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A Custody Evaluator Explains Why Reunification Can Go Wrong · Head Shrink Inc.

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Hey everybody, welcome back to Headshrink Inc.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: I so one of the things that I do with this podcast is I want to interview people that I find interesting.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'll run across lots of interesting people.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not just therapists, it's other people that are have different professions.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_03: But today we're going to be talking to Aaron Hillesso.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: Is that how we say Hillesso?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so let's listen in and I'm going to ask Aaron some questions and we're going to get to know Aaron.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: You are listening to Head Shrek Game.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Your answers to life, relationships, and daily living.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron, thank you for coming on today.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate it.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's always interesting to get people on here that live in different time zones because then we always have to coordinate the time zones for like because we're both actual practicing therapists with offices and schedules and clients, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: So thanks for coming on and making time for me today.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me, so I'll just start off the bat.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me what got you into the therapy world.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I started in, I guess, the helping professions right out of high school.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I did a lot of volunteer stuff in high school, the kind of nurse aid candy striper type of thing in nursing homes and stuff like that.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I actually, when I originally went to school, went to college, I thought I was going to do nursing and then ended up pregnant with my oldest and single parenting it.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that changed my plans real quickly because in the 90s, the late 90s, we didn't have the flexibility we do with education today.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: So had to take a little bit of a detour and ended up going for a more traditional degree related to like psychology.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: And just figured I would use that in some way to, you know, figure out what I wanted to do.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I just continued to gravitate towards working with individuals with disabilities and mental health needs, mostly in the community mental health space.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, those individuals that with really severe chronic needs and couldn't live independently.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um is that, sorry to interrupt, is that like community the community mental health, like people with schizophrenia or more like developmental disabilities?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Both.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I've worked in both spaces.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: So my first job out of c in in college, I should say, because I thought I was gonna do nursing was in a state hospital.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: But that state hospital was a psychiatric hospital, and it was a very old school setup that they had.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's since changed today, but very, very traditional, very typical, like one flew over the cuckoo's nest type of setup.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I think of when you say typical, traditional.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a forensic.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: They had forensic units.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: So they had units for those individuals who are incompetent to proceed.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: So they can't even like go through the process of being in a courtroom because they just can't, you know, withstand it, or individuals, the very small amount of individuals who do actually get like not guilty by reason of insanity or some other plea deal related to that.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I was working with individuals within that context in a locked setting, my first year in college, and got exposed to a lot between the medical side of it with nursing, but also the mental health side of it and just really understanding and seeing up close and working with individuals once medicated and once supported and like, you know, the things that they needed to do well.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so that kind of, you know, shot me forward into the field since I wasn't going to do nursing anymore.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: I then started working in the mental health and disability services area.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think I've pretty much worn every possible hat that there is within that area.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: I I've I've worked, I've kind of run the gamut.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: And my ex-husband now, but my husband at the time was a mental health provider.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: He was a mental health counselor, and I had decided that I wanted nothing to do with that.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I had no interest in a therapist.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: Nothing to do with that, or your husband.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and yes, eventually.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: So so I was like, nope, I'm not gonna be a mental health provider.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna do my own thing.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually went and got a master's in public health.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I got a master's in public health, community health, and education.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So surveying programs, doing outcome studies, all the fun stuff when it comes to research and making sure that like things are doing what they're supposed to.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: The fun stuff?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: No, that is not.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: That's not so you're telling me you have two masters?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: I do, I do.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I have that and then worked, you know, in the broader sector with administration.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: I worked in hospitals, I've worked in ICUs and EDs, you know, pretty much any of the medical areas in private clinics and stuff, using those skills and using that with program development and and just like studying the metrics and stuff.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: From there, when I got divorced, life was pretty rough.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was what you would consider a very well, the divorce itself was not difficult.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: It actually went by quite quickly and surprisingly well.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: It was everything afterwards.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I grew up in a household with parents who could not get along while they were married, let alone when they did finally get divorced when I was a teenager.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I was gonna, that's what I'm interested in.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: Was there a backstory that led you to kind of towards mental health?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_03: Was there your own experience growing up that you can look back and see that as it kind of led you?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was a Vietnam veteran.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: He was there early on in Vietnam and was exposed to high amounts of Agent Orange and chemicals.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: He was a paratrooper.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: So he jumped out of the airplanes into the jungle in the beginning of Vietnam.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that that was his duty.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a lot he saw.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my brothers were born shortly after that.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: I am the youngest of four, quite by quite a bit.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: I came later.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was the whoops that came later.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so just watching my family and watching my dad struggle with PTSD and how that impacted him, and just in general, that's part of why I was like, oh, nursing.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't understand in high school that mental health was a thing because it was the 90s.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't talk about it then.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: There wasn't awareness.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just thought, oh, that would be nursing.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just I'll I'll be a nurse and I'll work in a hospital and you know, we'll we'll deal with this.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I was able to see the the dynamics.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: My mom also had a brain injury.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: So during the time that my dad was in the military before she had children, she was in a really, really serious car accident in the 60s and basically went through the windshield.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so she has she had a frontal low brain injury, you know, early on.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we didn't have awareness, you know, of the you know, impacts of concussion and brain injury until probably the last 20, 30 years, really.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even then it's still a growing, you know, study.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I had a mom who had a brain injury and a dad who had PTSD, and we were this Midwest family that was supposed to have a white picket fence and pretend like everything was okay.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: So you probably did.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: So did you pretend like everything was okay?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: We did.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: We swept it under the ring.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like we just we pretended like everything was fine.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, once my brothers were out of the house, I was the only one left at home because there was an 11-year age gap between me and my next brother.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think my mom got to the point where she was like, I don't know that I can keep doing this anymore between between both of them.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the threat of divorce and going back and forth between that was constant.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was a relief when they actually did get divorced because it was so common for us to deal with the fallout of it and just being around the constant arguing, fighting on all the time.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was like a blessing for that to happen.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: How old were you?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: How old were you?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: I like when they divorced.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I they they went back and forth a lot separating and getting back together throughout my childhood.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I was 16 officially when they got divorced and the papers were signed.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got to be the child in the middle of the dynamic.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so not only was it horrible and we all got a sigh of relief when the divorce was done, we're thinking, oh, it's gonna be over.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was just the beginning.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, my father actually passed away a couple years later because of the effects of the Agent Orange and what that did to his system.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: So he died of complications related to that.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: But for about two and a half, three years, it was dealing with the constant super high conflict, nonstop fighting and back and forth of my parents.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was the only one, I guess, that was in the house that really dealt with it in the way that I did because I was stuck.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: My brothers could go live their life.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: They had families, they lived in other states, like they could hang up the phone or be busy and be gone and do the thing.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, they would hear about it, but they wouldn't really have to like live with it day to day.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that was something that I got to experience.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that's ultimately when I got pregnant with my youngest unexpected or my oldest at such a young age unexpectedly.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, one of the things that I vowed to myself was that I was not going to do the same thing to my own children.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because we were not staying together.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were, we were, we had been in a long-term relationship during college, but it was not working well and we did not stay together.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so by the time I had my oldest, we were not in a relationship anymore.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I just got to the point where I was like, I'm going to co-parent and figure this out.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: I had an attorney at the time that was very, very smart and advised me appropriately in a way that a 19-year-old could understand, and just gave me very black and white rules of what to do and what to follow when it came to, you know, the things and the messiness.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's kind of what saved me in the beginning from making a lot of mistakes because it's so nuanced.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what got me into that area.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: But do you think that influenced because part of what you do that I find interesting is this evaluate evaluation thing.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: So explain that.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: Because I I I when I first started interacting with you, I remembered what I I remember what I thought, oh, this is interesting.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: One, it's that intake evaluator thing role that you can explain.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then two, I saw you do it, it wasn't a rant, but an explanation, and it was like without any cuts, and I thought, whoa, this is really impressive.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like you spoke for a minute and with no stopping, anyways.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I thought I'm gonna follow this person.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_03: There they have interesting stuff going on.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: So explain as best you can about what you do for evaluation stuff.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because I've I don't think I've heard of that before when I ran across you.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that I do, I do parenting or custody evaluations.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of depends on the state you live, on what they call it and the rules they have around it.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so within the family court space, we have evaluations to help the judge figure out, you know, with all of the high conflict we have today, it's more and more common.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Where we hire psychologists or clinical social workers.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a clinical social worker, other types of mental health providers.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're just psychologists, and clinical social workers are the most common licenses that do this.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: Is it different than a gal guardian ed lightum?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Very different than a guardian ed lightum.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Although there might be some limited overlap on maybe what their focus is, and they are both considered neutral professionals.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Guardian ed lightums in the majority of states are attorneys.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: There's a there's a couple of exceptions where a mental health provider or just a randomly trained other person can do it.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I would say about 95% of the time it's it's an attorney.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they are they are they are taking on the legal aspects of you know that child and what's in their best interest.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: They're not necessarily evaluating.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: They might do some review and evaluation based on the law, but they don't necessarily do the psychological components or the behavioral relational components.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so these evaluations have become extremely popular in family court because of the level of high conflict and the rise in divorce that we've had in society.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then on the other side of the spectrum is reunification.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so reunification work is something that has a very bad rap.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: It has a lot of providers that I would say are using it and accessing the services very unethically.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: There are providers, I won't say the names because I don't want to get myself sued, but there are very famous providers out there that jump on this train of children never reject their parents, they love them at all costs, and everything is alienation.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's these very biased schools of thought.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then what happens is that the court will order these reunification services or through these camps that exist in some states.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: They've been outlawed in a number of them.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So they've been made illegal, actually.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: Is Camp and is CAMP an acronym or it's an actual camp?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's an actual camp.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like they they have you go and stay in these remote locations and like or you know, with the the parent you're estranged from as a child.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: I have never heard of that.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that must be a midwest ProPublica did a whole thing on them.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: Is that Midwester?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean southern, because like I've never heard that here in the Northwest.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually really popular in the the West Central United States, not so much in the Midwest, believe it or not.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's not super popular here.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: I've only had one case where I had a parent try and get it approved that I was on and it didn't fly.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: New York used to have them.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think they might still have some providers that support it.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: So East Coast area in certain areas, and then California, Arizona, Colorado used to allow them, but they don't anymore.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Colorado's made them illegal.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Texas, you know, so it's kind of in these clumps throughout the US.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of times these parents are abusive, right?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, severely abusive, and they're angry that, you know, they don't get access to their child.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And there's documented abuse many times in these situations.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just a false, you know, this loose allegation that we can't, you know, understand.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happens is that the court will actually order those kids to go live with that parent and cut off contact from the healthy protective parent.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a whole thing.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's a whole thing.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's a worm, it's it's it's a it's a wormhole you can go down.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: I wonder if this is why many people view family court as kind of corrupt because of things like this.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: So there, when you I want to go back to what you said about like unethical therapists.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: So the agenda, you said the agenda you think some people have is what to promote themselves and their plan of how to reconcile reconcile alienation?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, as we've seen kind of in the mental health field and in psychology, I mean, there tends to be these really extreme, like extreme schools of thought that come around from time to time.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one of them where it kind of intersects with the legal world.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so there are individuals, some of them are very well-rounded individuals and researchers that say, no, you can have estrangement and you can have, you know, parent-child contact problems where it's from abuse, and you can also have influence on a child that's unhealthy.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's multiple things that can exist at once.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: But then we have people who live in the extreme of it and say, nope, it's only this all the time.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And here's how we address it.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And all of these services are private pay, and they're not cheap.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're like 10, 15, 20, 30, 40,000 to do this.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And people with money are willing to pay the money to do it.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what the outcomes are?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, because it seems like that's what's important is like what are the outcomes show.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I haven't heard from a lot of people who have actually gone to the camps directly.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the stuff that I've seen out there have been from news stories, not just social media, but actual news stories and investigations that have taken place.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the majority of the feedback about them is that they are very harmful because it typically is in situations where there was actual abuse going on of some type.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so most kids, when they go through it, from what I've seen from these camps and these programs, are like just counting the days to get out of it and get through it and typically end up cutting off contact with those parents anyway, as adults.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um I mean, yeah.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: Imagine being sent to a camp with a parent that you've had a really bad experience with.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: It just seems so nonsensical.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like it must have been a parent.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: The person that came up with that idea must have been an estranged parent who had money.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: I would say they probably were.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And just from what I've picked through to try and understand it, a lot of these are people who are connected to situations.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: I kind I like to bring up the whole like eight passengers or whatever it was with Jody and the mom, like Ruby Frankie.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Ruby Frankie, and how like that clinician just like had this way about her, but was, you know, very much an unhealthy individual selling, you know, these these tactics.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think people get desperate and they cling to whatever they can, whether it's somebody who's abusive because it supports your story or because you're really that desperate and you get sucked into the narrative with it.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, certainly, I mean, we both have seen that with certain content creators on TikTok that are strange parents or non-licensed individuals that say the right thing that feed that, like I'm desperate to get my kid back.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so then buy my program, buy my course, and join my club, and I can help you get your kid back, anyways.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: So you so tell me what you do specifically in regards to this evaluation stuff.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm one of the few people in the country who does evaluations specific to reunification work.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: So if a court says that in its reunification work is children under 18, otherwise it's just estrangement.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we look at this, because the child doesn't necessarily have a say in it, uh to prevent this from happening, the research out there tells us on the opposite side of this that no, we need to be evaluating the health and well-being of all the family members, including the protective parent, but also the estranged parent, to make sure that there, you know, are no like things, you know, issues, problems, abuse before even stepping forward and doing these services.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's a protective resource.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's similar to what a custody evaluation is.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: But instead of doing therapy afterwards, we are making recommendations of how to help this family work, you know, whether it be therapy they have to go to or parenting coordination or the custody schedule that might be best for the developmental needs of the child, and really looking at the relational and the mental health aspects of that with the rules of the court.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's similar with reunification.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: And courts don't really understand the process of reunification.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Our juvenile court system, since that's what it's about, when we start talking about child protective services and reunifying families, that's where a lot of this comes from, but it's been exploited to a point in family court and by the private sector that we have a lot of really bad actors.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I do a lot of my training with the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court judges, which is, I guess, the ethical or highest standard of how to conduct these services and for training.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: So who do you interview in in this process?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we work with in in any of these.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So traditionally, especially in reunification stuff, if it's dad that's estranged and hasn't had contact with the child ever or like for a while, what will happen is that a lot of a lot of providers who do reunification work, as they call it, will only work with that parent and the child.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And they only work to try and fix that dynamic and it's in a vacuum.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't work because families are a system, even if they're not in the same household.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have to teach and have to support the parent that's the primary caregiver in that process.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so we interview both parents, we include both parents in the therapy process.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be in the same room at the same time with each other.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: It just means that I we all we have family goals we're working under for all of the individuals involved the same goals.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we are helping them maybe on an individual.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Basis work towards that family goal.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: And inevitably, inevitably, you probably have one parent that is irritable, like is annoyed that they have to be participating in this with the other horrible parent.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of narratives you have to challenge and a lot of beliefs.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And there's also a lot of screening that we have to do related to making sure if there is any suspicion of coercive control or any type of domestic violence, even if there's no proof, right?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of people don't report it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that we're watching out for that, not just between parent and child and the family violence there or the potential influence there, but also between the parents, even though they're not in the same household, because it tends to be post-separation abuse tends to be a problem.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And these reunification services oftentimes are you know weaponized in situations by those people who don't use very ethical practices for them.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I've had people reach out to me before it says the court says I the judge says I have to do reunification with my nine-year-old.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: Can you can you see us?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: Or I'm in a Facebook group of therapists where that request comes across.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: And then inevitably there's you know, several people that I can do it, I can do it.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I and I just think, and then there's a couple more seasoned therapists that will say, you don't want to do this unless you're like trained and ready for a lot of conflict.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: But I think younger therapists don't really understand it.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: They think, oh, it's just helping people get along and and reconnect.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's just normal family therapy, which we you're you're family therapy, like that.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's not easy.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Family therapy is in the trenches, like it is one of the hardest things to do because you have to work with multiple people and hold that neutral like role.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's a lot of what it is.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I see a lot of people doing it thinking, oh, I'm gonna throw my hat in the ring and start doing it.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: And this is just family therapy.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'm the fifth or sixth person down the line that they have gone to trying to get this resolved.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Yeah, we did this and we did this.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I hear about all the things that were done.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: And while that might work in a typical, somewhat healthy family that just needs some support, those are not things that we can do when it comes to reunification work, especially when it comes to domestic violence and also acknowledging a lot of the gender stereotypes that come into it if we're not addressing those.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because there tends to be a lot of pressure on one person or the other, whoever is the one with the most complaints, to try and, you know, give in or to kind of concede if you're not trained to do family work.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's that's an issue I see a lot of.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_03: So then are you are you like, do you have a contract with the court?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: You do.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I have a contract.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: It depends.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: So some states require that you roster with the state.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that means like so Minnesota and Colorado and places like that, more populated states with more populated metropolitan areas, they typically have really strict rules about who can even do these, the type of training you have to have.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have to be able to provide it.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's a whole separate board of ethics for it from your licensing board for it.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have states like mine that have nothing, and we're the wild, wild west.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so it just anybody can literally decide to do it.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so it really just depends on the state that you live as far as the training expectations or who can or can't do it.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, in Washington State, guardian ad items are you can be a social worker, I think.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: And then they have a list, right?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: And what I've heard attorneys tell clients who who tell me this is oh, well, let's not request a guardian and ad item until this person comes up on the roster because they have they've worked with them before or whatever.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know if that's similar, but so then so you have to work with these families and give as an impartial view as possible.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: But sometimes can you like if it's very clear that one parent is just a crummy parent, can you say that?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I mean, not crummy, you know, I mean, say it clinically.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: Can you can you describe it clinically?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think one of the things that happens a lot too when we do these evaluations is people look towards, oh, we need to have psychometric testing, which is like your, you know, IQ, you know, they'll do like IQ testing and then they'll do like the MMPI to try and like see if you have a personality disorder or what's going on with you.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the court really doesn't need that.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: You don't really need those services.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're important in criminal services because of the burden of proof in criminal court beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to family court, when you're doing an evaluation and working with them and you're looking at all of the information and evidence, test psychometric testing doesn't really help because you're giving it to a legal professional to interpret.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you've interpreted as a clinician, you're now passing that information off, as vague as that will be, to an attorney and a judge to try and interpret.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they're not clinicians, they're not psychologists, they're not, you know, trained and to understand what that means.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so it basically becomes very confusing in the court's eyes and it doesn't really mean anything.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: It gets weaponized.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm a big advocate for eliminating that unless there's an actual functional need.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like we have a parent who really is like struggling and we think they maybe have an intellectual disability that's been missed, or there's something else going on that's you know, really severe that we need to probably get a better handle on.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: But the process and and the things that we do for it to be neutral is really learning how to step back and look at the data.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it is hard for people to do, especially if they empathize with the abused partner, or if they are very pro-rights dad.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: We have people who are like at all cost, you know, one side of the fence or the other, and they cut that's that agenda, that's that bias that they bring into it.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: So you so you do your report, you interview people, create a report, give it to the judge, and then both sides of the attorney, I don't know what it's not defendant or respondent or whoever it is.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: How do you say it in that world?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: Is it respondent and defendant?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's not petitioner, respondent.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it's every state is different.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_03: So then the a petitioner's like, oh, this is a garbage report.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: So then you have do you have to get up on stand ever?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have to testify.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: How do how do you do you get stressed about that, nervous about that?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: What in the beginning?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: I used to.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: It is something that you have to learn how to do.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've coached therapists when they get called, you know, because the angry parent subpoenas the notes and the judge lets them, you know.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: I've coached people on doing it.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have a certain stage presence where you can be in front of an audience, period.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: We I think we've seen plenty of televised trials, regardless of how long ago.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think at the Johnny Duff Amber Heard situation, but I know we've got other cases that are more recent.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: When we look at the ability to sit up there and actually give confident answers and understand how to interact with the court, is the biggest piece of it.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, attorneys are a very important piece of our legal system.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: I would never go to court without one because they know all of the unspoken rules and all the like processes.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, and I have lots of attorneys who agree with me on this, they are also, aside from their specialty of the law for that state, they are completely clueless when it comes to behavior of individuals.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, the questions they're asking are are formulated either off of a chat GPT survey of what questions should I ask about this report, or it is their own ignorance that they're putting on display.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's just being able to sit up there and confidently go through your report and confirm it and making sure you have the proper research in your report to support your information.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like the I that's where I like the Amber Heard trial is where I first kind of clued into this.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man, I couldn't imagine being a couples therapist and having that much detail in my note first, and then secondly, there the attorneys just they're there to discredit you.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so your job shouldn't be to help them discredit yourself.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so that in the Lindsay Clancy trial, you must have seen them interview that psychiatrist, that the woman.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I watched it closely because it wasn't just the forensics and the forensic process of mental health providers being on the stand.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was also the the what was at stake.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, mental health was pretty much on trial.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, watching that and the processes and how many experts and, you know, whether it's private sector, which is your insurance-based, you know, private sector therapists or the forensic, you know, professionals that were paraded around.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there I can't say that there were very many of them that were prepared well or testified well because they just don't, it's just not something that mental health providers do.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really the responsibility of the attorney, especially the one who called you.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: I have a lot of people get angry with me because, you know, I wrote this report and I went on the stand and I have all of this valuable information, but I can't volunteer it.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: I have to be asked.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to have the right questions asked based off of what I'm allowed to answer, whether, you know, whatever my role is.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if attorneys don't do a good job and understand how to cross-examine well, especially a mental health professional as an expert, which is a problem.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: It is a problem in the field, then the my report was worth nothing because your attorney didn't do a good job.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and then hopefully then if you're well, I don't know, in your world, can you then you you probably can't interact with either the the attorneys of the petitioner or the respondent, right?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: Because that would be not good.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's the opposite.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: So what we do to establish neutrality from the beginning is if there is a service, whether it's family therapy, an evaluation, whatever it is that you're wanting me to do, sometimes individual therapy of a child, because there are, you know, other things going on in the family, or they just nobody can agree on who the therapist is going to be and the court needs to make a decision.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: So they'll send kids to therapy under a court order.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's subject to the court.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happens is that if it's under a court expectation, that's part of the contract I have with my clients, but also with the attorneys, they have to sign it, what the limits of HIPAA and what the limits of that confidentiality and stuff is, and what I will and won't do.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that it's very clear and transparent from the beginning.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I'm interacting with everybody, instead of it being the mom or the dad that reaches out to me, which sometimes they do, my instructions are always, I need to hear from your attorney first, or the guardianed lightum, or the parenting coordinator, whoever it is.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a neutral person, great, but that's not always at play.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I say, I need an email from an attorney and I need to have the other attorney included on it before I'm allowed to do any kind of interaction with you and before we agree to anything.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that is typically where we start things is that the attorneys, the legal counsel has to reach out first in order to establish that relationship legally in the court system and the type of service we're doing with those contracts.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then from there we can go, we go forward.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I have very strict rules on the beginning of my process before we even get into any kind of interviews or treatment on how they're allowed to interact with me and the boundaries I have in place on how I interact back with them.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: I would imagine that you the goal then is you don't want to be seen as having or perception of taking a side, like from the start, I would imagine.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's kind of funny because there are people, I mean, they're in every you know, court area.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like there are evaluators and there are therapists that will work with the court and are best friends with certain attorneys and we'll just side with them.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: It is a problem in the industry.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: But in order to kind of like combat that, you know, we have to make sure we're constantly doing consultation with other providers that understand the court space because it's a very unique space.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, bouncing those ideas off of them to maintain that neutrality.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I've been able to build a network, even though there's not very many of us in our state, I've been able to build a network of providers that do this work.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: So if we do have a difficult case or we do have questions, we can call one another and just say, Hey, I need to consult for a minute.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: I have this situation.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: What would be your impression, or what do you think?
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: To make sure we're doing that to kind of check ourselves.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_03: I forgot to look at your Google reviews before having you on.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Do you also the I don't know if I have any, but you know, license complaints are not an uncommon thing in our field.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I am not going to be able to do that.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you have so you have some.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: I have one right now I've got to fight.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's typically the parent that is either the abusive parent or the angry parent that didn't get what they wanted.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, they're usually really extreme situations too.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens is that their attorney is pissed.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's usually the it's usually the parent with the really high conflict attorney that is pissed they lost.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then the attorney works with the parent and they file the complaint, and then you have to go through the whole process to try and like fight it and just, you know, address whatever questions that that come up.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's funny, since I started doing TikTok more regularly for the last three years, my Department of Health complaints have increased exponentially, but it's never from people that I actually see in person, it's from people that live in Delaware that don't like what I said on social media.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_03: So then they they take the time to call up the Department of Health here, and I don't know how it works in your state, but if if our Department of Health gets a complaint and they basically say there there wasn't anything to this complaint, so we've closed it, they'll send me an email letting me know that a complaint was made.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: So last week I got two of those emails, and then you just file public records requests to see what it was.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: So, anyways, they're just so I've gotten to the place now where I used to like when I was younger, if I got anything related to that, I was like stress, I'd get so stressed about it.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: But I think, and a lot of younger therapists that I've interacted with, they're always worried.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if they must teach them in grad school to just be so fearful of the DOH.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: And the DOH is I just it's not a fearful organ, it's an annoying organization, certainly.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: But in our state, they assign you an investigator, and so at some point I just started becoming acquaintances with my investigator.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had I've had the TikTok complaints and it stopped dead in its tracks.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: I it took them forever to give me the letter because it's they're just very slow here.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but basically it's it was a complaint that I was sharing too personal of information in my TikToks.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking I don't mention anything.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even like, you know, do personal stuff.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: But apparently there are people who felt that, you know, some of the content I made was too similar to their own personal situation.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I must have information that I was personally sharing.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, our response basically was well, you are a governmental organization suppressing my First Amendment right, my freedom to speech on a private platform.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: And unless I actually violated, you know, HIPAA, there's no you can't hold me to that.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: So aside from giving bad advice that would make people do bad things that would go against our ethics, or actually directly like disclosing a person I'm working with or a family by specific nature, there's absolutely nothing they can do because of the constitutional rights that I have.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so that just dropped it dead in the sand.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they moved away.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_03: It rose, it rose to that level in your DOH that you had to get like an attorney involved in that.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: I have an attorney that I regularly keep on retainer.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: You have to in this field.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, we don't really correspond a ton.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: I will reach out and have an occasional question just to clarify like a law, if I'm doing an evaluation just to make sure I'm interpreting it correctly, or if there's like case law and I don't quite understand it, if I have to reference something like that.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Or if it's there's an interesting situation, I'll just be like, okay, so if I do this, do you have my back?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: If I take this case that looks like a train wreck waiting to happen, and I'm probably going to get a complaint.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: Are we on the same page?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so I do have an attorney that I keep on retainer related to that that I regularly consult with on those matters to keep myself out of trouble.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: But even then, it's a nate, it's just part of the field, it's just the nature of the beast.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that's outside of like your malpractice insurance attorney.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's crazy.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's why it's so expensive.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: Expensive if we had more rules as far as who can do this stuff.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't have any rules or expectations and you don't have any like limits on who can and can't and the training required, you know, or you know, its own separate review board.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't have to worry about the attorneys all the time.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: It would be a lot, I wouldn't say simpler, but it would be a little bit more of an efficient machine and be more inviting to providers to participate in it.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: But that's definitely like what you're describing is definitely in government inefficiency because it's like it seems like it's a no-brainer that you can get to say what you want and it's not restricted unless you're har saying something harmful, encouraging harmful behavior or things like that.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: I I think some of it was so I ran for a local, I ran for state office and had a pretty tense primary.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: There was three of us for our district, and I didn't make it through the primary, but it was interesting the timing of when some of these things came about just because of that, because it was about two months after I announced my campaign, and we have a very conservative government in our state, and so they wanted to hang on to the seat that would easily be flipped, and so they were looking, whoever was running, anybody like they were looking for stuff to do.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: So my attorney even said like this was a really interesting one because they did it, and then like six months later, after you're no longer a contestant, a contender in the primary, all of a sudden you get the letter saying, Oh, just kidding, we closed it, you know.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: Was there a name attached to it?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, we don't get to know the name.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: We, I mean, you can figure it out, you know, by by the process of deduction of what the complaint is and the allegations, and you know, it usually gets pretty specific, but we don't get to know who it is that's complaining unless we have to actually go to a hearing where then obviously you learn about who it is and what it is.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, like a public records request wouldn't give you any of that information.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, in Washington State, you public records request gives you the information.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_03: You've heard of Dormat Mom, right?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: So she filed a complaint against me and I made a whole video on it.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you saw it, but I did a public records request and got all of her, she doxed herself essentially to me, gave me, and so all of her information is on there, and it didn't go anywhere because I don't take my videos down, and so if any Department of Health can look at all my videos and decide, I guess, if what I'm saying is harmful, but they haven't.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_03: I think just people, you know, people get upset and they want to do something about it, right?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: They don't like the voice that's echoing what their issue is or it conflicts with their belief, and so they want to try and take you down, and that's the only way they can do it, right?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's in their eyes, that's that's their remedy because they're not they can't afford to, you know, fly across the country and like do whatever it is.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be through whatever licensing reprimand or or thing like that that can happen.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: The government will solve my problems just like that.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_03: Did you see that video I wrote or I made about the grandparent who's at a rally asking a senator to get make a law so she can see her grandkids?
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't see that, but I do get questions from attorneys, uh, which I'm surprised because I would think your family law, you should know this, but we don't have.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's only one or two states that have anything about grandparents' rights.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: There's actually no states that have grandparent rights.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_03: Every state you can petition to see your grandkids, but then you you have to prove why it's in the benefit of your grandkids for you to see them.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so when when someone wins, and it and on occasion, because I did look into this, I did kind of a dive on it, and on some occasion, grandparents do get the rights to see their grandkids, and so then those grandparents will say, I have grandparent rights in my state.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: But no, it's just that in every state you can petition, there's just different laws in every state that allows what.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Where you can go with the petition that you make.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: And you have to prove that, because you're in Iowa.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you have to, and I don't know what the laws are there, but you have to prove that it's in benefit to it's a benefit to your grandkids.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so then that's just that's going to be kind of arbitrary based on the family court that you interact with, I imagine.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: And Iowa isn't going to support it.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: I I mean I've had a couple of requests of can you do this?
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I to my knowledge, here, no.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: We don't, I mean, we don't have any like precedent case law, we don't have anything that supports it in our local area as far as any type of rights for that.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it's only if you have legal guardianship or have right to legal guardianship that you can actually do that as far as outside the biological or legal parents, depending on the situation.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Grandparents aren't supported in that in our local area.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I think you know the court well enough.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_03: You can you can file any kind of petition that you want to, right?
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: But now where that where that is gonna go, who knows based on the court.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: But I think what I have found is that if like you watched your kid, if you watched your grandkid because your your child was an addict and they were in rehab, and so then the kid, the grandchild was like really dependent on you, it's gonna be more likely that you do get those rights because the you were a part of that kid's life.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: But if you're randomly not a part of the kid's life and you file a petition, it's highly likely that you're not gonna get permission to see the kid.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: Anyways, that's Washington State.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it could it changes obviously state to state, I think.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'm licensed in more than Iowa.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm licensed.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was six other states, but I just didn't renew one.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really work in that state other than one case I had.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: But so I'm actually licensed in multiple states because I do a lot of work that's interstate.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have an interstate compact for social work finished yet.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's coming, it's supposed to be out this next year.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to like the ability to work across state lines, that's a huge request, oftentimes, because you've got a mom or a dad that lives in one state, and then you know, child's obviously in another, and relocation issues, and so that becomes a problem with licensing.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I yeah, don't get me started on licensed in one state, not licensed in another state.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, when when the rules are identical, it's kind of crazy, anyways.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_03: All right, so then so let's go down this path of like family relationships.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: So are you in a relationship with all your kids?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: Or how many kids do you have?
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: I so I have six children, and then I have four stepchildren.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have four children.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Ten total between my husband and I, yeah.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I had my oldest one, I was in college and then married a couple of years later and had three children, and so four children there close in age, you know, two, three years apart, and then got divorced and thought I was never having kids again and was done with it.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, four's good for me.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: They're older, they're independent, they're going to school, I don't have to deal with daycare, and then ended up getting remarried, and you know, neither of us thought that we wanted to have more children.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then we're like, you know what?
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like it would be nice instead of us having to deal with the co-parenting battles and the part-time parenting.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, you know what, maybe we will have kids.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so we ended up having two children pretty close together.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have two younger children, but they have relationships with each other, like they all kind of intersect and and and are a family.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_03: So how old's your youngest then?
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: My youngest is eight.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: My oldest is 28.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: She'll be 29 in November.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what I mean, and you're are you in touch with everyone?
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, is it all good usually?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have one child that is hot and cold when it comes to contact.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: One minute they're fine, the next minute they're not.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's very reflective of just their personality growing up.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron, it's all your fault.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_03: You know that yeah, it's all your fault.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: That we blame the parents, right?
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's always the parents' fault.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so, you know, one minute I, you know, don't have any contact.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't heard from them six months.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what's going on.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's really heard from them, quite honestly.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, nobody really knows what's going on.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're off living their life, they live in another state.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Most everybody is close by except for this individual.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden, like, there'll be like a family gathering.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have a wedding or what thing going on.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's fine, and everything's great, and like we're talking, and then like you'll hear from them and get some text messages, and then all they kind of just like drop off the face of the earth and do their thing.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_03: I another creator that I've made videos on, Peter Anderson.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_03: You probably have seen his stuff over there.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: I may have.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'd have to he has some pr really hot takes in support of estranged parents.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: But, anyways, I interviewed him.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: He talks, and I I may do another interview with him.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_03: He talks about a link between a strange adult children and borderline personality disorder.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I I kind of you know didn't think much of it, but as I'm working with a family now where there's a kid, and I wonder if that's a thing more of a thing than we think it is.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_03: Undiagnosed borderline personality disorders.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: It could be I've also seen just from all of the evaluations that I do, because I get to interview everybody, I get to look at all the information, which individual providers don't get to do, you know.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you only get that individual person's version of what's going on in their life, and you're not going to get the extra details.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so because I get to talk to everybody in the family in the dynamic, including collateral contacts, so teachers and therapists and like, you know, outside professionals and others involved, you get a lot more feedback and objectivity.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've actually found in a lot of my cases, while it's not everybody by any means, there is a connection between people who are potentially on the autism spectrum, especially if they're undiagnosed, okay, and you know, contact issues.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, usually we'll find or have a child in the dynamic who is either diagnosed and has pretty significant symptoms and presentation of it, and you know, issues with speech and nonverbal or need lots of special education supports.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have a parent in the mix and they have major co-parenting problems or parent-child contact issues.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: And when we think about the nature of somebody who has autism, I mean, they don't read the social cues, they don't, you know, they they don't have some of that perception, even if they're very empathetic or can, you know, read other things.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've just seen that there is a pattern and a connection to, well, it's not everybody who is high conflict or everybody who has contact problems.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: I've noticed that there is a connection with individuals who may be on the autism spectrum, especially if they're not diagnosed.
• 51:19
  unknown: Huh.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: Not just personal observation, no statistic with that one, but just it's very interesting.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_03: So you you are of the belief that it's not always the parent.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: No, it could be anything.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's good reasons to not have contact.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's, you know, circumstances that maybe people haven't healed from that isn't directly related to that parent, but that they're struggling with.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's substance abuse, mental health issues, uh, partners that influence, you know, it just there's lots of different scenarios when it comes to the reason why we have contact problems.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: And when people say, Well, why is it such a problem today?
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: Why does it feel like it's this massive epidemic that's taking place?
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I point to history when we start looking at the court system.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, divorce was not common 50, 60 years ago.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_03: What was not?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: Divorce.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_03: Divorce.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: When when we start looking at dynamics of families and we start looking at those who are estranged, not that there aren't couples still together, you know, that are estranged from their children, but it's also that family dynamic, right?
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: The conflict in the family.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we look at generally speaking, like the progression of divorce and the rate of divorce and the issues with that, also we started seeing an increase with estrangement dynamics.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: So even if it's the lower contact or the limited contact child with the parents, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot that speaks to the the connection, a correlation between, you know, parents who have struggled in their relationship or had high conflict relationships, even if they're still married.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: But also like when we start looking at that dynamic of divorce and how that splits the family and how that sometimes plays into adulthood, depending on how that's managed.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_03: The I there's another creator named Therapy Jeff on here that made a video about this.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I in this in early 70s, I was like one or two, so I'm not even aware of this.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_03: But when was the height?
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you have an answer for this.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_03: When when was the height of like feminism?
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_03: Was it it was in the mid-60s, late, mid to late 60s?
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know I would say it became a thing politically in the 60s and 70s, because that's where we saw a lot of political activism around it, especially with the laws that changed for females.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: But as far as like the like the peak of it, I would say it was in the 80s, 80s and early 90s, because that is where there was more push for equity and inclusion, you know, in workspaces and pay.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: And more women were working and finding themselves having to work because of divorce or because whatever family situation that they had economically.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_03: So the the the this creator went back to the 70s and found data, articles, books, because there was a higher number of women divorcing in the 70s, and he was comparing it to how the the same things were being said in the 70s about it's an epidemic, women are divorcing, and people are influencing women to divorce, and how the same kind of things are being said now about estrangement, and it was interesting because he said, Are people still calling it an epidemic?
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_03: No, no one's calling divorce an epidemic currently, and even divorce rates have gone down.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I thought it was interesting that, and highly it's highly likely more so that estranged parents are calling it an epidemic.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_03: Estrange adult children aren't calling it an epidemic that I've found.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_03: So, anyways, I don't think it honestly, I don't think it's an epidemic.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: I think the shame around it has more or less gone away, and so then people are more willing to talk about it.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: We've always had estrangement, it just wasn't talked about, right?
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like we've always had the family member that it was like don't nobody talks about Bruno kind of thing.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's not like it didn't ever happen, but there also is a different cultural shift in the United States, and we don't see not that it doesn't happen in other countries, but we actually do not see when we look at you know worldwide studies on contact issues, while it is something that is starting to grow in places like the UK and Australia and other areas that are more developed, like the United States, culturally, when we also look at the cultural norms of a society and of a population, we're also looking at some of those larger scale impacts.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so in the United States, we are very individualistic, where in other cultures and other communities they're not.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so there is a very different culture, just period, that doesn't reinforce and support the issue of estrangement.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: Again, not to say it never happens.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's not been as big of or widespread of an issue in a lot of other countries with the same development of the United States as we have here.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I would and I would add then the people in those other countries have to then tolerate a lot more crummy behavior from parents, aunts, uncles, etc., etc.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: Anyhow, is there anything how can people find you if they want your help with something they they can follow me on social media if they just want entertainment besides doing informational stuff, content?
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: I try to have fun with it and poke fun at different points of view and perspective.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I am creative therapist and evaluator on social media on Instagram as well as TikTok.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have anything on YouTube yet.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm working up the you know bandwidth.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's platforms.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I YouTube is much more long form, I think.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and uh for me, TikTok is perfect.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's just two to three minutes is perfect.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's the long form that's just like that's a lot of work.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'm doing that, and then they can also go to my website if there's information they want about other things or just curious about it.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: I have a lot of informational stuff on there to help people understand services.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's Candor Iowa is the website, it's just candorioa.com, and they can find me there as well too.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and is that Candor Candor like speaking very like directly and clearly?
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_03: Anything else?
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: Nope, that's it.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_03: All right, thank you for coming on here, and I appreciate you for all the work you do.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.