If you're new to seeking therapy or wondering if it's something you should pursue, this episode is for you! Brooke gives us all the details from knowing when it's time to receive therapy to what to expect in a therapy session. There's a lot to know and understand and the goal of this episode is to help our listeners feel more comfortable and confident when it comes to receiving therapy.
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Jen: Hello and welcome to The Parent’s Place, a podcast put out by The Family Place for parents to develop skills that will strengthen families and provide tools that will help each of us in our parenting efforts. No matter our skills, we can always use reminders that help us work towards a safer, happier home. I'm your host, Jennifer Daly, the education director at The Family Place and my co-host is Sarah Hendricks, a family educator at The Family Place. Every week, we will interview professionals that will provide valuable information that will make a difference when you apply it directly to your life. Thank you for joining us. Now, let's get started with today's episode. Hi and welcome to the Parents Place podcast. I am your host, Jen Daly.
Sara: And I'm your co-host Sara Hendricks,
Jen: And today we are super excited to have with us, Brooke. She is going to be talking to us about the process of going through finding a therapist. I feel like this is a really important question because a lot of people don't know where to start. So, this podcast is really going to help us out with that process. So, Brooke, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself?
Brooke: Yeah. So again, my name's Brooke, I've been a therapist with The Family Place for almost exactly a year now. We kind of make the joke in my family that therapy sort of our family business. My dad's also a therapist, DSW, and my mom was a speech language pathologist and speech therapy, and my brother does physical therapy. So, any kind of therapy need? Guess we got you covered.
Jen: You could open up just your own business and offer all of that all in one place.
Brooke: Yeah, yeah. So, it's fun. But I love working with kids and families and helping them work through things especially like trauma and some of the difficult things, and it's exciting to be here.
Sara: I'm excited for this topic, and I know for myself I don't feel like I know a lot about therapy. There are probably times that I should seek out therapy, but I just don't know what I'm doing and it's overwhelming. And there's like connotations with therapy that just kind of keep me from wanting to look into it more, I guess. And so, can you help us understand why people may be shy away from therapy?
Brooke: Yeah, yeah. So, a little bit of work and wanted to talk about this. Thought this might be a good thing to cover in the podcast is I think this is my experience. Working with clients and through my education just kind of realized a lot of people don't quite, I don’t know, it's kind of a foreign world out there, I guess this world of mental health and getting therapy, and he can be overwhelming and really uncertain, like what you're going to get into when you're seeking therapy and what's going to happen. And I think, like you mentioned, there's a lot of stigma around mental health and getting a diagnosis. And so, it can be really intimidating and it's really vulnerable to going in to talk to a therapist and to let people know that you're struggling and that you need some help. So, I just wanted to touch on some things and give some background information to make it less overwhelming and help people feel a little bit more prepared if they are seeking therapy.
Jen: You know, years ago, I looked for a therapist, I didn't know where to go. And so just talking with a therapist here at work and they hooked me up with one person and I got with him and I'm like, “Oh no, no, no, no, I can't be with this person.” So, going back and for me, it was a process of meeting with different people to see who I clicked with. So, Brooke, how can someone know when they are in a space where they need to seek therapy?
Brooke: Yeah, I think that's a really good question to start with. I guess the basic the simple answer is if you feel like you need it, definitely look into it. I think therapy can always be beneficial for people just by nature, because it's just trying to help people improve their functioning and find tools and resources and skills to help them work through challenges in their life. But that being said, I think some things to keep in mind to help you know if therapy might, some professional help, may really be important or beneficial for you to get. I think it comes down to functioning like, I think been touched on talking about mental health, first aid, that kind of thing. But I think just really looking at if you're able to function, if you're able to work and hold a job or go to school and be successful and also be able to just take care of yourself in general. Like get adequate sleep, a nice healthy diet and be able to exercise and have good hygiene and everything that you need to function out there in the world. There's, you know, obviously any challenges there. It's probably a good sign to seek out some therapy or some extra help. There's also mental health field. We know relationships are super, super important. So, if you're having challenges with relationships, you're just not being able to find stable, meaningful relationships. Whether it's romantically you're like in your family or friends or acquaintances like your neighbors and co-workers who is really struggling with those relationships and not being able to make a really meaningful connection. Then again, another good sign to seek out some therapy. And I think also the other thing another thing to keep in mind is how persistent it is if the symptoms or challenges whatever you're facing are just continuing to be ongoing or lasting for a while, or they just don't seem to go away. They maybe get better, but they just keep coming back. Or, just looking at how significant they are, like if it's just a really overwhelming things challenge, definitely might be time to look into therapy. And kind of going back to just if you feel like you need it like whatever is happening in your life, if it's just really distressing and it's really causing you a lot of just discomfort and distress, you're having a really hard time with whatever it is that's going on in your life. Therapy can definitely be beneficial.
Jen: I really think about how important it is because lots of times we think, “Oh, I don't need a therapist, I'll just go to my friend and I'll talk it out with my friend.” But what I have found over the years is it's super important, and it's so much more beneficial to find someone who's not emotionally attached to the situation. Or going to take sides or whatever the case may be. So just having that third party that's not involved at all is really helpful. And that, to me, is what a therapist can do for you as well is be that third party that's not involved with if it's a spousal thing or a family relationship or something, they have a clear head. They're not emotionally attached. And so, they have clearer thoughts because when we are emotionally attached, we don't always think clearly. So, I don't know. I am 100 percent pro therapists.
Brooke: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I think if you just also want to mention that even if you're feeling like this isn't maybe something that I totally need professional help with, there are so many resources out there, so many YouTube videos or like things you can Google like there are coping skills, explain how to do things or apps, or all kinds of things that you can try out and see if that helps before you go to therapy. But there's always things out there that can help.
Jen: Yeah, I am hoping that this past year really sheds light on the importance of mental health and taking care of ourselves, both with those apps and whatever they can find online, but also showing that going into a therapist is beneficial as well.
Sara: Yeah, I think oftentimes we think that what we're experiencing isn't that bad or it's not worthy of seeking therapy. So, I just want to reiterate that whatever it is, all those things that you were sharing about how it affects your ability to function. If your life isn't going in the direction you want because of whatever it is, it's in your mind that's holding you back. Seek therapy, work through it so that you can live your best possible life. So, for those people who maybe are considering that therapy would be a good fit for them. What are the first steps to find a therapist?
Brooke: Yeah. So, I guess the main thing that I think about with trying to find a therapist is most agencies or private providers that you're going to find will take insurance. So, your insurance might be a really helpful place to start with. Just finding who's in network kind of similar to going to a doctor. Just finding which providers can fit what you need and will be in that work is kind of the easiest, most streamlined way to find a cost-effective way, I guess, to find a therapist. You can also, like Google Search can find all kinds of providers. I know there's sites like Psychology Today that will give you a list of people locally or in any area. They can provide mental health services and kind of give you some background on what services they provide. There's also usually a lot of workplaces, you know, through their insurance will offer benefits where some of your sessions are covered through work. So, there's lots of ways to get that covered. And if you don't have insurance absolutely still looking to getting therapy, there's lots of resources and ways to do that in a way that is still manageable, that you still can get the help you need. A lot of agencies or providers will have grant funding things that can help. Like, for example, if you're like the victim of a crime, there's lots of grant funding out there to help you get your services covered so you can still get that help you need. Or, I’m also thinking like if you're a college student or someone you know that might need some therapy as a college student, opt in on campus, offer free counseling services or just lots of resources. Even if you're not a student, maybe you have a local campus. They can often offer a lot of good, cost effective services. Or a lot of agencies or providers are workable, and they can help you pay on a sliding scale. So basically, that just means based on your ability to pay, you just pay a certain rate for your sessions. There will be a lot more affordable. Or finally, you'll probably be paying out of pocket, but there's lots of ways to get into therapy, where often there's lots of people like government agencies or school counselors or lots of people that if you're in contact with. They may give you referrals, they may help you get in touch with people that can be helpful. So, using those resources can work as well.
Jen: It's one thing that I always love about therapists. Even if you can't go to the one that you know is in town or whatnot and always go to them. And I've always found therapists be very helpful and saying, “Well, let's try these other resources.” They're all connected, it seems like, and they know, like, who's out there that can help and help your situation the best. And I think that's a great thing about the therapy community is they're very well informed of. Everything else that's out there to help those who are seeking for therapy. We've been talking about all of this now it's finding the right therapist, and I talked about how I had to go through several different therapists to find one that really clicked for me. So, what is that process normally look like? I mean, I can go off my experience, but I just normally, what does that look like?
Brooke: Yeah. So, like I said, you me just do like a Google search or like through your insurance, find someone that's in that work and go try them out. So, I think this is part of our some of that vulnerability and being open comes in. Like as a therapist, like we absolutely want our clients so that we can help them to be open and vulnerable and share their experience if things are not working. If they're not clicking, let us know you won't hurt our feelings. Yeah, absolutely. We know not everyone's going to click with everyone and we want you to get the best that you can. So just letting us know and then the therapists can. Often agencies will have multiple providers, so you can they can send you to someone else there that might be a better fit or help you find someone outside that could work as well. I think that will make that kind of frustrating, tricky process of finding someone that clicks a little bit easier. If you're just being open and letting your therapist know what your experiences like and how it's going for you. And hopefully your therapist will be checking in with you on that as well, like asking how you're doing with things. And I think if there's anything that you take away from this, I think the big things are to get help, to help if you need it and to find a therapist, it's a good fit. Even if it's a difficult process. It may take some time to find the right therapist, but it's absolutely worth it. I remember in grad school one of my professors telling us that there's research out there that showing that your relationship with your therapist has much more impact on the outcomes and successful outcomes than any interventions or modalities or treatment techniques, thing or therapies using in sessions and treatment. So, it's so, so critical that you find someone that you connect with that works well with you.
Jen: Well, it makes complete sense because if we have, I mean, I'm just thinking of trauma. The more you click with someone, the more you're going to be able to reveal those details to or whatever it may be to help you move to the next step. And if you're not clicking with your therapist, more likely you're not going to share that information and then you're going to miss out on that piece that could help you move forward. So, I can totally see how just your connection with your therapist is super important.
Brooke: And I think often in therapy again, it's kind of intimidating and clients may want to kind of please their therapists or other therapists so they want to hear. But all we want to hear is your honest experience. We don't, we're not looking for anything in specific talking things. We're just trying to help you the best we can. That works best when you're telling us exactly what that experience is.
Sara: Yeah, I can see that like trying to sugarcoat things or paint yourself in a better light. But really, how is that benefiting you to not be open and honest and share exactly how you feel? So, in addition to like clicking with your therapist, are there different techniques and things that therapists will use that might be a better fit for whatever it is that the person is going through and seeking therapy for?
Brooke: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, there are different modalities or kind of frameworks, interventions, treatments that your therapist might use that are research based or show to help more with certain things or that people just respond better to. So that can be part of also, the process of clicking with your therapist is letting them know how you're feeling about whatever interventions they're using. So, some specific ones, just so you have some background in the different kinds of modalities that might be used. Obviously, this is not even close to exhaustive, but some of the main ones. And here's where some of, like all the acronyms, like the foreign part of the mental health field, comes in. But CBT is a big one that's been around for a long time and adapted for different situations, stands for cognitive behavioral therapy. And the idea behind CBT is just that. Your thoughts and your feelings and your actions or behaviors are all kind of interconnected, so trying to identify your thoughts, especially the ones that are not as helpful or not as accurate and trying to challenge those who can get those into a more effective place so that you can feel better and you can be more functional and effective and in your life. And so, there's lots of different interventions and ways to kind of do that just kind of, for example, like if you're laying in bed at night, you crash out in front room. Your first thought might be, “I don't, someone's breaking in”. But if you can take a pause and be like, maybe, maybe someone's out there doing something they didn't realize it's like to someone that lives in the house is out there. It's not a big deal. Or maybe that picture frame that keeps falling over. It's just fallen over again. So, then you can feel a little bit more calm and relaxed and go out and see and take care of it. So that's kind of what CBT does kind of helps you get to that place where you're not just jumping to those negative thought patterns or negative conditions that everyone experiences on some level kind of helps you sort through that. And that's CBT is helpful with a lot of different your basic mental health disorders like anxiety or depression, and adapted to help work with trauma, all kinds of things. Or even if you're just going through like an adjustment transition in life, that’s difficult CBT can be helpful. It's very similar to that is ACT for acceptance and commitment therapy. The difference with ACT is that it's a little bit less about challenging those unhelpful or inaccurate thoughts, a little bit more about just noticing, being more mindful and aware of what your experience is and being a little bit more accepting of that so that you can move forward or make adjustments in a helpful way. And a big part of ACT is identifying your values and making sure you're living a value different driven life. So, whatever your experience, your thoughts, you can notice them and accept them, but then make sure you're making decisions, are behaving and committed to doing things that are still in line with your values. And that's also similar to I know that there's research that shown that act is good with trauma, but like a lot of the basic against depression, anxiety or adjustments and can be really helpful with EMDR or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is a big one for trauma. Often used to help treat trauma, and the idea behind it is that when you go through a traumatic experience or event, it's not from normal natural thing that your brain is wired or equipped to deal with. So, when you experience the trauma that your brain kind of goes, “I don't know what to do with this. I don't know how to process or where to store it.” So, it gets kind of started putting your brain in a way that's not super helpful and your is constantly kind of making connections and wiring things together. So that's where some of those triggering flashbacks, you can go through something and when you're triggered, you're right back into that traumatic event or in that traumatic moment, so EMDR helps you to use what's called bilateral stimulation that can be done in multiple different ways, but it's just basically engaging both sides of the brain to kind of help your body in your mind work through and become kind of desensitized to all those things that are super triggering. And you also in the process, it's an eight-phase treatment, so you'll start with some history taking the EMDR isn't your typical talk therapy. You're not going to be telling your whole trauma story to your therapist. Most likely, it's going to be kind of like a headline sort of basically what happened and then going into bilateral stimulation to process that. But before you do that, your therapist will get some brief history and then also resource to help you to have resources and safety, whatever you need before you're getting into the processing. So, if you are processing and feeling completely overwhelmed outside of what we call your window of tolerance or you're completely shut down or just completely and fight overwhelmed with what's happening with your therapist, knowing can help you get back into a safe place so that the processing can be effective. And also, as part of EMDR is you're going to be identifying negative thoughts that you have in positive thoughts you would like to have instead. And so, you get to a place of installing or really taking you and feeling like you believe that positive. But and then just kind of reevaluating later when you come in just making sure that that's all been processed through and worked through before moving on. You kind of work through standard protocol, which can be adjusted based on what you're experiencing, but you're going to work through past stuff and then you're presenting current whatever's going on and then looking at the future and when you may struggle or have things come back up and how you can handle that. So, you feel well equipped. The last one that's the big one to mention is DVT or dialectical behavioral therapy and the idea behind dialectics, I guess, since I like to think of it as the power of the word, and you can experience one thing, but also an imposing thing at the same time. So basically, like, I can make mistakes but still be a good person. And so, a lot of that goes into part of DVT is mindfulness skills being more aware and being able to emotionally regulate and have good interpersonal skills, able to communicate well with other people, just kind of those things and also behavioral things that will improve your functioning. DVT is helpful with, I think it was designed to help with borderline personality disorders or other personality disorders or suicidal thoughts or ideation and self-harm. It can also be helpful with other general mental health disorders. I got to say this for EMDR side said, can be helpful with PTSD and complex PTSD. Also, general anxiety or depression, phobias, or even sometimes like shown to be effective with like chronic pain. So really cool. These are all science research-based methods that have been shown to help clients.
Sara:And will you just clarify for our listeners with all of these different frameworks, we as somebody seeking therapy, do not need to go to a therapist and say, this is what I want like the therapist will evaluate and decide what is the best process. Is that right?
Brooke: Yeah. So, most therapists will have training or specialized education, maybe in a certain type of modality. Most therapists are pretty eclectic. They'll use different things from different frameworks or interventions. So, yeah, you don't need to be going in knowing or requesting. I think it's just helpful to have some background and maybe know that, oh, I'm struggling with trauma stuff. So, some of that does act maybe not so helpful. But yeah. Your therapist will probably know better. And. Yeah, again, just keeping those open lines of communication with them will help you navigate that
Jen: One area where it would be helpful to know what framework or modality your therapist is working is if, say, your therapist moves away and then you have to find a new therapist. So being able to know what they were using so you can go and find another therapist that uses the same modality that you're used to working with. I had a friend that she had to figure that out because their therapist left and insurance and all that kind of stuff, so it was helpful for her to know what she was using so she could find an appropriate therapist to help her out. So, once we find our therapists, what can someone expect during a therapy session?
Brooke: Yeah. So, therapy will always start with kind of a history taking information gathering kind of phase. You'll go in therapists will probably do an intake or assessment. This is going to getting a more in-depth history. So again, going back to this is where it's vulnerable. You just barely met the person that they're getting all of your backstory and everything you've been through, not necessarily going into like telling your whole in-depth story of a trauma or anything, but just kind of it just helps us gather all the helpful information that we need to know how to help you to come up with, like a diagnosis, which is kind of a controversial thing in mental health field. So, you know, just to kind of stick someone in a box or give them a label sometimes doesn't seem like the most helpful thing, but can be important in helping just to kind of get an idea of what is going on in the person's life and how to help them. And also, insurance is going to require that there's a diagnosis that you're treating. So, therapists will get that information and then they will also guide you through identifying and establishing goals that you want to work on an objective choice. You're going to meet that goal, things that you'll be working on and doing in therapy to help you just get to where you want to be and accomplish what you want to do in therapy. And then you kind of go into the more regular sessions where they're using the other interventions and helping you work with things.
Sara: Well, I feel like you've shared so much. It's so good, I feel like I've sat here quietly through a lot of this episode, but I've just been like taking it all in and I hope that our listeners feel the same way that they feel better prepared and better equipped to seek therapy if they feel like that is a good fit for them. And hopefully, this has answered a lot of those questions for our listeners who maybe have never looked into therapy before. I know that's something for myself. Like I've considered therapy, but I've never looked into it. And so, it's just been super helpful to me to go over all these things that you've been talking about. So, I want to thank you, Brooke, for joining us and sharing your wealth of knowledge about therapy. It's very clear that you feel passionate about it, and I've enjoyed learning from you for our listeners, if you have any questions in regards to things that Brooke has shared with us and you need to contact us. You can email us at Parents@TheFamilyPlaceUtah.org and we can forward your questions on to Brooke if you want to reach her specifically. You can also find us on Facebook. Jen Daily - The Family Place, or Sara Hendricks -The Family Place, and we have a Facebook group page called The Parent’s Place. So, lots of places that you can get in contact with us. We do want to give a shout out to all of our listeners in Ogden and Provo, Utah. We keep gaining momentum and getting more and more regular listeners. And we super appreciate all of you. And if you feel like this episode will benefit anybody, please share it with them and help them feel more comfortable finding a therapist. That is all that we have for you today, and we'll catch you again next week on The Parent’s Place.
Thanks again for listening. The Family Place is a non-profit organization in Logan, Utah, with a mission to strengthen families and protect children. We call ourselves starfish throwers. If you're unsure what that means, refer back to our introduction episode where we explain it. The good news is you can be a starfish thrower too by subscribing to The Parent’s Place podcast and liking our social media pages. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with others and help us get our message out to more people. Also, be sure to check the show notes for links to information referenced in this episode. That's all for now, but we'll catch you again next time on The Parent’s Place.
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