Social Work Spotlight - International Episode 2: Matt (Canada)

Episode Date: September 13, 2025

In this episode I speak with Matt, who in addition to being a registered social worker, is also a certified mental performance consultant, podcast host and co-founder of Southwest Counselling Services in Ontario, Canada. He is passionate about utilising a variety of tools including EMDR, Emotion Focused Therapy, Sport Psychology and Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy to help individuals, couples and families lead healthy and fulfilling lives. Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Southwest Counselling Services - https://swcounselling.ca/Social Work Me podcast - https://www.facebook.com/SocialWorkMe/Wade Wilson’s The Mentor Magazine - https://thementormagazine.substack.com/aboutAlliance of Social Workers in Sports - https://www.aswis.org/Association of Applied Sports Psychology - https://appliedsportpsych.org/Canadian Sports Psych Association - https://www.cspa-acps.com/Mindful Men podcast - https://mindfulmen.com.au/podcast/This episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YqOatfUpDK8yHda4eXKIGYRty1UaydYnkm5Fg1NQJbs/edit?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

Before beginning, I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the countries of guests featured in this podcast and acknowledge their continuing connection to land, waters and community. I pay my respects to the First Nations people, the cultures and the elders, past, present and emerging. Hi, and welcome to Social Work Spotlight, where I showcase different areas of the profession each episode, with a 12-month focus on social workers around the world as of August 2025. I'm your host, Yasmin Lupus, and today's guest is Matt, who in addition to being a registered social worker is also a certified mental performance consultant, podcast host and co-founder of Southwest Counseling Services in Ontario, Canada. He is passionate about utilizing a variety of tools including EMDR, emotion-focused therapy, sport psychology, and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to help individuals, couples and families lead healthy, and fulfilling lives. Thank you so much, Matt, for joining me on the podcast today. Looking forward to having a chat with you about your experience in social work so far.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat with you. Yeah, and I'm also looking forward to interviewing another podcaster. We'll talk a little bit later about your own podcast. But, yeah, as you said, just before we started recording, it's probably nice for you to be on the other end of the microphone. Yeah, this is the third podcast I've been. on as a guest. And I think the first time I've ever, I'll ever really be talking about my career

and kind of the path and going through some things. So this is the first time. Yeah, cool. A bit of a this is your life moment maybe. I guess so. Yeah. Well, I always firstly ask when you got started in social work and what brought you to the profession. Yeah. I mean, I've been thinking a lot about that question since you sent them early this week. And it's hard to kind of pinpoint the exact moment, but it's sort of a lot of different, different elements that led me here. And I guess, you know, the first place I thought about was just my upbringing and my parents and my mom was a nurse and my dad is an electrician and came from a very blue-collar family, parents that really instilled some really good values around, you know, equality and giving back and they're both

really active in the community. And my mom, obviously being in the helping profession, very caring and compassionate person. And my dad's just like a real people person. Like he can connect with anybody. And he's, you know, really down to earth. So I learned a lot from them and I think gained some of the skills that make me a good social worker.

Just from my upbringing, I really wanted to go. When I was in high school, I really wanted to get into film. and be a director and I was really passionate about making films throughout high school. But I had realized at the time that that would be a pretty challenging career to get into. It's really tough to break out into that area. And so I took film as a minor in my first year of university, and I majored in psychology. And that really stemmed from a course in high school that I took that was, I think it was called challenges.

and changes. And it covered psych, sociology, and anthropology and just really loved, loved those subjects. I was really interested in homelessness. I did a big project in high school on homelessness and mental health. And then as I sort of got into my early days in university, taking Psych 101, just really passionate about mental health, mental illness, and psychotherapy. And so that sort of set me up to what I thought was going to be a career as a psychologist. And I'm sure like many social workers, I really struggled in math. And so the statistics courses were such a challenge for me. And I was just scraping by in those classes.

And so because of that, the option of being a psychologist wasn't really there for me. but I love working with people and like I said, I loved psychotherapy and the mental health field. So as I did some more research, I found that social work would be kind of a perfect place for me to be. It aligned with my values. It allowed me to be providing psychotherapy and working with the populations that I was really interested in. So there's a bit about Australia here. This is where we had kind of chatted because when I had. graduated from my undergraduate. I had applied for the master's in social work. And fortunately,

as I look back now, I wasn't accepted initially. And that's what led me to take a year off and travel to Australia. And that was just such a life-changing experience for me. Love Australia, love the Australian people, just to have some friends that I keep in touch with there. And that was really transformational. And so that gave me some more life skills. And I can't. came back and I did my master's in social work at the University of Windsor in Ontario here and graduated in 2011. And so that's kind of how I got there. It's a long story of how I became a social worker. It's interesting what you say about the psych stats because that was probably the part that I struggled with most. I love the developmental. I love the social psychology. And I did high level maths in

high school and I still struggled with psych stats because it's not maths. It's something completely different. So, and I think the pivot point for me was the realization that you can't then go and be a psychologist after having done an undergrad in psych. There's a whole extra level of study that you needed to do. And that was the point at which I thought, yeah, social work sounds actually a perfect fit. Let's do that. Yeah. But interesting, you mentioned movies because, or film studies, another social worker who I met through interviewing her for the podcast, Catherine, I think interview 88, maybe from memory. She's now a really good friend of mine and she has started a podcast herself called Movie Health. So she did her undergrad in film studies and then went on to do a master's

in social work. And her movie health podcast looks at movies and mental health and just really interesting discussions and she uses it now in a form of therapy called cinema therapy where she encourages people to look at narratives, look at themes, look at personalities or the way that people make decisions in films to kind of talk through what's happening for them. So I was actually fortunate to be a guest on her podcast a couple of times. The first one we were talking about Garden State, the wonderful Black Breath movie. And the second was What's Eating Gilbert Grape. And such a fun experience, just being able to get super nerdy about film techniques and that sort of thing as a way of conveying a message or really communicating what someone might be feeling. So not completely

bizarre when you say that to me. I can definitely see the parallels. Yeah, that's really neat. I'll have to check her podcast. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. So if you hadn't taken that gap year off and traveled, would you have met your wife? Because I understand that you met at university. That's a great question. Is that kind of like a sliding doors moment? Yeah, totally. And I've actually thought about that. If I would have gotten in, I wouldn't have met her. And it all sort of was meant to be. that way. I wouldn't have met her. And honestly, there was a moment. I remember when I found out I got into the master's program, I was that day leaving for Thailand. So at the time was living Gold Coast. We had ran out of money. Initially, we were living in a van. And we flew into Melbourne. And then we

worked our way up to the Gold Coast. And we eventually ran out of money, had to get jobs. I was working in Tuwamba at a mall and I was my friends still make fun of me for this but I was driving a Thomas the Tank Engine children's train ride in the mall and it was a sweet gig I had a company vehicle they put me up in apartments I had some time where I'd work in Surfer's Paradise at the mall there and then they would ship me out to Tuwamba and I had a utility like a Ute was called and they put me up in an apartment in Tuamba and work at the mall for three or four days and then I'd come back to Surfers Paradise. The day that I found out, I got into the masters, my parents called me and said you got in. They were super excited. And it was the day we were flying out to Thailand.

And so this would be about seven months into the trip and I had no plans of going home. I had plans to take my dive master course and work for a dive, scuba diving company. company somewhere, wherever that was, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, I didn't care. But that was kind of where my head was at. And I remember my parents saying, you know, you've worked so hard for this. It would be disappointing if you didn't sort of follow through with your career. And so that kind of was like a seed that was planted in my, my head as I went to Thailand and had an amazing month with my buddies there and came home and decided, you know, this is probably the right choice for me to come back and get back into my education and

finish that up now while I'm young, rather than sort of taking a bunch of time off and having to struggle to get back into kind of a student mindset. Yeah. So yeah, so if I would have stayed another year or I would have gotten into the master's program, I wouldn't have met my wife because we met in our first year of the master's program. Mm-hmm. And is there a bachelor's an undergrad in social work in Canada, or is it just the masters? Yeah, there's a bachelor's program. So if you take the, BSW it's called. You only do a one-year MSW. I didn't take that route. I didn't know at the time that social work was going to be my path until my fourth year. So when you don't do your undergrad and social work, you do two-year masters. Okay. And so that's what I did. Sounds very similar to us.

So we can do either a four-year bachelor's of social work, or we can have done some other related undergraduate and then two years as a master's. And so the two-year master's is a fair. And so the two-year master's is effectively the same as the last two years of the bachelor in that the first two years is mostly theory and the second two years is half theory half placement so we do a thousand hours in total of placement over those two years that makes sense that lines up with what we do as well yeah cool was there a point in that two year period where you felt yep cool this is really solidifying i've made the right choice yeah my first placement was at children's society, so in child welfare, and that did not solidify that I wanted to do this at all. It was a

really challenging job. But the second placement I did at hospice, and that was confirmation, that I'm in the right field, I'm on the right path, and I had a really great experience working at hospice. Yeah. And I'm imagining that similar to our, I mean, hospice palliative care, but the collaborative approach and the multidisciplinary approach for me is what made it so worthwhile is that everyone's working together everyone's got the shared goals everyone's so incredibly compassionate even our palliative care ward in the hospital we had two cats called dex and morph it was divine and they would just go and sit on people's beds and keep them company it was just this whole environment of really supporting people and making them feel at peace or comfortable

Love it. Yeah, we had an eight-bed residence, and we had an outreach social work program, so we would go to people's homes and support them at end of life or for caregivers and family members. Part of my placement, I did a research project on harp therapy, so playing the harp at end of life and the residence, and just the impact and how meaningful that was for family. and how comforting it was. And then we ran groups, and I was able to help facilitate some groups, and the one-on-one work was really what I loved the most. Yeah. Were you able to keep working in hospice or something related when you finished? So after my placement, I moved away.

We moved up to the Yukon territory after I graduated, and I volunteered for the hospice up there, and I started helping out with a grief-walking group. and so this was for people that had recently lost a loved one and we would meet and the Yukon is so beautiful. I hope you can make it up there during your trip. Not this time, unfortunately. I've only got four weeks in Canada and it's just not enough time. Yeah, you need to come back just for the Yukon. You could go to the Yukon and Alaska and spend a great month there. But the Yukon is so beautiful. So we would meet as a group and we would do check-in and a warm-up

and then we would walk. It was about three to four kilometers and just encouraging people to walk together, mixing up the pairs. We would walk and we would support people and it was very kind of informal support group. So I volunteered with them throughout my two years up there. And then when I moved back home, I was fortunate enough. I've had two short stints as a clinical supervisor for the hospice in Sarnia. And so just kind of helping to oversee some programming here. And then I actually brought the grief walking group back to Sarnia. And when we opened our practice, I ran that group just as a like a free group in the community. I think we ran that for about three years.

And it was a, yeah, a really successful program. And is that for caregivers or is it people who are having treatment with hospice as well? No, the grief walking group was for caregivers and loved ones that were mourning and grieving. And so we've done sort of general, like all types of losses. And then we've sort of found over time that it was better to categorize people with the similar type of loss. So infant loss or spousal loss or parental loss. Reminds me of someone that I know you know, Mark, who now works in Australia. He's Canadian.

He's been on the podcast before. But he does a lot of ecotherapy and things outdoors. sometimes what people find is that not sitting face to face in front of someone that can be really daunting is actually conducive to more therapeutic interactions. So even just driving with someone walking along the beach, walking in nature, that sort of thing can sometimes be a little bit more conducive. Totally. I love what Mark's doing and I totally agree with what you're saying. I've done a session in an ice fishing hut with somebody, which sounds like a really Canadian thing to do. so does.

And we do walk and talk therapy all the time with clients. One of the sort of first experiences I had doing that was when I was doing my placement at hospice. And we had a gentleman who had lost his wife and had really isolated himself, was leading a really unhealthy life, not exercising, not eating healthy. And so one of the treatment goals was for him to get back into physical exercise. but he had a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety about going to the gym. And so my supervisor being such a progressive and holistic supervisor said,

well, why don't you take him to the gym and have a session there? So we did that and it just calmed his fears. You know, he got to see what it was like, how people interacted, that he was welcome there. And he, that was a real big stepping stone for him to get into a healthy lifestyle. Yeah. Did you anticipate that you'd get into therapy? Is that something that's always been a passion for you? Yeah, it's always been a passion. I'm sure like many social workers, you know, early experiences of helping people through things, being a listening year, being that friend that people kind of confide in. And I think, you know, even mediating conflicts and things like that early on in my life. So I think I always felt like I had some gifts when it came to being able to help people in that way. And from the time you got back from the Yukon to Sarnia, what was the process like for you in terms of actually biting the bullet saying, yep, I'm going to open my own practice?

So there was a step kind of in between the Yukon and starting our practice. And so I had worked in the Yukon for two years. It was very challenging work. By the time I left, I was supervising a residential youth treatment program. and we had some pre-adolescent boys very disregulated violent there was a lot of restraints a lot of staffing turnover injuries it was just a really complex job learned a lot i just listened to the episode with stacey where you oh did you okay and so enlightening really yes so you already yeah so that's i left there and didn't feel ready to get into psychotherapy.

I was more case managing, supervising, doing some one-on-one work with the youth, but wanted to get some more experience in the field. And one of the, had a great connection at the Children's Aid Society because I had done my placement there, and I had also helped out with another program. It was a homework helper program,

and I had great relationships there from my placement. As much as I didn't love the idea of going back to child protection, It was a really generous offer to hire both my wife and I and to relocate us back home. So we decided to take the offer and we both got a job at the same organization. I worked at a satellite office out Strathroyd just outside of London. And we did that for four years and just gathered so many new skills, learned about so many other issues and populations.

And that really helped to kind of build some confidence. And then from there, we sort of tapered off. I kept my position in child protection and then slowly built up our private practice. And so we started early on doing EAP work, which is like employee assistance program work. And it's really short-term solution-focused counseling. And then we did some training. We did EMDR training. and I got trained in emotion-focused therapy and just built more of the psychotherapy skills

from there. And then the practice sort of began expanding outside of EAP work, doing more longer-term psychotherapy work. And I think I might have skipped over your whole question, but that's really. That's perfect. That shows me the trajectory. Yes. I'm so curious as to how you kind of developed the practice.

and got the confidence to do that. And did you have any mentors that helped guide you through the process? Yeah. So back to my first year of the MSW program and I did that placement at Children's Aid Society, I had an amazing supervisor and her name's Dawn Walls. And we had kind of stayed in touch over the years. And when I went back to Children's Aid after the Yukon,

she was still there. And so we reconnected. And she was very, very focused on, providing really professional quality care for clients that went beyond case management. And so her and I had had some discussions. She had been in the field for a long time. And we both had aspirations of getting into providing psychotherapy. And so we had kind of talked.

We had a great relationship. We knew we worked well together. And so we said, why don't we start a practice together? And so we had some early conversations. And then at the time my wife was working for, she was working for children's aid part time. And then she had two counseling jobs that she was doing. And she was all over the map. And so we were like, well, why don't you jump on board with us?

So my wife and I and my former supervisor and colleague Dawn decided, let's start this together. And so we had the three of us, you know, I think confidence can come from a group. We really encouraged each other. We knew that we wanted to do additional training. Dawn really led the charge with EMDR. She had done a lot of research and felt like that would be a really great modality to be trained in. And then we just rented two offices side by side, very low rent, low risk. And we just started doing that EAP work.

And we connected with the Children's Aid Society in Sarnia because we were at that time in London, Strathroy area. and it just started growing from there. And in our second or third year, we had an MSW student reach out and say, hey, I'd love to do a placement with you guys. And so we took her on. And then after she graduated, she started working for us. And then since then,

we've taken on six or seven other students, and we've hired most of them. So now we have seven other therapists that work here as well. So there's 10 of us and total. That's amazing. Yeah, so it's kind of been an organic, natural growth that sort of stemmed from the three of us just being really passionate about the work that we do. And you don't have to onboard.

They understand your processes, they know your population, they know how you like to work, so that's perfect. I think that's the best. For us, it's been the best way of bringing new people in, is to have them as a student, to train them, guide them, get to know them, and then some of them have started just part-time, some of them have come fully on board from the get-go once their placement ends. So, yeah, it's really worked out. Yeah.

Do you have a number of funding sources then? Because EAP, I assume, is private through the employers. But do you get, say, people funded under health, people funded under private insurance, veterans? There's a whole bunch of stuff that people can access in Australia, at least. So I'm wondering if it's similar there. Yeah, I've had some conversations with Mark about this. There are some similarities, a lot of differences. A lot of our clients have workplace benefits that cover the cost.

We work with indigenous populations. So in Canada, if you are a first nation individual, you have access to, I believe it's 15 sessions covered by the government. And you can get extensions for those sessions. So it's a really great program. We have Veterans Affairs that we work with that gets funding. We have clients sometimes from child protection agencies, and they'll cover the cost of counseling. And we work with victim services. So if you're a victim of a crime in Ontario, you are eligible for $1,000 in funding for counseling and therapy.

I'm probably missing a few, but those are the main sources of funding for counseling here. What do you find the hardest part, whether it's about the work itself or maybe about just running a business? Paperwork admin scheduling. I have hit a point with my schedule. This happened last week where I'm just, I'm making my schedule available for online booking because it's such a pain going back and forth with people and then they don't get back to you for a couple days and then you've already booked that spot and just the logistical administrative stuff. I don't love. So I'd say that's the worst part. Yeah. What do you love most? What's the most rewarding for you? The most rewarding is working with individuals and couples and families, helping to educate them, helping to use interventions to help them work through. You know, sometimes really historical traumas that have been plaguing them for decades, seeing transformations, helping them.

them, you know, build healthier relationships and lifestyles and overcome those obstacles and challenges. We love working with people and I love my time connecting with people. But you're also branching out and doing some things that are a little bit left of center and probably super interesting to you as well as to me listening about it. But in terms of all the psychedelic research and practice that's out there and social work or therapy in sports, that's really incredible that you're able to. just constantly learn and constantly apply that to what you're doing. Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. The best way I kind of think about this kind of goes back to my dad being an electrician and I

spent a few summers working for him. Just the idea of having like a tool belt and different jobs require different tools. And I really see psychedelics as another tool in the tool belt. And so we work with ketamine here and we've been we've been providing ketamine-assisted psychotherapy for three years. And some of those sessions are some of the most transformational experiences I've seen with clients. That's a really rewarding aspect of this job that I have. And then the sports work brings a lot of joy to me. And it's sort of like the lighter side of life. You know, as much as for them and those organizations and teams I work with and the coaches, like, that's their livelihood. To me, I'm able to see it as a game, and it's not life and death, like some of the

work we do with our clients. And so it's a lot lighter. I'm able to help them with mental skills and help them with their performance and optimizing kind of mind and body. So that's, that really fills up my cup. So about one day of the week, I work with sports teams. Do you have a sporting background yourself? I raced, downhill ski raced, and I have a black belt in karate. So martial arts and skiing were kind of the two sports that I was into, and then I played volleyball in high school. Okay. So there's a lot of discipline in there. Yes, for sure, especially with the martial arts.

But you work with hockey teams? Mainly with hockey teams, which I never played hockey. I was on the ski hill, so. Yeah. How did you come about the podcast? I'm curious as to how you got started. Yours started, I think, end of 2019 before the world blew up. How did you adjust to all that while you're still trying to develop a new thing? Yeah, it started with a colleague in the community who also had a private practice and her name's Julie Carter and she's an ideas person and she's like, hey, we should do a podcast. You know, we both love what we're doing. There's so many great guests out there, and this would be really fun to do. And so I was just like, yeah, let's do it. And we started the podcast, and we did about four or five episodes together, and then Julie just got too busy.

And I was loving it. I was loving doing the interviews. Because of my background in film and video, I was pretty efficient with editing and, you know, getting the audio quality and the music and all that kind of stuff. So that was just natural for me. And then the pandemic hit and I was like, okay, this is a really great outlet while work is slowing down. And it's kind of free learning for me. So interviewing people that I would love to learn from and people with interesting stories.

And it's just been such a great way of networking and connecting with people. And it's led to a lot of cool, cool opportunities and relationships like Mark Maselli and I still keep in touch. So yeah. I found something similar in the sense that the first three episodes that I released were face-to-face like normal people. And then everything went down. And I realized that LinkedIn could be a wonderful forum to network with people and find people that I never normally would have come across or have met in my regular life. And exactly as you're saying, it expands your understanding of a particular topic or it gives you an opportunity just to connect with someone. who's completely outside of your regular scope.

And it's rewarding, but it's also fulfilling in the sense that until fairly recently, I haven't worked with any social workers for a long, long time in my team. And so it's a really good way of reconnecting with the profession and being able to, yeah, just kind of build my tribe, I guess, a little bit. Love that. That's cool. So you started right during the pandemic or right before? Yeah.

Yeah. I think first episode was maybe January of 2020. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's great. What are your plans for going forward with the podcast? Do you have any other ideas for topics coming up? I really enjoyed your virtual reality one, actually, with Dr. McMahon.

That was fascinating. Yes, it's so sad. She actually just passed away. Oh, I'm sorry. She was such a brilliant clinician. Oh, she was a powerhouse, just her energy. Yeah, totally. Well, when she did the podcast, she did.

didn't share this on the episode, but she was going through chemotherapy during the time. And she's just such a trooper. But in terms of future episodes, I want to have, Stacey's actually, who we just did the burnout one, is actually coming down to Sarnia. She's going to be staying with us. So we have some talks about doing another episode together. And maybe you have my wife on who's never been on the podcast. So that would be kind of fun, the three of us because we were really good friends. So I think that might be the next one coming up in September. And we might do that one in person, which will be really fun. I haven't done an in person interview in a long time. Yeah. Does Taryn have a specific interest or field of social work that she specializes in? Yeah. So she's just finishing up her

certification to be a play therapy supervisor. Oh, cool. So she really works a lot with children. and she's very passionate about psychedelics as well. So she's really leading the charge here. She's running an upcoming retreat for helping professionals. And so there will be, I believe, two ketamine trips involved in that retreat. So she's, yes, she's really focused on working with kids, supervising clinicians that want to work in play therapy. And she's also an EMDR certified therapist as well. And are you looking at more training?

I know you're constantly curious and interested in knowing more about everything that you can get your hands on. Yeah, right now I would like to do some training through Nancy McWilliams on personality disorders. I'm finding that is a gap in my learning and something we covered early on in undergrad, but not as much in the MSW program. So that's an upcoming training I want to do. But my time right now is, or my spare time, I guess, is focused on a research project that I'm really excited about. And so that project is going to be a two-year project. And we're looking at studying and researching youth athletes, teenage athletes, about 15 to 20-year-olds. And looking at what are the gaps and what are the gaps?

and what are the needs for mental health and mental performance? And at the end of the two years, we will have developed a curriculum, a mental health and performance curriculum that will be a season-long periodized plan for teams that will include mental skills training, mental health education, safeguarding information about abuse and safe sport. There'll be education for parents, for billet families, for coaches, and for athletes. And so I'm really, really excited about that. And that's in partnership with one of my mentors, Wade Wilson,

and he has a magazine called The Mentor Magazine, as well as Lampton College here in Sarnia. There was a documentary that came out fairly recently about abuse in gymnastics in Canada, which came off the back of the big scandal in the US, and there had been a lot of cultural shifts. But unfortunately, there are certain sports, certain areas where it's a bit more prevalent.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. So the two of the gymnasts in that documentary are from Sarnia, and one of them has been on the podcast, Mel Hunt, and she was interviewed by one of my colleagues, and they're doing a really great job. They've started an organization called Athletes Empowered, and they are connecting with athletes that have experienced abuse and connecting them with therapists, doing education for teams and organizations,

and I believe they're doing some of their own research as well in the area with child welfare and sports and connection with safeguarding and things like that. So great documentary. Forget what it's called. Broken? Broken? Yes. Yes.

Yeah. But yeah, it was excellent. Yeah. Sad and scary and, yeah, really difficult, but well done. And great advocates in the field. Yeah, and it's unfortunate that it took something so significant in the US and the Me Too movement to then bring all that to light, but better now than not at all, I guess. And it's trickled on to, there's been a catalyst for gymnasts in Australia, gymnasts in the UK. There are a lot of powerhouses like Russia and Romania where it probably will never be brought to light, but I think it's really important across all sports to be really interrogating that power and abusive power. and vulnerable people, especially when they're underage minors. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's a good point. What support do you need, speaking of heavy topics, other than you've got a great group of people around you and sounds like you've got a really good supportive culture within your organization, within the company. What do you do? How do you make sure, speaking of having just done a whole episode on burnout, what do you do to make sure that your work is sustainable?

Great question. Well, it's nice that my wife and I can debrief, so we regularly do that. We have once a month team meetings with our staff, and those are great opportunities to connect and debrief some situations. We're always kind of crossing paths too in the staff office. So those little conversations are really helpful. I think having a solid routine has been really important for me, so I have the same routine. every morning and that includes exercise, some time outside, music, and a cold shower. And so that just

kind of gets my day started. And I think another thing that's really beneficial for me is I go to therapy weekly or bi-weekly. And so just have my own place to kind of work through things and have my own person to, yeah, just to meet with regularly. Yeah. I'm sure you've got so many resources, but is there something in particular you want to shout out that maybe people could go off and do some reading or viewing or listening if they want to know more about, I know this is a huge topic, but social work in Canada or the type of social work that you do in that context. Yeah. Well, they could check out my podcast, social work me. We've covered quite a few Canadian topics and some American haven't ventured out to, well, other than Mark in Australia,

been mostly North American. One of the things, organizations that I'm sort of new to, but really passionate about, is called the Alliance of Social Workers and Sports. And you can become a member of this organization. I think it's $100. And you're included in the list serve. There's trainings. There's clinician meetings. There's a symposium conference coming up in New Orleans this year.

And it's a great resource. if you're a social worker looking to work within sports organizations or with athletes or performers. So that would be one I would highly recommend for social workers if you're interested in sports and working with performers. What else? I'm a big fan, obviously, of EMDR therapy, of emotion focus therapy. If you want to learn more about psychotherapy, those are two great modalities. If you want to work in the mental performance field, which is totally a possibility as a social worker,

I'd recommend connecting with the Association of Applied Sports Psychology, and they have a certification, a mental performance consultant certification. And that's something that I went through. And that is kind of the gold standard if you want to work as a mental performance consultant with professional teams in North America, especially, I'm not sure about Australia, but that's a great organization. And Canada has a similar organization called Canadian Sports Psych Association. So again, those are very sports related. Yeah, great. Do you get to travel much for work, whether it's maybe traveling to training or conferences, that sort of thing? This will be my second year going to the annual conference

for the Applied Association of Sports Psych. This year, it's in Montreal. Last year, we were in Vegas, which was a really great time. Yeah. And so I get to do that. Sometimes I'll go on road trips with one of the teams I work with. Those are really fun. And I work sometimes an hour or two outside of Sarnia, so just little road trips to do workshops and things like that for teams. So I worked with a hockey team in Windsor and I work with a golf team in London.

And so those just like brief little stints are really fun too and just kind of get you out of the office and doing something new. And I think you mentioned you have a member of staff in a satellite office. How do you make sure everyone feels connected, cohesive as a group? Yeah, the once a month meetings are really helpful for that. So sometimes we'll have a guest speaker or somebody that we've brought in to talk about a specific topic. Other times we'll just have kind of open conversations and check-ins. So that's really helpful. We're trying to get better at doing team parties.

So actually this Friday, we're having a pool party at Dawn's house. Which sounds completely bizarre because it's winter in Australia. But yeah. It's the opposite over here. So we're having a pool party on Friday and everyone will bring their kids and families and stuff. So that'll be good. We always do a Christmas party with our staff and just try and celebrate birthdays and have. lunch and stuff like that together whenever we can.

So. Perfect. Yeah. Before we finish up, Matt, is there anything that maybe you wished I'd asked or that we haven't quite covered about your experience, anything else you wanted to mention? I guess one area that I'm really interested in that we didn't cover is men's mental health. And I think there's a huge need for more men in the field of social work. Yeah.

And it's a very female dominated profession. And a lot of men prefer to talk to other men. And so, you know, I think it's, if there are any men that are contemplating social work field that are listening to this, like, we would love to have you and we need you. And the world needs you. So that's, that's one area I'm passionate about. And we just, we need more men in the field to support other men. Absolutely. I think the statistic in Australia of men who die by suicide is three or four times.

women and there's actually a really high population of men over the age of 65 that take their lives. So I definitely agree. It's an area of practice where I guess doesn't get enough attention or, you know, traditionally people have said she'll be right. I'll figure it out. It'll be okay. Whereas there are so many programs out there and there need to be more programs where people can just get together like men sheds and those sorts of things where they

replace the camaraderie that people have lost from. leaving the workplace. There's another Australian social worker. He's actually up at the Sunshine Coast Simon Rini, and he has a podcast called Mindful Men. And he's developing his practice and employs significant number of men to do their therapy. So yeah, thank you for shouting that out. I think that's wonderful. And because predominantly, I think it was something like maybe five percent of my graduating year were guys. So it's a field of practice where it's definitely skewed the other way. And yes, we can work with everyone, but sometimes people are just going to feel more comfortable reaching out to a guy. You might feel as though you're understood a little bit

better, or you might have a lift experience, a shared experience. So yeah, the more guys we can get in, the better. Yeah, and it makes me think of your friend that you mentioned with the cinema therapy, too. And it'd be great if we could start portraying social workers in film in a different light. I think this idea that we're case workers or case managers and child protection and that's all we do. So that's, I think, you know, back to the podcast question. Like that's part of why I wanted to do a podcast is to start to change the narrative about what a social worker is and make it more attractive and make it more enticing for people. And it's an amazing profession and it's so fulfilling. And there's so many things you can do.

I didn't mention this, but I actually helped consult on a field. film for somebody as a just a psychological consultant, it's endless. Like the, the opportunities in this area are, it's unlimited. So that's, yeah, I really love the field, love social work, but want the idea and the image of it to evolve and shift and to attract more men and for us to know about all these opportunities out there. Needs to be representative. It needs to be, you know, social work is more than I'm thinking bubbles from Lilo and Stitch. You know, we're not all FBI agents who are from outer space. So yeah, there are so many things.

As you said, in terms of building your tool belt, even just one person can diversify the practice. And as I told you, before we started recording, I'm not even in a social work designated role. And apart from when I worked in the hospital, I've never worked in a role that has social work as the title. I've just taken my skills and my experience and interest. into a role where I've made it a social work role.

So I think if we can highlight, which hopefully both of us are doing through our work and through our podcasts, if we can highlight where social workers can be and what we can do and where our training can really translate, I think that's fantastic. Yeah, that's, and I think, Yasmin, you have in your podcast, like that fills in the gaps for people and there are a lot of gaps in the training. You know, we don't learn about the business side of things. Or sort of this mentality of like we're going to be overworked and underpaid and this sort of inevitable burnout that's going to happen. Like it doesn't need to be like that. So I think, you know, having podcasts and these are great opportunities to talk about psychotherapy, which in my

MSW program was one class, right, a direct practice class. So, I think we can do a better job in our universities and our education around social work. And in the meantime, you know, people like you and I can have great guests on to fill in those blanks and those gaps for people. Yeah. Thanks again, Matt, so much for doing this. I'm so grateful that we can make it work. We coordinated it and for sharing even just that background of how you got interested or how you even, where your value set came from in terms of your upbringing and being able to really see that translation of community-mindedness into how can I support people and you integrate your practice with research and looking at performance therapy and sporting.

And there's just so much to it that's super interesting. And I'd encourage anyone to go and have a listen to the podcast and look up some of those resources, which I'll put in the show notes. But you're really pushing the boundary. in terms of what social work scope and practice and therapy can be. So thank you so much for highlighting all of that. Thanks for saying that, Yasmin. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Thanks for staying up past your bedtime to speak to me. You're probably ready to crash. I really am. Yeah, but that's okay. This has given me energy, so I'm A-O-K. We'll have an amazing trip, and I really hope you enjoy Canada. Stay in touch, and yeah, maybe we'll have you on my show maybe after your trip. I'd love that. That sounds great. Awesome. Thank you again.

All right. Take care. Talk to you later. All right. Bye. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Matt, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm.fm. slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Blue Sky, or you can email SW Spotlight Podcast at at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Next episode's guest is Victory. who has over 11 years of experience in the NGO sector in Nepal and is currently pursuing her PhD. She has worked extensively on issues such as mental health, anti-trafficking, gender equality, community development in slum areas, youth empowerment and the prevention of commercial sexual exploitation of children,

and her expertise spans program design, proposal writing, monitoring and evaluation, capacity building and policy advocacy. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you're notified when this next episode is available. See you then.