Your Therapist Needs Therapy 98 - Life Lessons We Don’t Learn in Grad School with Polly Sackett

Jeremy is joined this week by Polly Sackett from Firefly Counseling. Jeremy and Polly talk about her winding path into the mental health field, and how her lived experience, including navigating motherhood, experiencing grief, and discovering somatic practices deeply shaped her therapeutic approach. Together, they reflect on the evolution of the field—from stigma and limited language around mental health to greater accessibility and awareness—while highlighting the importance of authenticity, ongoing learning, and finding joy in nature, movement, and connection.

To learn more about Polly and her practice, head over to fireflycounselingmke.com or give her a follow on Instagram @fireflycounselingmke

Jeremy has all his practice info at Wellness with Jer, and you can find him on Instagram and YouTube. To show your love for the show you can pick up some merch! We appreciate support from likes, follows, and shares as well!

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Podcasts about therapy do not replace actual therapy, and listening to a podcast about therapy does not signify a therapeutic relationship.

If you or someone you know is in crisis please call or text the nationwide crisis line at 988, or text HELLO to 741741. The Trevor Project has a crisis line for LGBTQ+ young people that can be reached by texting 678678.

Transcript

Transcript

Jeremy Schumacher: Hello and welcome to another edition of Your Therapist Needs Therapy, the podcast where two mental health professionals talk about their mental health journeys and how they navigate mental health while working in the mental health field. I need to practice my intros. We're almost episode 100. I'll have it down soon. I have a guest who is a wonderful therapist, a local Milwaukee therapist, folks in my local area that I like to highlight. Today I am joined by Polly, hi for coming in. 

Polly Sackett: Thank you so much for inviting me onto your show and onto your podcast. Super honored. 

Yeah, I'm glad to have you here. Paulie and I have connected I don't know over the last couple months. Yep. I think maybe February connected. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: with some other great therapists who have also been on the podcast and talking about doing case consultations together and just supporting each other as we do mental health in these crazy times we're living in. Yes. Yeah. Py, I start every episode with the same question, which how did you get into the mental health field? Yeah. Jeremy, I actually want to start by saying I'm sort of newish to Milwaukee area. Yeah.  And I was super grateful to have found Tracy Keller of Firefly Counseling MK. and so Polyacetic Counseling that does contract work with Tracy Keller at Firefly. And I just major shout out to Firefly. I'm so very grateful for Tracy and all that she's welcomed me into in the Milwaukee area and introducing me to therapists in her network etc. grateful for that.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, she's great. Tracy's been on the podcast before. tiny plug from the podcast. Yeah, Tracy is a great healer and she's Very funny. so yeah. what got me into therapy, becoming a therapist, my professional journey. And Jeremy, I am older than I'm approaching 50, if not maybe crossed over almost yet. so I've had kind of a little bit of a long professional life that's done a little bit more of what is circumlocating how do you say circling towards becoming a therapist.

Jeremy Schumacher: So, it's but yeah, I mean honestly and it really is interwoven into my personal journey with mental health which starting when I was 17 until I was living with undiagnosed panic attacks and it wasn't until I came to WMadison as an undergrad and I played ultimate frisbee and I was surrounded by some really wonderful  women who were like, " why don't you consider going and talking to somebody about this because I think they saw me in great amount of distress." And I had no idea what was going on. Yeah. So, I walked into a therapist's office and during that first session, she was like, " I think what you're describing is you're having panic attacks." I was like, "What is that?" yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: She handed me a book called Drama of a Gifted Child by Alice Walker and along with a few other psychoed stuff and my mind was just blown. Yeah.  So it was during my undergrad that I did a pretty deep dive also then into my personal healing for I mean three years of pretty intensive therapy talking through things working through things a lot of it it was pretty intense. Yeah. meanwhile going to undergrad and my undergrad studies I was a geology And a women's studies geology and geoysics and then women's studies.

Jeremy Schumacher: and while I was there, I loved being a geology major because first of all, I love hard sciences. I did not mind chemistry and calculus and all of those things. and though what I loved about geology is we did a lot of camping and we did a lot of outside time and we did a lot of field work. and I met some really wonderful a wonderful community through that I was so grateful for. so that was all happening in tandem to this really intensive deep work that I was going through. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: and I toyed around with maybe I would want to be a therapist during that time. And then I was like, no, I think I'm just in love with my therapist, she's an attachment figure now. And hold on, I don't think I want to do that work. and nevertheless, I did take a few counseling classes and electives during my undergrad as well as did a really cool independent study because I had one credit to graduate.  And this counseling professor was like, "Why don't you go interview four different therapists in the community?" And so I interviewed therapists at East High School in Madison. someone who was working in private practice, a community therapist, as well as a career counselor. and then wrote up a paper about it, which writing papers was super excruciating for me. I'd rather do 20 calculus problems, but that's A little different. I can dwell in the gray. Yeah.

00:05:00

Jeremy Schumacher: but nevertheless, so I found a few I worked as a geologist. So right after school, I actually was working as a TA and I loved that work because they were short on TAs in the department and yeah that was one of my favorite jobs because I just loved working with that granted I was not too far away from that population itself but they were interested in being there.  So working with young adults became really interesting to me and specifically teaching and and then I worked as a geologist out in the field for a summer. It took me out to California to Arizona. and then way cooler rocks out there than we have here. Yes. Yes.

Jeremy Schumacher: Although I mean Wisconsin has some incredibly fascinating geology between what's happening with the Barabou range and yes we are on the Cambrian Sea here but it's pretty cool too. Yes. but not volcanoes which is what I was working on in Cool. Yeah. though I will say while the area was really cool I wasn't out in the field all the time.  I was sitting in front of a computer analyzing data. Yeah. So I was not getting some of my favorite pieces and parts of being a geologist. Yeah. so that was kind of a lesson of its own self. back in Madison and I worked a number of different jobs and then had some encouragement.

Jeremy Schumacher: and I want to say I did every year and Jared this was back in the day when people applied to grad school there wasn't online you write a postcard saying I would like to attend your graduate and you put it in the mail or you call and they send you this big packet and you fill it out by hand.  So I did it was almost like every year around springtime I'd be like I think I want to go back to grad school for counseling psychology. but I would get as far as filling it out and then I was like I don't know about this. but the interest was there. yeah kind of just got scared in some ways.

Jeremy Schumacher: so anyways, back in Madison and I did have some encouragement from some of my support network to go to med school. go back to school and try and get into med school. Yeah. and so I ended up sort of on that journey a little bit again with mental health in mind and what I wanted to do with that. at the same time, so I had recently gotten married and so I had applications out to maybe 14 different schools. and then I got pregnant and it was like I remember with my husband we had a conversation that was okay realistically am with being six months pregnant or with a six-month-old am I going to go down to school? Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: at two lane in New Orleans or go to Cleveland case realistically am I going to do that when I have a small child and we have health insurance through my husband's pretty great job and it was realistically no yeah so that really narrowed my focus to just apply to WMadison med school which is I got weight listed and that was weight listed for a protracted  did 9 month sort of Yes. You're at 14th and if we get down even to two weeks before the program was to start. Meanwhile, I then had an infant. but I was like, "Yeah, I'll throw my hat in the ring again." So, I app because I did not get in that first cohort. I applied again. these same letters of Meanwhile, by the time the final rejection letter arrived, I had two little kids. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: and by proxy of sort of this waiting and this on hold, I was like stay-at-home moming as well as working part-time at the Willish Co-op in Madison which is a little safe lovely nest for me. as well as working at a gym as a personal trainer. those things.  So that's kind of what I was doing and I was like again once med school was like I'm not gonna do that. I have just isn't the right time. I have two little kids. I don't see how I'm going to parent and be I'm going to call it. Yeah. So I called it and then started to take some more interest in maybe I will pursue counseling.

00:10:00

Jeremy Schumacher: three great programs around the Madison area with Edgewood and Whitewater and WMadison. so again, I kind of kept looking. My kids were still young. I still sort of ambivalent. so my daughter went off to preschool and so I then had three hours a day in my life which basically is take the child to preschool, go home, empty the dishwasher and turn back around and go pick up the child from preschool. But nevertheless, I knew how to, manage my time enough that I was so I remember this was like Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2012.

Jeremy Schumacher: and my daughter had just started preschool. And so it was that Tuesday right after and I was like, "Okay, I am going to look at grad school programs again." I opened my laptop and my mom called and I saw that it was her on my phone. I was like, " maybe I'll take that." I went ahead and answered the call and she said to me, she was like, "I'm going to need you to drive me to an oncology appointment on Thursday."  And I was like, "Oh." And I just shut my laptop and I was like, "This is what I'm doing." Yeah. Whatever this is about to be, and what it ended up being was 59 she was alive for 59 more days. It was a quick end that it was caring for her taking care. Yeah. Just can't even put into words the intensity of that particular time for me. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: which ultimately I found myself a year later pretty whoa whole new sort of take on my own life and what does it mean to be a human on this earth and how we spend our time. and so one thing led to another and I ended up in the office of a career counselor for a vocational assessment. Yeah.  And he was like, "All right, so I'm gonna write up this whole 20page thing, about you, and while you're here, is there anything you want to know? is there" And I was like, "Yeah, what? I would like to go back to grad school for counseling." I figured, he had taken a similar sort of path as and I was like, "And I have small kids, so going to Whitewater, I don't know that I have the time to these different things."

Jeremy Schumacher: And he said to me, he was like, " have you considered online grad school, like a hybrid program?" Yeah. And I was like, "No, I've never considered that on Gen X. it's brick and mortar. This is not legit." he's like, "Wait, I sit on the Krep accreditation board for schools, including online schools." And he's like, "I can think of four that are really wonderful." And so in your assessment at the end, I'm going to just put them in there.  Mhm. and so I got that assessment back and that next night I applied to Adam State University in ado. to their hybrid program and it was like it just professionally working in so many different areas. This was like the sunshining.

Jeremy Schumacher: when I got into grad school and I was in the program, I was like, " my sh, here this feels so very right." And it was like sitting in the right seat. I loved my classes. I just enjoyed the whole experience. so that's how I ended up in grad school.  At the time, I didn't really necessarily know what it was that I wanted to pursue, though I loved couples work as well as working with folks in process addiction, as well as substance abuse. my practicum ended up taking me to Brier Patch, which is a homeless youth shelter in Madison. Yep.

Jeremy Schumacher: which was an absolutely wonderful experience to get to work with the team there and work with kiddos through there. And then my internship was through connections counseling in Madison again mental health, half substance abuse but with more of a substance abuse origin.  So, I got to work there with some incredibly wonderful just such a great team and incredible clients that I loved that experience and I ended up staying on there getting hired on there and as well I started my own private practice in Madison at the same time. Yeah.

00:15:00

Jeremy Schumacher: so I was doing sort of like both of those things. and then we came to Milwaukee because my husband and I bought his parents' business. And this was during COVID, so I kept my private practice, I could see everybody on teleaalth, right? and then when my work shifted back to more therapy, now found Tracy. And started stepping in a little bit more again. So that's the whole  circumnavigating the thing. Yeah. I love just the different educational pieces here. Yeah. I went to Bigton University. It was a golden gopher. I went to Minnesota. and you sort of have the wonder of a big campus and a large community with your support from your ultimate frisbee people and your undergrad getting out and going camping and doing that stuff and all the different things you can study.

Jeremy Schumacher: I was a cultural studies minor at Minnesota. And so I know how much fun some of those cultural classes can be. Women's studies. I love that stuff about a big university. And then you also had that piece of being whitelisted and it's hyper competitive and that's sort of the downfall of those big universities. and then finding an online program or a hybrid program that was a really good fit, which I think again those started in a good place. Yes. And I think it took a while to get the reputation built up that they had and then they got not all of them obviously, but there are some scammy ones out there now. Yeah. especially with the accessibility to online learning.

Jeremy Schumacher: where there's just been an arc to some of those things and it's so interesting you're talking about being Gen X but it's so fascinating I think to reflect on where the field has shifted and changed over the years if you had gone to grad school right after your undergrad you would have had a much different experience. Absolutely. And had a lot of different learning. Yes. because when I have young therapists on the podcast I'm always sort of surprised how knowledgeable they are about trauma and it was like I had a class on it and I'm 36 I'm not ancient but I've been in the field for long enough where that happened after I was done with school our sort of awareness and understanding of how trauma affects pretty much everybody all the time. Yeah. So I think it's one of those interesting things where you had all this life experience and you were working at the co-op and working at the gym like you were doing all your counseling skills were there. Yeah. Absolutely.

Jeremy Schumacher: just without that certificate that says you're qualified to do this. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It was sort of naturally these are helping wanting to How can I lead? for sure.  And yeah, bringing up that is funny that you bring that up about the grad schools so my mother was a education professor at the University of Cincinnati and so even though she had passed when that gentleman did put that list together for me I went out and looked at the professors and looked at their CVs I knew enough to know okay is this legit?

Jeremy Schumacher: So I did a little bit of research and loved that school and yes yeah that's so interesting about and so with the therapist with whom I worked for all of those years so we didn't she didn't say trauma and that is exactly what we were working through. Yeah.  I mean, I look at that book, Drama of a Gifted Child, and really what I'm not going to try and change the title of someone's book because I want to honor that. And I think it could very easily be the trauma of a gifted child. so yeah. Yeah. You named a lot of those interesting elements that are brought through. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: And I think it's a very human experience to sort of you accumulated all these experiences and lived experiences before entering the counseling room professionally I did the reverse where I started doing therapy when I was 20. Yeah. Because I was like a gifted child and a prodigy adjacent when I was going through school and I didn't have any lived experience. I was doing marriage therapy before I was married.  there's all these things why was anyone listening to me? but I even like losing a parent and having that grief piece I think is something that really can change people's perspective and that paradigm shift you sort of mentioned of how you view your own life and being a human on this planet.

00:20:00

Jeremy Schumacher: It's like, yeah, we have people my journey was both my parents are teachers, so you're good at school, you're going to go to You're good at school, you're going to go to grad school. it was just sort of but I didn't accumulate any life experience. I just did the school thing. It's a different route and different I would say. I was als Yeah, I was also parenting before I was a therapist, too, which was a whole that's like a whole I like the joke the difference between how people took my advice when I had a wedding ring on after I got married versus before I was married night and day. Yeah. Yeah. and I'm fairly clean shaven by my standards and I'm clean shaven right now. but that being said, when I like skills and education can take folks really far. Yeah, for sure.

Jeremy Schumacher: you were able to have the names of the things that I wouldn't have had names to. Yeah. And one is not better than the other. it's just like all these different experiences. And I think because being a good therapist really comes down to being a human. With another person growing up in a very real way. it doesn't really matter which route you're taking to get there as long as sort of that's where you're landing. Yeah. Yeah.  That's what I found. Yeah. And my favorite part of I mean I just like love being in the room with folks. And that is just so incredibly powerful those hours. working on healing. So yeah. And these journeys that we go through when we want to be helpful to people finding there are all these different ways to be helpful.

Jeremy Schumacher: but finding a way I think to be authentic in that, finding our avenue or I don't want to say our lane because you don't need to stay in one, but finding that space where you can be helpful because that's what you want to do and it's authentic or it feels genuine. Still staying To your own self. I feel that deeply. little tiny shout out to Krap Accreditation.  I was at Marquette when they were going through their reacredititation, which was just a bloody nightmare. it's intense. It didn't affect me that much, but it deeply impacted my cohort because the clinic on campus closed while I was there. So, A bunch of people's internship just sort of disappeared overnight. And so, it was a very stressful time on campus in a weird way that I was aware of but not affected by. Yeah. I also loved my internship.

Jeremy Schumacher: I started at a homeless shelter, but then I was also at a loafy clinic. This is again dating myself here back in the day before the affordable care act. So people just wouldn't have insurance and they'd pay5 or $10 per session to work with the student. but that's where I started and similar to you I got my postgrad right away because I loved it so much I stayed on to work there. and then kept studying there too. So again I think those internship when you find that space where it's like this is a good fit.  this is what I want to be doing. Yeah, it's really lovely. Yeah, absolutely. and in my work with folks, not everybody gets to necessarily find that.

Jeremy Schumacher: And that can be such an interesting thing to navigate as a therapist because we're learning and when we're in consultation like that is also a really tender vulnerable time and since we don't know what to expect just so in working with therapists talking a little bit about here's how consultation here's what it could really look like and here's what it would re really be of benefit in this particular way and I was very grateful for connections counseling in

Jeremy Schumacher: the way in which they conducted theirs. Yeah. because you never know how those can go, especially for bigger clinics. For there's that piece, too. And people who listen to the podcast regular have heard me sort of complain at the same time about some of those internship placements and how we're putting students who aren't very well trained and don't have a lot of experience in these super highintensity places. Yeah. I think that can go poorly. That can burn people out right away. Absolutely.  And I think it can be harmful to clients to have providers who don't know very much are just learning. it's your first semester of seeing clients live and you're working with a homeless population or a population who are pretty high crisis. I joke I was doing DBT with these unhoused folks and I'm sure on some level it was helpful but also not what they needed. but that's all I had learned how to do at that point.

00:25:00

Jeremy Schumacher: that's what I knew and that's what felt approachable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember at my practicum at Brier Patch I was with someone who was in a great distress because I wanted to help them. I kept the session going for two hours and about an hour and a half my supervisor knocked. She's like You need to stop. Yeah. I was like okay they're in great distress  That's how the greats did it. Carl Whitaker, every video I saw of him was a six-hour session and the family's just exhausted by the end of it. They're agreed to whatever. Yeah. Just chain smoking cigarettes for six hours in this room of people. yeah, that's so wild. what was your experience then, 2012ish? what was sort of the messaging around opening your own practice?

Jeremy Schumacher: because I think in that chronology you're maybe a little early on the trend to have your own place. Absolutely. it's interesting because being so I already had a small business in personal training. So I knew how to do an LLC. I knew how to do an LLC and the different things around it.  Yeah. and the other thing that I had was not necessarily people from my cohort, but I knew therapists in Madison because I'd been there for a lot of decades. And so just friends of mine were like, you can do this, you got this. As a matter of fact, I had two of whom were like, let's share space together.

Jeremy Schumacher: and that became a strong network and referral system and consult system or group. so really it was with the support of those around me that are like you can do this and here's how I do it. And I also got to see just the range from very simple to complex. And I knew that I really wanted to spend a lot of my time in the room with folks.  M so I kind of kept my overhead low and I don't just mean moneywise but just the efing. so that's how I ended up going with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. was that something that you were taught in grad school? Was that something that came up or that was more of you think geography where you were just happened to be around people who were in that space already? I think it was pretty much I don't remember anybody Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: talking about and I think also one of the differences since I was physically living in Madison and I was going to school in Colorado there wasn't a parlay of private practice we didn't talk about it there yeah and since we were all from all over the country many of whom were from Colorado whatever they were going to go do including private practice was going to look differently than what it was that I was going  to do. Yeah. So, I kind of just went with to answer your question in a longer No, we did not have I mean, maybe it was alluded to in one or two lectures. I think again that lived experience piece of already having your own business and having done that that was the thing that kept me from opening my own place for so long was I'm ADHD. I just assumed so many of the tedious business things would be unapproachable for me. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: And by the time I came to it, almost all of this is online and you just pay your monthly fee for whatever program does it all for you and you're good to go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many systems built up to the service of making this possible. Yeah. I also don't want to talk about age too much here, but I think again it's gotten a lot easier and I think college websites are some of the worst websites in existence. but I remember when I was a little kid, my dad went back to grad school. yeah. And this was in the 90s. So just that totally mailing stuff in calling for your interview and just much different environment and again there's pros and cons obviously about the internet. Yeah. I don't say it's this awesome thing all the time, but that has really simplified and made the accessibility for people so much higher. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I will say I said as a stay-at-home mom and a part-time worker as I was looking around Edgewood I mean that was still a drive kind of prohibitive Madison I wanted to be more clinical and Whitewater was a drive and so as I was like I didn't have that sort of time literally it was like I study after bedtime or before they wake up or during nap time.  And so to have this online program where I could and I'm pretty good at self-starting. I mean by necessity you got to just do And so I was so grateful when I was in that hybrid program because I was able to make it work for myself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:30:00

Jeremy Schumacher: And just some of that stuff seems so ubiquitous now using the internet to do your application seems so obvious like tella health since obviously everybody offers it some of those things but those are big shifts that happened it wasn't that long ago that those things weren't part of the process. Yeah that's very true. Even just looking back 15 years many of these things weren't and so my mom when she got her PhD at the WMadison there were not word processors in the same sort of So she was typing it. And so I have this book of her type but just over the years and what that was like 1985 and here we are in It's only 40 years later. my dad's advances. My dad's a school counselor but there we have an old copy of the DSM3 I think somewhere in their basement.

Jeremy Schumacher: and again, it's a very different book than the DSM 5, and I'm not a fan of the DSM in any way, shape, or form, but not that long ago, some of the changes that we've made and some of our understandings of things like neurode divergence or trauma and all this stuff. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah.  And yeah, the DSM, don't get me started on that. I've done whole episodes about it. Yeah. But I think there's I'll say a historical lens, but I think it's easy for myself certainly to get lost in how terrible things are currently.

Jeremy Schumacher: And when we like zoom out and look at the progress that's been made in 25 years of our field, it's really incredible. obviously sending neurody diverent folks to wellness farms like RFK wants to is a big step backwards. but also stuff isn't going to go backwards. some of this stuff is so well established and the field has been changed forever that there's no going back to sort of prehistoric DSM one, two or three level of things.  Yeah. Yeah. And let's keep going like that particular energy. Let's keep going even further and stronger to the point. and again I think people who own their own practices we'll get into the plugs at the end of the session, but you and Tracy doing Instagram lives and there are things that I think make mental health so much more accessible.

Jeremy Schumacher: even in your story talking about I didn't know what these panic attacks I was having were having a Gen Z or a Gen Alpha client come in they're so knowledgeable of a mental health sometimes to a problematic degree because they watch too many Tik Toks about autism but it is the way we talk about it and their awareness of it and what it looks like is so different than what it was growing up in the 80s or 90s. Yeah, absolutely.  I don't think I learned the word anxiety until around the time 19. I was like, "What is that?" Yeah. and that's just something that my kids, they know That is a part of the lexicon. Yeah. And so, with the Instagram lives and this just being able to make this even more accessible, whereas when I was, on this particular early in my mental health journey, it was just that I would go into bookstores and I would immediately end up in the self-help section.

Jeremy Schumacher: that was my favorite place to be reading that is how we got information. Yeah. Yeah. I bet some of those books have not aged Yeah. Some of them and some of them not. that'd be neat. ADHD a superpower is one of my favorite books to pick apart because of how much it got wrong. But it's the one that got really popular for some reason the late 90s and that's how everybody learned about ADHD and learned all these horrible things about it. Yeah. It's a wild time back when Dr. Phil seemed like a respectable character. my goodness. so in Milwaukee now with the private practice, who do you like to work with?'s the who do you light up when they're in the room with you? Yeah, absolutely.

Jeremy Schumacher: my heart just bursts about the whole thing because there are so many different areas and folks with whom I like to work. right now primarily I've been seeing women just because who's been coming my way. And as a matter of fact, a lot of brand new moms and I have been really really enjoying working with them because that is such a huge life transition. coming to know oneself after having a kiddo. so that I work with a lot of folks on grief and loss and I do have my grief and loss certificate.

00:35:00

Jeremy Schumacher: the other thing being that I have a lot of work under my belt with substance abuse, granted I don't feel quite as comfortable working with folks who don't have an active recovery program just because I'm in a small private practice and I know the benefit of being in a clinic and having access immediately to higher level of care. Yeah. That being said, I love affected family members.  So, I have quite a few I love working with folks who have beloveds family that are affected by substances. that's been something for sure that I'm enjoying. And then I do have my EMDR certification as well as I love working with couples. though I would say individuals may be a little bit more in my realm depending on what is coming my way.

Jeremy Schumacher: and most recently I received my sematic EMDR certification and that is just so cool and I just for the past five years have been really trending towards the seatic in my work and what I've seen be possible. So I am super pumped to do that stuff EMDR with my clients in the room. Yeah. cool. I love and some of it's I seek out guests for the podcast who I align with obviously. Yeah. But I also love therapists who just love learning people are endlessly fascinating and I think good therapists are continually updating how we do our work, what we like to work with. the brain is such a complex thing.

Jeremy Schumacher: It's such a complex organ and we are still learning so many of just the basics about how it works. I think to be a good provider you sort of have to stay up to date on a lot of the new research and the science. So I love to hear from people who are learning things and getting certifications. It's one of the dumb things about our field is we end up spending a lot of money on staying up to date. We like our certifications. We do. there's nothing that I love more than a pretty amazing lecture where I get to learn so much. I made this whole in my past it made my own sematic EMDR book from all of the lecture notes. Never have I ever made it to the end of a notebook, but this one I did.

Jeremy Schumacher: it's so fun to get to learn and just have my mind blown about this is just and what I love is how well this ends up synthesizing with even those early learnings that I have as a kiddo with panic attacks of updating that schema of how do we look at this and how do we because yeah I think that if I were to have sort of entered into the field like all I would

Jeremy Schumacher: in my pocket was how to survive panic attacks in the way that I did when I was this, and it wasn't as comprehensive. CBT was the cat's meow back then. my And the therapist with whom I worked she was way more let's do a deeper dive. And so it was a way more humanistic as well as so it brought in a lot more than it did cognitive stuff. Yeah. Which I was grateful for.  And then though when I ran into CBT I was like this is cool this is more directive than what I've been given so far. So yeah I think that pieces of all the different approaches that make sense. Yeah. I don't know what the psychoanalysists are still doing. It's 2025 gang get with it. No. see if I get any angry comments on that.

Jeremy Schumacher: I love sematic work too because it's so approachable for clients and I think there's a weightiness to it when you are learning it. It's unnecessarily academic sometimes and when you explain to clients you can't think your kidneys into working any better. Why do you think you can think your brain into working better? that makes so much sense intuitively it's an organ it's part of your body. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: But culturally, we spent so much time differentiating mental health from physical being and acting as if those are two separate topics. And it's so lovely when you can do sematic work and get people's brain and body working together. Again, yeah, and folks have a different sort of sense of it. and I want to honor that sometimes it is difficult to sort of go below the shoulders in terms of what we are experiencing in our bodies. figuring out, at all different levels of how to make that accessible and to enter into that, that's been pretty fascinating work. Yeah, for sure. I have a lot of intellectual clients and I work with latestage ADH later diagnosed folks. so usually, we're doing that diagnosis journey together and then making sense of it.

00:40:00

Jeremy Schumacher: These are people who have learned a lot of masking behaviors, have spent a lot of time managing their own symptoms without understanding what was causing their symptoms and then have sensory issues on top of it with neurode divergence. And so something like I think sematic work can be really unapproachable for myself I will say I have a lot of weird sensory stuff. I'm autistic and have ADHD and a lot of my sensory stuff I didn't understand.  I thought that's how everybody experienced the world because we don't talk about things like how you feel full or some of those basic things that interception and proprioception your vestibular senses we think of sensory issues as your five physical senses but we have these other senses too time blindness so all these things that I see with neurody divergent folks with they're so heady because that's how they've had to manage their symptoms. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: and then getting back in touch with their body was this very variable sort of complex thing depending on their level of stimulation is and some of this other stuff. So I think it's again super freeing and lovely when you make progress in it. Yeah. But I think for If I was a younger therapist, I wouldn't know how to do it I'd sort of be in that space of this should work.  I don't understand why it's not the idea of intuitive eating I've always loved and know for myself that would never ever work because I don't get those body cues like that on hunger fullness I would just be 450 pounds eat all the time. Yeah. I always feel hungry. Yeah. But Jared, it's so because I know that you are an athlete and an amazing volleyball player, a D1 athlete.

Jeremy Schumacher: So, I was on the bench on one team. The You made the team. And my son he's a ref and so he's seen you play. He's like, " I know that guy. He's so good." The podcast listeners who know me, I stand out. I'm a large person with a lot of facial hair and a lot of hair. People know me because I look a certain way. it's interesting because as you say, not necessarily knowing your body and yet you are an athlete. So, I just am so curious about the reconciliation of that.  That's just so interesting to me. It's weird. for sure. And again, I think it's sort of how I understand some of I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was in my postgrad. So, I've known about that for a lot longer than I've known about the autism stuff. understood my own autism. but I think a lot of that stuff is the ADHD it works really well in this one specific area.

Jeremy Schumacher: So it's almost like a hyperfocus. when I'm doing sports, I'm using my body in a certain way and that makes sense. My brain gets that. I know how to do that. again, I'm kind of in gangly especially when I was younger and I was 6'3 and 160 pounds just this real tall, real skinny thing, but put me in a baseball uniform and I'm pitching looks very natural and coordinated. And then me not being able to walk in a straight line anywhere else I think sports was always that structure that made sense. To my brain and I could do that and then there's a lot of the everyday life or sort of mundane stuff that made a lot less sense. Yeah. Yeah. But as high functioning my brain moves very quickly this very high processing speed. So it's one of those things where I sort of accounted for it on my own without realizing that's what I was doing for so long. Yeah. Okay.

Jeremy Schumacher: Which is why I like working with these late diagnosed people because again for a lot of times they have so many of their own management techniques they just don't realize that's what they're managing. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that with that with me and giving me some insight into that how that was for you and making sense of that. there's a lot of paradoxical I talk about ADHD as a very paradoxical diagnosis. and then obviously unpacking the autism piece of it is even more complex.

Jeremy Schumacher: I think it's again we're just scratching the surface on neurotypes and dstigmatizing a lot of that and again our current political time is trying to restigmatize a lot of that but it's one of those things I look at where trauma was at in 2015 2016 and everybody was reading Body Keeps the Score and there are issues with that book but it really did revolutionize the way the profession addressed it and it made trauma so much more accessible to regular folks to read about it or read books that came out after that and be like, this is a trauma response." Yes. And so where now we talk about triggering somewhat colloquially and we're not using it correctly, but it's just parliament in the cultural zeitgeist, I guess, using all this jargon here, but like it Yeah.

00:45:00

Jeremy Schumacher: we just use that word triggering and that's a very trauma ccentric word that has permeated pop culture because yeah of our understanding of trauma. So again we just got a bunch of funding so I don't optimistic is the wrong word but I do think that's where we're at with neurode divergence too is just scratching the surface of what that looks like for folks because I was a straight A student.  And I graduated with honors again. I was prodigy adjacent. and also hated school and was miserable cuz I had undiagnosed ADHD. I was up from my desk every class and messing with people cuz I was bored and bored. Yeah. So it's just one of those things where I look back I'm like how did nobody diagnose me? I was like cuz I had three weeks ahead on my homework and I had straight A's. and in the 90s that's not what they were looking for.

Jeremy Schumacher: So again, it's come a long way, yeah, but it's so coming back to the sematic work, I think it's so I love doing that stuff and I hold a lot of space for the people who upfront that seems really inaccessible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where are we going to be in one decade? what's 2035? and you didn't talk about this, but I happen to know this about You also have this background in yoga and being a yoga instructor. So that sematic piece I imagine is again just a lot of experience in doing your own work. You have to do a ton of yoga to be a certified instructor. but then helping other people through that process. I'm really grateful that you brought that up and I'm remissed that I didn't bring it up but yeah I did start so at the same time that I started therapy in 1994 five.

Jeremy Schumacher: I actually started yoga and I just like meditation where I walked into a yoga class and I was like yikes this is scary and hard and meditation I was like what is wrong with me I can't sit still anyways all of these different things I am so grateful for my yoga journal journey having met some really wonderful teachers throughout and yeah that has been an integral piece and part of my healing which is so interesting because as I gave the whole spiel I didn't bring that in and all and yes my body went through the whole thing and also was so let me just give a shout out to that because that was definitely an integral part of my healing and something that I love and want to impart in my work with folks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's so cool.

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah my background in athletics I have a lot of I don't know it's compartmentalized for me for sure I coached collegiate volleyball as well and so we would just and practice early sometimes and we do yoga and for so many of my athletes that was like what are we doing? How is this supposed to help me?  It's like cuz you're college students and you're stressed and you need it like you're going to be so much like you're going to perform at such a higher level if we take stuff off your plate and we just let your body rest and recover. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. that is so revolutionary and it is so not counterint counterintuitive to how at least I've been raised. Yeah. Since those you don't slow down and then listen to your body and Keep grinding.

Jeremy Schumacher: rub some dirt on it. Yes. Yeah. But to have found flow and that is sort of another interesting part of this working in One of the other things that I do that is incredibly important to my mental health is I so both contemplative writing and then also I like to write novels and so that's been and talk about a process that is not one that I was like it's like I sit down and I just start typing or writing and the thing happens and it comes out and so that is fascinating to me and also sometimes very scary because I'm like I don't really get this yeah and I love this and it

Jeremy Schumacher: a part of slow down. It's a part of what it is that makes me function well and this all work and part of what makes a life great. So yeah. Yeah. you're beating me to the punch here, but that segue into holding space for other people can be really rewarding and super fun. It's also a lot of work. and everyone's mental health is deteriorating right now.  So, we're in a profession that's highly stressful. yeah. So, you mentioned writing. We've talked about yoga a little bit. you mentioned your own journey with therapy. but yeah, what does self-care look like? What does cultivating joy even if we can be so bold look like for you at this point in your career? Joy is super radical. So, I love endeavoring in that. another thing I love to get my hands in the dirt.

00:50:00

Jeremy Schumacher: That is just being outside and being really close to nature. I love birding. I love walking. we two couples of orioles that come to our feeder right now. We have an indigo bunting in the backyard and my daughter who is 15 was the one who spotted it. So I'm super excited that she saw nature, getting my hands in the earth. I love being on my bike. I love being outside.

Jeremy Schumacher: I love playing disc golf. Yeah, I love playing ultimate frisbee. being with being with my son who's on the verge of leaving the nest, launching Super excited about that. And my own therap I do a lot of yoga. When any of these things are sort of missing in, if I don't get that Yeah. I can feel that particular grist.

Jeremy Schumacher: And I'm so grateful for the monopoly of selection so that today would feel good to do some yoga. Today would feel good to lift some super heavy weights. That's another thing I love to do. and also, continuing with therapy. is and I'm so very grateful to have found therapists with whom I connect and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  Milwaukee has been really good to me. I love this town. So, yeah. Yeah. Lot of different things to do in and dance. We've got a lovely disc golf scene. I will shout out Milwaukey's disc golf scene. We have a lot of great courses. all within a very small geographic area. So, there's a lot to do here. I spend a lot of time talking about time out in nature, but yes, it is going to be warm consistently here.

Jeremy Schumacher: So, can get out the paddle boards and spend some time out on the water. I pumped my bike up a few weeks, the tires of my bike a few weeks ago already. So, Yeah. it's a under appreciated city. I think there's a lot of good stuff. Yeah. that's available here for healthy coping. one of the challenges is that it's kind of all happens between Memorial Day and Labor Day.  I'm being facitious here and a little bit hyperbolic and yet we kind of like jam it in. Yeah, we do. it's not a good thing with global warming, but we do have more time of warmth into October and November now than we used to. Yeah. but yes, it is a bit of a rush. Again, my ADHD I like the change of seasons have different things every season. Yeah. But yes, this is the good season for getting outside and getting on the water, the bike trails, etc.

Jeremy Schumacher: I do love to ski, I will say. And I cannot forget about that. But I do love to ski. I have to take a lot more caution here as my bones are more brittle and my body years of investment in your joints being okay to handle that and all the yoga you've done. My knees start to hurt just thinking about that. Yeah. Yeah. U skiing is so very fun and freeing, not sissimilar from biking. So love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Polly, this has been lovely. Yeah. We've covered so much ground.  I love these conversations. If people want to learn more about the work you do, if they want to connect with you, Where do they go? folks can find me at Firefly Counseling MK. so yeah, Firefly Counseling is the best place to seek me out. and that is the Instagram handle as well as FireflyCounselingMK.com. Yes. Yeah. Thank you for that.

Jeremy Schumacher: And yep, I've do free consults and I've got some space right now. happy to see folks and get going on helping and healing and being a part of that journey. for sure. We will have links to those down in the show notes so people can find it. you and Tracy, you had mentioned before we started recording that we're going to do some Instagram lives this summer. We sure are super pumped about that. very cool. so, we'll have links to all that stuff in the show notes. Polly, thanks so much for taking the time and coming on the show. Thanks, Jeremy.  Appreciate it. And to all our wonderful listeners, thanks for tuning in again this week. We'll be back next week with another new episode. Take care, everyone. Rushed it. That was super fun. I know. It goes by so fast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  I hope it in.

Meeting ended after 00:55:12 👋

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