The Taproot Podcast - ⚚ Wounding the Healer with Brittainy Lindsey

Episode Date: April 6, 2024

Join Brittainy's substack here: https://substack.com/@brittainy We Talk with with Brittainy Lindsey, a former therapist turned mental health writer, about the systemic issues plaguing the mental healthcare industry. They discuss the challenges faced by therapists, from inadequate training and lack of mentorship to exploitative practices and unsustainable working conditions. Brittany shares her experiences and insights on how these problems impact both therapists and patients, and offers ideas for potential solutions. Joel also shares his own efforts to create a more equitable and sustainable model for mental health practices through his collectively-owned clinic, Taproot Therapy. They explore the importance of empowering therapists, fostering collaboration, and staying curious about innovative treatment approaches like brain-based therapies. While acknowledging the darkness in the industry, Brittany emphasizes the need for hope and the potential for positive change if mental health professionals can unite and advocate for better systems. She encourages listeners to stay passionate and keep shining a light on the fixable problems in mental healthcare.    Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Podcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml Taproot Therapy Collective 2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216 Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail]   #MentalHealthcare #TherapistBurnout #SystemicIssues #InnovativeTherapies #BrainBasedTherapy #EmpoweringTherapists #CollectivelyOwned #SustainablePractices #MentalHealthAdvocacy #TherapistTraining #Mentorship #EthicalPractice #HopeForChange #UniteForMentalHealth #TaprootTherapyPodcast   Chapter Markers: 00:00:00 Intro 00:02:27 Brittany's background as a therapist 00:09:11 Challenges for early career therapists 00:18:30 Flaws in the mental healthcare system 00:30:32 Therapist exploitation and burnout 00:40:46 Innovative therapy approaches 00:44:53 Taproot Therapy's collective ownership model 00:52:56 Unethical practices and lack of oversight 00:57:57 The need for curiosity and collaboration 01:00:20 Brittany's hopes for the mental health field 01:04:04 Encouraging the next generation of therapists

Hey, so I'm here with the go off queen of LinkedIn. It's got a great sub stack. There's a lot of problems affecting mental health care, you know, from structure to service delivery, a ton of things. But today is a good day because it'll all be over. You know, we're going to talk for just a little bit. And all of the problems will we're going to figure out the solution to all of those things so that they will no longer be affecting you and probably will be solved by the time you're listening to this podcast so just an fyi we're really excited um can you tell me a little bit about your work because i don't know a ton about your history like i've read your writing and i like it um but i don't know a ton about how you got there there maybe i missed a bio somewhere on the sub stack but yeah no worries oh thanks for that introduction go off queen i'm gonna use that i'm taking that well i just like i don't know linkedin like used to be it just it's like people trying to be funny and do a meme but also be an hr department like at the same time and so it's just like the worst types of posts usually like the most broad stuff

stuffiness too yeah because you know which i get you're looking for a job or you need to show that you're professional or something. But I just love sharing stuff that is like kind of subversive and against that or just weird because it's like, yeah, I don't know. I don't really need over it. I'm kind of over trying to be super professional and in HR. Like, that's kind of my whole angle. So but you asked about my background. So my background is as an LMHC. I went to a K-Cred accredited program in Southern Maine, where I'm from, did all the hours, all the licensure, got fully licensed. I really mostly worked in community clinics. So that outpatient, you know, therapeutic work was my jam, thought I

would do that my entire life. Like I really became a therapist very young, I think I was 25 when I was conditionally licensed and then, you know, a little bit older, fully licensed. And that's a really hard, you know, road hoe, as a lot of people know, when they're getting into this profession, very young. And so what year was that? Like what's going on? That was, I graduated in 2012 and I left clinical practice by 2018. What was your training in or what did you, were you having any observations about the field as you were coming into it at that time? Yeah, I think I was just trying to

survive it, trying to figure out what it meant to be a good clinically sound ethical therapist. At that time, I was only had access really to being trained in like cognitive behavioral therapy, some acceptance and commitment, which I enjoyed motivational interviewing. And, you know, I could, I didn't even have access to being trained though in like DBT or any sort of EMDR or trauma informed that was very specialized at that time. Only like a few clinicians in each sort of practice or clinic even could do that work. So that was, we can get into any, anywhere we want to go in this conversation. That was really limiting too. You know, I just, I only had access to like a pretty narrow scope of like the evidence based, you know, treatments and seeing the people I was seeing, it was like, well, this

is only going to work like some of the time, you know, I could kind of tell very quickly that I was seeing such a broad scope of folks that I didn't really know how to help, you know, and I was able to acknowledge that. But that's sort of the moral injury of it, too, you know, that you're just expected to treat all these people without really given the tools and the skills and the supervision and the support to actually navigate that successfully. So that was just one piece of why I kind of transitioned out of direct clinical practice. Yeah, I remember that feeling of just terror when you're like, oh, I don't know. I don't know how to conceptualize this.

I haven't heard this. And then you go and you read and you take the CE and you keep like I just always, but the right out of school because it doesn't prepare you. School doesn't prepare you to be a therapist. You know, it takes takes a lot of other stuff. It does. And, you know, it takes the right environment, too, for years and years, I think, after school, you know. Because I hear, I consult, you know, with clinicians all the time.

And, you know, they're mostly clinicians who are unhappy with where they are or they're feeling burnt out. Even graduate students sometimes will reach out and just want to be like, okay, so, like, what's really going to happen for me when I get up there, when I'm, you know, not protected anymore, insulated, you know, by the academic world. And so we have frank conversations, but, you know, I don't deter, I try not to deter people, you know, from their passion because nobody could have deterred me from becoming a professional counselor. I was that. So that's not my angle, but it is to speak like openly and authentically about what we've all sort of experienced, or at least for myself. And there's generally, you know, one of the themes is that there is not a lot of high quality supervision. There is really no mentorship opportunities for folks. And it's so expensive.

And it's so costly. The people who can do the trauma therapy. I mean, my license is as a social worker, so there's kind of different humps that you have to get over and a little bit different of a struggle than at LMHC and ALC and some of the different counseling programs. But it's like, you already have to go to school. You already have to pay all this to go to school. Then you're told that you can't say you do this, even though it's pretty intuitive until you have this training.

The piece of paper says that and you've got to go out and get supervision which is just expensive to afford at all but then if somebody actually has like a lot of clinical practice skills well they can already make two three hundred dollars an hour seeing patients so what through you to see them for supervision is a pretty big cost proposition and it's just like everyone keeps saying like mental health crisis let's like smooth licensure out and across states or something. And it's like, okay, that's fine. But just to be able to pay, you know, $15,000 for a career where you're maybe going to make 30, 35, like when you're first coming out, I mean, how do you, how do you change that, you know, reality without there being more support there than there is. Absolutely. It's a really, it's just one more piece of what makes, you know, a lot of these

helping professions kind of untenable. Like we don't make a lot of money to begin with and to have to come out of your own pocket to just try and get better at your craft or just try and feel like you're doing the best you can by your patients and developing your own clinical skills. It feels really impossible, you know, especially for folks who are not well resourced, you know, like a lot of the people who are able to survive this industry are folks who have a certain level of privilege in society, right? Like there's a lot of, there's a lot of white women in therapy, right? Overwhelmingly female, you know, dominated profession. And, you know, I see that as people with just enough

privilege to get themselves into, right, graduate school, to have the loans, to, you know, do that trajectory, but not enough privilege, it seems to actually create a lot of change from, you know, within these structures and these systemic failures that we're seeing everywhere. So it's a really sort of enclosed space that seems forever shrinking in terms of finding safe places for clinicians to be able to show up, be themselves, do the work, not be inundated with, you know, high volume caseloads and the whole thing. It's just it seems wildly untenable. And I've been out of clinical practice since, like I said, 2018. And I'm paying attention, you know, I'm like sort of this observer that cares very deeply and is paying attention. And it seems to only have gotten worse in a lot of ways.

And I think private practice route, the entrepreneurial route seems to be sort of the one way, right? To find, to survive. And I think that's great. I will always, always support, you know, people's autonomy to do what they need to do to get by and work in a way, you know, that makes them feel safe and loved and supported. But, and, you know, and that's not fixed. That's actually not a solution to these systemic issues that just were, we continue to bump up against time and time again. Well, and that was one of the things that I was interested in, because this has been on the books

forever. So I would see a LinkedIn post, I'd be like, oh, I want to ask a question about that. And then I would forget about it. And then I'd see another thing and be like, oh, we're going to talk about this. But you're reminding me of one of the things that you posted a long time ago, which is the structure of these practices and the ethics of that. And you're reminding me of one of the things that you posted a long time ago, which is the structure of these practices and the ethics of that. And you're saying like, you know, I'm open to there being like another alternative where people aren't exploited, but I don't see that. There's either these practices that take this huge percentage of your income or you're just kind of or you do your time. You get a lot of street cred. Now you're well known and you have a referral base and you can charge whatever you want and don't have to take insurance.

But you're on your own. So like, how do you, you you know and then there's some group practices where people split the cost of a waiting room essentially or you know the water bottle you know machine getting refilled but that it's everybody's kind of they're doing their own thing and to talk about like what the future could look like because like yeah i wouldn't advocate for somebody unless they just love it or that's their career path to stay in the hospital and start off making 30 and then top out maybe making 50,000 if they really like you and you do your time. But then also we have to have bigger practices. Like it's not like we can just have everybody in private practice, you know, doing their thing.

So what does that look like? And I wonder when you do consulting, what are structures that you see as helpful pathways going forward to have a more equitable mental health? It's hard. It's really hard. I don't know that the solutions really exist yet. And what I'm interested in is people who want to have those conversations, who are actually say, like, these are the things that aren't working. How can we rethink that? How can we do this differently? You know, but there's a lot of built by design oppression, right? Like, what can we really do to change reimbursement rates if, you know, insurers and corporations are not willing to understand how that trickles down and affects our ability to make a living or just to stay in these professions at all, right? There's very little it feels like we can do as individuals or even as a united collective to really work against such an enormous power

differential that really does sort of dictate our ability to survive. And then, you know, you mentioned the other path, which is the cash pay route. That's viable for a lot of people. It works for a lot of people. I think when I spend a lot of time with that, I think ethics come in there. Gosh, people might be going broke just for the opportunity to spend an hour a week with me. And I know that the people who really need support are never going to be able to afford these costs. And therapists charge what they deserve. You know, that's not a, we really sort of demonize, I think, a lot of these rates that we see from therapists who are charging out of pocket. And I think that's

misguided as well. Therapists are doing what they need to do to survive this industry. And if it doesn't work for them for a million reasons to contract with insurers, then they're choosing, like they're taking back their power and saying, well, it's great and you can pay this or you can't pay this. And a lot of people are paying it and a lot of folks are busy and that's okay. It's not therapist's fault that the system is designed to not pay them, not to create this humanistic work. Which hits them against patients too. So it's not healthy.

I mean, patients take away the social worker's greedy or something because they're not aware of how these issues work. Yeah, and it gets very taxing, right? To have to continue to explain to your own clients or patients what's happening here. Like why it has to be this way. Well, this is insurance is very difficult to deal with. Let me talk to you about that. You know, or, or, and then it goes into like even diagnosis and treatment stuff. Like, well, let me explain to

you why I have to give you a diagnosis in order for us to work together because yeah insurance you know so i think that's really exhausting and like i think about potentially if ever to go back to clinical practice i get exhausted just thinking about having to educate you know person after person it's not people's fault that they don't know these things right but there's just this whole education piece to understand. The system's like the way that it works and the way that it makes money is based on it being too hard for you to know what your rights are to navigate any of it. That is so overwhelming. You know, like people are like, well, it's the patient's responsibility to know their plan or

whatever. It's like, I don't know 300 pages of my insurance plan and like when it pays for therapy where and now there's like you know these more obfuscatory like secret networks where they're like oh you're in network with you know this insurance company but you're not in the double special network where you actually get money for being in the it's like no you're in the network or you're not like that's not you don't know what network means like um you know there's like these three tiers now um like when my wife when we had our baby like we went to the hospital no complications the first one you know just like in and out and we get a bill in the mail that's like you owe sixty thousand dollars but good news right off with insurance they paid fifty nine thousand you know ninety or whatever so only thirty dollars is what you owe

and it's like maybe like like no money changed hands there like people look at this bill because it's a bill and the whole system is like well here's the fake rate that we say the insurance pays but actually they don't get it but then if you didn't have insurance then this is the price like it's the whole point is to make those things so murky and untransparent that you just see a big number it gets scared you're like oh i'm glad i have insurance i would have been on the hook sixty thousand dollars i mean blue Cross didn't pay anything to Grandview. You know, there was just part of like maybe, you know, $200 changed hands there or something for that, for that hour of time.

Yeah. So when people are looking at these prices and things like they don't understand, I mean, they don't understand how any of this works by design, I think. Yeah. No, you highlight some really important, you know, flaws in the system. And like, a lot of these numbers are completely arbitrary, right? It's a warfare, right? Between hospital systems particular and what insurers are not willing to do, right? And we've been in this race for three or four decades now. It's inflating prices on one end and pretending that there's deep

discounts and some sort of benefit from having these third party arbitrators on the other end. And it's this this battle and this dance and patients and providers are lost and not heard in any of it. So yeah, you see these fake numbers of my father in law has some health issues. And he actually had like a VAD device implanted for his heart. And so he's had a lot of hospital stuff going on. And so he has like a, not to get too specific, but he has like a permanent sort of open wound that he'll have to take care of for the rest of his life. And his coverage now says, well, we don't cover like supplies for that anymore. That's not part of your policy coverage, even though it's absolutely medically necessary, he will require that for the rest of his life. But insurers just get to say, no,

we don't do that anymore. You know, after they give you the port or whatever, too, you know? Yeah. Right. I mean, that's what these permanent surgeries, we're seeing that. And I mean, by the way, to anybody who, you know, doesn't know a ton about this, no one else in the world does this. There's no other first world country that looks two percent like our system like it is it is one of the weirdest most backwards things that we just continue to layer more and more weird on instead of kind of going back to the drawing board and saying like this doesn't work it's going to fall apart let's go ahead and take it apart and figure out something sustainable now i mean we just keep propping up this lumbering beast of a mess and i

mean we're in sure like you know like a lot of times i think the perception is that the therapist doesn't take insurance because they're like greedy or something but i mean there's not like an hour of therapy it's not an hour of my time you know it's 30 minutes charting it's following up with everyone on your release of information sheet it's the i mean when i got trained in brain spotting i had two thousand dollars in that cost me three thousand dollars to get trained in emdr i'm thinking about in four thousand close to five thousand dollars in emotional transformation therapy training now with the devices and the equipment and the travels have probably got about there so i mean to really keep pace with this

industry that's changing pretty quickly and moving away from just cognitive and behavioral therapies into more brain-based stuff it's very expensive it's like another master's degree yeah that's that's what's built into it like if i don't have the money to go to those trainings i can't do that next year you know and and then how am i different from the therapists who you're coming to see me after it didn't work you know we're tap like the, the end stop for every complex trauma treatment resistant. I've been in therapy. I've tried everything. I mean, do I want to have the cutting edge tools out there and be able to refer you to them, even if it's not through us. So, you know, all that. It becomes increasingly, you know, in an industry where only those who are particularly well

resourced or, or you're right, figure out how to do, you know, very specific industry where only those who are particularly well resourced or, right, figure out how to do, you know, very specific treatments, these are the only folks who really, I think, survive. It just, it just gets so untenable. You know, another thing is, you know, the, the high, high prevalence of 1099 contracts and, you know, treating sort of the therapy profession seems more and more to be treated like, sort of like this niche, almost like side hustle, you know, this industry that's not really respected, everyone wants to talk about it, everyone wants to talk about mental health, and how important treatment is. But when push comes to shove, so many of these companies and, you know, private practice is its own sort of outlier, I think, compared to like what's happening with larger organizations. And

when you work in community mental health and it's sort of like a safe haven for folks. And I love that. And often what I, what I think about is how can we pull what works for so many therapists in private practice back into these other environments that clearly are not taking any of these ideas, messages, principles into consideration when you're trying to take what makes the private practice guy lean and mean and competitive and then pull that institute pull that individual knowledge into an institution and the two things are one just like size like when you have a really big hospital when you have a really big anything change kind of becomes the enemy no matter how many courses you say we want to improve and innovate and please bring your suggestions and new ideas up front like you don't you can't really believe that. And you get this kind of like insecurity at the end of the, like USSR imploding of like, well, that's a very good point that you bring up, except like, we cannot be wrong. And, you know, like I just had those interactions in the hospital where it was like, if you're

right about this, we're going to have to go back and do so much work that we can't really do that. So just don't say that again, even though we ask you to bring up good ideas. And then the other thing is capital. I mean, that these are profit seeking companies. And as long as that's there, then is there a difference between me keeping somebody for a long time, who's really good, or just kind of kicking them out the door as soon as they can go compete against me and then getting another person who is right out of school and maybe isn't a great therapist, but I got to employ 500 people. So what's the cost benefit for me? Why would I keep this person when I can pay that person less? So the larger places you

may get a good therapist, but if they can figure their thing out, they're going to be on their way out. That's right. That's right. Because, and this is true, I think for any good employee, regardless of what industry you're in, is that if you're not being treated well in your environment, good folks are going to leave, right? And trust that they can find their way to an environment that supports them better. So I think that's largely, you know, what we see. As soon as people build some competency,

they get their full licensure, they realize that they can do this without being exploited or without being treated like crap or without being indicted with these caseloads that are making them literally sick, you know, they will make plans or get to that realization where they need to go do something different. Yeah. Well, and the colleges are different now, too. I mean, a ton of the stuff, like the bigger

places, the people who teach it or have all the awards or whatever, they'll say, well, I'm a therapist, too. But it's like you're really working at the student counseling center, you know, two days a week or something like what you're doing. And I know that you're famous and you've got all these fancy doctor awards, but if you went and tried to sell this in the strip mall, it's not competitive enough for anyone to buy it. And so because of that, it's like, well, this person wrote the book or they have all the credentials that are medical, but then this other person has leaned in mean and making all this money individually doing this other thing that the hospitals fundamentally can't they're going to be the last to come around to something like brain spotting they're going to be the last to figure

out you know what to do with the mdr which they just never really figured out what to do with the research there they're you know it's always going to be easier for them to do cognitive behavioral therapy and drugs and so you see like the cutting edge private practice people moving in a different direction than academic psychology, which is a bad thing for the profession. Like, I don't like that that's happening when I pointed out, like that shouldn't be happening, but it is, you know, so many people come out of these programs being told, well, CBT is the gold standard. It's the best thing ever because it's the most researchable. Yeah, absolutely. We're not doing a very good job bringing back our real world learning and understanding of what works in clinical practice back to things that, you know, I value now in terms of mental health and healing are not things that I learned academically, you know, like, like we were saying,

you know, CBT was kind of the go-to. I think it still is. It's fairly easy to learn. It's fairly easy to train people to do. It's fairly easy to administer, not always. And it works for some people. And just so just sort of kind of good, like two stars out of five is what we're getting, I feel like, in a lot of environments with what we're producing, you know, from school programs. And it's just it's just not working. And it's not especially not working for the clinician's mental health. You know, imagine, you know, put yourself back in graduate school and how hopeful you were and all the things you were learning and that curve from leaving graduate school to figuring out what it's really like to be sitting with all these different folks and how ill equipped you really feel. And the lack of access you have because you're not making any money to get yourself trained up to get yourself mentorship. I mean, it's really, really, I think causes so much internalized shame in the therapist. And I write about that's something I write about quite frequently is how

the way that our systems are broken does produce this internalized shame, I think in a lot of us, and it takes a lot of unlearning and peeling back those layers to really figure out, you know, is it really that I was a shitty therapist or did I just really never have the things that I needed? And now that I know better, I can do better, you know, with that. Which a lot of times for people in the helping profession is them reliving their childhood trauma that is, they haven't, you know, totally healed yet or some role that they played with a parent. And I think that's a lot of under the negative reactions when you bring these issues up and try and get people to sit with complexity and admit that things are broken and change is the anger of no, no, no, don't do that. Stop.

Why are you why are you doing this? It's it comes from that same wound that got them in the profession in the first place. You know, absolutely. They don't want to admit how broken the system is. Yeah. And I just I guess thanks for saying that, because I think that's really probably gets a bit to the to the root of what I think we need to do. Because it feels overwhelming. our clients and our patients. And I guess maybe it's naive, but I believe that if we form enough collective voices that there might be more things we can do to help change this trajectory, but it does feel like a very uphill battle. And I understand, you know, that clinicians are just

going to say, well, I'm just going to hang my shingle out and do my own thing, keep my head down and do the best I can with one, you know, one, one, one client at a time. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I do ask people to sort of pick up their head, at least from time to time and try and take that 30,000 foot view. And how can we, you know, elevate these conversations and be aligned as a collective and how we're really advocating for these systems to treat us all better and serve us all better. Yeah. And I think like the LPC and the social work programs, I wish would learn a little bit from each other because the social work ones, like it is just this huge person and environment view where you're learning about systems and power and politics and the way that wealth and power functions and the history of healthcare and all these things. But you don't get a lot of the clinical technique you kind of have to pick that up later whereas the lpc is

like it's all psychopathology it's all just like this diagnosis but then it's like you can't see the forest through the trees sometimes you know like there was a case at um one of the hospitals with a student and it was like all lpcs and they asked a social worker that was one of my supervisors to like come in and and see why she couldn't figure out and she was like they were like they were trying to figure out this anxiety with the student who was having difficulty and they went through it and so she like kicked the clinical psychologist and the lpcs out of the room and was like is are you uncomfortable that you're an afric an African-American that all these people are white? She was like, yeah.

She was like, okay, well, there's the source of the anxiety that you guys have been looking for for a long time. Because, you know, this student didn't come from that community. She wasn't comfortable. But it just didn't occur to them because it's like, which F code is this, man? Like, which diagnosis is it? Like, you just almost, they knew too much to kind of see the forest through the trees there. Absolutely. And it's so funny you say that because it's so true yeah and and i wanted it that way i wanted to just

focus on the clinical treatment of that person centered one person at a time like that was my that was my bread and butter and that's what i loved but it it doesn't work we do have to have a blend of zooming out and paying attention um and we it's a it's a flawed intellectualizing of everything. Right. Not that complicated. Like, we just have to take a look around and realize, you know, what's really going on here. But that's a great that's a great example. Yeah, I love that idea.

That's a great system change idea. We need to blend what works great in social work and what works great in clinical counseling and have some overlap there and learn from each other. I had a mentor when I was in graduate school who runs a pretty well-established private practice in Portland, Maine. And he said, you know, one thing that social workers do awesome that us counselors don't do well at all is network and connect with each other and, you know, create like this network of folks who are all sort of trying to champion or paying attention to the same things going on. Counselors historically have not done that very well. So, and, and my

whole thing is like, I don't care what your letters are after your name. Like if you identify at all with like being a helper or healer, working in healthcare whatsoever, like we can find a way to align. And I care a lot less about what the letters are after your name as like what your values are and how we can, you know, all show up to this conversation. Yeah. And I think the letters and the trainings and the CEs and that I'm triple, double, extra special certified in this thing, that tendency feeds into the worst insecurities in the profession and it makes such

bad clinicians. I mean, I would so much rather bring somebody on with our collective who is like, oh, I read Albert Ellis and I like this about him but I don't like that. But what I do when I get to the part where he doesn't work is I use French pearls and I like a shot. And somebody who's read and integrated all this stuff, like that person's

going to be a hundred times better of a clinician than the person who's like, who's like, I've done five years of training in DBT. I'm DBT level 8 million and here's all the paper. So they, I mean, that just doesn't tell me very much about if you're any good with a patient or if you can solve a problem that you can't solve, which is really to me, like the trick of the profession is like, you keep bumping into problems that you can't solve and then you need to know how to solve that well if you think you can do everything you're never there you know and um i mean like going back to you talking about systems and all this stuff i mean so many of the like you know cures for the anxiety or when i just point out something that the person doesn't really want to admit that

they don't want to like feel and it's not that there's a solution or you need a cognitive or behavioral change. It's just like, yeah, man, like it does you like it does feel like you're in a sinking cruise ship of a country. You know, like, I'm, I've made it, I guess, and I'm looking at the cost of American cheese. And I'm like, what, how do I do this? And by design, you will not hear about these problems on the news or in the paper, like you look at it it's going to be like well actually here's a secret reason why you're gaslighting yourself and you really you're you have lots of money and inflation's not real or you know which bathroom and disney movie is allowed this week i mean it's this aesthetic social stuff that not that there's nothing to it or that we shouldn't have an opinion on those

but to take away the it's a distraction from the structural failure of this place yep and and people feel that and i'm just like yeah that's that's it i can't say anything about it but you know a lot of the way wealth and or i can't really do anything about it but a lot of the way wealth and power works this stuff goes back to the bronze age probably not changing how can you and your kids be okay in this world let's figure that out because but it's like people don't the anxiety is created by not quite looking at the sun because it's too bright to look at and i can't do it and when you just bring that into the room and give them permission they're like oh okay you know but it's us trying not to know what we know if that makes sense i don't know yeah you know and

and a lot of that is like bringing it back to core counseling you you know, skills, like just being able to, to hold that with somebody and like not trying to fix or change. I feel like a lot of times we're always trying to fix or change. And sometimes that's the absolute last thing we need to do. Like it's holding it, it's validating it. It's saying like, you're not crazy. This is happening. Like the price of things, you know, is going up insanely and inflation, you know, is out of control. And like, yeah, there are all these societal structures that are causing a lot, you know, of mental health struggles and therapy was never designed to be a solution for systemic failure. And that seems to be what we are all asked to do as mental health professionals is prop up all of these conditions that are surfacing as a result of people being really oppressed by systemic design.

You know, we are in sort of, as I think everyone probably in history feels that they're living in a unique time period. And the thing that feels unique to me is how, you know, I wrote about, you know, the, the, the invisible power of excessive wealth, um, last week, I think this very small number of Americans, zero, you know, 0.1% of all Americans is controlling the wealth of like more than half of, you know, our, our GDP, you know, of, of, of all of American wealth that this country holds. And it's up to them. They're the ones that are really dictating how these systems operate, why they're so dysfunctional. There's a lot of political overlap with all of these things. Our food system, the way food is grown and manufactured, healthcare, justice system, all of it. It's to benefit know, healthcare, justice system, like all of it. It's to benefit very, very, very, very wealthy people. And if past a certain amount of capital, you make money in a recession. You're not afraid of it. Why would you care if you can profit off

of that? Yeah. And I mean, all the money injected from COVID, like all those COVID relief funds, I mean, healthcare CEOs made more money than they've ever made from all that COVID. But we didn't talk about that. We talked about how somehow people weren't working nine months later because that little $1,500 stimulus check they got, they somehow had been able to live on that. So they just didn't need to work. I was like, man, can you tell me how people are paying rent, water, power, gas, and food without... Can you tell me how people are paying rent, water, power, gas, and food? We need to get these people some budgeting classes because I want to figure out how they're stretching that stimulus check for eight months.

I kind of refuse to watch news. I've reached that point in my life. I'll read news. I like reading and information, but I really can't watch what's being said. It's a dog and pony show. It's a distraction. I mean, there's not news on the news, which is a weird development. Yeah. So it's interesting. There's the digital age and the age of information that we're in, and yet we all are struggling to figure out what's real. It's causing a lot of problems.

Well, you've talked a lot about the kind of emotional and uh effect of the systems on the providers and on the patients but you know practically what would things what kind of changes would you advocate for which is a big question i mean there's like i'm sure that there's something against like unionizing essentially in the insurance contract like if you tried to go get all the the therapists in in alabama to say hey blue cross you got to raise our rates or else we're just going to leave your network and they couldn't have no private practice people they couldn't survive with just hospitals and big clinics you know what um well you know what what are the kind of collect because you talk a lot

about you diagnose a lot of the problems with labor um you know taproot was a kind of a different experimental structure to try and basically do an experiment to see if we could do a thing where labor owned the practice. But a lot of that stuff, it has to be an experiment because there's not a lot of... We have been moving in such a bad direction for a long time. We've got to try something new. Do you have any ideas there? So I like to talk about what I think would have worked for me better when I was practicing as a clinician or what I think would help me stay longer because that definitely is still real, a real hurt and a pain, you know,

that I felt that I had to leave to just like find a way to survive, find a way to make money to pay our bills. And we own a house. And the reason we own a house is in part because I left clinical practice and found my way to make more stable money elsewhere. There is a deep pain in me still that I had to leave. I did not want to. And I have anger and hurt and resentment. But one of the things I think would have worked really well for me does not exist. I've never heard of this existing is being able to see a much lower volume of people on a daily or weekly basis. I'm a highly sensitive person. I think a lot of people who are helpers and healers are intuitive empaths, you know, tend to trend

towards being sensitive folks and seeing six, seven, eight people every day literally made me sick. It was just too much on my nervous system. I didn't quite know that at the time. Cause like, you know, when you're entrenched in that survival mode, you can't, you can't take that 30,000 foot view. You don't have time. You don't have the energy to really realize what's not working and why. And when I got to private practice, I did sort of taper down. And I found that if I was able to see four people a day was like a really good sweet spot for me. And especially if I work well in the morning. So like if I could see four folks in the morning or by early afternoon, and then, you know, be able to talk to my supervisor for like an hour or more about like

all the things that was going through my mind about those sessions I just had, you know, um, that would have been so much better of a structure for me over the longterm if I was able to do that. Um, and then what I really think would be awesome now, um, is if I could build in like a couple hours of writing, like creating blog post content for somebody or something like that, you know, so having like this blended approach, I think to clinician work, we're like, yes, we're doing direct service work, but that's not the only thing, you know, that we're doing, we can change it up. And so our days can look different. You know, I think we need that variety to really feel like we still are having an art form to this practice that we're doing. I think that's really important. So I haven't seen or heard of positions like that. I think

that probably would only exist in private practice, but that sort of blended model. I think if we could find a way to make that work structurally, I think it could really invite a lot of people who have left this industry for dead back to practice. Well, and I think too, one of the things is that like, I wish insurance would pay for two-hour sessions because you could see a lower volume of that. And with trauma and a lot of complex trauma and relational therapy, like I think less therapy for longer works better you know but they won't pay for the two-hour session so the patient either is on the hook for that and the insurance pays for the first hour but like why would you pay for why would you

say okay you can come seven days a week to see this therapist and we'll pay for it you just can't come twice every two weeks you know you know you can come for a two-hour session every two weeks we won't pay for that but you can come for a two-hour session every two weeks we won't pay for that but you can come literally seven days a week and the claims will sail through i mean why it doesn't make sense you know and and it's really frustrating because now we have the data on outpatient services we have the data that shows and this is from like ever north um which is owned by etna or i forget yeah um but they did studies and showed that when people have access consistent access to outpatient therapy they get better not just in their mental health but also in their physical health the volume of their claims

goes down they are less costly to manage year over year so not just in the first year of receiving therapy but if they receive therapy in the second year those So not just in the first year of receiving therapy, but if they receive therapy in the second year, those cost savings go down even further year over year when individuals have access to outpatient mental health services. So the proof is already there that is extremely cost effective for managed care to be paying almost with opening the floodgates entirely without any of this red tape at all, it would actually cost them less to manage patients, you know, financially over their mental and physical health if they just gave unrestricted access to mental health therapy.

So it would literally be a win-win. There is literally a win-win that exists in this system that they are not willing to engage in whatsoever. Well, like I did business consulting before I did social work and some of the, I mean, you'll get with the owners of these businesses where it's like they're spending all this money. But when you tell them, Hey, look, you screwing this person over in this situation is actually costing you money because you're not keeping talent or whatever. It's like, they can't get it. And a lot of those forces insurance is the same. It's like, I mean, you have literally literal research saying that this is cheaper for them and they can't swallow the initial expense because it feels

like they lost or there's some way around that or, you know, that profit seeking, whatever. And it's like, you know, y'all are requiring me to use evidence-based practice as the insurance company. Why aren't you using it? There isn't any because it's all about risk management. You know, I've been inside. I've worked for health insurers. You know, not super high up, but high up enough to ask difficult questions and get shitty answers about them. Yeah.

And it's all about containing costs because there's a quarterly earnings report that has to go out to stockholders. That is more important than the long-term profitability of the company, the quarter. We have these such perverse incentives. That's what it's about. Well, I was curious if you, because I do think that the newer generation seems to be open to new ideas. They don't have the insecurity of like, oh, you're doing something new. Did mommy and daddy say you could do that?

That I see in some of these older professionals that i butt heads with and um you know so with taproot like my practice like the the goal of it was to be kind of i mean one we wanted to be different than the this kind of cbt practice and and the kind of boomer like zen rock stacked up gentle gentle time this is a safe space and so our brand was a little bolder it was like yeah we do state-of-the-art you know uh complex trauma neuroscientific approaches but also um you know this therapy can be part of life and art and growth and cool and it doesn't have to you have to be like a hurt puppy you know coming in here like sometimes i feel like that language keeps more people out you know that we have to make you know you know it's a safe space but it

also is like you don't you there's something that gets a little bit performative sometimes. Um, and then, and so, uh, the structure of it was, you know, that we were going to do, we don't look like a normal thing where there's the little target light and whatever. I mean, we wanted it to, um, because we, everyone was trained in brain spotting, which is very expensive. Everybody was trained in phase two of brain spotting. We have the QEG brain mapping and neuromodulation clinic downstairs. We are now getting trained in ETT, which is really neat. Another brain-based medicine. And then we're one of the few places where you can get all of those with somatic and experiential models that everyone has at least one of those. So we kind of are building these protocols to

figure out like what works better, you know, like we know if it's asd brain spotting may not work right away but then with the neuromodulation we can now use brain spotting to treat trauma but the trauma it has to be done in this order with a during a little condition and things and that isn't something that you um see everywhere because people tend to just be doing one kind of therapy. But then from a business perspective, I really believe that in that labor, you know, has right stone structure, like I really was never gotten offers to run businesses that I turned down, because I just think the revolving door model of like, I'm going to take 60% of your income, and then an extra 10 to 15% in made up fees, until you can go compete against me and then leave and then an extra 10 to 15% in made up fees until you can go compete against me and then leave. And then you go into private practice and then I'll hire another one of you. And I have all

the patients and people know who I am. And I'll deign to give you some for, you know, more than half your income. Like I just, I don't like that model. So what we wanted to do with Taproot was have a collectively owned practice where, you know, on paper, it's a 1099 contractor thing, but we take young people who they were that I can talk to and be like, this person knows what's up, but the hospital is not going to value you for a long time, but we'll invest in you now. And we don't make money on you for a year or two years. So we really need you happy. You know, like I'm putting myself over a barrel because if we just spend all this money to do a designer office for you and prefer personalized marketing and set

you up your brand and you just take it and walk. Then I'm hosed. So like I'm like, we really want to keep you happy. And so because of that, we tried to be really lean and mean and to automate as much stuff as we can and to not have like a lot of like, you know, administrative and W2 overhead and work smarter, not harder. And then if we make extra money, we pay it back to the clinicians as a bonus at the end of the year. But what that did was, one, we're not all by ourself. You know, we're not just like, okay, well, I'm, I'm made it in private practice. So now I'm by myself, like it actually is a functioning clinic where we all can collaborate and do these things, kind of like an institute in a way that you can't at those other practices, because the people who are good are leaving you know um and then two um like people can do things like you're talking about like i like to write and do the podcast which wouldn't really be a cosp opposition that made any sense for me but it fills up it does all

of this wonderful seo that would cost 15 20 000 if we went out and bought it but i can produce content people like and that's benefiting the other clinicians so they understand so i'm kind of i get paid for that and then you know like some of them have more administrative um or networking or you know whatever and in private practice none of those skills would get used you know um because there's no reason for me to continue to have a podcast i'm already full in a year so why would i do that you know but it lets you break that up and everybody's strengths kind of shine so i hope that that collectivized thing is something that happens. But I really, really just didn't want anyone to work for me if they would make more money not working for me. There'd be no reason for that to happen. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that,

because I think that's the type of innovation that we need to be looking at together, you know, that we could invest in people who are up and coming, who have something to look forward to. You know, like I've heard from like a lot of clinicians I consult with, especially newer clinicians, they're like, so what's the goal here? What's my overarching goal here? Just see as many patients as possible as long as as I possibly can, until I can't do it anymore. Like, that doesn't feel very good as a clinician who wants to grow their skills and get really good at something. I imagine the fact that you're using actual devices helps to destigmatize and break up some of the drone of all talk therapy, you know, on overload, on repeat all the time. You know, those are some really wonderful things that you're doing there.

I hope I'm interested if you're tracking that in any way or how you're seeing, you know, clinician mental health sort of improve as maybe compared to other environments they're coming from. I'm always looking for a problem. So I'm like always terrified they're going to leave and are like, what can we do? And we're like, we're happy. Calm down, you know, whatever. So, I mean, so far, nobody who's joined Taproot has ever left. But there's nothing in our contract.

There's no non-compete. There's no buyout. There's no punitive, whatever. I mean, if you don't want to work here, take all the patients that you have, walk,, our management to make sure that everything there is always keeping them happy and making them more money than they would make on their own. Because the second that they can, they should leave. Like, if you can make more money, then not at Taproot. But we're able to bundle, you know, very professional, like, billing and admin services and all of these. We have a huge professional library. Like we're able to provide trainings, um, you know, on a larger scale cheaper because we're bundled together than anybody could individually go out and get all that stuff. You know, that's, that's awesome.

I think that just your lens of like empowerment, autonomy, like wanting people to learn skills that they can be self-sovereign with, whether they stay with you or not, you know, that level of, um, self-empowerment, I think clinicians need everywhere, far and wide. And it's just, it's just really rare to find that. So I appreciate what you're doing. Well, I mean, I, I don't know if that works. I mean, so far everyone else has made more money. They haven't left. That's a really good. Well, but they have, they've made more money than they would have if they hadn't, if they had not joined, like they made more money being a part of Taproot, but I've made less money trying to start this whole project.

Like, cause I, you know, like it, maybe if it works out in the long run, you know, all that, that's a nice thing to have a piece of, but in the short term, I mean, it's been like an investment, you know, it's not something I don't I'm not making what they're making. So it's still experimental. Yeah. Yeah. But I think we're going to have to run those experiments, you know, and we've learned a ton about how to be leaner. Like you look at our overhead and what we're able to provide with what we spend based on practices that are four or five times our size, like they should able to be leaner. Well, this is something I've heard too, that practices could operate on leaner margins than they do. And that's why, you know, even in these group practices or private practices, there can still be exploitation that exists unnecessarily. I didn't really know that.

And still I started talking to some practice owners who were like, yeah, we can offer like an 80-20 split and still be totally cool on our books. Especially when you're a teletherapy firm and you're not even the rent and all of that. I mean, if anyone's not familiar with the market, like the way that, I mean, there's W-2 practices that act like they're God's gift to pay a new $30,000 or something. And then there's these 1099 contractor practices where you're your own company but they're going to refer and manage for you but they pay you you know usually about 60 of what you make but then you never actually get that in practice at a lot of the firms around here some are better than others but

i mean the ones that like me and my friends have worked at it was like oh you didn't lock your notes on a sunday when you didn't have any notes to lock but you didn't hit the lock button so that's five percent fee and just do like it just stuff designed to scam money because that's how they make money and they don't care if you leave and it's in your contract and if you want to leave early you got to pay me and buy out of it and and so i mean on paper we are a 1099 contractor practice like we're all individual companies but the structure is more to protect them and let them run it. And everyone gets a piece of what the whole total project makes at the end of the year. So you're incentivized to take some time to learn how the QEG works, you know, help set up a referral stream for them so that more people in the community know about it because you get a part of it. And the hope is that, you know, everybody is able to make more together than we ever would have individually. And, you know, content creator,

you know, being like a thing that a lot of therapists do it when they start, but then they stop because they're full and they don't need to get their brand any bigger. But because we're all writing articles and doing podcasts and contributing, like we could have an online store where we sell wellness products. I mean, there's a lot of things we can do with our national reach now that they would all kind of have a part of. and i think those kind of collective structures are things we need to to work on but collectivism doesn't mean everyone's doing the same thing you know it means you find people with the skills you need and share it yeah it almost almost means the opposite to me like the collective means like maybe generally all trying to push the ball forward but in a variety of different ways you

know like this is an experiment for you and i'm'm sure like you said, you've gleaned so many insights from this. You know, how else are we supposed to move, you know, our professions forward if we're not trying new things, you know? So yeah, I really like that. And, you know, I talk a lot about 1099s and I don't mean to suggest that it's not a good thing. I think there's value there. Like you've obviously built a lot of value into what you're offering to clinicians and they know that upfront. And so that's a symbiotic relationship. If that works, I love that. But what I see is a lot of these bigger companies saying, well, we can't afford insurance. So here you go. And we're still going to tell you that you need to do CBT with all your clients and you have a caseload that is way too much for you and you know what i mean so 1099s can go a different route but they're definitely

usually kind of exploitive a way to turn the profession into gig work which is what they're trying and that's what's scary to me is you look at like something like better help that the the lefty good guy on the podcast is saying mental health awareness and then they roll their sponsored ad for better health or something and it's like these companies that want to reach across state lines and say that they're the same as therapy and all of that. I mean, that seems like the scariest thing for me is somebody trying to turn, you know, social work into Uber basically. Yeah. Or, and with AI, you know, literally they're already trying to replace, you know, the work of human connection with AI. And there's lots of things AI can be leveraged to do, but I don't think we should start with replacing therapeutic work.

It doesn't seem like that'll really work out in the long run, but people are trying to do it. Well, and a lot of those companies, it's kind of icky. And what they do is because they'll say, you know, this is therapy, therapy, therapy on their YouTube ad. But then when you go to your paperwork, yeah, this is a licensed therapist, but they're not doing therapy to you. So they're bypassing all of this. And she's going to read the terms of service, 30 pages or whatever, but they're bypassing all of this legislation. And they're not providing therapy, but they're for some reason advertised that they're- They're advertising it as that. Yeah. There's a real lack of oversight. I mean, and it's hard to even keep up with the lawsuits and the litigation that is coming out, but people have to keep blowing whistles. You know, I have a real affinity for whistleblowers because a lot of times we don't know about any of this horrible shit until it really sees the light of day. And yeah, that's one of the other things I try and write about too. Like keep speaking up, even though it feels scary and hard. Like if we create collectives where it's safe to do that, you know, the more

we can speak out and try and say that this is not okay. You know, a lot of it is like clinicians taking back, you know, in some ways ownership of what it means to be a therapist, of what it means to do therapy, what therapy is, not allowing like all these corporations just come in and bastardize it and cut it down into little parts and sell it off. That's not, that's not what any of us came to do. Yeah. But I mean, that takes some political will and some like desire to actually regulate, like when BetterHelp sold people's Facebook and when they sold Facebook therapy notes illegally, which if one provider did that, they would be out of practice. They wouldn't have a license. But for some reason, when you do it with, you know, 4 million people, you're, you, it isn't an existential threat to your existence, you know,

or even that inconvenient, they got fined less money than they made selling the data. So, I mean, that's a huge failure of regulation that I don't really see right left any outcry about. Yeah. And it happens. And they even plan for that. Well, we're, they even, they know, they know they're going to have to pay a fine, but they know that it's less than the payout. So there's a lot of darkness in this industry. And I try and balance calling it out with having hope. I think that's important and not just talk about how terrible and bad it feels sometimes, but that there is hope and highlighting people's stories and who's trying to do it right and who's trying to experiment and do new things and keep people in this industry, in this profession, because God knows all of us need helpers and healers in the

world. So I can feel it. I think like the speed of, you know, there's these kind of post-EMDR things that are just really quick, like ETT and brain spotting, especially, I mean, where I see those kind of empowering the profession is that they're just so fast. The cost proposition isn't that much for the patient, even if you charge $300 an hour, because they can get better in a month. And things that used to just take years, it's not an intuitive therapy idea. It's more of a neural neurological, kind of weird thing. And I mean, you're looking at pupillometry and stuff and those things just work for PTSD in weeks and what really used to take years, even with very good therapy because it's not, it's not talk-based. I mean, it's kind of operating somehow directly

on the brainstem and basal ganglia and like, they're just, there's some exciting new stuff coming. I wish it was more available. I do too. And that's wonderful. And I think we have to be willing to think beyond talk therapies, right? I think that's where we start, but like, we have to be willing to just sort of figure out what else works. I think we're not, a lot of us are not willing to say how little we truly know about the brain, just like where we are in society, in evolution. Like there's so much undiscovered that we know about the brain and what helps and what heals. And it's very individualized. But I think it's super exciting that folks with, you know, licensed clinical social work backgrounds can find their way to learning these specific skills with brain mapping

and bringing people like neurologically essentially based treatments that can help them like heal some really severe symptoms in a really short amount of time. I mean, that's incredible. And I agree, we need to have those accessed in more places and be more widely available. I think one of the worst things we do is get so focused on our little niche that we don't want to pay attention to how the field is growing and all these new things that are happening. And so one of the things that has worked really well for me is to not become too fused with whatever it is that I learn. I always want to learn more and just like keeping that really piqued curiosity about what else is out there, you know, what else could work. I think that's really sort of a recipe for growth when you're willing to sort of keep your head up at what else

is out there and not just only be focused on the things that we have been trained. Well, I think the traditional hierarchies are as damaging for the people on the bottom of the totem pole than they are on the top. The thing is, I don't know how all of that stuff works. I mean, Jay has two PhDs. Deanna is an electrical engineer PhD. I mean, they run that nervous stem stuff marie does things that i don't know she's got trainings that i don't know i mean if it feels like oh well i want to have this practice and everybody needs to do my same kind of therapy and i need to be the expert and they have to come here and they'll learn from me and then after they've done their time they'll i'll kiss their ring and now they're the whatever like i don't want to hire people who only do

worse versions of what i know until I want to hire people who are smarter than me, because that's what has allowed us to provide things that I can't alone and to discover things that I couldn't by ourself. And we have so many protocols and integrative, you know, methodologies now that don't exist anywhere, just because we were willing to get out of our comfort zone and be curious and get a bunch of people who were new things the other person didn't and weren't insecure about that together in one space. That's beautiful. And I think that's, that might be the future, right, of where this is all headed is that we don't just exist in silos as professional counselors and social workers and psychologists

and psychiatrists, but that we do have these blended approaches where we're going multidisciplinary and we're figuring out, you know, how can we pull from all these different fields and really sort of get that holistic view on how to help people in really innovative ways. Sometimes they're like ancient ways and sometimes they're strikingly innovative ways, but like, how can we take a really holistic approach? So that's really cool what you're doing. And I suspect that those types of approaches will continue to grow. Yeah, I do. I mean, when we opened BrainSpotting, there were two providers in the state almost, and now there's like more than 50 just in our zip codes. In three years, it's really blown up because the market demanded it. And patients don't pay for things that don't work for a long time.

They don't recommend things that don't work to their friends. That's great. Yeah. Congratulations on that kind of growth. That's really impressive. Well, I mean, we don't have the 50 providers. We're a five-person practice. But I just mean that we brought it here and it kind of fueled demand and people heard about it. And that's great. And I hope ETT is the next thing to go that direction. The QEG brain mapping stuff is, I mean, that's another issue is like, you bump up against the market where it isn't educated yet. And there's like 20 competing technologies in that sector that all have different pros and cons. But they range from like snake oil to like well-intentioned but doesn't work as good as this other one to like really good.

But the people are all calling all of those brain maps or neurofeedback or neurostimulation. Like they're making a distinction. So it's not the time when somebody says, I don't do that. I did it and it was a waste of money. Well, you did it on a was a waste of money. Well, you did it on a $20 Brookstone machine. You know, you're just calling it the same thing as this $30,000.

You know, I did. Or, or the, a lot of them are protocol driven where there's not somebody interpreting the brain map. They're just like, Oh,

ADHD click. Well, you know, your ADHD looks different than mine, you know? So that I think those are, those are the market knowledge is kind of an obstacle too. Yeah. It's a learning curve, right? I feel like that happens when, especially when

there's new treatments, right? There'll always be people, maybe not necessarily bad actors, but people who are going to try and like jump in and do that work without fully understanding it, you know, without being really adequately trained or, or, you know, having those supervision or mentorship that they need to really learn it well. So you get that's a that's a real deterrent in our industry, too. You know, some people are really, really focused on delivering high quality clinical care. And there's a lot of deterioration from that, too. And that causes a lot of infighting and a lot of chaos. And it's like, gosh, well, like, who's ever what patients are going to trust us if we can't we can't even have like public discourse and talk about, you know, what really works or the high quality ways to approach these interventions. So that is something that's always funny to me is you see all these like medical conspiracy theories now or conspiracy theories about therapy where they're like, oh, all the therapists go to this conference and they're you know doing to work this political end or this whatever you see all this conspiracy stuff and it's like man have you ever been to a

conference where people are presenting research like they are all fighting nobody like open an academic journal it's all just like clapbacks and like to to act like you you have this consistent cabal that could be motivated to get along at all i wish we were organized enough to do something that powerful. Yeah, trust me. We are not good enough at just furthering evidence-based practice, let alone being the blizzard people or whatever. Fact, yes. Well, is there anything we don't get to

that you want to talk about with your work or perspective on everything? We touched a little bit on, I tried to touch a little bit on everything you write about. No, thank you. I feel like I could talk to people for hours, you know, especially fellow therapists, especially people who are in practice about the flaws and, and the struggles. Um, but it really does, um, fire me up to hear people who are doing things

their own way and they're having at least some success with it, or they're enjoying it. Um, they want to stay in the field. Um, enjoying it. They want to stay in the field. I want everyone to want to stay in this field. That's, that's, you know, that's why I ride and I'm turning around and trying to shine a light on all these dark spots. It's not because I hate the industry, or I'm just a resentful, angry person, you know, it really is because I want more therapists to find and build the places where they can really stay and do the work. And it didn't work out that way for me. Maybe it could in the future. I don't know.

But I want us, like, especially the people who leave or have been just really morally injured, like the people who didn't find their way to stay. I really want us to turn around and to spread light and to talk about why it didn't work and what could be different and how to keep this industry going and alive because we got a lot of passionate people who are really intuitive healers who really could make a tremendous difference in this world. So those are the things that I write about. I could talk about it forever, but it was such a pleasure to learn from you, Joel, and all the good work that you're doing. The only thing I really have to plug is my LinkedIn, where I write Brittany Lindsay on LinkedIn. And I also have a Substack where I write in longer form, which is Brittany.substack.com. Yeah, I think when I first wrote you an email,

I called you like Lindsay Brittany. I think I reversed them. Oh, that happens all the time. Yeah, all the time. And then some places they switch it automatically, like, you know, some online directories and things. So then doubly confusing. But yeah, thank you so much for your time. It was wonderful speaking to you. And I hope everybody comes and enjoys your writing.

I think one of the issues that a lot of times, you know, your stuff comes through very clearly that you have hope for the profession and that you're wanting it to improve. And a lot of times when there's more of like a whistleblower or kind of a critical analysis, people, their takeaway is that the person's just angry and they want to complain or that they're saying the thing about the system because they just feel bad or something. And there is a personality and perspective in your writing that makes it clear that these things are not good and that we need to admit the gravity of the problem and be adults and do that and not avoid those truths. But that also they are overcomable and they are things that would benefit us if we were

able to do that. Thank you. Yes. A lot of the problems that we face are very fixable. And that's, I think, one of the important takeaways is that if we can be united, if we can shed light on this, if we can, you know, do what we need to do as a collective, that maybe we can incite this fixable change that we know is so needed. So I'm going to keep writing and doing what I can do to that extent and appreciate being in community with you as you do the same. Yeah, well, good luck. And thank you for your work. It's important.

And if you look at, you know, people like Yalom or people who like write a ton, so much of their influence on the profession comes like almost after the heyday of their practice because you have the next generation reading the work. And then that's their, the people who are 13, 14 now,

you know, reading your stuff may end up becoming the next generation, you know, because that they, it spoke to them. And younger people are generally a little bit better at being able to admit when the system doesn't work or just because we've done the tradition forever, maybe we should stop. I'm so excited by young people, you know, each new generation moves us forward. So I'm always excited to see what young people are You know, each new generation moves us forward. So I'm always excited to see what young people are going to do next. And if the work that, you know, we're doing, the writing that I'm doing now even plays a small part in influencing that for the better, then it will all have been worth it. Well, great. Thank you so much. And please go check out Lindsay Substack. She's got some nice stuff and we will see you soon thanks

joel