Latest / The Trauma Therapist / You’re On Fire It’s Fine with Katie K. May, LPC

Transcript

You’re On Fire It’s Fine with Katie K. May, LPC · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Trauma Theverist podcast. Plus listeners can listen to episodes early
0:03
Speaker 1: and ad free right now. Become a Plus listener by
0:07
Speaker 1: going to Apple Podcasts, searching for the Trauma Theverist podcast
0:11
Speaker 1: and signing up today. Welcome to the Trauma Nevers Podcast,
0:18
Speaker 1: a show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those
0:21
Speaker 1: who experienced trauma. My name is got macpherson, and my
0:24
Speaker 1: mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to inspire
0:27
Speaker 1: each of us to help those around us. All right,
0:38
Speaker 1: so five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome
0:42
Speaker 1: back to the podcast. I'm very excited to have as
0:45
Speaker 1: my guest today, Katie May Katie, Welcome.
0:49
Speaker 2: Thank you, happy to be here.
0:50
Speaker 1: Awesome. So. Katie is the owner and executive director of
0:54
Speaker 1: Creative Healing. She's a national speaker and trainer specializing in
0:58
Speaker 1: therapy for teens experiencing depression, self harm, and suicidal thoughts.
1:03
Speaker 1: As one of only eleven Lenihan Board certified Dialectical Behavior
1:07
Speaker 1: therapy clinicians Pennsylvania, She's an expert in this gold standard
1:11
Speaker 1: treatment for life threatening behaviors. Katie's committed to helping teens
1:15
Speaker 1: feel accepted for who they are while teaching them skills
1:18
Speaker 1: to build a life they love. Katie, Welcome to the podcast.
1:22
Speaker 2: Thank you.
1:24
Speaker 1: So before we get going, share with the listeners where
1:27
Speaker 1: you're from originally and where you are currently.
1:30
Speaker 2: I am from the Philadelphia area, originally right outside Philadelphia.
1:34
Speaker 2: If you live in Philadelphia, you don't like when people
1:36
Speaker 2: right outside Philadelphia actually say Philadelphia. So I'm being specific,
1:40
Speaker 2: and I've actually grown up here. I've been here my
1:42
Speaker 2: whole life.
1:43
Speaker 1: Awesome. So I used to live outside of Philadelphia and
1:46
Speaker 1: when school in Philadelphia awesome, amazing.
1:50
Speaker 2: Where'd you go?
1:52
Speaker 1: Well? I went to what was at the time Philadelphia
1:56
Speaker 1: College of Art on broad shast Oh yeah, yeah, interesting,
2:00
Speaker 1: well cool, but I miss miss miss Philadelphia Art. Look,
2:07
Speaker 1: this is an intense topic. I love this topic. We're
2:10
Speaker 1: talking about teens. How did how did this start for you?
2:13
Speaker 1: How did you get into this field?
2:17
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, well by accident, but on purpose, if that
2:22
Speaker 2: makes sense. When I was a teenager, I struggled a
2:25
Speaker 2: lot with self harm, with depression. I had kind of
2:28
Speaker 2: a traumatic upbringing due to my parents' divorce. I was
2:31
Speaker 2: raised by a single father, so all of those experiences
2:35
Speaker 2: of it was really difficult for me to be a teenager.
2:38
Speaker 2: And then When I went to college, I wanted to
2:41
Speaker 2: be a journalist. I wanted to be a writer. I've
2:44
Speaker 2: been writing my whole life, so that was my identity
2:46
Speaker 2: as a writer, and graduated with a degree, found out
2:51
Speaker 2: that I was pregnant. It was the best surprise in
2:53
Speaker 2: my life. But it was a surprise, and so it
2:57
Speaker 2: kind of changed the course of what made sense for
2:59
Speaker 2: me in my life. And after the birth of my child,
3:02
Speaker 2: I decided that I wanted to go back to school
3:05
Speaker 2: to become a therapist and to give back in a
3:09
Speaker 2: way that made sense to make my life and my
3:11
Speaker 2: struggles make like, to make meaning from them right, to
3:15
Speaker 2: make it worth it that I went through that experience.
3:18
Speaker 1: So you went to school, you had a degree in
3:22
Speaker 1: journalism or counseling.
3:24
Speaker 2: Oh I do I have. I have a via in
3:28
Speaker 2: English Lit and a minor in journalism.
3:29
Speaker 1: Okay, But then you went back when you wanted to
3:32
Speaker 1: be a therapist. Okay, all right. You talked a little
3:37
Speaker 1: bit about your upbringing being traumatic impacting you when you
3:44
Speaker 1: you talked a little bit about self harm and so forth,
3:48
Speaker 1: and to the degree that you feel comfortable talking about
3:51
Speaker 1: this stuff, I just want to put that out there
3:53
Speaker 1: to what degree, Were you conscious of what you were
3:56
Speaker 1: going through and how that was impacting you and your
4:00
Speaker 1: reaction to it, the behaviors you were exhibiting at the time.
4:06
Speaker 2: I mean, I consider myself a pretty insightful person, even
4:08
Speaker 2: as a teenager. Again, I've been writing and reflecting on
4:11
Speaker 2: my life, my entire life. I learned about the concept
4:15
Speaker 2: of self harm from a peer who was doing it,
4:18
Speaker 2: and I just kind of was like, huh, that's a thing,
4:21
Speaker 2: and that's kind of intriguing, and didn't give it a
4:23
Speaker 2: second thought at that time because it was just like
4:27
Speaker 2: a new and novel and interesting thing that I had
4:30
Speaker 2: never seen before. And then I had an interaction with
4:32
Speaker 2: my dad that was really tense, and looking back on
4:35
Speaker 2: it now and in my own work in therapy, I'm
4:37
Speaker 2: recognizing that, like my response to that interaction was a
4:40
Speaker 2: whole lot of shame, and in that moment, my brain
4:44
Speaker 2: just moved me towards oh, that's a thing that I
4:47
Speaker 2: saw before, I wonder and not consciously, but like, in
4:50
Speaker 2: a split second, that's a thing that I'm going to
4:52
Speaker 2: do right now, And in that moment, it's what I did,
4:55
Speaker 2: and what I now teach to other parents is that
4:58
Speaker 2: self harm regulates emotion really quickly. It reduces that emotional
5:02
Speaker 2: intensity quickly. And so when that happened for me, it
5:05
Speaker 2: became a coping strategy that I then continue to use
5:09
Speaker 2: in a setting where I had very little control and
5:11
Speaker 2: a whole lot of challenge and difficulty.
5:16
Speaker 1: When you went back to school, what was your what
5:21
Speaker 1: was your hope? What was your goal? If you had one?
5:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I went back to school, I actually didn't
5:27
Speaker 2: intend to work with teenagers either. That's why I say
5:29
Speaker 2: it was still by accident. I went back to school
5:32
Speaker 2: because I wanted to be an addictions counselor. I went
5:35
Speaker 2: through my own ten years of using substances, my child's
5:39
Speaker 2: father as well, and it just felt like, well, this
5:43
Speaker 2: is another thing that I've overcome. It was more recent
5:45
Speaker 2: and relevant to me, and I said, I can do this.
5:47
Speaker 2: I can help other people through this, and so I
5:49
Speaker 2: went back to school for that reason. But I did
5:53
Speaker 2: an internship in like an intensive outpatient setting for substance use,
5:58
Speaker 2: and I hated it. For me, it felt like every
6:02
Speaker 2: day was focused on helping people not do the thing
6:05
Speaker 2: that they wanted to do, and that just felt not
6:09
Speaker 2: It felt like something that was not right or aligned
6:12
Speaker 2: for the life that I wanted in the career that
6:14
Speaker 2: I wanted, and so I realized that actually wasn't where
6:16
Speaker 2: I wanted to focus my attention. I wanted to focus
6:18
Speaker 2: it more on that life worth living piece which dialectical
6:21
Speaker 2: behavior therapy DBT we're all about moving someone towards the
6:25
Speaker 2: life they want rather than just continuing to white knuckle
6:28
Speaker 2: it through the life they don't want. And that resonated
6:31
Speaker 2: with me and how I got to where I am,
6:33
Speaker 2: And that's kind of how I ended up where I
6:35
Speaker 2: am now, So.
6:36
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that. So how did you move into
6:40
Speaker 1: working with teens? And from what you said, one might
6:45
Speaker 1: imagine what your response would be, but why teens? Why adolescents?
6:51
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well I got a job. I mean, that's a
6:53
Speaker 2: short answer. I was offered a job and a child
6:57
Speaker 2: an adolescent partial program, and I didn't. And still it
7:00
Speaker 2: was like, wow, I'm so you know, I'm empathetic. I
7:04
Speaker 2: really struggled as a teen. Can I do this? Am
7:06
Speaker 2: I healed enough to do this work? So there were
7:08
Speaker 2: a lot of questions, But it was the job that
7:11
Speaker 2: was offered to me because I had applied at this
7:13
Speaker 2: hospital and that was the area where they had an opening,
7:15
Speaker 2: so I took the job because I needed a job.
7:18
Speaker 2: And what I realized was that I really connect well
7:21
Speaker 2: with that teen population. I think I'm probably in some
7:24
Speaker 2: arrested development myself, Like you know that I'm good at
7:30
Speaker 2: connecting with teens. I'm good at, you know, helping move
7:34
Speaker 2: them through their struggles. And so it just kind of
7:36
Speaker 2: fell together naturally from that point.
7:39
Speaker 1: When you say you're good with connecting with what does
7:42
Speaker 1: that mean? Say more about that? Why? How well?
7:46
Speaker 2: I think that teenagers can sniff out yes, genuineness, yes,
7:53
Speaker 2: like a mile away, ten miles away. And I've always
7:58
Speaker 2: been radically genuine with my clients. I am who I am.
8:01
Speaker 2: I'm not a blank slate. I don't make it about me,
8:03
Speaker 2: but I'm also not a blank slate. I'm honest. I
8:05
Speaker 2: answer questions and I treat them as equal individuals in
8:10
Speaker 2: the conversation, and I think that resonates with them they
8:14
Speaker 2: you know, teenagers naturally don't have a lot of autonomy
8:17
Speaker 2: in their lives, and so when I can provide that
8:19
Speaker 2: to them and I can see them as who they are,
8:21
Speaker 2: I think that that creates a really strong report between
8:25
Speaker 2: client and therapists.
8:27
Speaker 1: Was that something you had to learn or did it
8:32
Speaker 1: just come naturally for you?
8:34
Speaker 2: Like, is that this came naturally? Yeah, it's just like
8:38
Speaker 2: I don't know how to not be myself even in
8:40
Speaker 2: a work setting, and so that's just how that happened.
8:44
Speaker 1: I guess what I wanted to ask was, did you
8:48
Speaker 1: understand the importance of that naturally, like from off the bat,
8:54
Speaker 1: or did you learn that that I look in order
8:57
Speaker 1: to connect with these kids. Yeah, it's important for me
9:01
Speaker 1: just to it's important just to be who you are.
9:06
Speaker 2: I think it was probably innate, but also then a
9:09
Speaker 2: learned insight over time, like this is who I am
9:11
Speaker 2: and this is what I'm doing. But then along the
9:13
Speaker 2: way recognizing that that was a piece of why it was.
9:16
Speaker 1: Working right right, I didn't have that insight that you had.
9:24
Speaker 1: I naturally. When I got out of graduate school, I
9:32
Speaker 1: was working in a clinic where we were assessing and
9:36
Speaker 1: working with kids who were showing early signs of psychosis,
9:38
Speaker 1: so a bunch of adolescents, and I loved it, and
9:44
Speaker 1: I in a very opposite way to you, I led
9:52
Speaker 1: with my knowledge and my you know, like, I have
9:57
Speaker 1: all this information that I want to share and it's
10:00
Speaker 1: going to work and instead of what you're saying, instead
10:05
Speaker 1: of like honoring who I was, you know, And there's
10:10
Speaker 1: a whole reason for that, you know. But I learned.
10:14
Speaker 1: I learned the importance of exactly what you're saying is
10:20
Speaker 1: us being who we are as clinicians. I'm not no
10:23
Speaker 1: longer a clinician, but for a lot of people, not everyone,
10:27
Speaker 1: but for a lot of people, it's hard to do
10:32
Speaker 1: to do what you're saying, is to be anything else
10:37
Speaker 1: than who they are. But it's so friggin' powerful, right,
10:43
Speaker 1: And we connect when we when we're talking to someone
10:48
Speaker 1: or in the presence of someone who is themselves, it's
10:52
Speaker 1: so inspiring, right, we feel it.
10:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree with you. I think as a
10:58
Speaker 2: therapist there's such a ven diagram too, though, Right, it's
11:00
Speaker 2: like being yourself and being genuine, but also having the
11:03
Speaker 2: knowledge and the confidence to support someone through a process.
11:07
Speaker 2: I don't know, and this is maybe controversial, but I
11:09
Speaker 2: don't think the relationship is enough for someone to see
11:12
Speaker 2: changes in therapy. I think it's important, but I also
11:15
Speaker 2: think that the interventions, the knowledge, the experience that you
11:19
Speaker 2: can bring a client through is equally as important. I'm
11:21
Speaker 2: not someone who says like that's all you need, of.
11:25
Speaker 1: Course, and I'm not intimating that, yeah, but I do
11:28
Speaker 1: think that is a huge piece. So let's talk a
11:34
Speaker 1: little bit about when you started working with this population,
11:40
Speaker 1: what were what was your experience, like, what did you
11:43
Speaker 1: start to do, How did you start to interact with
11:50
Speaker 1: kids who were maybe sometimes having really intense traumatic experiences.
11:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I am someone who has to learn everything
12:02
Speaker 2: about the thing that I'm doing. So I remember reading
12:04
Speaker 2: a lot of books, you know, in the setting that
12:07
Speaker 2: I was in, and I think most hospital settings are
12:10
Speaker 2: like this. They had a high demand and they didn't
12:13
Speaker 2: have a lot of time to train me to do
12:14
Speaker 2: what I was doing, so I was thrown into having
12:17
Speaker 2: this really large case sload and figuring it out along
12:20
Speaker 2: the way. And I do remember leaving work sometimes with
12:24
Speaker 2: those sad stories or traumatic situations that over time as
12:27
Speaker 2: a therapist you learn to contain, hopefully and be able
12:30
Speaker 2: to transition out of work and into your day. But
12:33
Speaker 2: I do remember just feeling like I'm in the right
12:36
Speaker 2: place to help these kids get something that they're not needing,
12:40
Speaker 2: and I felt like a big piece of that was
12:42
Speaker 2: also educating their parents on how to do things differently
12:46
Speaker 2: in terms of validating or providing support or creating more structure,
12:50
Speaker 2: and so being able to do that work with the
12:52
Speaker 2: child and also to work with the parent helped me
12:54
Speaker 2: feel like I was able to provide validation, give these
12:57
Speaker 2: clients something they maybe weren't getting somewhere else, but also
13:00
Speaker 2: restructure that home environment so that after seven to ten
13:03
Speaker 2: days in a partial hospital program, they weren't just going
13:06
Speaker 2: back into a home that was exactly the same. So,
13:09
Speaker 2: you know, and seeing that revolving door of hospitalizations that
13:12
Speaker 2: I did see all the time.
13:14
Speaker 1: So you're talking about a partial hospitalization where people who
13:18
Speaker 1: are going into that obviously are experiencing what oftens suicidal ideationidal.
13:24
Speaker 2: Ideation, school avoidance, sometimes psychosis. We would see some most
13:27
Speaker 2: POSTCD really a little bit of everything, which was an
13:31
Speaker 2: excellent first job experience for me, But we were seeing
13:34
Speaker 2: it all.
13:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, in terms of working with parents, what was what
13:42
Speaker 1: was talk about that, What was your approach? How was
13:46
Speaker 1: that for you? Et cetera.
13:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was interesting and it was scary, I think. Yeah,
13:53
Speaker 2: my approach was always joining with them and helping them
13:57
Speaker 2: to learn some new skills. The idea that you're doing
14:00
Speaker 2: the best you can and you can do better and
14:02
Speaker 2: you and your child want and deserve this so you
14:04
Speaker 2: can have a stronger connection and a better life together.
14:07
Speaker 2: And that wasn't always received well. You know, there were
14:10
Speaker 2: reactive parents, wounded parents, parents who wanted to drop their
14:14
Speaker 2: kid off and not be a part of the process.
14:16
Speaker 2: But I would say for the most part, it was
14:18
Speaker 2: really welcome. And this is something that I've learned over
14:20
Speaker 2: time as a clinician. When I worked at the hospital program,
14:23
Speaker 2: I was twenty twenty nine thirty, I had a young
14:26
Speaker 2: child at that time, but I felt really insecure in
14:29
Speaker 2: terms of my ability to give advice to other parents
14:33
Speaker 2: and felt like they didn't want that, or that I
14:35
Speaker 2: was going to trigger shinging more that I was overstepping.
14:38
Speaker 2: But what I've learned over time, both as a therapist
14:40
Speaker 2: and as a parent who has had a child in
14:42
Speaker 2: therapy is like, when you are in that place, for
14:44
Speaker 2: the most part, you feel helpless and hopeless, and you
14:47
Speaker 2: want someone to direct you and to make it better,
14:50
Speaker 2: and that's why you're there. And so that was the
14:53
Speaker 2: majority of what I noticed is that people were really
14:55
Speaker 2: grateful that they were learning something to make it different,
14:57
Speaker 2: because nobody wants their kid to be hospitalized.
15:00
Speaker 1: Right. One of the things I'll never forget is part
15:04
Speaker 1: of our job at the time was taking these referral
15:07
Speaker 1: calls from parents and teachers and the therapists to see
15:10
Speaker 1: if their kid was right for this program. Right, So
15:13
Speaker 1: we'd go through this a list of questions, you know, medications,
15:20
Speaker 1: behavior in school, and so forth. But ninety nine percent
15:23
Speaker 1: of these kids had experienced some kind of trauma. So
15:27
Speaker 1: you'd at the end of this call, you get this.
15:30
Speaker 1: You'd have this sheet of these, like oftentimes really intense behaviors,
15:35
Speaker 1: and then a few days later, the kid would walk
15:38
Speaker 1: into the office and I'll never forget this, just being
15:42
Speaker 1: blown away by this sheet of paper with these crazy
15:48
Speaker 1: behaviors and this kid, this normal looking kid, and you're like,
15:54
Speaker 1: holy crap, that's the kid who's going through all this.
15:58
Speaker 1: And it really made me think about just how the
16:06
Speaker 1: humanness I think of this process, and how so many
16:10
Speaker 1: of us don't know each other is experiencing, and for
16:14
Speaker 1: kids especially, it can be really hard. What do you
16:21
Speaker 1: feel a lot of therapists who maybe don't work with
16:24
Speaker 1: kids who don't have the experience, what do they not
16:28
Speaker 1: get or understand or maybe even need to know about
16:34
Speaker 1: working with this population, oh so many things.
16:37
Speaker 2: The first thing that always comes up from me is
16:39
Speaker 2: that they're not tiny adults. They're in their own developmental stage,
16:42
Speaker 2: and so it's different than being a child, and it's
16:45
Speaker 2: different than being an adult and then being.
16:48
Speaker 1: Sold on hold on there, Oh god, what does that mean?
16:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, developmentally they are in a stage where they're
16:55
Speaker 2: gravitating more towards their peers, they're figuring out who they are.
16:58
Speaker 2: It's natural for them to limits and to push back,
17:01
Speaker 2: and so when therapists that mostly treat adults try and
17:05
Speaker 2: work with clients that are adolescents like they work with adults,
17:08
Speaker 2: it's not going to be as effective. And when therapists
17:11
Speaker 2: treat them like children and use the same interventions as
17:14
Speaker 2: they might use with an eight year old, it's not
17:16
Speaker 2: going to be effective. And mostly for I think that
17:18
Speaker 2: comes back to this idea of them feeling seen for
17:20
Speaker 2: who they are. They don't want to be a child anymore.
17:23
Speaker 2: They might want to be an adult, but they're not
17:24
Speaker 2: an adult, and so we really do need to see
17:27
Speaker 2: them and ground our treatment in the idea that they're
17:32
Speaker 2: in this developmental stage that's very different than being a child,
17:35
Speaker 2: and it's not yet an adult.
17:36
Speaker 1: Right, this is great, and can you give us an
17:40
Speaker 1: example of what this might look like how someone walks
17:43
Speaker 1: in a kid walks in a kid teen unless walks
17:46
Speaker 1: into your office. Let's get specific about an interaction you
17:54
Speaker 1: might put forth that would appreciate their developmental stage.
18:00
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll use the example of school avoidance because I
18:03
Speaker 2: think it's concrete and we can look at it from
18:06
Speaker 2: all sides. So teen comes into therapy, they're not going
18:09
Speaker 2: to school, maybe making it two days a week. I'm
18:13
Speaker 2: also seeing the parent come in for this intake session
18:15
Speaker 2: and they're saying like, well, I've taken their phone away,
18:17
Speaker 2: they're not allowed to play video games, and it's still
18:20
Speaker 2: not working right right, So that right there? I pause.
18:23
Speaker 1: I have a fifteen year old, so I have.
18:26
Speaker 2: A sixteen year old. Yeah, isn't that right there? That's
18:29
Speaker 2: one place where I pause, say, of course that's not working.
18:32
Speaker 2: Where you don't even understand why they're not going to school.
18:34
Speaker 2: So it's not like when they're you know, eight, and
18:37
Speaker 2: you can say no video games for the rest of
18:39
Speaker 2: the day because you hit your sibling like it's different.
18:41
Speaker 2: Not that I would have done that back then, but
18:43
Speaker 2: just as an example, like that kind of response is
18:46
Speaker 2: not honoring that this teen is more complex than that,
18:49
Speaker 2: that there's an underlying reason for this behavior, and so
18:54
Speaker 2: joining with the teen wouldn't be starting with that problem.
18:57
Speaker 2: It would be understanding seems like a really struggling right now,
19:01
Speaker 2: like something I'd probably drop an f bum somewhere in
19:03
Speaker 2: that conversation, just as the way to like sprinkle in
19:06
Speaker 2: that we're on the same page or something like that,
19:08
Speaker 2: really join them in their moment of like this is
19:10
Speaker 2: really hard for you, like, tell me what's going on.
19:13
Speaker 2: So if we're starting with the parents problem, which is
19:16
Speaker 2: my teen's not going to school, we're already in validating
19:19
Speaker 2: the teen's experience because we're then trying to solve a
19:23
Speaker 2: problem that's not their actual problem.
19:27
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, So, as is often the case with a
19:31
Speaker 1: lot of parents, I mean not I mean me myself,
19:36
Speaker 1: oftentimes being reactive to the to the behavior, yeah right,
19:43
Speaker 1: and not taking those steps to look at why the
19:48
Speaker 1: hell is this happening in the first place? Exactly? Yeah, okay,
19:54
Speaker 1: love that all right, So continue Okay.
19:58
Speaker 2: So, then, as we're a se and I'm very big
20:01
Speaker 2: on assessment, I don't like to jump in with solving
20:04
Speaker 2: problems before I fully understand them, I'm looking at both sides.
20:08
Speaker 2: In my work, I call this the transactional model, meaning
20:11
Speaker 2: what your child does influences how you respond, but how
20:15
Speaker 2: you respond influences how they respond. And oftentimes this is
20:18
Speaker 2: how we get to levels of escalation that are crisis prone.
20:21
Speaker 2: And so as I'm understanding, well, let's look at what
20:23
Speaker 2: a typical day looks like for you teenager. You wake up,
20:27
Speaker 2: you're already having that pit in your stomach, You're feeling
20:29
Speaker 2: really down. Maybe there's an image in your head of
20:32
Speaker 2: sitting alone in the lunch room because nobody's talking to
20:34
Speaker 2: you right now. But on the other side of that,
20:36
Speaker 2: parent is nagging them to get out of bed, ripping
20:39
Speaker 2: the covers off of them, sprang them in the face
20:42
Speaker 2: with a squirt bottle or whatever, you know, other strategies
20:45
Speaker 2: they think are going to be effective, yelling at them,
20:47
Speaker 2: shaming them, or also not because I don't want to villainize.
20:50
Speaker 2: Parents really stressed out because they're about to lose their job,
20:53
Speaker 2: because they haven't been able to be on time for weeks,
20:55
Speaker 2: because their kid is struggling. So their behaviors also come
20:58
Speaker 2: from a place of their own struggle, and so you know,
21:01
Speaker 2: that's one of these important pieces in looking at working
21:04
Speaker 2: with teenagers is you have to be you have to
21:07
Speaker 2: look at both sides of the transaction. You have to
21:09
Speaker 2: see how the parent is responding to them, but also
21:13
Speaker 2: a lot of times understanding why the parents responding to
21:15
Speaker 2: them like that. Because teens don't heal in a vacuum,
21:18
Speaker 2: They're not being raised in a vacuum. They can't make
21:20
Speaker 2: changes in a vacuum. And that's why I think the
21:22
Speaker 2: work with teenagers is so complex, and that's why I
21:25
Speaker 2: think a lot of people don't want to do it.
21:26
Speaker 2: I see mostly it is because they say, all, I
21:28
Speaker 2: don't want to work with the parents, right, But you
21:31
Speaker 2: can't effectively for many things. I'm not going to say
21:35
Speaker 2: all the time work with a teenager and these kinds
21:38
Speaker 2: of struggles, self harm, school avoidance, really high risk or
21:41
Speaker 2: acute situations without also involving the parents and getting them
21:45
Speaker 2: to change their own behaviors.
21:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're doing an excellent job of articulating
21:52
Speaker 1: how complex and layered it is. It's not just enough
21:59
Speaker 1: just to work with the kid who's in front of you.
22:01
Speaker 1: It's the soul system which can be obviously is very challenging.
22:06
Speaker 1: Let me just remind everyone I'm speaking with Katie May.
22:10
Speaker 1: She is the executive director of Creative Healing. Let's just
22:16
Speaker 1: take a step to the side here, and I want
22:21
Speaker 1: to ask you about the genesis of Creative Healing. How
22:28
Speaker 1: did that come about? Why did you start decide to
22:31
Speaker 1: start that.
22:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, going back to the partial hospital program, I
22:36
Speaker 2: had gotten licensed. I knew that my goal was eventually
22:39
Speaker 2: to be in my own private practice. I'm not great
22:42
Speaker 2: at having a boss, and so moving into my own
22:45
Speaker 2: business made sense. And what I found because part of
22:49
Speaker 2: my job there was to make referrals to outside services,
22:53
Speaker 2: A lot of the teens that were in that program
22:56
Speaker 2: would say, I wish there was a group like at
22:58
Speaker 2: the hospital, but that I could go to after school.
23:02
Speaker 2: And so I heard that consistently and decided, well, that's
23:05
Speaker 2: how I'm going to start my practice. I'm going to
23:07
Speaker 2: start a team group, and I'm going to help teen
23:09
Speaker 2: stay connected and not have to be in the hospital
23:12
Speaker 2: to get that level of validation and connection. And that's
23:16
Speaker 2: what I did. I started with one day a week,
23:18
Speaker 2: which then went to two days a week, three days
23:20
Speaker 2: a week, four days a week. I had seven groups
23:22
Speaker 2: in a full case load when I finally made the
23:24
Speaker 2: decision to leave the hospital, and that was awesome for
23:28
Speaker 2: like two years until I got to the point where
23:30
Speaker 2: I had so many referrals. I didn't know what to
23:33
Speaker 2: do with them all and didn't have the time or
23:34
Speaker 2: space for them. But I also didn't want to send
23:37
Speaker 2: them to the general practitioner down the street because the
23:40
Speaker 2: work I was doing and the training I had in
23:42
Speaker 2: DBT was really important to me that other teenagers get
23:45
Speaker 2: that quality of care. So I decided to build a
23:49
Speaker 2: small team and train them so that we could do
23:52
Speaker 2: this work together. And then a small team of four
23:56
Speaker 2: is now a small team of almost twenty and locations,
24:01
Speaker 2: and I just feel really fast because there's I mean
24:03
Speaker 2: good for the good for business, but bad for the world.
24:06
Speaker 2: Maybe there's so many teens that are struggling that I'm
24:10
Speaker 2: just so honored that we have a team that can
24:11
Speaker 2: support that work.
24:13
Speaker 1: Now, where is Creative Healing?
24:17
Speaker 2: We have two locations. One is in Flowertown, it's Montgomery County, Pennsylvania,
24:21
Speaker 2: and one is in Wayne, which is on the mainline
24:23
Speaker 2: in penn Wayne.
24:24
Speaker 1: I know, Wayne, Yeah, you doing okay? Yeah? Yeah? And
24:29
Speaker 1: are you doing any work online or is it all
24:32
Speaker 1: Oh yeah you are okay?
24:34
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean is anyone not doing work online
24:36
Speaker 2: now with the post pandemic? Maybe they aren't.
24:39
Speaker 1: Sorry. What I meant is is it just restricted to
24:42
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania online? Oh?
24:44
Speaker 2: I see, yeah, so we can see clients in Pennsylvania
24:47
Speaker 2: and Florida right now.
24:48
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, really cool. So I want to sorry jumping around.
24:55
Speaker 1: I want to go back to uh the question I
25:00
Speaker 1: asked about what therapists maybe don't know or need to
25:05
Speaker 1: know in terms of working with kids, and you talked
25:08
Speaker 1: about kind of the complexity and so forth. What are
25:10
Speaker 1: some other things?
25:13
Speaker 2: I think I hit on some of it when I
25:14
Speaker 2: was saying that you need to be able to work
25:16
Speaker 2: with the parent, and so I think that having the
25:20
Speaker 2: skills to address parent concerns or even the confidence to say,
25:24
Speaker 2: you know what, I think this is coming from your
25:26
Speaker 2: own childhood or your own stuff, and you need your
25:28
Speaker 2: own therapy. So really feeling comfortable and confident addressing the
25:32
Speaker 2: parent side of things. And I think one thing that's
25:37
Speaker 2: been really instrumental for me and a lot of people
25:40
Speaker 2: on my team is having teams support because it's so
25:43
Speaker 2: easy to get pulled into judgments or frustration or hopelessness
25:49
Speaker 2: when you're working with really high risk teens, and also
25:53
Speaker 2: sometimes many times parents who want them to get better quickly,
25:57
Speaker 2: and they're just not going to get better quickly. So
26:00
Speaker 2: it's tricky to not get polarized somewhere in there. So
26:04
Speaker 2: having other therapists to be able to debrief with and
26:08
Speaker 2: to say, like, you know what, I think that might
26:10
Speaker 2: be judgmental or I think we might need to take
26:11
Speaker 2: a step back and look at this from a different perspective.
26:14
Speaker 2: I think it's so important. I don't know how I
26:16
Speaker 2: could do this work without a team at this point.
26:19
Speaker 1: A good point. So as we kind of wind down
26:22
Speaker 1: here in terms of the groups you did, are you
26:26
Speaker 1: still doing groups now?
26:28
Speaker 2: My team does groups. So we have about fifteen groups
26:30
Speaker 2: for different reasons that are so.
26:32
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, what are some of the qualities that you
26:37
Speaker 1: think are effective or we're effective in the groups that
26:40
Speaker 1: you ran? Why did they resonate so much with the kids?
26:46
Speaker 2: I would say, I mean a lot of our groups
26:48
Speaker 2: are DBT groups, And I would say in general, our
26:51
Speaker 2: groups really work because we gear them towards teenagers, so
26:55
Speaker 2: they are interactive. We provide them space where they can share,
26:58
Speaker 2: but also structured within that riculum, so it's not just
27:01
Speaker 2: glory stories or people learning new information. And where we
27:06
Speaker 2: do creative activities, we'll take them outside. We do it
27:09
Speaker 2: like gamified or interactive, and so they're learning skills, but
27:13
Speaker 2: they're learning them through interaction, through activity, through situations that
27:18
Speaker 2: are relevant to them, and I think that that makes
27:22
Speaker 2: all the difference. It's not just reading from a book
27:24
Speaker 2: or using a whiteboard to teach a skill. We're teaching
27:28
Speaker 2: it through the lens of how they'd prefer to learn,
27:31
Speaker 2: or they get excited to come to group and tell
27:34
Speaker 2: parents they had a good time at group, which is
27:36
Speaker 2: a cool thing to hear considering they're learning how to
27:38
Speaker 2: regulate their emotions in that process.
27:43
Speaker 1: So for the listeners out there, who most of whom
27:46
Speaker 1: are in the mental health field, if they want to
27:51
Speaker 1: after hearing you, they're like, Okay, I want to start
27:55
Speaker 1: working with kids. I want to start working with teens.
27:57
Speaker 1: What would you say would be a first step?
28:02
Speaker 2: I would say, if you want to start working with
28:04
Speaker 2: kids or you want to start working with teens, two
28:06
Speaker 2: things that helped me a lot. I trained as a
28:08
Speaker 2: play therapist, and I don't think that everybody needs to
28:10
Speaker 2: do that, but I think understanding the language of children
28:13
Speaker 2: if you're going to work with children, is really important.
28:16
Speaker 2: So if you're working with ten and under, definitely check
28:18
Speaker 2: out some play therapy trainings. And for me, the two
28:21
Speaker 2: things that I still use and I learned back in
28:24
Speaker 2: the day were expressive arts. So I trained under a
28:27
Speaker 2: play therapist and I learned creative modalities and expressive arts
28:30
Speaker 2: and DBT and that just you know, there's so many
28:34
Speaker 2: concrete skills that we can pull in that are practical
28:37
Speaker 2: and applicable, and working with the teen population, they're not
28:41
Speaker 2: I'm going to generalize now, but for the most part,
28:43
Speaker 2: they're not going to do psychodynamic work. They're not going
28:45
Speaker 2: to do depth work because they haven't had enough of
28:48
Speaker 2: a life to do that deep work. But also most
28:51
Speaker 2: of them don't want to. And I think if you
28:53
Speaker 2: go into working with teenagers thinking you're going to have
28:57
Speaker 2: every perfect sixteen year old insight orient to teenager who
29:01
Speaker 2: wants to be in therapy, you're going to be disappointed.
29:03
Speaker 2: I have to do that in my interview process with
29:05
Speaker 2: new therapist. That's everyone's perfect client, but that's not the
29:09
Speaker 2: majority of clients that we see. So learning, how to
29:13
Speaker 2: teach skills learning, some kind of motivational interviewing or some
29:18
Speaker 2: kind of increasing motivation strategy for clients that may not
29:22
Speaker 2: fully be self motivated to be in treatment and managing
29:25
Speaker 2: your expectations are really important. But the biggest thing is
29:28
Speaker 2: you have to love it. Like, if you don't love
29:30
Speaker 2: working with teenagers, please don't work with teenagers because you
29:33
Speaker 2: have to love it to really do it.
29:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, awesome, Katie. Love talking to you. You're so inspiring
29:41
Speaker 1: and obviously you love the work you're doing. Love to
29:43
Speaker 1: have you back at a later time. It's awesome to
29:46
Speaker 1: talk to you. What's best way for people to learn
29:49
Speaker 1: more about what you're doing and getting that's with you?
29:52
Speaker 2: A couple of ways. If you're in the Philadelphia area,
29:54
Speaker 2: Creative heealingfhilly dot com is my practice website and any
29:58
Speaker 2: interest in the kind of work that I do with
29:59
Speaker 2: parents and means you're on fire. It's fine dot com
30:02
Speaker 2: is where you can find information about my book and
30:04
Speaker 2: membership and things like that.
30:06
Speaker 1: You're on fire dot com.
30:11
Speaker 2: You're on fire.
30:12
Speaker 1: It's fine, You're fine dot com. Okay, we'll have that
30:15
Speaker 1: linked up here at the shoots page at the Trauma
30:17
Speaker 1: Favorites Podcast dot Com Katie awesome, Thank you so much.
30:21
Speaker 2: Thank you.
30:22
Speaker 1: All right, we'll be in touch to take care