A Hero's Welcome Podcast
A Hero’s Welcome Podcast
Hosted by Maria Laquerre Diego, and Liliana Baylon, both LMFT-S and RPT-S
A Hero’s Welcome is a podcast for mental health professionals committed to culturally responsive care. Each episode features in-depth conversations with clinicians, supervisors, and consultants who bring diverse perspectives to the forefront.
We discuss mental health topics including psychotherapy models, clinical interventions, trauma-informed practices, and the role of cultural humility in therapeutic work. Our guests share their experiences serving children, families, and communities impacted by systemic stressors, offering insights and practical tools for fellow practitioners.
Whether you're looking to deepen your understanding of culturally competent care or seeking a community that values diversity and inclusion, A Hero’s Welcome offers a space for reflection, learning, and growth.
Hosts:
Maria Laquerre-Diego
maria@anewhopetc.org
Liliana Baylon
liliana@lilianabaylon.com
A Hero's Welcome Podcast
Balancing Ethics and Flexibility Creates Better Therapy with Dr. Dana Wyss
How do we honor therapeutic boundaries while truly meeting clients where they are? In this thought-provoking reunion episode with Dr. Dana Weiss, we explore the delicate dance between ethical practice and therapeutic flexibility.
Dana shares a compelling case study of working with a client in a domestic violence situation who splits time between countries, illustrating the complex decisions therapists face when standard practices don't fit unique client circumstances. Rather than rigid adherence to convention, Dana demonstrates how thoughtful adaptation—increasing session frequency when the client is available, creating personalized therapeutic tools, and maintaining clear communication about boundaries—can transform treatment outcomes.
The conversation challenges the profession's sometimes inflexible approach to therapy. As Dana notes, "These theories were created in a time that no longer exists." We discuss how meaningful therapy sometimes looks nothing like textbook examples—from sessions spent in healing silence to therapeutic humor through "Snarky Coloring Pages." This isn't about abandoning ethical foundations but recognizing that human healing rarely follows predictable patterns.
We explore practical approaches to documentation, scheduling flexibility, and navigating boundaries when clients have complex attachment needs. Throughout, Dana emphasizes the critical role of supervision and consultation as safeguards that allow therapists to work creatively while maintaining ethical practice.
Whether you're a seasoned clinician or new to the field, this episode offers permission to question rigid therapeutic structures while honoring the profession's ethical foundations. After all, as we discuss, we're "in a helping profession, helping messy people with messy lives"—and that requires both structure and adaptability.
A Hero's Welcome Podcast © Maria Laquerre-Diego & Liliana Baylon
to another episode of a Hero's Welcome podcast. I'm Maria and I'm here with my co-host.
Speaker 2:That's me, Liliana, and we're here with. I was gonna say a comeback. Is it a comeback? I think you can come back anytime.
Speaker 1:Don't call it a comeback.
Speaker 2:Don't call it a comeback. How do you wanna reintroduce yourself to our listeners?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, that's like all of a sudden I was like flooded with what do I say? I'm fabulous. I don't know if I would say that, but I'll take it. Well, we've talked about anger. We've talked about supervision. I do what? Art, play all the things, love all of it. So we're here to talk more and bring more to the table. So we're here with Dr Dana Weiss.
Speaker 1:Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back. Yeah, so we were chatting as we do before we hit record, and we have not learned our lesson to not just hit record as soon as Dana shows up. It might have had to have been a little bit censored, but that's all right. We were chatting about where things are in the world right now, where things are in a mental health field. So where did we land? Where do we want to keep this conversation going and involve the rest of our listeners?
Speaker 2:So I think we were talking about how do we, as mental health therapists either working with kids, adults, it doesn't matter we have to often keep adjusting to what they need, not what we have in the agenda, not with, but what is it that they need from us? That pivoting that we have to do often and you were giving us examples on these beautiful cases that you've been working with and how we're mindful of ethics and boundaries and still honoring the client.
Speaker 3:So we can start with the one we were just talking about. Yeah, the censored version, of course.
Speaker 3:There was some colorful language used when we described it first but Because humor is healing, humor is healing. So the balance for me is always thinking about what, what are my needs and what do I have that I need. Like, where are my boundaries that I'm going to set for myself? It's not my job, Like it's not my client's job to like meet my boundaries, it's my job to set those. And then how can I meet them where they're at?
Speaker 3:And this particular client is someone that I've worked with, for it must be two or three years now. They have lots of trauma history. They openly discuss their poor boundaries. So we're very open about boundary work in that way, because I'm going to give you some examples, some interesting examples of how that showed up in this space. But there's always a balance for me too, of setting too strong a boundary with her and allowing some of that fluidity and that flow, because that is her trauma history, that is, her inability to set boundaries, not her desire to walk over people's boundaries. So that balance of holding that space and talking about it.
Speaker 3:But then also and I'll give some examples of how that happened and she is also in a relationship that involves domestic violence right now but has no desire to leave. They're both older in their life, they have a lot of money tied up together, a lot of assets, they have homes in multiple places. So for her, divorce right now is not an option because there's just too much intertwined and their age. And so we work with her where she's at. In that way I have a supervisor that I work with my boss at my full-time job outside of my private practice specializes in some of this work, so she's my go-to and my client knows I talk to this person about the case to make sure I'm checking all the boxes, doing all the safety stuff I need to do. You know, with her wanting to stay in this relationship, that's her choice, that is their life, and so I'm just making sure I'm doing all the things I can to keep them safe, both of them, and that's what we talk about. How do I keep both of you safe?
Speaker 2:Because you're choosing to stay in this.
Speaker 3:So we have to figure out what that means. And she's in Costa Rica some of the time. She wanted me to still see her in Costa Rica. I looked heavily into that option and it is not an option for a couple reasons. One, my insurance and kind of licensure protection doesn't cover me in Costa Rica. And two, to honor Costa Rica's requirements, because in order to practice in Costa Rica, you have to live there, for I think it was about two years and you have to take your test in Spanish. So the goal is really to make sure, because there's so many expats that go to Costa Rica. My understanding from my research is that the goal is to keep the work there for people who are there and make sure that they have jobs outside of people beyond.
Speaker 3:So we've talked about that a lot and she was like well, why won't you just do it anyway? And I was like well, let me tell you One reason is you and your husband have talked about really harming each other. You're in another country, your families could sue me. One of you could sue me. I was like I have no protection. She's like but you see me here and I was like I'm protected here, I'm licensed here, it's safe for me to see you here, and she's like oh, and I was like, and it's not safe for me when this is actively happening, although I am torn because I also think leaving you alone is not a good option, but I don't have a choice because of all of these things.
Speaker 3:And so we've talked about what she does in Costa Rica, which I think that's what I was sharing is she tried to go see some other therapists in Costa Rica and decided they were not me, so she didn't like them. But we have a lot of other things she does. She has a lot of other healing practices. She's really into her religion and her practice there, and so she has a lot of stuff that we put in place before she goes. We also see each other more often when she's back, which is not something I do with everybody, but we'll have two to three sessions a week while she's here in the States to kind of do work and prepare for the times in between.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's not a lot of. I mean you're, what you're doing is meeting her where she's at yes, holding those really strong boundaries for protection for yourself, but also your clients. And and being flexible where I? I still see a lot of practitioners and clinicians struggle with. No, no, this is how it's done. You know, if you're not here full-time, I can't see you at all, or no, I'm not going to see you. Not see you for four months and then see you three times a week for two months. Right, I love that you like, truly, truly, are meeting your clients where they're at and doing the work in the safety and the boundaries that you need to continue to have a practice.
Speaker 3:And I do believe I'm able to do that with this person for a few factors Like she respects those boundaries. When I call her on boundary pushes or boundary issues she's like oh yeah, right, like she's able to respond to that. Like there are things that happen and a lot of the things that are would be considered boundary pushes that she does are really just kind of not realizing that that's not okay versus someone I would set different boundaries for someone that is pushing boundaries, that is, you know, really taking advantage. Like I would do that a bit differently and I may not be able to do this with other people. It works with her and me.
Speaker 3:Another thing that is different about me than other people is I speak a lot, I travel a lot, I have a full-time job outside of my private practice, so I'm very flexible with time and space. If you show up 30 minutes into your session happening, you still get the rest of your time. Like I don't cut it off at 10, 15 minutes. Now, if you show up 10 minutes before your time's over, we really don't have any time to do anything. But you know, if you're running late you get as much time as you get. You're getting charged for the whole hour still, but you get as much time and if you call me and I have a lot of parents that have a lot of family stuff going on with- other children in therapy with medical stuff going on, other mental health stuff, and so when a parent's calling me in a panic saying they forgot the session, you know I give them several options.
Speaker 3:Like your option is we can here's my times open the rest of this week, or you can pay and we'll schedule for next week as normal. But I always try and reschedule if I can, and the reason for that is because I often am like oh, next week, by the way, I'm not going to be here. I need to like. So I need people to be flexible with me and things to shift, because I will see some clients like earlier in the day and then sometimes I get pulled for work stuff. So I need to shift. So I allow that because I need that too to a you know, to a reason, if they're like hey, do you work on Saturdays? No, I don't right. I think the only time I work on the weekends is if I know I'm gone a lot that month traveling for stuff, and then sometimes I'll do a Saturday or Sunday to make up so my clients don't have too much in between.
Speaker 3:But I feel like for me and my practice that's important, that I give them that grace, because I need it as well and and I don't know that I could work with that really structured what I hear people say, like if you're not here on time. I was like my own therapist I'm late sometimes because I'm rushing to get where I need to be, so like if were like too bad, you're 10 minutes late, I would be like I need another therapist, like I'm always gonna be running late, probably Like this is my life. Yeah.
Speaker 1:What I think is our life more and more these days. Right, everyone is overwhelmed. We're all juggling way too much and doing the best we can, but we're gonna fall short more often than not. Yeah, so I love that you have that grace, but you're also like I am, because I'm asking for it too.
Speaker 3:And there's definitely people I've had conversations with. I'm like, hey, every time you're not making your session, like do we need to figure out another day for this? Like do we need to take a pause, like, because then that's a conversation. I don't see it as there, that's a problem with them. I see it as like, where's the problem with our time? Where's the problem with? Is therapy just, is it not fitting in? And I don't see that as a negative thing against therapy. What I see with a lot of the families and I have also a benefit of in our practice my colleague sees a lot of the parents and I see the kids, or vice versa. I end up getting most of the kids.
Speaker 3:Let's be honest, I do the art and play, but I do see some of the adults too. But she'll often have parents that want their kids to go to therapy and she's full. So I end up absorbing. And so I do have the added benefit of sometimes doing a little bit about the family more than I might, about why this could be happening and like what's going on with the parents, where they're not being irresponsible they're not but they're like barely holding on by a thread. And so for me to come in really harsh like get your child here also. And I do think that I have that benefit where we have enough communication and everyone knows we kind of have that ROI, where everyone knows we're going to communicate with each other when we're working on cases together, that I have a bit more information so that I can have a little more of that grace and understanding and not take it personal, because it's not.
Speaker 3:It's. Sometimes it is about therapy and sometimes there's parents that are like I don't understand what this play is like. Why are you just doing slime with my kid all day long? I think would you like to come and join us and find out. Um, but for the most part I think it's that like. It's just really hard right now but is that right?
Speaker 2:like as you were talking, I was like oh, so we're not naming or for new cohorts of therapists. What is not being named is that, in our field, we have a fantasy of what a therapy session should look like, posed by the systems that we work in regards to.
Speaker 3:This is what this session, if it's 30 minutes an hour, whatever it is will look like, and this is what you have to produce. Yes, yes, because when I train, I talk about the client that I sat for 30 minutes with in silence, and everyone's like what? And even when I was doing it, the colleague next to me was like why do you let this person come in and waste your time? And I was like what are you talking about? And they're like if they're not going to talk and do the work? And I was like they're doing the work? And she was what do you mean? And I said they used to only be doing 10 minutes, staring at me like that, like now we're doing 30. That's amazing. And she was like what? And I was like and they're paying for my time, this is not my time. Like I'm not wasting 30 minutes, this 30 minutes is theirs.
Speaker 3:Like in my mind and this might be from my inpatient background, working in psychiatric hospitals where there is very little ability for them to have anything and like I was required to see them twice a week for 30 minutes. Like if you want to stare at me for your 20 minutes now, how do we rate that up? I think that is the next piece Like I worked at that time. I was still an intern when the first time it happened happened many times since then, including in private practice.
Speaker 3:But you know, I worked with my supervisor like this is therapy, this is how I know it's therapy, and so I really learned to write to what was happening, whether there was words or not in the space, and I think that also goes from the art therapy background. So my guess is therapists who are really restricted to like we have department of mental health paperwork or DCFS, like whatever probation, whatever paperwork or whatever entities are requiring you to write Medi-Cal, how do you put that in a way where they can understand it? And that's just a conversation with a supervisor or consultant or taking a few classes. I know who is one. Anne Meehan has some great information about documentation and like how you can do it in five minutes too. I don't know if I believe her, even though she is my play therapy supervisor, but, um, and she, you know, teaches that, and it's like, how do I write this 30 minutes, like how is this therapeutic? And I think that by diving into that with someone, you also enhance those clinical skills. Because you're right, like people would say, this is what it's supposed to look like and I'm like, okay, well, they're not talking, so we're just staring. Okay, staring, got it. Do I stare at you or do I stare away, stare at you, okay? Well, they're not talking, so we're just staring, okay, staring, got it? Do I stare at you or do I stare away? Stare at you? Okay, and we're just staring for 30 minutes. But they stayed and they were in the space and they were showing up.
Speaker 3:Who is locked up away from their family? Who is being told they have a mental illness and possibly other things? Who is at risk of being put in jail? Well, of course, they are not sure if they want to tell me anything, because anything they tell me actually does go to their probation officers and all that way in that setting. So like, of course you want to be careful. There is a treatment team that decides whether you stay in placement or go home. Like, all of the information you tell me is not as kind of confidential or private in the way that it might be in private practice. So like, of course it's going to be hard for you to talk to me. Yes, and why would you trust me? I'm also some little 20 something year old white girl who doesn't understand gang life at all and you're in trouble for being gang affiliated. So of course you're looking at me like, can I figure you out? Are you safe? Is this an okay place for me to be? Of course that's going to take time.
Speaker 2:Beautiful right which would go into the brain and the nervous system for most of these clients thinking of let me see, I'm paying you for a session so that you can help me make sense of my journey, but in that journey you have an idea of what you think I need, not taking into consideration my nervous system, my history.
Speaker 2:You're focusing on your structure, your systems, telling me what model you're going to apply to me, not asking if that's the right model for me. You're telling me how long, how often, I have to come with you, not taking into account what I need from you. Is that something that we all acquire in our master's program, in associations, in terms like? I don't know, probably all of the about, but the conversation that we started was how do we meet our clients and we are ethical, which you just described, how ethical we can be. How do we honor boundaries? They're there for a reason for them and for us, but the invitation is how can we be flexible, not be married into a model that I have to follow or a structure that I have to follow?
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 3:When you talk about that, it reminds me of like my journey and being like a manager, and there's a book called the One Minute Manager.
Speaker 2:Oh yes.
Speaker 3:And when I read it it was it's such a simple book to read and it was life changing for me, and everyone I employed after that like had to read that book, whether they were a supervisor or not, like whether they manage people or not. I made them read One Minute Manager because what it did for me clinically was something I thought I was already doing but I didn't have words for is that when the One Minute Manager is like, you will have your management style, but all of your employees have their learning style or their need for their manager and, as the manager, it is your responsibility to match theirs, not their responsibility to match yours all the time. But that is a very hierarchy that not all managers will agree with. But this is what this book says. And so we had a job coach program where I worked because we were an inpatient. There was a lot of crises. I think we all, if you've ever been an inpatient before, you know the people making the least are the ones on the floor working with the kids and also usually have the least education, in the sense of not even just schooling, but just like the least amount of training, because they're the ones who can't get off the floor to get the trainings. And so we employed, because our company was really trying to like bridge that gap, we employed a job coach, and so the job coach's job was to assist all the managers in going in and coaching people to build their skills. And this book just really I had read it before, but then when we started this program it's when I was in, I was in charge of the job coaching program and when I read it and we talked about it and we looked at our employees, it just changed everything for us.
Speaker 3:Because then, even if someone wasn't a right fit, we talked about why. Like, we talked about what is your career goals Like? And if someone said, well, I want to be a personal trainer and work with adults, we're like, why are you working with angry adolescents who are trying to hate you? Like, how do we help you get to that goal? Or how does this job help you with that goal? So you're the happiest person here versus the person who's calling off all the time. So it's that same concept which I think now I apply to my families, and my private practice is like where are you? What part of me do you need? Because I'm still being true to myself, right, like if I do like with this one person where I see her a couple extra times a week, like we do set limits, like she did joke about seeing me every single day and I was like that's absolutely not going to happen. She's like you're serious, aren't you? And I was like, yes, and I know you are too Like, aren't you? And I was like, yes, and I know you are too Like, I know you would see me every day. I was like, but that's not what therapy is about. And then I educate her on why. Why can I not see you every day? You know she jokes about like we would probably be great friends and I was like we may or may not be, but this is what I need to be in your life right now. You need someone like me that can help you with this stuff and me being your friend. You wouldn't be able to have this. She's like you're right. So like I do sometimes have to set boundaries and pull us back a little bit.
Speaker 3:This is the one we started with, and I think what I was sharing at the beginning too, is she is back. She had been gone for a while. She was supposed to come back into my office to see me for her first time back, and then her husband is now in the hospital. It was very sudden, it was very quick and so she can't see me. I don't normally do phone calls while people are driving, although I will admit that this is a person that this has happened to more than I'd like to.
Speaker 3:We continue to talk about it, but this time I approved it. There's a lot of like safety, risks and ethics around them driving or being in public spaces. She doesn't understand that all the time. We continue to have conversations about that, but there's certain circumstances where it doesn't feel right to cut off the call and because of her boundary issues, but also some of her rejection and things that are an abandonment that have happened in her life. I try and balance it a little bit.
Speaker 3:So we were supposed to have a meeting. She was rushing to the hospital. She thought he was okay and stable. Something happened. She's like but I need to talk to you. We hadn't been able to talk yet. I was like you know what, get on the phone as long as you're safe and you promise me you'll stay safe while you're driving. We're going to have a call and we talked while she was getting to the hospital. That's where the colorful language came in. She is not one that she uses a lot of words, which is part of probably why she likes therapy with me, because I'm fine with that and sometimes I'll give her some as well because it makes her happy. And we were talking about as she was going in like I'm traveling a lot, we're having trouble being able to see each other, so I was like we can do check-ins Like I usually don't let people text a lot of stuff, but she's texting a little more, just to
Speaker 3:keep me updated on how everything is. People text a lot of stuff but she's texting a little more just to keep me updated on how everything is. She knows the rules about that. Like it's not, you know, I was like it's not confidential, like anyone could see my texts they could, so just know all this stuff. If I won't text anything to you, but if you're giving me stuff to give me information, like just if, if it gets a little too personal, I say okay, remember not to text. We know, maybe we need a call, can you get out?
Speaker 3:But I started creating this coloring book for her called Snarky Coloring Pictures, because she's just in such a bad place but her humor is still intact and one of the things that I have a lot of sarcasm in my bones and one of the things some of my all my clients, but mainly my adult clients like is that sarcasm and so I'm creating like coloring books for most of my clients. I started it with clients actually because they're like these affirmations are stupid. So like our affirmations are like, oh my gosh. Let me pull one up and read it to you.
Speaker 1:It's so funny.
Speaker 1:Someone wrote one, but so now, like we're doing this, so as she was talking, I was like, oh, I'm going to get some of these coloring pages, I'm going to either email it to her or drop it off to her at the hospital, so she has something to do too. Because that's a lot Right, we do, we go to school. We need that foundation as newbies. It's nice to have a structure to follow, absolutely, but the truth is we're in a helping profession, helping messy people with messy lives. Yes, and if we are too rigid, we cannot be helpful. We can actually be more of a burden and a hindrance and a stressor.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think you said something very important. There's a reason that in school we need to know where the lines are, because then that helps me know. Like no, like we, you cannot walk me around your job place introducing me to everybody. Like next time I'm going to hang up on you, we need to be in your car. Like you have to be in a private place if we're meeting at work. Like that's the boundary. Like this is not what we do in therapy and I know it's also coming from a place of she is so proud of me and the work we do together that she wants everyone to know me and I'm like that's fair and that's not what therapy is for. Like that's not. This space is private. This is ours and I am so grateful that you want to bring people into the space, but we have to really like keep this private Right, and I talk about the difference between privacy and secrecy, and I do that a lot with kids.
Speaker 3:Like secrecy is holding secrets from other people. Privacy is keeping things private and choosing who you tell. Those are very different things, so I found one of those. This is one of our favorites. Let's do it. I'm not saying I hate you. What I am saying is that you are literally the Monday of my life.
Speaker 2:I'm going to carry that in a cart.
Speaker 3:Oh, I have a beautiful picture with flowers for you. I'll send you. I'll send you my snarky coloring pages. You saw some of them, maria because I had them in the. I had them in the anger one, but this is a little this one which.
Speaker 3:I will share with you is not for everyone. This is. There's some certain ones that won't be shown to anyone else. It's just for this particular client. There's some words that I would not give to all people. I do try not to have cursing or anything in these if I'm giving them out for clients, but if I have a client that has some specific words they love a lot, then I'll add in their version a couple fun ones that either we create together or they create on their own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's helpful, right? Because, as you two were talking about, you know, this is still the client's time and I was like, and how beautiful, from an attachment lens, that you created this piece and she still can be attached to you working on something as she's encountering all these stressors. So, like, can we also see the benefit of it from not only the therapeutic work that we're doing, from an attachment lens, from a crisis lens, like it's all these things that are being in. All of that does not sound or look like the traditional we bought into, what therapy should be like.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, well, and we don't have another three hours to go on. Well, and we don't have another three hours to go on, but you know, the other thing, too, is like yes, we get these structures, and I think I've talked about this in a couple of episodes maybe, so bear with me. These theories that we are prescribing to were created in a time that no longer exists.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:They're not completely applicable, the way that they were when they were originated, and if we don't keep up with where our clients are, where the society is, what tools are now available to us, we're missing out and we're doing a disservice to our clients. I agree.
Speaker 3:I think that's so important and so beautiful and I teach the trauma course at LMU and one of the things we always talk about is honoring what came before us and honoring the time they were in and why that made sense, Because I also think equally to what you're saying people not being able to shift people also decide to get rid of things. Yeah, and it's like no, like honor what came before us and that in the time and space that existed, that was important. Like, I think, of Kubler-Ross because this is the one in like a lot of the book we just wrote, Hope in the Winds of Grief we were talking about the grief models and what to add Kubler-Ross one is very misunderstood. Two, at the time she was the only one writing about this Like she did a breakthrough thing which is really important to honor and we have learned so much since she did that that all of that doesn't fully apply in the way she found what she found Right. And also she didn't find grief and loss stuff.
Speaker 3:She was really looking at a person anticipating their own loss and it got translated and translated and then it kind of she even, I think at some point said like it's a train that ran away and I don't even know how to stop it if I wanted to anymore. I don't know if those were her exact words, but it was something like that, Like it's a ball that was rolling. It was just like it kind of got bigger than her and even if she wanted to pull it back and she wanted to shift it, like she couldn't, because people need things to hold on to and at that time that was all they had. And now we've learned so much in the grief and loss world. We've learned so much about how different people grieve and different cultures grieve, and not one model fits for anyone. And I think that's a beautiful example of don't get rid of her work and what she did, Like we shouldn't not talk about it.
Speaker 3:We should absolutely talk about it and why it fit in that time and why it doesn't now, Like why we've had to shift and move, and it may fit for someone. That may be. Those kind of stages of grief may be something someone needs to get through the day. I am not going to deny them that as their therapist. Okay, well, let's work it, let's look at that. What does that mean for you? What does this model mean for you? Because you may be interpreting it in a way that does make sense for you and works, but wouldn't for these other 12 people, Right, yeah?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No, I love that you remind us of that, right, that's funny. I was talking to someone who's a historian uh, historian, the um this past week and we were talking about politics and history and he reminded me so many good points which I was like, oh my god, I forgot about that. And, as you're saying, this is please for all of you who are out there, we're not dismissing and please do not dismiss any theory, because it is absolutely right, like when I think about in that point of time, when they created this, it served that purpose with what I know now and the nervous system and the brain and different cultures. What are the adaptations that we have to make, knowing that what I know now may not work six months or a year or five years from now and we will have to adapt again. Absolutely. The idea is how can we be flexible? How can I say the point of today is can you be flexible and what would that look like for you within your practice?
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And within your boundaries so you're not pulling too much from yourself, right? Like what makes sense for me. I'm very good at working from eight in the morning to nine or 10 at night on the weekdays. My non-negotiable is the weekend. That's for me, like, but I don't tell my clients, I don't say you, I just say these are the times I'm available. This is my non-negotiable for myself. I know whenever I add too much stuff on my weekend, I start to get stressed out, and that's no one else's fault because and this has been a lot of work. By the way, this is not something I learned yesterday I worked in inpatient for way too long where people pulled on all of my time, but now that I have more availability for my schedule and I can set it Now, when I was in inpatient and working there, my non-negotiables had to be different, because my schedule is different and I have a little bit of ability to work where I want now, where?
Speaker 3:Then I was at a building and I had to be there, and so I think that's another part. Our boundaries and non-negotiables shift as our family shift, as our responsibility shift, as our job shift, and what does that mean? And what worked for me here may not work for me there. And when I was an inpatient, I had to see you twice a week for 30 minutes. That was regulated.
Speaker 3:Now, what that 30 minutes looked like, or if I did maybe 45 minutes, one part, and like a quick 30 minute check-in while you're in the door, like that was something I could play with within my ethics. But like now, it's like once a week, okay, but what if someone needs twice a week? Or you know, we say an hour, but what if, like, someone can only handle 30 minutes? Like well, then I'm going to have a conversation with you about how billing looks, because if you're choosing not to spend your whole 50 minutes and that's what you're doing, like we can talk about that, but some people, even adults, can't handle the full 50 minutes and some people want an hour and a half. Yeah, that could be possible, but we're going to have to talk about what payment looks like for an hour and a half, because that's separate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Look at this beautiful conversation as we started not recording having a blast with our conversations, as we tend to do, but the invitation today was, you know, flexibility. Can you allow yourself to be flexible while honoring clients and your boundaries and then following ethics, so that we do not lose what we work so hard for? So this idea as we become global and clients are traveling because since COVID we became more global than ever yeah, no, you cannot practice in every single country. Do your research. You cannot say I'm a therapist in the US and I'm a coach everywhere else. No, that does not work like that either.
Speaker 2:I love you. I love that for you and your creativity, and stop it. I love that for you and your creativity, and stop it. And it may be they use you know, just look at each other or it may be that we create coloring pages for our clients. It may be from an attachment perspective we are working with them for what they need, not what we want, or being loyal to assist them. This was such a beautiful, insightful conversation. That is needed and we need to have more and more often.
Speaker 3:Oh, I would be absolutely happy to talk to either one of you all day, every day, Although we all talked about we can't do that. So pockets of the day all day, every day.
Speaker 1:Oh, and I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I feel like we're just kind of giving listeners permission to find the flexibility. I have this image of like well, you have a palm tree in your background, of like these roots right, these are our ethics, these are our boundaries, these deep, deep roots. We can shift a little bit with that and we can move with our clients while being grounded in ethics and in good practice, while honoring the foundations that we were taught and where we've been, but also being, you know, taking a step forward and like where are you and how do I best meet you where you're at? Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:And my last thing would be how do we do that is supervision and consultation. Even as a licensed practitioner for many years, on these cases where I am shifting, like this case in particular, I think I said at the beginning I am consulting and I am supervising all the time to make sure I am not pushing my own boundaries or forgetting things. What I would say, too, is that you don't have to do it alone and have those people that can do that checks and balances for you, check your biases, but then also check your boundaries and like are you pushing too much or being too rigid?
Speaker 2:like that's someone you trust, for that is really important beautiful and go to a training where they teach you how to translate all of this into notes, because we need creativity. Most of us who are play it's easier for us to be very creative in translating this, but not everyone has that, and I get it. Sorry, you're not a registered play therapist. You can still take those trainings therapist to work with kids, or can you just be trained in play therapy? That's the whole discussion that it keeps showing up every year. So just go get trainings, get supervision, consultation. That is the best way for us to make sure that we stay within our ethics.
Speaker 3:I agree, training is training. Do the training.
Speaker 1:Just do it, sign up for it, do it.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you. Thank you for being here. We're so lucky. Please come back. We always have a blast when we're having these discussions with you. All right, thank you everyone.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me Till next time.
