NASW Social Work Talks - EP 118: Career Pivots — It's Never Too Late to Become a Therapist

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

In this NASW podcast episode of Social Work Talks we examine why it's Never Too Late to enter the field of therapy. Our host NASW member Elisabeth Joy LaMotte, LICSW chats with chef Karey Swartwout, and political organizer and journalist Dr. Brooke Stroud, now a clinical psychologist, and author Daniel Duane (who today is featured in an article in The New York Times). Today, each discusses why they left past careers to enter the profession of therapy. Listen as they discuss why they leapt, later in life, to a field inhabited by many social workers.

From the National Association of Social Workers, this is Social Work Talks, and I'm your host, Elizabeth Lamott, and I am really looking forward to today's conversation with Keri Schwartout, Dr. Brooke Stroud, and Dan Duane. We are titling the episode of this podcast, It's Never Too Late. And the reason for that title is we are sitting down with three very successful professionals who made the decision mid-career and mid-life to pivot and train to become a therapist, which for all of them meant going back to school in mid-life. So Carrie is a very well-known and popular and respected chef.

Dan is a gifted and very successful writer who's written many books, including Caught Inside and How to Cook Like a Man. And Brooke is a fearless political organizer and journalist. Kerry, Dan, and Brooke, welcome to Social Work Talks. Thank you so much for joining us. I do think it's really important to point out, as we're getting started, that all three of you were steeped in very successful careers when you decided to make this change. Carrie, you have started very popular catering companies and restaurants. Dan, you have written more books than I can name. You have published in the most prestigious publications. Brooke, your tireless political organizing is legendary in the D.C. area and beyond. So can you walk us through the catalyst, as you see it, each of you, for how you decided to make this change? Well, the catalyst for it, there were a number of different threads in my making this change.

But let's say one, one way of thinking about it is that I was a, a lot of my writing was as sort of an adventure sports journalist, like I did, you know, I would go on climbing trips and surfing trips. And so I had this whole side of my life that was out there in the world, having great adventures and writing about them. But I had this other side of my life, which was being in therapy all the time. And I mean, for a long time. And I had a really, I had a great long-term therapy with a psychoanalyst. And that just was a wonderful relationship and helped me go through very difficult times in very successful, emotionally successful ways and grow in great ways. and over the years in that therapy i had found myself at times sitting there in this guy's office thinking man you have a cool job this is really neat what you get to do you know like you and you know maybe i was idealizing it a little bit but it really looked great to me um talking about life's big questions and all of that another thing that was going on is that as my journalism became more serious i found myself really drawn to the part of journalism that is bearing witness that is, um, asking people about their, their, their lives, you know, asking you to hear about

people's lives and, and the, um, the job of being present and, um, really listening and authentic curiosity started to feel, um, like an incredibly important piece of that to me. Um, and then, uh, you know, then there was the death of the magazine industry. That was another piece of it, this industry that I'd worked in for a long time started. Well, it's been crumbling for as long as I worked in it. So there was that piece of it too. So one day I just kind of woke up and I don't know. The truth is my daughter was home from college one day talking about majors and my wife said, God, honey, if you could go back to college and major and just study one thing for two years, wouldn't that be amazing? What would you study? And I said, nothing. I'm too tired. I'm too old

heard and then i said no i know what i do i become a therapist and it just sort of popped out of me and it that's you know sometimes you have to kind of listen to these inner when these things just kind of come spontaneously from within it i don't know i feel like they they're telling you something you know the inner voice is speaking so that's my answer thank you um i feel the same way dan and and i would say i think a lot of people look back and feel like their experience in therapy is the most meaningful most important training that you get which which may be a separate conversation um i also happen to think that you're a natural therapist for sure there's several pieces i want to ask you about but carrie could you tell us what led you to make this

decision? Um, I, it's, it's, it's interesting to think about the journey. And I think as humans, this field is just, you know, obviously everyone, you know, has, has a piece in it. So it's just a, I think everyone, and probably all four of us throughout our lives, there has been some time, whether when we were little, or whether we were in college, or whether we were in, you know, our 30s and 40s, where we just learned so much about other people and navigating challenges, navigating catastrophes. And so I think this is just such an amazing field for anyone who is midlife because it's just, by the time you've gotten to this age, you've figured out a lot of stuff that you didn't know in your 20s. But growing up, my mom was actually an LPC.

She counseled, and her second husband, she counseled sex offenders and rapists at the Texas State Prison in Huntsville, which was fascinating. And he had his doctorate and he was death row counselor for the Texas State Prison. So it was just fascinating to hear all of those stories and their challenges, but also their just grit in really helping these clients. So I kind of grew up in that environment. And, but then the second best training aside from getting your master's, I think is working in the restaurant industry. Because you are just, you know, growing up, I've worked in restaurants, you know, in high school, while I was living in New York for a little bit, I worked at Sardi's, which was fascinating, you know, started my catering

business in London, catering for hedge funds and private equity. And that was a whole another field of psychology. And then, you know, ending up in Rockport and opening up, you know, a restaurant as well. And I think the constant thing that I've seen is that everyone has just a primal need to be taken care of, period. And so it came to me a few years ago, and I've seen, you know, my friend Brooke here who has gone through the journey as well. But I felt a need, a desire to grow more in this area of what makes people tick. And so I decided to dive in. I'll be finishing up in December. So it's just a neat journey. And like Dan said, it's like if you could do anything in the world and and study anything in your later years of life mid to later years this is this is it

how did your mother respond when you decided to join her profession well unfortunately so she passed away um in both my mom and dad passed away 2017 2019 but my older sister yeah and it's you know it's it's and but i know that she's wherever she is looking at me going, I knew you were going to do that. I knew you fought me all the way, Carrie, but I knew you were going to do that. But my older sister is a school psychologist up in Austin. So, you know, you can kind of think that it may be, my dad was a geophysicist. So it wasn't counseling at all. But but my I think it's just something that it was thinking about how people think and just that exposure and that being in the house and being in the conversation, it sort of feels so natural to be entering this field now. And Brooke, what about you? How did you come to this decision?

You know, I studied psychology in undergrad, and that was my passion and my pleasure and intention to go into that field. I happened to volunteer on the Clinton-Gore campaign of 92, him. And it turned into a full-time job where I stayed for seven years and had a variety of roles. roles um and um and then um i met my husband and we moved overseas uh to london uh while as i arrived i studied um i got my master's degree at the london school of economics um in social psychology. And the intention there was to become a writer about groups of people. My interest in politics and my role, my vantage from having been in politics sort of opened my eyes to what policy can do to affect people's lives and what people's lives are like, groups of people,

and how policy can affect, um, them. So that was my, that was my goal. I had, um, three kids while I was in London and raised them, um, to keep myself engaged in the world. I did start writing for Time Magazine, um, as a freelance journalist. Um, and then we decided as a family to move back to the United States about 10 years later. And just prior to returning, my father died in a car accident. And it was throttling to my heart and soul and our whole family. And it took me a pretty good year and a half to both get settled, um, help my family get settled in Washington, DC, but also, um, enter therapy, um, to process the, the traumatic loss of my dad. Um, and I think that, uh, really created some soul searching about what was important to me at the time,

um, where I wanted to go with my life. I, how I wanted to use my, um, my gifts and talents and interests and energy. Um, and I, uh, you know, ended up having a conversation with my, uh, well, It was an internal conversation. I was having lunch with my mom and my dad's best friend about a block away from where I am right now, actually. And I was sitting watching the two of them talk about their work and had this sort of flashbulb moment, as we call it, um, this sort of revelation that if I pursued a degree in psychology, um, that I could have a cool 25 years if I was anything like the two of them. And I, I felt really hopeful and excited and went home and literally got on the phone and, you know, dialed around town to all the universities within a, you know, hour radius of Maine. So, yeah. Well, you, you are the farthest

along of everyone in this group. You've gotten a doctorate, you're in private practice. Has it lived up to your visions and expectations of what you were looking for by making this transition yes and enormously and it's it's really surpassed what I could had imagined at the time um I feel uh very fulfilled which was really what I was seeking I I felt like I had a lot to give Um, and I, I felt that I wasn't, um, fulfilling that sort of, um, fulfilling myself. Um, I, I feel I have an amazing sort of rhythm of life, if you will. Um, and, and so that my work just is, is the centerpiece of how I live my life. Um, and it's, uh, I have incredible relationships with the people I work with.

Um, I feel like I'm always learning more and expanding. I think in this work, uh, you're learning more about yourself, um, but you're also learning more technique, um, uh, exploring reading. Um, so, you know, it's the, it's a, it's a, the, the journey is not over. um thankfully i mean it is especially as a therapist um you know there's so many branches of social work which is my degree uh and the theme of this podcast but as a therapist i do think we are so well poised to get better at it as we get older which is also why it's so interesting to explore the stage at which you're starting this process.

Dan and Carrie, what would you say about learning, being in school now at this stage of your life? What stands out to you or what is that like for you? Can you each say something about that? Whoever wants to go first. i can go first because i i um because as brooke was talking i was thinking exactly what she was saying as far as just being well poised at this uh you know having decades under your belt um and um i'm doing mine i finish up in december with pepperdine um i'm about to

start my third practicum term. So, um, I've been doing my, my practicum for the last six months. And I, um, and there's just so much benefit to, because I have started businesses because I have an entrepreneurial background. I, and I live in a very rural area of South Texas. Uh, and I'm going, I'm doing my online program with, with Pepperdine university, which is out in Malibu near, I think Dan's out in California. Um, so I can't wait to go to graduation cause that's going to be fun. Um, but because of Texas and because of our mental health, I mean, I think we're bottom of the bottom of the barrel as far as access to resources. And so you can imagine what the internship finding process was like. It was, how did you do that? I, I did what every entrepreneur does

and I made my own. So I went to the local, and there's a tremendous need in our area, high poverty, lots of need in the local school district and with the local families. And I have a very close relationship with the school district. So I went to them and presented the plan, uh you know googled it chat gpt i was not it was not around or it was but i wasn't privy to it but i would have been very helpful um how to create a practum internship in a local rural south texas district so um and in my school work with my classes it's so fascinating um because i am in these classes with a lot, the majority of my classmates, and I don't know how it is for you, Dan, but, and probably similar actually for Brooke with her doctorate program, but the majority,

although the doctorate program, you probably had maybe more that were in their thirties and forties. But for my program, I have a lot of, I call them nuggets, my little nuggets, my little classmate nuggets who are in their twenties, you know, 26, 27. and yes so i we're going around talking about you know all the things and you know each class is different and you know you go through psychopathology and you go through different types of theories and you go through different types of um like the last the last class we just finished was trauma and and and different things and having lived a life um with the knowledge of death and grief and living through Hurricane Harvey down here, living through,

you know, COVID, living through, you know, a divorce or remarriage or stepchildren or the birth of a child. It's a lot that you cannot get from a textbook. You have to go through it. So it's been, it's been a learning process for me to be patient with some of the discussions, because I would really, I almost feel like, and I just thought of it now that we, there needs to be some level of certification or something that is for, you know, 45 and up, because when you've gotten to that age, you are, we're dealing with things like, I would love for us to talk more about, you know, elderly parents, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, you know, loss of midlife, career loss, ageism, um, menopause, my God, you know, um, and, and for, for the poor men, you know,

that have to deal with, with, with all the things with, with their own stuff, with their, with their, with the menopause and, and manopause. I mean, I don't know what you call it for men, but, um, you know, so the, just, there's be manopause, manopause. I just that you heard it here first. Um, so if anybody writes a Brene Brown, if you're listening, that started with us. Okay. Um, but it's just been, you know, Dan, I know has a lot more to say about it, but just the, the, the, the golden platinum nuclear level of knowledge that you get after the age of 45, it's not being studied it's not being shared it's not being researched as much as it should and so i think that's you know if if if i was looking for a program um i mean and also you're

just going to get what you get out of it i know for a lot of my classes i have um asked a lot of questions that you can just see the look of the eyes glaze over in the classmates because I have no idea what you're talking about. I mean, Dan, has that happened to you? Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. I feel like a space alien in a lot of my classes. Totally. Totally. I mean, to the degree that sometimes it's actually kind of embarrassing, you know, like, I'll ask a question. And the truth is a lot of my instructors are a lot younger than I am. Exactly.

A lot younger, you know, and I'll ask some question and it's like, Yeah, I should probably just shut up. I shouldn't talk in this class. Well, what else would you say about what it's like to be learning psychological theory and how to apply it now as a clinician, Dan, at this stage of your life? At this stage of life. Well, that's a really interesting question. And I guess it's something i've thought about a lot um because uh i don't know by the time you get to our age and you i'm i'm 56 so by the time you get to our age and you've been through all the things you know carrie's talking about love and loss and love again and lose again and and um big successes

and painful failures and you know all the yeah just you know being humbled by life and odd by like just all those things um you know you develop a there's sort of two things that you develop your own into just sort of intuitive learned sense of the human heart um and the human mind what if just what it feels like to be a person and then you also develop a kind of you also have a sense of who you are you know you have you have kind of like a shaped identity like you you know i i don't mean like we all know ourselves all the way inside and out or anything like that we're still mysteries to ourselves but um but you know you have an i you have an adult an adult identity you really are somebody and uh one of the things that's been a little peculiar for me and is

that i and i i feel like i'm starting to come out the other side of this but in in entering the profession i could feel in sort of starting the you know schooling and doing the other things one does you know you start listening to podcasts and immersing yourself in the discourse of the profession and what is it like you know what are therapists even like you know you start sort of imagining yourself like who will i be as a therapist anyway and particularly when you're just taking the when i was just taking the classes so before i started practicum um it's there's this kind of daydreaming quality um and i could feel how much you know every every profession has a kind of a professional persona or identity like you know that you guys might remember from that

from tom wolf's the right stuff there was that thing in it that like the voice of chuck yeager the test pilot became the voice of all american airline pilots so every time you hear an american airline pie so if you look down to the left there that's that would be mono lake and then on the other side that's yosemite national park you're you're hearing somebody doing an impression oh yeah like when i was cooking i was julia child for sure first you take the bed then you're that's exactly what i'm talking about so so you enter into so as i enter into this one at my age i can feel that if i were like 22 doing this or 24 starting school you know i'd be just like looking around like oh i'm i'm like gonna shape an adult self as a therapist what will my adult

self be like let's look around a therapist i should probably imprint on one and uh you know and i should imprint on one and be like oh i'll be the puppy imprinting on that big dog over there um i'll try to be like that but that's not that ain't happening at this age you know at this so there's this kind of different negotiation you go through of like um how do i bring the person that i already am how do i bring the life that i've already led um to this work and then that i just recently started practicum so i just started seeing clients and and then that piece of it has been another wake-up call in the most exciting way in the sense that i think for the last year just out of a lack of imagination i was thinking like i'd be certain you know when i'm

having these thoughts what will my life as a therapist be like i i think i probably just because i'm a middle-aged white dude i just pictured myself like talking to middle-aged white dudes about the meaning of life and i guess that's what i had done in therapy and really liked you know and i thought that'll be cool uh and maybe some teenage boys because i remember being a teenage boy and i really dig teenage yeah i don't like that state i don't know okay but that maybe that would be true in private practice but in agency work this is not what's happening right and so i start agency work and my and there's that spin the wheel of life quality to it of like let's just you know spin the roulette wheel and see what two souls get matched to have a conversation

and this person my very first client you know pops up and it's just someone who's so profoundly unlike me and yet there's they're in trouble you know they're really in pain they're really suffering and they've gone they've mustered the courage to reach out to a non-profit community mental health agency and say, can you, can I need someone to talk to? Can someone, I'm really in trouble. And it's not so much that I'm appearing on their screen. It's that this, some pixelated version of this physiognomy is getting reproduced on their screen. And they're, they're, you know, some aching heart is looking at that face on a screen wanting help. And this needs to happen really fast some kind of you know connection and service and care and empathy and um suddenly all

those ideas about i'll be like a middle-aged white dude talking middle-aged white dudes about the meaning of life just that was gone in like the first 30 seconds of my first client as i found that experience of i just found it so thrilling and so fascinating and that has happened again and again none of my clients are just like outwardly anything like me but of course there are these other parts of our common humanity that we connect with each other through and you sort of discover you have all these who knows what part of your heart is going to overlap and connect with who knows what part of that person's heart or what who knows what part of their journey in the world is going to resonate with your journey in the world and so anyway there's some thoughts

on what it's been like for me being in school. So a few things, Dan. First of all, it is so clear listening that even if it's your very first client, that person is super fortunate to be working with you. And second, it occurs to me listening that we're highlighting something indirectly about social work training that is unusual.

and distinct from other fields. Because in the field of social work, there is a general ethos that folks start out learning about advocacy, learning about client services, and therefore it takes more time until we find ourselves as social workers in that therapist chair. So I do want to just take a moment to really credit the social work profession here, because I think it therefore helps us create much more developed, more seasoned, more mature therapists. I focus a lot on differentiation and systems theory. And the whole idea of that, if you were to summarize it, is to work in therapy to be as emotionally mature as you can be, therefore, to be intimate with others and simultaneously separate. And I think part of

what you're describing in looking back at school is that students who are right out of college or in their early mid-20s, like I certainly was, are less differentiated, less emotionally mature. and it doesn't mean that you can't do wonderful meaningful important work but you're at such a different psychological stage which is part of what draws me to this whole topic in terms of how well poised i think all three of you are to do really good work by virtue of when you're starting to do it um what would you add to that um i i would like to add something to that and you know speaking of of differentiation i i uh i i had the experience that you had of feeling uh you know when i was in the master's program and i was already you know 30

something at that time um feeling like have you guys paid taxes like you know Do you know what it is to hold a job? Like, you know, when I got into the doctoral program, yes. I mean, my one of my closest friends from the program was 23 and I was almost 45. We are still working together today. There was another woman in the program who's also one of my closest friends who was 55. um and we are our cohort is still very very close what i found really challenging was that i was being i you know i was a i was writing for time magazine in the village voice not

small publications and my writing was being taken apart um i i was literally being scrutinized in everything I was doing. Um, two way mirrors and, uh, you know, feedback every, you know, I think it was probably quarterly, but it felt like weekly, um, and receiving constant, constant feedback about, um, my performance, um, my, uh, insight into myself, my personal growth, It was like a rewiring, I felt like, for me of feeling like a, you know, a very sort of found self, you know, full human, and then having to really submit to the whole process of being a student was an incredibly vulnerable experience. So, you know, I think it's valuable and almost a parallel process to what your patients are experiencing as they come in. Not that we're scrutinizing or that we're, but it's the vulnerability that I think that gave me a real sense of what it might be like to be a patient walking into their first ever session. it's such a good point i mean i remember doing that in my earlier 20s the two-way mirror and

all those things and i did do additional training where there was a half of the program was clergy and the clergy tended to be a bit older and i remember classmates asking what's the difference At that point, I mean, and I was in my early 20s and I had classmates in their 40s and 50s and they said, you know, what is the difference between us? And I remember one of the professors saying the younger students are much more open to everything and anything, including submitting to whatever it is and studying every detail. um but but they don't have the developed self to bring into the room and and and i think are not therefore able to work with as many clients simply because of stage of development um so it's bringing me back to those those humbling experiences but i don't think they were as humbling for me because of my stage of development um do you ever think about like what

you would have been like as a therapist if you were doing it without the robust experiences that you had professionally beforehand do you ever think about that all the time yeah i definitely yeah i mean definitely just um like i could not because when especially with each of the classes and we're talking about different subjects and talking about, you know, counseling, you know, whether, like you said, you know, family systems or systems therapy. And I just would not have had the confidence and I wouldn't have the resources internally and just cognitively and just, you know, the wealth of data that I have captured over the decades of life to truly be able to help someone who would come in with with trauma from a

divorce, or come in with, you know, having to help an elderly parent die. Or, right, just every all the things that a lot of the things that bring people to therapy. I don't know that I would have had the skill set, you know, a couple that's navigating, you know, infidelity, I would have been like, let me, let me, let me, let me Google this. Um, or, or, you know, chat to it, but, um, I just would not have had the confidence, the confidence and the resources that would have been quickly, uh, accessed, um, that I do now. And so, um, I think it's interesting. I mean, I've, I've even thought, and I, and I, I think it's their knee, you know, their, should there be, I mean, it's an interesting question. If we're going, should there be an age requirement minimum to go into this field? I feel increasingly like maybe.

It's another way that that is touched upon is should there be a requirement that you have therapy? And it used to be much more common that there was, and now it isn't. And I don't think it's an unrelated question at all. Carrie, there's something else I want to make sure I ask. And you alluded to it in the very beginning of our conversation when you talked about being in the restaurant industry and some of the ways that one can feel like a therapist in that role, classically as a bartender, but really in any part of the restaurant industry. And what I have found in my practice, but also just in life, is there's so much alcohol use in the restaurant industry.

do you think that will shape the way you show up as a therapist your your knowledge and understanding about that i think that's also been an interesting part of the of the journey in my school work in my in my master's program and um you know in one episode of the bear will will will fill you into all the fun things about the restaurant world and i feel a little bit of pride watching that with my teenage and college age sons, because they're like, that's so cool. I'm like, that's, that's me. I did that. Like, you know, all the mise en place and the knife and the burn, look at my burn marks like that. I always say now and behind every time I'm behind, behind. Oh no, my son, my older son, Henry. Yeah. He says that he says behind. Yeah.

he's like behind um but i think it's been interesting yes lots of alcohol lots of drug use um wonderful wonderful conversations around the bar uh you know as the night goes on it's fascinating to watch and fascinating to watch those relationships either develop or fall apart Um, but I think what has been interesting is that because substance use is behind so many problems of humans that it's been interesting that that has, I think that could also be an area that could be further developed for therapists to really, um, focus a lot more on that with clients with older you know with with clients of drinking age or even not drinking age but um it's definitely a an area that um and i think it's interesting too to see this it seems

like this younger generation as opposed to our generation which was very different with our relationship to alcohol and what we were privy to even from our own parents this generation seems to have a different attitude towards um alcohol you know you see a lot more of alcohol free or or or just it's just not even a thing um but the restaurant world is um it's a it's a dysfunctional world and it's a dysfunctional work environment it is and i think there are some restaurants and restaurant industries there's you know southern smoke which is a hospitality non-profit down in houston that provides free counseling for their workers so it's it's a it's an ongoing issue but you know can you have one without the other

you know i think you know there's a there's a reason why you want your liquor license when you get a restaurant because that's where the sales are you know so it's yeah it's a hard it's a hard question um dan how do you think your writing is going to inform your work as a therapist and vice versa what would you say about that yeah so that's that's i've thought about that a lot i'm still working on that question but the um uh many many different ways they talk to each other in a lot of different ways and and there's a lot for me to work out. There's sort of kinks and, you know, complexities to work out, let's say, in that I have been a, well, okay, so I've done a lot of different kinds of

writing, but the two sort of really big strains in my writing, I know I mentioned adventure journalism earlier, but the truth is there's sort of two other really big areas. One is memoir. So I've done a lot of personal essay writing and first person, you know, I've written books that are first person and um i've also done a lot of writing that was sort of you know in non-fiction creative non-fiction that involved historical reading and science and stuff like that okay so the different the ways that those things affect interact with therapy is on the one hand like in a sort of great way the the non-fiction experience and the journalism experience has given me this sense of, I know, I know what it means to feel interested in something. I know

what it means to feel excited by something. I sort of know that I've really learned deeply the process of discovering what lights up my own mind. And that has helped me in reading the psychological and psychoanalytic literature, because I, I think if I were a younger person, I'd be just like, I better just read the whole darn textbook and try to remember what's in the textbook and yeah and you know just whatever they say is important to learn is probably what i better learn and i just my brain just does not roll that way anymore like i i mean i do my course work i get my courses done i learn what i gotta learn you know i'm getting my degree but i i chase areas of authentic fascination you know because i just know that that's how i learn best so like

I've found these, this one particular psychoanalytic writer, this guy, Thomas Ogden, who writes about the British object relations school a lot and his writing is so beautiful. And so I just sort of have this practice of like every morning I just read one of his essays and it just completely lights me up and gets my juices going. And, um, but then there's another on the memoir side that one is sort of interesting in that as a practice to write a good personal essay you really have to look within and be the more honest you can be the better the writing will be so the more truthful you are about yourself and that's a lot harder than it looks um to be true to tell a true story about your own life is a lot harder than it looks

it's like therapy in a way yeah okay so that's called in similar ways painful that's that's what i'm saying so there's so there's a there's a sort of i think there's i'm going to describe sort of an upside and then a complicator the upside is that i think that process that that is feeling pretty similar to me like when i when now that i'm getting a chance to work with some clients it's feeling to me like you know um i can you know they're telling stories in essence and i'm can feel where there's vagary in the story or i can feel where maybe something's not being you know attended to or there's hidden pain in a story and and because i've been doing that my whole life on the other side when therapists themselves when therapists present themselves to the world

they they seem to find it almost impossible to be honest about themselves um because and i don't mean that any of that they're deceptive what i mean is that i don't mean that therapist i don't mean there's any deception but there's that there's such a culture of um being very careful about self-disclosure of being very careful about the kind of persona you present you know like um how many details you share about yourself do you share your angular crazy you know vulgar side do you say you know do you share that you're you know i don't know cuckoo for cocoa puffs i mean you're really careful about what you share. And that's just like kryptonite for good writing. That's just like a recipe for bad writing. There's no getting around that problem. So that's something

I'm really thinking about a lot and trying to figure out how to manage as I go forward in life. That is so interesting. And Brooke, you look like, I mean, you just went like this. I appreciate the struggle. That's my reaction is seeking truth and being honest with yourself. I'm also trying to figure out how writing is going to fit back into my life. And I'm journaling. And so that's my sort of new foray back into, you know, putting words together that aren't notes for my, you know, casework. But it's, I find it so fascinating how many footnotes need to go to a sentence, you know.

It's, there's, you know, and who's that for? Is that for me? Is that for an audience? Like, why am I putting up some, you know, a need to qualify and qualify and qualify? So, yeah, I really appreciate what you're saying. And I can't wait to read Thomas Ogden. I made a note to myself. I can't either.

Thank you for that. I really can't. May I ask Brooke a question here? I'm really, Brooke, when you mentioned that you were doing journalism while you were in school, and you mentioned some vulnerability around that or complexity around that, I just wanted to, did you mean just that it was a ton of work to be doing both, or was there a question of self-exposure a little bit? Yeah, I think that maybe I was, I don't know how that came, I wasn't doing journalism at the same time. When I was at LSE, I finished LSE and then started freelance writing again. But when I was at GW, I really exclusively did school. I really know what you mean about the difference between journaling and like process notes therapy. I've actually been noticing that exact thing for myself because I keep a personal journal.

I'm also writing process notes. And I have had, I think I've had the exact same question in my mind you have, which is like, you notice yourself writing process notes. They're basically just for you. And yet you're censoring it into this very anodyne clinical language that you would never use as a writer in describing characters, but then you're in your journal and you feel like, wait, am I allowed to be honest about, I don't know, you know, anyway, sorry, Elizabeth, but that's, yeah. I think it's similarly like with the, with the notes that y'all are talking about,

it's just, it's just also being careful that I find myself just being very aware in a way that I haven't before of imposing my values. And is my recollection accurate? Is this actually, you know what they said is that the way that i interpreted it and so it's the note taking the process notes is is very anxiety inducing you know and i think and i wonder um but i can see no matter what age you know going back to the the that all of our all of our experiences i feel so much more confident though taking these notes at this stage in life versus if i had been taking these process notes in my 20s because i because the nuance of of what's not like what dan had said that's not being communicated i wouldn't even have known to have looked for those things

so i think that's an interesting connection that brooke and dan are talking about with that whether it's self-centered censoring or whether it's discerning reading between the lines i think it's it's interesting it's an interesting journey do any of you have any other questions for each other right so many um i've learned a lot go ahead i think i would love i mean i i i i know a bit about what brooke what are what her some of her clients that she's working with i would love to also hear from dan about his as he's going through this journey but we could start with Brooke about who she's found herself, what client base, what client, you know, demographics that she finds herself gravitating towards, I think is interesting. So Dan, do you want to go

first? Oh, go ahead, Brooke. So yeah, so I'm in private practice. I'm in Northwest DC. I have a sliding scale, but I have a pretty high rate. And so it's self-selecting in a sense by that. So I have a pretty affluent, you know, caseload at the moment. And I think that's relevant to, you know, the conversations that we're having about, you know, where I was in training, you know, there was a far greater diversity and, um, uh, it just a different, a different, um, sort of set of needs for sure. Um, so I, uh, I have a, you know, I have a folk, my graduate focus was on, um, children and adolescents. And so I really started in private practice uh you know six and a half years seven years ago um working with children and adolescents

during the pandemic I really had to drop working with kids online that was too difficult um and so I took on a whole set of adults so I continue to have I've added kids back now since I went back into the office in June of 21. But, um, I, I have a, a varied caseload in terms of, uh, age range. So I have, uh, uh, as young as four and as old as 60. Um, and I love that. I think I really thrive on kind of, um, variety, you know, and, uh, I like, and I, with the kids, I'm literally on the floor. Um, so I really like, you know, getting up and moving around with the teenagers. Some of them I'm working, you know, I, I incorporate mindfulness and body, uh, you know, somatic kind of, uh, work. Um, but, uh, um, yeah, I, so I have a pretty, uh, wide range in terms of ages.

I think, uh, trauma, depression, anxiety, OCD, that's probably the, the, you know, kind of, um, diagnoses that I think are most prevalent within my caseload. I guess I'm still, you know, I'm still in the throes of that moment I was describing of thinking, you know, having come into this with a sort of particular idea. And, you know, it could still go that way for me in the long run. Who knows? But right now, I'm discovering that I'm kind of interested in everybody. i'm discovering that i i just love getting to be present and um you know uh be curious and um but i'm i seem to be you know drawn to creative people but creativity is so many

forms you know i guess i feel like this sort of create like creativity as a source of energy in a life is something and is something i have a lot i really understand but people are creative in so many different ways that I don't think that excludes a whole lot of people, you know. Or, yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm still sort of exploring what demographics and who, you know, who I want to work with. Because my agency, the agency that I'm working with

is in San Francisco. It's called the Liberation Institute. And it's a, it has a kind of artists and activists kind of DNA. um and so a lot of the people who come through are are in one way or another in that in that spirit and mood um and that just feels fantastic to me i love the population we get um and i was also sort of wondering carrie if you if you have found yourself working with people in in food at all like i can imagine you working with you know chefs having breakdowns i'd be i'd be busy i'd be

very busy yeah no and i car me in the bear car me in the bear needs your help you know right i know they all they all they uh they but they yes but they are they're also helping each other which i think is a great about that show but i i definitely um i am finding myself leaning towards more and more um because of my own journey uh sort of entrepreneurs small business owners professionals uh that because it is holistic right you're not just uh a you know solar power integrator and you don't suffer grief or ocd you know you and it's and you don't those those i think increasingly we will see those uh coming together and so trying i i'm thinking from a place of what would have been really helpful to me in my own therapeutic journey it would have

been nice if my therapist had had a background, more of a background in entrepreneurs or small business startups or professional development or midlife career pivots or whatnot. So I think that I find myself, I keep, you know, it's like you keep, I can't stop looking at, even though I'm not learning about any of that in my practicum, some of it I am in the sense that I am making it happen or I'm making it fit with these, especially with the younger students or that, I mean, the high school students that I'm helping them to develop their own career paths while they're also navigating the death of a parent. But I'm increasingly finding that these are just, there is no separation. And I would like to, I think, create a practice that really

serves that small business entrepreneur professional population and make it less stigma. You know, everybody, you know, it's everybody's got to have their shizzle together. You know, it's like, no, nobody has it together. And the more that we can bring awareness to that and encourage that conversation, especially in states where it's not so great to talk about how life sucks sometimes, you know, pull yourself up by the bootstrap. you know but how can we how can we still also though value honor those values of resilience of pull yourself up and grit but also simultaneously holds you know sensitivity and vulnerability like how can we and i think in the business world that's what so many of us have been programmed to do you know we all have to be glossy shiny people and not show any of the you know don't look at my you know look at my beautiful plants you know it's just so i think that's what i keep that's

dan i think what i keep gravitating towards uh i think don't they call that don't they call that coaching yes well no but that's what that's what i i think that's what where the the the and don't get me started on coaching sorry i'm sorry that was a I mean, I would love to be a part of that one. Do you have to end? Let's think about another conversation. Once Carrie and Dan have finished school and Brooke, you and I will also be that much further along in our practices.

We can come back together and, and maybe, Maybe we'll focus on teaching or maybe we'll ignore it. I'm not sure. But really, thank you all so much, Carrie, Dan, and Brooke for joining Social Work Talks today. So glad that you made the decisions that you did. I can't help but wish that you weren't all social workers because that's who I am, and of course, I'm here representing NASW, but I'm generally just so glad that you are on this path and know that you will help so many people. And you've certainly helped me today to think even more about how honored I am to be in this field.

So thank you, and thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you for having us. Huge respect to social workers. Huge respect. You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.