Self Careapist Therapist Podcast
How do you actually use EMDR, CBT, or IFS in session, not the textbook version, but with a real client sitting across from you? Self Careapist Therapist is a therapist-to-therapist podcast where licensed clinicians break down the
clinical skills, modalities, and hard conversations that training programs skim over.
Hosted by Lorain Moorehead, LCSW, PMH-C, EMDR Certified Approved Consultant, Clinical Supervisor, and graduate school faculty associate. Each week features expert guests, including researchers, authors, and practicing clinicians, sharing
evidence-based interventions you can take straight into your next session.
Topics include:
• EMDR therapy, trauma processing, and advanced EMDR applications
• Internal Family Systems (IFS), parts work, and integrative trauma approaches
• CBT, DBT, RO-DBT, ACT, and third-wave cognitive behavioral therapies
• Clinical supervision, therapist training, and professional development
• Trauma, complex trauma, PTSD, CPTSD, and nervous system regulation
• ADHD, autism, neurodiversity-affirming assessment and treatment
• Therapist burnout, perfectionism, compassion fatigue, and sustainable self-care
• Couples therapy, attachment theory, and relational wounds
• Anxiety, OCD, and exposure-based interventions
• Grief, prolonged grief disorder, and meaning-making
• Suicide risk assessment, CAMS, and crisis intervention
• Parent-child therapy, adolescent anxiety, and family systems
• Perinatal mental health
• Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and emerging modalities
• Clinical ethics, risk management, and culturally responsive practice
• Private practice development, insurance, and building a sustainable career
Questions we answer:
• How do I use EMDR, CBT, DBT, or ACT in real-life sessions, not just textbook examples?
• How do I choose which therapy modality to learn next?
• How do other therapists handle burnout and compassion fatigue?
• How do I integrate different modalities instead of feeling like I'm doing them wrong?
• When should I use IFS parts work versus EMDR reprocessing?
• How do I grow as a therapist after grad school or licensure?
• How do I make my practice more trauma-informed and culturally responsive?
• How do I find my niche or specialty as a clinician?
• What does evidence-based therapy actually look like in practice?
• How do therapists cope with imposter syndrome and self-doubt?
• How do I explain complex therapy concepts to clients in simple language?
• What is the best podcast by therapists, for therapists?
Whether you are a seasoned clinician or a graduate student, every episode is designed to sharpen your clinical thinking and reconnect you with the curiosity that makes therapy meaningful. Conference-level education and psych journal-quality conversations delivered while you drive, walk, or decompress between sessions.
Many episodes offer a free CEU for licensure in Arizona through the Board of Behavioral Health Examiners. Content is relevant for continuing education across LCSW, LMHC, LPC, LMFT, NCC, NBCC, and psychology licensure.
Subscribe and leave a review. It helps other therapists find the show.
Self Careapist Therapist Podcast
ACT Then and Now: Why the Originator Turned a Framework Into an Invitation with Dr. Steven C. Hayes
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What does it actually mean to practice ACT — and how would you know if you already are? Dr. Steven C. Hayes, the originator of acceptance and commitment therapy, joins the podcast to talk about the 45-year arc of ACT's development, where the field of psychotherapy has gone wrong, and what it would mean to truly serve the person sitting in front of you. This conversation covers the six core processes of psychological flexibility, why randomized controlled trials may be misleading your clinical work, and why Dr. Hayes thinks every therapist should start by trying ACT on themselves. If you have been ACT-curious, or if you have been using elements of it without naming it, this episode gives you the bones.
Episode Timestamps
0:00 — Introduction
1:27 — What ACT is, and why it may already be in your practice
2:41 — ACT in a single sentence: open, aware, and actively engaged
4:48 — The origin story: personal suffering, panic disorder, and the limits of existing evidence-based therapy
8:08 — Did ACT precede DBT? Dr. Hayes on Marsha Linehan and the shared roots of third-wave approaches
10:35 — Process-based therapy: why the technique matters less than the mechanism
13:29 — What to do instead of drawing a fence around your modality
21:27 — The six core processes of psychological flexibility, explained one by one
29:32 — Reaching more people: how ACT is being used in lower- and middle-income countries
33:28 — Why your journal articles may be statistically misleading you (the ergodic theorem)
38:30 — Idiographic measurement: tracking the individual, not the aggregate
43:00 — PsychFlex and the Personalized Life Assessment Network: tools you can use now
48:51 — The eugenics roots of standard statistical methods in psychology
52:29 — The neurodiversity movement and what it gets right
56:00 — Outcome measurement that fits the actual person
1:01:35 — Where ACT is going: empowering clinicians from the bottom up
Episode Highlights
- ACT is not a set of techniques. It is a model built around processes of change — the small, repeatable behaviors that lift people up or push them down. A new randomized trial is published on ACT every two days.
- Psychological flexibility — learning to be more open, aware, and actively engaged in meaningful life — is the core target of ACT. Dr. Hayes argues it is also the mediating mechanism behind DBT, MBCT, and most other third-wave approaches.
- The six core processes of ACT are organized around three pairs: openness (cognitive defusion and acceptance), awareness (flexible attention and a transcendent sense of self), and engagement (values and committed action). They are not six separate things — they work as a system.
- The statistical methods clinicians rely on — Pearson's R, analysis of variance, factor analysis — were developed by eugenicists and assume that differences between people predict any individual's future. The ergodic theorem, proven in the 1930s, demonstrates mathematically that this assumption is false.
- Process-based therapy means starting with the person in front of you, identifying which processes are lifting them up or pushing the
The Self Careapist Therapist Podcast is a biweekly conversation with Lorain Moorehead, LCSW a therapist in private practice. With guests ranging from expert psychologists, therapists, researchers and authors, each episode offers a deep dive and keeps listeners from intern to advanced supervisor in mind while dropping gems and aha moments for everyone who loves to learn! If you love learning and want to keep track of some future learning opportunities, grab your personal curriculum here!
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