.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's incredibly difficult.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Also, we just got lucky at our time for what was going on in the world.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I had a roommate at the time, I'm sure you remember, who was also going to grad school to be a therapist.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: She really wanted to go in person.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was important to her.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: She picked one of the private schools in Seattle because they had a really good program for becoming a therapist and attended school for maybe a month in person.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then lockdown happened and it had to be virtual, but she still had to pay like$40,000 in tuition a year to be virtual the entire time.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: The most messed up part to me, and I realize this is a weird part to hyperfixate on.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: In order to keep her parking spot at the school, which heaven knows in Seattle, that's a like a luxury to have a parking spot.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: She still had to pay for it for the two years they were in lockdown, like$200 a semester.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're they were already robbing you.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're already not in person.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: But don't worry, you've got to maintain that parking spot just in case it comes back.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you might lose it.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's so real, though.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Parking in Seattle, just a freaking nightmare.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I was also grateful to go the virtual route.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: It made more sense.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: I also think it kind of forced some adaptability, which is so important in our field.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're probably not going to sit down at a nine to five job and do everything and leave with your notes perfectly wrapped up at the end of the day.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's going to be predictable, right?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of forced the ability to consider all of the things on your plate and prioritize as needed and move things around and think about shifting deadlines and lots of input from different places.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: With all that, maybe one of like the last things I had kind of thought about when kind of pondering things that I had wish I'd known before grad school is just it's going to be chaotic.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's going to be so much that's happening.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to feel overwhelmed.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the world of imposter syndrome.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: You are going to come face to face with imposter syndrome.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's a natural experience that almost every therapist experiences at some point.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: One minute you feel super confident and excited and um energized, ready to kind of do this thing that you've been dreaming of doing.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: You finally have the skills to do it.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then when that moment comes in your internship or wherever it is that somebody kind of puts you in the room and says, All right, here's your time, be a therapist.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: It is just like this paralyzing feeling of, wait, I can't do this.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: What are you talking about?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: The imposter syndrome comes, though, having this universal experience of not feeling just overwhelmingly over your head when it comes time to do the things that you're expected to do.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that is something that is talked about to some extent, but I don't know if anybody ever prompted me really how much I was going to sit in kind of the imposter syndrome energy and how that is honestly something that as a therapist, especially a new therapist, you just get comfortable kind of existing in that space.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: A line I use a lot is I'm gonna fake it till I make it.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Even if I have a huge caseload of clients that have all these complex issues and need all these different things for me, I'm gonna do my best.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to keep reminding myself that I'm the best person to be doing this and I'm gonna do everything I can.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm competent because if I don't kind of, you know, lean into that, the imposter syndrome can really swallow you up.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was aggressive early on.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: I remember kind of just the first day of sitting in my office being like, is this it?
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like somebody's gonna trust me with some of the most vulnerable pieces of their lives.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to make it work somehow.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: I want to have the answers immediately.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've gone to school for so long, so I should know all of these things.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: One of the hardest things for me to realize early on is that it's better to admit that you don't have the answer and to think on it and to be transparent and to get there with your client than it is to spit answers out at them.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: It totally does.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Before coming a therapist, um, before going to grad school, I had this idea in my head that grad school would essentially teach me the right thing to say to clients.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna come out of grad school having all of these responses to say to people when they were explaining their trauma or discussing their stressors or whatever.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And really now looking back on it, grad school taught me if you're doing your job as a therapist, there there's not the right thing to say or a right response.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Really, it comes down to how long can you go without responding?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: How how quiet can you stay?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: How, you know, how long can you let your client sit in the feelings and sit there with them and empathize with them and really be in that space with them before the therapist starts opening up their mouth and giving their two cents and reflecting or whatever it is we're doing, but just that overarching idea that the therapist is gonna have the right thing to say to you.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: But really, if you have a good therapist, chances are that therapist isn't saying anything at all to you and kind of allowing you to process and work through it, you know, to some extent.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: I now spend a lot more time prompting and trying to get there with someone else for me.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that everybody's perspective is a little bit different.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: I have found that clients do better long term if we are continuously moving in that direction together.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: If I am asking some leading questions, doing some prompting, but ultimately allowing them to guide themselves there as well.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: There is a sounding board to try and give perspective and to teach skills occasionally.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not sitting there saying, you need to do this, this is what's gonna fix it.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let me pull out all of these books and I can reference all of these things.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: I also am really cautious about using clinical language with clients because I don't find it relatable.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: It is in our conversations, obviously, and you know what I'm saying.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's really sterile to talk to your friends who are not therapists and try and use all this clinical language and relate to them.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it almost kind of puts those people in a space to not be able to talk about it because they're explaining a concept that another person has no idea and they're using all this language, it becomes overwhelming.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, really just trying to meet them where they're at as frequently as I can.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that grad school prepped me for that at all.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think it was for lack of trying, right?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: They have to fit so much into such well, I'm gonna say short time, but it felt like a long time we were in it.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I just wish they would say, sometimes it's okay for you to say, I don't really have an answer for that.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: But we could look at alternatives together or something along the lines of that sounds incredibly difficult.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think there is a correct next step.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost just like putting like the humanistic aspect back into things.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone who's using Chat GPT or something to say every now and then I'll process my feelings in Chat GBT.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Something I've noticed about ChatGBT is um it's always gonna have a response.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's always gonna have a problem-solving strategy, it's always gonna have, you know, your next steps, X, Y, and Z.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: But Chat GPT, robots, AI are not gonna be able to just sit in the space and exist, hold space with another human being.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that is really special and is not talked about a lot, especially in grad school when you're going through your internship.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much pressure to know how to do the interventions and what to say and how to guide your client, how to support them.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: But you're totally right, like the best healers, the best therapist, whatever you want to refer to them to, aren't necessarily healing or, you know, fixing the client.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: They are supporting, sitting, walking alongside the client as they heal and, you know, take care of themselves.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: And those are the best healers or therapists that are are really empowering their clients to do that on their own.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a hard journey in general.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what way you approach grad school, it's going to be a struggle.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is that even if you enter directly from your undergrad and you're 23 while you're approaching it, you're going to face a different set of struggles.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: But you're still going to face the fact that your friends are having fun and starting to live their life as adults with real adult money.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to say no, you don't get to join.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: You also don't have the real adult money because you're spending it on school.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: So your friends are eating steak dinners and you're having cereal for the third night in a row.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing your best to just try and sleep.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're missing out on major life events.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it does come to an end.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it was entirely worth it.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: I love my job 90% of the time, which I feel like is a victory.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've never met anyone else who can say that, aside from maybe a teacher or two.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a long road.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing that it's going to be hard for a while before it gets better is really important.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you're going to graduate, be an associate, and get paid less money to do the same job.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to be mentally prepared for that.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Then you have to be mentally prepared for the big SAT style test that you are going to have to take that they don't tell you about when you're entering grad school.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone who's listening who is contemplating going back to school, wanting to explore a grad program, is already in their program, in the thick of it, struggling or experiencing some of the things we've been talking about today, just know this is your reminder that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: It is extremely hard and overwhelming, but it will pass.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: Things will become easier.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: You will grow more than you've ever grown in your life.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's how at least that's how it felt for me.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you come out the under other end just being different, being stronger, more knowledgeable, more wise.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Then you get to have this experience of kind of learning how to feel most fulfilled in this career, in this job, and expanding who you are as a therapist.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: So even though it's chaotic and messy and a lot to take on, the end results are worth it in most cases.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: My big takeaway is that if you are entering this field because you genuinely love helping people and love being a part of kind of breaking down systemic issues and supporting others, not for the money, because you also are not going to have a lot of that, you really can thrive.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Grad school, although it feels really intense to be in it, is going to be such a short period of time of your life to give you this career that has a lot of flexibility that you can build on, even into your old age, right?
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe this is telling of my personality.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't picture a time where I retire until my brain is goo and I can't access it.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Even if I'm working five to ten hours a week seeing clients, the idea that I forever get to sit and hopefully improve other people's lives for the rest of my life is really personally fulfilling.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: And holding on to that while you're getting through eating Cheerios for the third night in a row, I think is very important.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: What's your good thing of the week?
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: Good thing of the week.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm going to a wedding this weekend for some friends of mine, and I'm really excited to see everyone and just get dressed up.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that sounds amazing.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, what is yours?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we are going to the Pewet Fair, which I know is now the Washington State Fair, but in my heart, it's always gonna be the Pewet Fair.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know that probably doesn't sound super exciting.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going for the rickety rides.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going for the hobby hall for those who have never been.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a huge complex full of people's intricate hobbies, collections, X, Y, and Z.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're all over the place.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: I particularly love people who build custom dollhouses.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: They're so cool.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: They had a cougar-themed one last year.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: I also just love collections.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a collector, I hate clutter, but I love that other people collect things.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: To see, I don't know, every Ninja Turtle from the first time they released it all the way through now and all the merch and different things that have come out is really cool.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: I just much like in my job as a therapist in real life, I also love that.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: A moment where somebody lets you in and shares the thing that they love so much with you, even if it's not something I love.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not huge on Ninja Turtles.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even tell you what color goes with which name.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea that they are welcoming enough to share this with other people is really cool.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, a scone or two on the way.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: All good things.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we're coming to the point where we get to say it is what it is.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: It is what it is.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you everyone for listening.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next week.