Latest / The Vincere Project / Episode 2 -Why H-Hour Counseling
Transcript
- Vincent: Round two, we'll try to do it again. think this podcast thing is going to be super fun and frustrating at the same time. There's so many cables, wires, logins, plugins, the lighting is not the same. ⁓ And is going to be pissed about that. And that's okay. It's part of the skill acquisition and it's going to demonstrate the growth curve of the actual production of creating and delivering a podcast. ⁓ today, man, we're just going to talk about H-Hour counseling. Like, what is it? Who are we? What do we do at H-Hour counseling? Who do we serve? How do we serve them? ⁓ the I briefly shared it in the first episode, which is how did we come about with H-Hour? And how did know that was going to be our thing? Well, we didn't know. And me and my wife, when we started it, we had no what it was going to become. We just knew we needed an EIN and an LLC to start. Because professional counseling is a wide and deep and the health professions in general. ⁓ I have found teaching grad school for counseling students the last two years is this, is there's clearly a divide ⁓ really maybe it's thirds, right? Is a third of the students will go and be incredible administrators in community mental health and small businesses, in government, in hospital settings, and they'll be administrators. They'll be managers. They'll take on leadership roles along the way. and they'll be rewarded for such. Yet they may not enjoy or possess the requisite skills to be a phenomenal clinician, therapist or counselor. then there's a third in the middle that will kind of do both and bounce back and forth throughout their career and hit a little bit of both when the time is right for what they need, depending on what they're doing, who they're serving. ⁓ then there's gonna be people that are gonna be practitioners ⁓ the thing we call therapy and engaging with humans. ⁓ I trend towards the practitioner of therapy. That is my preferred work at this point. It's that one-on-one or small group interaction of harnessing those difficult things known as thinking, feeling, and behaving, ⁓ what that looks like in lives. ⁓ And for H-Hour counseling, as it's grown, Brooke and I are at this point partners in the business. we just made this wonderful transition over to an S-Corp. We're going to open up in the next two years by 2028 to start funding and sourcing the vision and what that looks like. But we're not there yet and we're still building that really strong foundation, which has taken three years of our time and attention. So H-Hour is the brand in and of itself and that is Vince's thing, right? Think like any logo that represents something, right? It's symbolic, it's a standalone thing, it doesn't need words. What's really exciting though is we flip it around, right? And we bring on Brooke and since then we've started to bring on different practitioners of counseling and or social work, right? Because when somebody graduates in one of those programs, they're required to accumulate quite a bit of time practicing underneath somebody else's flagpole before they can go out in the world and work. So ⁓ Brooke was my clinical supervisor. And if you think about it as like a sports thing, right? And like a coaching tree, everybody coached underneath somebody beforehand. And at this point, Brooke has a legit, legit series of people that have worked underneath her for supervision that are incredibly successful in all of those settings and backdrops I mentioned before. I am one of many people she's impacted in our field. And for me, she just signed off on me being able to do my supervisory stuff, right? And so what a huge moment. Eight years later, her and I were kind of laughing. When I first walked in her office and I was still shedding some of that old identity and some of the old behaviors of what the military version of Vince look like moving into the softer kind or gentler version. Equally as intense though, right? But not quite as intense to the point that I'm meeting all situations with that degree of impact because it doesn't work in the helping professions. It actually can be counterproductive. So Brooke and I, sat down, we started penciling out, engaging and measuring how many locations is going to be What kind of services are we going to deliver and what are we going to do? And I think the most important thing for today's episode is we'll talk briefly about what it happens when you engage with an H-Hour therapist. And the best part of it is it's really sequenced exactly like this, is that first session will be a bio-psycho-social assessment. Take a look at all the biological factors, all the psychological factors and all the social factors that led to this person reaching out to us. now being on session either on the computer or live in the flesh. is my observation since doing for a while. Nobody walks through the front door of H-Hour looking for H-Hour counseling on a winning streak. At this point, I feel relatively safe saying that. And the wide range of things we help serve people with could be anything from post-traumatic stress to social anxiety, phase of life, career development, anxiety, mental ⁓ illness such as bipolar disorders gets so effective and a whole host of other issues that people can face and socially. What happens in that process, that first session we do that and we ⁓ a little bit of homework. Hey, think about the one or two things you think that I can help you with when you come back. So whether it's myself, Brooke, Rachel, Elena, whoever else has worked for us and the other people that are working for us, ⁓ how we start it. It's just build a little bit of rapport and a culture of respect. But the second session, we're sitting down and we're identifying the very specific interventions and things that somebody wants to work through. Meaning, hey, Vince, I'm struggling with social anxiety. Well, in response to that, I will offer a good faith estimate of six to eight sessions and suggest that, hey, we can see a decrease in the symptoms that you have found with social anxiety within that prescribed amount of time. We'll use a wide range of interventions and therapies to achieve and accomplish that, but it has to be hyper specific. So for example, if somebody comes in and says, hey, I'm struggling with some social anxiety and then they roll out a laundry list of other issues. It's that client's responsibility to identify one thing that they think they can work on in therapy. It doesn't mean that the other ones aren't important. It just means right now those things are priority. So by the end of the second session, there's a treatment plan with a goal or two and some objectives to support that. And then our provider has declared, hey, we are gonna use this clinical intervention help support you in that. So social anxiety, you're looking at some cognitive behavioral therapy, rational motor behavioral therapy. to kind of take a look at some of these things, help people start to develop the skills required. Complex trauma, well, that's closer to 12 to 16 sessions and you're looking at cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure therapy, or a whole other host of interventions that I may not be trained in, but if we don't have a provider on staff that is trained in it, we will help you find that provider. That is our responsibility to you, right? It's just the right thing to do in my opinion. By that third session, we've hopefully transitioned from a culture of respect and therapeutic alliance, right? And it's trust, right? At that point, the client should be able to state is that I trust that the H-Hour therapist is going to do exactly what they said they were going to do, right? And in that storyline, as that person starts to develop a little bit of that self-efficacy, making their appointments, being in their own time, doing the things that are required as part of the treatment plan. That allows us to get to the point that people think therapy is hinged upon and it is, but it takes a while to get to that is our responsibility is to ask that really, really, really difficult or direct question to a person when they're struggling with something. a lot of times it can be related to very sensitive things. The truth of the matter is any good counselor, social worker or medical professional for that matter is going to be direct when it comes to that particular point. So once that therapeutic alliance rapport has been established, session three, four, five, six, ⁓ Responsibly the provider is to answer those direct questions that nobody's gonna ask at the workplace or within the family system or on the bar stool. Somebody might be hiding out on avoiding or accommodating to the world. Usually what happens is people's therapeutic lines raport get stronger ⁓ people start to take ownership of being able to say yes or no or decline answering questions. And that is really a big tipping point for somebody on their healing journey. So you wanna get a better look at what we do and how do we do it, you know, part of the storyline or narrative for Brooke and I is each month we try to be super generous and make a donation to our local not-for-profits, sports teams, veterans' interests. And then we ask who, you know, whoever on the team is outperforming their position, hey, where do you want to make a donation to this month, right? And ⁓ it's for the puppies, sometimes for the turtles, but it's for other human beings on their journey and adventure, overcoming some things, going through some things. competing a little bit, maybe sometimes it's health related, right? And I think for us, it's whatever is important to us that season is where we would like to be generous. Part that generosity is the pro bono work. And for and I, we made a decision a long time ago for ourselves is, you know, there is no sliding scale at H- Hour There are alternative payments. But for us to deliver and be true to our word is twice a year, we deliver a free training. There's continuing education units for the social workers and counselors that need them. It's good exposure for students if they need that exposure and that experience, other colleagues and professionals. And we open it up to the public for maybe somebody is a youth coach. Maybe somebody works in a gym. year we're doing our second run, right? We did it in the fall. It was incredibly successful. We're doing a fall again here at Stockton in Manahawken. The is The Apprenticeship of a Likeable Human. ⁓ Brooke I agree in a lot of our research, our writing and our work is that That window between 12 and 14 years of age, if we can get that right, it's that second window that's incredibly important. Much like zero to three years of age is, hey, I gotta teach love and I gotta teach forgiveness. I gotta learn love, I gotta learn forgiveness. Well, 12 to 14, we gotta start learning how to say no, right? And saying no to a lot more things than we potentially know at that point in time. Meaning how do we keep children from wandering in their adolescence into negative situations and creating some of those negative feedback loops? It's all teachable. And a lot of it I would say is this, it's the modeling, the mimicking and the mentoring. And nobody has it all figured out. Yet I would say clinically and personally, the more a 12 to 13, 14, 15 year old is saying no to things that aren't serving them and learning how to develop that competence and confidence, the better served they're gonna be at 24, 34 and 44. Typically, the first no is usually the most difficult. It gets much easier after that. And I say that from experience my own story, ⁓ will be for another podcast. So yeah, May 14th at Stockton in Manahawken, Brooke and I will be doing some our pro boner trainings, delivering to ⁓ social workers and counselors, ⁓ health professionals, some students, and hopefully I will get some participants from the local community and folks that are out there doing all the great stuff. Man, I think that's it for today. I think that is a glimpse into the inside of what we do at H-Hour counseling. We're here to serve people. No doubt, right? We accept insurance right now, Horizon, Blue Cross, Blue Shield and Aetna. Otherwise we're out of network and we can issue a super bill for insurance reimbursement if that's part of somebody's story. If somebody does need some help and they're like, I'm between jobs or whatever, hey, for 2026, we're offering payment through Bitcoin for $125, whatever the values of that Bitcoin, and then you're locked in at that rate forever. So we've had a few clients whether they've had insurance or not, or like, what do mean forever? Well, like, yeah, we're gonna honor that. Brooke and I have access to the ledger. So if somebody comes back in 2045 and they're like, hey, going through some tough stuff, but I made a deposit on my behavioral health and mental health to lock in that rate of 125 USD, which will translate to whatever the Bitcoin rate is on that day. That's will be locked in the ledger. And that's what people will pay. But my light just went out. That means I'm supposed to end right there or I didn't charge the light and Aunt Jamie will give me some feedback on all that stuff. All the opportunities out there, H-Hour counseling is out there for you. You can find us at thehhour.com. You can directly reach out to me at Vince at the H hour. You can find Brooke at Brooke at the H hour and many other people. And if you're not sure where to get started on your mental health or your counseling or therapy journey, that's okay. Look, if you're on a winning streak, there's nothing wrong with reaching out to you, right? So, or if you just want to say hello or hi, right? That works too for me. So, hey, have a great day. Enjoy the week. I'll chat with you next week. Cheers.