Interview With Dr.

Kevin Anderson

Unknown Speaker 00:00

Like my, my title here is I'm the clinical director at Freedom counseling group and so I, I work I'm
licensed as a marriage and family therapist. But these days I don't even know I'm licensed
marriage and family therapist. I don't really typically do a lot of marriage counseling. I've got a lot
of like advanced trainings in it, but I don't. I don't like doing it as much as I do all the trauma
work. So I just focus on the trauma work. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 00:36

I see. Yeah, because I understand it's not your primary focus necessarily. You specialize in
EMDR therapy, right. So yeah, I think to follow up with that was, what exactly is your main goal
or purpose? As a therapist?

Unknown Speaker 01:03

What is my I'm not sure I understand the question

Unknown Speaker 01:07

right. How do I formulate this? So what exactly do you try to accomplish through using EMDR
therapy with clients, I guess, okay.

Unknown Speaker 01:25

So, so the idea of the concept of EMDR therapy is that we are helping people to process
through past events and experiences that are disturbing to them. In a more efficient way.

Unknown Speaker 01:49

Should I say more about that? Yeah. If

Unknown Speaker 01:51

you're able to elaborate that would help. Yeah, absolutely.

Unknown Speaker 01:55

So I would say that the see.

Unknown Speaker 02:15

So EMDR therapy, as you know, stands for eye movement desensitization and Reprocessing.
So there's probably about 400 different thoughts and perspectives around different types of
mental health counseling. The field in a general sense has really focused on methods and and
things and it is, especially over the last few years, there's been this really big emphasis in
research, research bases to kind of things and, yes, research base based things are important,
but it's not. It's not really kind of mission critical at the same time, if I'm honest about it. I think it's
important I mean, to know the research to understand the research. But I don't think it's I don't
think it's so, so important to focus on methods. What's more important in the field, is to
understand the the, what we'll call like the therapists way of being and so it's based on being
able to develop relationship and rapport with people. If you look at like Scott D, Miller's work. He
says that 70% of what makes therapy work is that basically you have good rapport with your
between therapist and client. If you don't have that, you know, you're going to have you're
basically going to have issues is what the research shows, of

Unknown Speaker 03:56

course, but I do find it interesting how you always provide context through like, history of
therapy, and you also like bring up how technology also plays a part. And if there are therapeutic
sessions yeah, like I like you bring up was, like therapists in the past. Like, is that part of your
education or

Unknown Speaker 04:28

my my educational background or how I work with clients,

Unknown Speaker 04:31

with how you work with clients,

Unknown Speaker 04:36

provide a little bit of context in terms of, you know, kind of how we do things. It's not it's not
critical I mean, again, I would say to, you know, to provide a huge backstory and everything, I
mean, somewhere on my yeah, there it is. I've got a book on the history of modern psychology. I
mean, that I mean, it was one of my, one of my first classes for my doc program, and I thought I
find that I find the history really helpful to understand because history is all about understanding
context. If you want to understand why people do what they do, you have to be able to
understand history. And so a lot of times when history we talk about things like cause and effect
a happened and so, you know, we responded this way. But what we understand as marriage
and family therapists is that we look at things for what for what we call a systemic perspective.
For example, it was about 60 degrees in my office, and so I realized okay, it's too cold. You
know, I can put my jacket back on, you know, where I could turn on this little space heater, you
know, and I can see from the from the little thermometer on my desk and it's now 70 degrees in
the air and it feels quite nice. You know, so it's not, it's you've got a feedback system. Now, if it
gets any higher, I'll probably reach down here and turn off that heater, because it's going to get
to a point where it's going to get too hot. And so the same kind of thing we've got to be able to
have you know, context for what we have otherwise. We can't really evaluate our own behavior,
other people's behavior and things like that without context. You know, like, you know, same
kind of thing if, you know, talking about in terms of context we have to understand the the
context, if you will, of you know, it's like if you're lucky in your math class, if that if you don't have
the units or things like that. I know when I took you know, science classes and things like that, if
you leave the units off, you get marked down for it. Why? Because, because, you know, it's, if
you don't understand the units, then it's always contingent on something, of

Unknown Speaker 07:06

course, so but but hopefully that makes a little bit more sense.
Unknown Speaker 07:13
Yeah, yeah. No, I understand. Yeah. Because of course, it's like a logical node like sequence
because the client, the clients themselves also need to have a better understanding of things.

Unknown Speaker 07:27

The clients need to have a better understanding of where we're coming from. But the opposite is
also true. We need to we need to be able to understand where the client is coming from and
their context. We can't, we can't just assume that we understand you know, where people are
coming from, and that's why we spend so much time in history going through their, their own
stories, as far as what they've experienced, because if we don't understand that context of
where they're coming from, and it can take, you know, several sessions to be able to develop a
not enough of that clinical history, to get to get an idea of where everything has come from. And
so, I mean, again, if we don't understand that, that we make, we may make different
recommendations and things like that, that are ultimately going to be very unhelpful because
we're seeing things out of context.

Unknown Speaker 08:31

Right. And people may not always like have the capacity to just simply delve into their own
psyche, which is why they need like a third party. In order to like, understand, like, the inner
workings of like, themselves in order to like, you know, see the source of a problem.

Unknown Speaker 08:50

Um, yeah. Yeah, I'd have to think about that one a little bit. I'm not sure. There. So part of it is
going to depend on your opinions and your perspectives around around mental health issues
and things like that. There's different different counseling perspectives are going to come from
from different kinds of areas. And so most of the type of counseling that you're going to see, you
know, is is coming from a perspective of what's called cognitive behavioral therapy. And so if
you're, if you've got certain assumptions, you know, that are that are being made from that
cognitive behavioral cognitive, low that cognitive, cognitive behavioral standards. That transcript
is going to have fun there. So, if you're coming from that perspective, then there are certain
philosophical assumptions that you have and I didn't finish going through all the papers, but I
have maybe I have a whole stack of papers that I was going through earlier

Unknown Speaker 10:25

Oh, I have it so my reflect a little bit so it looks like you might be on your phone. So it might not
be the easiest thing to

Unknown Speaker 10:40

know. I'm using my laptop right now. So okay,

Unknown Speaker 10:43

so should be pretty big. Yes, you have different assumptions of, of therapy. These are
philosophical assumptions, and they're for different kinds of areas. So you have modernist
philosophy, humanistic, systemic and postmodern. But this this I reproduced from from a
textbook, and then on the back on the vaccine, there are certain assumptions and so most
therapies tend to be that first category in terms of modernist kind of therapy where there's
objective truth. There's objective reality. It's observable and so the therapist kind of winds up
working as an expert. And so the therapists role in working with clients is that the therapist is
there to teach, to teach and to guide clients, how to how to improve things like that. No different
than you would and you know, it in the, in the classes that you have, same kind of thing, your,
your teacher, your professor, or what have you, is there to teach you and a lot of times they're
going to act in that expert kind of role. But if I'm doing marriage counseling, I'm not in that expert
role. A lot of people come to marriage counseling, assuming that, you know, the therapist is
going to be some kind of mediator and help them to work with things and to be honest, most
marriage counselors that I know that there are some they're gonna go work from that modernist
standpoint, but the good ones that I know and that I recommend, and the ones here are either
going to be in that humanistic or systemic category. And so they're going to see things more
from a subjective perspective. That's the humanistic part. Right? I mean, so there and so they're
gonna focus on reality being subjective individual, things like that. That therapist is there to be
an empathetic other. Not not kind of I'm the expert in the room. And so the the therapist is there
to be able to, to develop in a safe place in a context that helps the client to be able to kind of
solve their own problems kind of thing. Now, that is not my philosophy of therapy. It's not a
wrong philosophy as such. It just it's just not my it's not my style. And so, if that's your style, fine.
I'm really not trying to criticize or condemn that. It's just not one style first. So if I'm making
sense, I mean, I know the philosophy,

Unknown Speaker 13:30

and I understand what you mean. Everyone has their own subjective methodology to therapy, so
I don't really judge either.

Unknown Speaker 13:40

Right, but I mean, I just want to make sure that I'm not being overly philosophical and I don't
want to I don't want to veer away from from the context or parameters of your, of your your
project either.

Unknown Speaker 13:52

No, it's alright. The interview itself is supposed to be just educational. So I don't believe that like
you're necessarily petering off of the parameters of the interview. But it does help to understand
more on what being a therapist is like, so you don't worry about it. It's

Unknown Speaker 14:18

and I think I mean, so so a little bit more context. I mean, in California, you have five types of
mental health professionals, right. And that basically kind of in in two or three categories, how
you think about it. So on one hand, and then you may know this already, but you have
psychiatrists. These are these are individuals that have gone to medical school and decided to
specialize in it's like a in psychiatry as a further kind of discipline. Now, why exactly you would
do that and not go into something that you know, would earn you twice as much money like say
cardiology or dermatology that are probably a little bit more interesting. I don't really understand
that but to each his own. So but that's, that's also part of why we have such a shortage on you
know, psychiatrists, to be perfectly honest. is comparatively, it just it doesn't pay great. I mean, it
pays it pays very highly in the mental health field. But when you compare it to other doctoral
level kind of positions, not so much.

Unknown Speaker 15:32

So what would you say would be like the most, I guess, ideal paying occupation as a therapist?

Unknown Speaker 15:40

So probably a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist. I mean, I would say, I mean, most psychiatrists that I
know are charging, you know, anywhere from 250 to 500 an hour. So just based on pay alone,
psychiatry, but it's also about the type of people that you'd like to work with. And I was gonna get
there in a minute. But so, so again, just for context, you've got you've got two two different
practitioners. You have your psychiatrist and your psychologists. At that doctoral level. And so,
the psychiatrists are going to be MDS. Whereas your psycho, your psychologist who's going to
be a PhD, and that's going to they typically are going to focus more on research, or the site ID
and this ID is going to focus more on research. It's so a Doctorate of Philosophy or as opposed
to a doctorate. In psychology, it's more clinical focused. It's this, there's this whole debate, you
know, well, you know, are we are we researchers first and practitioners second, or are we you
know, practitioners? Yeah. Researchers first practitioner second, or is it the other way around?

Unknown Speaker 17:01

I'm not sure. Yeah, I recall you mentioned something similar. On the positives. Like, there's a
whole conflict about like, how sometimes it like may fall more into like a science or was it done
are the two that

Unknown Speaker 17:17

therapy is just as much an art as as it is a science, right? Yeah, there's I mean, there's a lot of
truth to that. I mean, I think it's, it's something that yes, I mean, psychology is obviously, you
know, a science. There's no question about that. But it's also about you know, what, what, you
know, what do you want to do with it? You know, so, like I said, I'm licensed as a marriage and
family therapist, there's three level so you can either be a Professional Clinical Counselor,
marriage and family therapist for licensed clinical counselor. And if you can figure out the
difference between those three, let me know, because I've been in therapy. I've been a therapist
for how long have you been a therapist now? Nine and a half years and I still can't figure out the
difference between some of them. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 18:17

I'll do some of my own research. And I'll help you out with that.

Unknown Speaker 18:21

Yeah, let me know. I mean, I mean, I think I'm somewhat kidding. But, I mean, in all seriousness,
we basically we practically we all do the same thing. So there really aren't differences between
us.
Unknown Speaker 18:37
WhatsApp, that's probably just subtle, though.

Unknown Speaker 18:40

There are very, very subtle differences. I mean, absolutely. And I was somewhat kidding. I
mean, I do know that. So the the idea of us as marriage and family therapist is that we're
systemic therapists. We're working with family systems and things like that. And even when
we're working with individuals, that we have that systemic view, whereas I don't know what the
professional counselors that if that's more of a medical model, or if that's more of a systemic
model, I've had I've had and then so the other one is clinical social workers and clinical social
workers is that we look at things from a systemic view. And I'm like, That's news to me. All the
all the social workers that I've ever seen, or have ever seen, you know, don't see things through
a systemic view per se. I would say it's more of a you know, viewpoint where they're looking at
things from a from a resource standpoint. So maybe that's lower level resources, like food or
clothing or shelter, maybe think of like something like the, you know, first aid or, you know, Red
Cross kind of stuff, that's, that's, you know, social work things. And there's nothing wrong or bad
about any of that in and of itself. So, I think it's just a matter of okay what what do we what do
we do with this? You know, once we, once we've got it, so I think that's probably the bigger thing
to me. So

Unknown Speaker 20:19

now, what I'm curious about is how you say that in your line of work, you know, it is very
dependent on the relationship and rapport that you have with the people that you speak with. So
would you say that like I mean, of course, it since it is your job, you do have to put in you know,
work into this but it is, would it be more or less each of you putting work into this dialog, or would
you have to be the one I guess more trying to take the lead? Because it's a like you said it's a
it's like a feedback loop. And you have to work with each other in order to make progress.

Unknown Speaker 21:09

That's actually a really good question. I mean, so I think it's gonna it's gonna go back to your
philosophy of therapy or counseling if you want to practice and so if you're, if your theory, or
your philosophy of therapy is that you're a modernist therapy, then you're going to default to this.
I'm the expert and here's information that you need to know. And it's going to focus be focused
on this very intellectual, insight based kind of thing. Whereas moderate, moderate or humanistic
type kind of things is more you'll hear the term client centered, you know, and so, these are
going to be your kind of more artsy fartsy. Kind of a little bit more kind of you know, very warm
and friendly kind of therapists. That really, we just kind of create this safe space and you'll just
kind of grow and heal. I don't know by magic or something, you know. Like I said, I'm probably
not the not the most, you know, anyway, you get the idea.

Unknown Speaker 22:18

The idea is very broad and it very much does depend on the individual.
Unknown Speaker 22:24
It very much depends on the individual, whereas the and I tend to kind of bounce between those
monitoring modernists and systemic perspectives. What I like about the systemic perspective, is
that it understands that the family systems that we have those feedback loops, it's like the
difference between a thermometer and and a thermostat. The thermometer can only measure
the room. The thermostat has a feedback loop if the room gets too cold, okay, then we can, you
know, bring in a heat source, you know, to be able to you know, you know, adjust for things or
on the opposite side. You know, we can you know if it's in the summertime, if it's too hot while
okay, we can. We can keep things here. I mean, and so if you think back to excuse me, if we
think back to it biology, there's that term homeostasis. So, the, we know that the body likes to
operate in a certain kind of range or area and so a lot of what we're doing is just basically
helping the the body to maintain in that area, or in that range.

Unknown Speaker 23:54

Right, so you're just trying to help the clients I guess, regulate themselves in a sense

Unknown Speaker 24:07

in some, in some cases, yes. We are. And at the same time, I think we're, we're we're helping
we're helping clients to be able to, to do that for themselves.

Unknown Speaker 24:24

Right, because when we first initially spoke, you said that while being a therapist is like applying
a bandage to a wound, the person themselves have, they have to do the healing process on
their own, and you're just there to help facilitate that. So yeah, I remember that.

Unknown Speaker 24:47

Right. Right. But again, I mean, some of that is going to go back to I mean, you know, my, that
that's part of my philosophy, if you will, of of therapy.

Unknown Speaker 25:03

I see. And also, I wanted to go back to elaborate on a previous conversation that we had
regarding was it what are the, I guess, requirements or like the fundamentals in order to be a
therapist? Extreme like, you know, of course.

Unknown Speaker 25:26

So I mean, if you don't mind I'll use I'll use my, my kind of background as as an example. So I
went to Vanguard, I graduated in oh five. And then I did three years of community college at
Solano and I took pretty much every class that I could I took at that stage. I mean, you name it.
So once, once I finished pretty much everything that I could at slano Then I got a transfer
agreement. It's called a tag I forget guaranteed transfer agreement or something like that.
Transfer Admission Guarantee. So it's a writ. It's a written agreement, that basically you can go
to Davis or that. That you can you can do that. And so I believe you can do these for any UC or
any CSU college that you want. And so you basically you need to you need, I'm just on the I'm
on the UC Davis website right here. So you have to submit this between October 1 and
November 30.

Unknown Speaker 26:56

There's a fire truck. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 26:58

that's yeah, they want to be part of the interview.

Unknown Speaker 27:03

Yeah, nice. So that's a that's an easier way to go in some ways. I mean, because your, your
school counselor or whatever can help you, you know, with that kind of thing. And so the nice
thing about the the tag of the Transfer Admission Guarantee is that you're basically applying for
school. But if you've done all the prereqs in advance, you know, you've got guaranteed
admission, so you don't really have to worry about about getting into school or not because
essentially you already know that you're going you're getting into school because because
everything's everything, everything has already gone through. So it might making sense or I
need to explain that more.

Unknown Speaker 27:52

If you're able to explain a little better, I'd appreciate that. Sure. So

Unknown Speaker 27:56

so the the idea of the transfer guarantee, is that you you've done all of your prerequisite classes
at salon or at salon or another community college. You have to have good grades and
everything. So basically what they're doing is they're looking at they're looking at your grades
from the two years, three years or whatever at Solana, and then you're saying okay, well based
on this, you're good to go. I mean, because they don't just let anybody in but the fact that you
that you've done well and some of the other classes basically says okay, well, because you've
done well here you're likely to do well at Davis, so you know, you know we'll give you
guaranteed you know acceptance basically.

Unknown Speaker 28:48

I see also is this like, Is this only like true for say like UC is because I when I was thinking about
what my future would be like how I would like how much time I would spend in college in which
colleges I made initial concept was that I would do two years at Solano and then transfer to was
William Jessup University. Yeah. But you said it doesn't necessarily work that way. Like there's
more like, I guess intricacies though. I don't fully understand the process.

Unknown Speaker 29:37

I mean, you that's where you would have to you'd have to check in with somebody at Jessup
and kind of see, you know, what some of the benefits would be. I mean, if you want to work as a
as a therapist, at least I mean, whether that's Professional Clinical Counselor, marriage and
family therapist, or clinical social worker, minimum you need a master's degree. And so, like I
said, I went to UC Davis, I double majored in psychology and Spanish language. But there
wasn't really a lot that I could do with those degrees after graduation. And I've known a couple
of the Davis grads, they don't do a lot with their with those degrees in and of themselves.
Unfortunately. It's not that it's a question of, you know, intelligence or things like that. I mean,
these are very intelligent people. But I would say it's, it's, it's more of a question of just, you
know, what does that degree you know, allow you to do. And so the other thing that I've said and
I may have said to you was, think about you know, what is the end goal that you have and then
work your way backwards, or you know, what is the lifestyle that you want to live and then
identify a job or a career that allows you to live that life. I think for me as a therapist. Let's see, I
didn't I, I didn't even start working as a therapist until June of 14. So that was almost nine years
after high school. And so I went to I went to community college and undergrad right away. But
then I graduated eight years ago now 13 years ago, with with undergrad, so it's December of 10
of 2010. But then I had all of 2011 2012. So I had almost two full years to try to figure out what
do I want to do next and in 2012 I put in an application, not for my master's degree in marriage
and family therapy, but I actually put in for a doc program. In clinical psychology. But because I
had background in ministry and doing you know, children's ministry and stuff like that, they
thought oh, well you're, you're not really a good fit for, you know, for our particular program, but
we think that you're a good fit for the master's program. So we're they denied my application for
the master's program. But they said, Well, you know, we think you should do this program. Why
don't I don't want to do that program, you know, you know, it's like, well, you kind of, you know,
either either, you know, reapply you know, next year or you know, what have you but you're not
we're not taking you as in the doc program. And so I was disappointed, but that still am to some
degree, but I think it's one of those kinds of things where it is what it is. So doesn't really matter
at this point in time. But that's one of the reasons I'm doing the dock program is because that's
what I really wanted to do in the first place. It's a better it's a better fit for my background and
things like that. And so, the advantage, I think, for me and being able to do the dark program is
that clinical psychologists have more of a background in doing

Unknown Speaker 33:30

psychological testing and evaluations and assessments, not just therapy. And so, getting into
doing evaluations and assessments will also let me cut back on doing therapy. But the other
thing I think that's more important is that like I said, Are you familiar with the income quadrant?
Have you ever heard of that?

Unknown Speaker 33:56

No, I have not. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 34:02

So, read the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, or just or just find it somewhere on
Google like everyone else these days. But what he talks about in in this book is that there's only
four ways of earning money and one of my mentors years ago, was teaching me about this and
I had for for a while I had a small, small business on the on the side of kind of the day job. And
so what he said is that there's basically there's four ways of earning income. That you can either
be an employee, you can be self employed, you can own a business or be an investor. And so if
you look at

Unknown Speaker 34:55

this image here shows the four options, but if you look at the left column, employee and self
employed versus they call it column B, and column A, Column B is actually on the left column A
is on the right. So employees and self, people that are self employed, you have to have active
work to determine income where as a business owner or investor, you know, their income does
not depend on active work because the business owner doesn't have to work because the
employees are basically making money for the owner, investors. You don't have to go to work
because your money your money is going to work for you. And so there's something this is
where there's also this idea of active versus passive income. And so I think it's one of the
reasons one of the reasons I started kind of my own practice is that mean in a big sense, I'm still
self employed. And so a portion of my income is derived from that self employment, but I also
I'm also a business owner, and so and so, in terms of the financial kind of aspect, there's also
benefits there's also those benefits, which I think is a big deal. So

Unknown Speaker 36:20

I've been to financial seminars, actually because of my my parents. But yeah, I wasn't fully
aware of how was it that would work but it does provide a little more. Yeah, I understand it a little
better now. Hearing your experience with that. See?

Unknown Speaker 36:49

I'm glad. I'm glad that I'm glad that makes sense.

Unknown Speaker 36:51

Yeah. Um, see, oh, we'll look into Rich Dad, Poor Dad. My free time. And let's see. Right. I feel
like you did actually provide a lot of good answers. But um, I don't know if there's much more
that I can really elaborate on. Like, just what you should do, you know, during your time and in
school, because you did really talk about like, your own unique experience from going to Solana
to UC Davis. Right. That was your own. Yeah, absolutely.

Unknown Speaker 37:33

And I think it's something that I think a lot of it is really going to depend on. I think you have to
identify who is it you have to in your doing counseling, or just kind of psychology you have to
decide who is it that you want to work with? And so and so one of the things I encourage you
know, somebody's a therapist is that you have to identify who is your ideal client. If you're going
to say you want to work full time as a therapist, which are talking 25 to 30 clients a week. And
so if you're going to see the same type of person in, you know, over and over again, what is
that? What is that niche, that area of focus that you want to be able to identify? And that's going
to look different from person to person to person, there's no right or wrong answers here. It
doesn't mean that you're locked into seeing a one particular person forever. But, but if you can
identify what that is, you know, you know, the more the merrier. So to speak, as they say. And
so, I think that's a you know, hugely important kind of thing to think about. In terms of things
because I've got a friend, I've got a couple, you know, friends and colleagues are like, oh, yeah,
I want to, I want to be a social worker and I look at I look at that, and I'm like, why, you know, it's
like, oh, you know, social work as a field. You know, it's been around a little bit longer. You know,
there's, there's some perspective that it's, you know, more respected and things you can get,
you know, it's easier to probably get some you know, state or county based jobs. Okay, you
know, that certainly makes sense. Fair enough. And so, I mean, if that's, if that's something
that's important to you, okay. You know, you know, but I, I went into with a mentality of, I wanted
to go on my own business. Not I want to work, work for somebody else. And so that I've always
wanted to work for myself. I've never wanted to work for somebody else. I mean, I have worked
for the people that don't, I mean, you know, but that was always going to be a very, very
temporary kind of thing. So,

Unknown Speaker 40:02

right. So, on that note, what would you feel like is essential for being I guess, in the sort of job
that you have, like, aside from like degrees and all that like as in like, traits, or like motivations

Unknown Speaker 40:28

I mean, I think I mean, I think it just exceeding in private practice, at least. I mean, I think we
definitely need to have you know, you know, the want need desire to help people. I mean, I
mean, it shouldn't. That seems kind of obvious. But, you know, just because something's
obvious, doesn't mean that we shouldn't be pointed out.

Unknown Speaker 40:57

Because it is very important after all. 100%

Unknown Speaker 41:01

I mean, and so you're, I mean, I mean, if you want to look at it, I mean either, whatever job that
you're doing, you're either selling a product or you're providing a service, you know, I mean, so,
with your with your parents, you know, being in the dental field, they're providing a service, you
know, differ and so in the service professions, you've got a lot of seasoning, a lot of variation in
terms of, you know, how much how, how much you charge for that service. And so, I think you
see a lot of people you know, that. I think that I have seen, I see a lot of therapists that, you
know, have issues with cioppino that feel like, Oh, I'm charging. I'm charging too much money.
I'm taking advantage of people but a lot of people are willing. It's a voluntary kind of thing if
people are willing to pay the fee that you charge. You know, it's one of the, you know, again,
you're charging for your time, you know, and so, it's not about you know, you know, manipulating
or, or taking advantage of people. You know, it's about, you know, what are they willing to pay,
you know, you know, and, you know, what are you willing to do? And so, you know, if somebody
comes in and Rina heads in and they say, you know, oh, I only want to pay $25 A session, you
know, well, I, I value my time higher than that. So I'm gonna say, Well, no, I can't do it for you
know, 25 a session. It's just it's just not reasonable at that at that rate. I mean, is it you know, I'm
not trying to be you know, you know, mean about it or anything, but it's just, I can't I can't I can't
make things work. And I can't make the numbers work at that, at that rate, you know, and so I
think I think it's easy to get hung up on some of those kinds of things. And I think a lot of a lot of
really good really talented therapists, you know, can struggle with that, you know, that, okay, you
see that people need help. You know, but at the same time, you know, you've got to be able to
provide for yourself and your family and your family as well. I mean, so you can't you can't just
work for free, you

Unknown Speaker 43:32

know, and like, if you're good at doing something, you don't do it for free. That's less what the
Joker said, and never watch dark net, but I still remember that quote. What's up? Was it there's
a quote from the Joker from the dark night? I've never watched the movie, but I just know the
quote that if you're good at doing something you never do it for free for Yes,

Unknown Speaker 43:55

quite, quite. Um, there's some truth to that. I mean, I mean, you know, maybe not the best of
sources. I wouldn't exactly call him a, you know, a role model or anything

Unknown Speaker 44:14

like that. Exactly. No, no.

Unknown Speaker 44:17

But I would say, I mean, I think you know, in terms of, you know, just the, the overall, you know,
perspective and attitude and things, but I think there's a there's a lot of merit to that. In terms of
okay, yeah. You know, you know, recognizing that, that I think it's easy to get to get caught up in
in different perspectives and things that that oh, I'll just do it for free. I'll do it at a discount. I
mean, I I've had even therapists hear things that you know, that, you know, had had really big
issues. You know, you know, you're charging you know, reasonable reasonable rates, but then
getting frustrated with me or with others, that they are not making enough money and, you
know, it's like, well, you're not you're not making enough money because you're not charging
enough money. But I mean, it's, it's kind of hard for me to tell you, you know, you know, you
need to charge more because you don't want to hear that.

Unknown Speaker 45:22

So yeah, it's difficult, like personally. Yeah, I try. I try to do drawings for people. Because I like
making portraits even if it's like takes hours, and I'm really good at it. And I have, I tend to just,
you know, make drawings for people, you know, for free just as a gift. And my parents
encouraged me and you know, the like, I can make a little, you know, like side hustle or a job or
make money out of that skill or talent. Sure, but it's, it's difficult for me to just ask for money to
get paid for doing something that I just enjoy, because personally it's not about the money. But if
I do actually want to make money, then I have to put that incentive.

Unknown Speaker 46:19

And I think it's one of those kinds of things where I mean, I just talked to a guy at church, you
know, his wife is on the worship team. And he's been a he's doing, you know, photo stuff. And
so, I was asking him, I said, Hey, are you you know, are you doing? I know, his background is
like military and stuff like that. He was just doing it for fun. And I was like, good for you. You
know, and so, but he said, they might, you know, they might develop, you know, some hobbies
and stuff around some of that, but they might incorporate, you know, the photo stuff as a
business, do a couple of weddings and things like that, but a lot of it is doing it for fun. So that's
what I'm saying is a you also have to think about lifestyle. Because when you own your own
your own business, and you can intersect your your lifestyle into that. I've taken four trips, like
not not just like, you know, like kind of things but get on a plane fly somewhere trips this past
year. Every single one of those has been work based. I just got back from Nashville. I think
about a month ago now.

Unknown Speaker 47:42

Yeah, so I got back Yeah. 23rd So it's been it's been a little over a month. But I was in Nashville
for basically a week or two. Well, Tennessee. I was only in Nashville for like, a day that pretty
much as soon as I got there, I drove out of Nashville. But I went I went to Tennessee because I
had a conference there. And that that was a two day conference. But I was one of my really
good friends that I've known since I was in junior high. Three years. ago, they moved out to
Tennessee, so I wouldn't have gone I wouldn't have probably gotten a chance to visit them. You
know, if if I hadn't had that conference, but the fact that I had the conference was okay. You
know, there's that intersection between kind of business and stuff like that. So I was able to, I
was able to spend, you know, Wednesday night with them pretty much all day Thursday. The
conference was held in Johnson City, I had a, you know, to two and a half hour lunch with a
buddy of mine that I hadn't seen, that used to live in Vacaville, or actually, he lived in Fairfield.
Come to think of it. But we went to church together anything Vacaville years ago. And so I hadn't
seen him in a long time. He's a lawyer. Now we've talked you know about, about, you know,
business formation stuff because that's mostly the type of work that he does. And I got to go to
church with them on Sunday. I mean, so a lot of things that I would have gotten to do. I had
lunch with a buddy of mine that used to go to my church on Monday and then flew home.
actually ran into one of my old classmates on the in the airport too, and so all anyway, more
information he wanted, sorry. But all of these, all of these kind of things, and I was able to do
that. Because because I own my own business and and because the the the trip was tied to you
know, personal kind of stuff. I mean, if I am sure, you know, if I had gotten a no you know, the,
you know, the, if this was if I was working for some kind of company or whatever, and I said,
Hey, can I, you know, go to this conference you know, maybe they would have said yes, but I
probably would have had to, you know, pay for so much of it out of pocket and things like that,
you know, so just a different a different, you know, perspective and things you know, not not not
not necessarily a right or wrong thing. Just a different, you know, perspective on it. But

Unknown Speaker 50:28

yeah, you know, that's, that's perfect because I was actually just like the last thing that I had
wanted to leave the interview off on a note was it was just how does you know your job? Like,
affect your personal lifestyle? See, I can see like the benefits of just like, because like you as a
therapist, you're a self employed, you know, business owner. So you're able to, you know, enjoy
all of those opportunities. Because that's your position. And, you know, you wouldn't be able to
experience the same thing if you were simply another employee. Right.
Unknown Speaker 51:23
Was there was there was there was there a follow up or a question about that, or, um,

Unknown Speaker 51:30

I mean, I'm just I just mean to say that like, because originally I was going to actually ask you
like, how is it? How fulfilling is it to be, you know, a therapist, as you are, but I think you most
slick pretty much summed it up for me.

Unknown Speaker 51:52

I mean, I think it's really fulfilling but I think it's also I mean, I think, I think for me being honestly
being self employed is more important for me than being a therapist. I mean, and in some
regards, I mean, even though I'm working as a therapist right now. Not that not that. That
therapy is bad or what have you, but I think my my temperament My personality is probably a
better fit, you know, for for Psych testing and evaluation kind of things. But being in a place
where I'm self employed, and I think just being a therapist in general, is that by I've got a buddy
in Roseville. He's been a therapist for well over 20 years now. He's had all sorts of different, you
know, perspectives and things you know, in the field of mental health. And so, in me, he's done
a lot. And so, his specialty I mean, he's written books. I mean, you name it, but his overall
perspective on you know, mental health is something that I think I think changes things, you
know, significantly and so, for him, being a being able to, to work with couples, I mean, is really
rewarding and fulfilling, but it's exhausting. And that's one of the reasons that I don't see a lot of
couples anymore because it's, it's, it's more draining for me to see couples because you've got
to manage to, you know, our families, you know, potentially more people in the room. You know,
if you've got two people that are fighting and you're trying to, you know, stop them from fighting.
Can you do it absolutely can do it. Is it difficult, not if you have the right training and things like
that, but I don't want to see 25 You know, couples a week right now it part of it is also just the
season of life that I'm in. And so what I like about being a therapist is that I and my, my my
friend, his name is Shawn. What he says is if he gets to that point where he wants to step back
and take a break, Sean's got four kids. I mean, I don't have kids. So I mean, we're in very
different stages of life. He's probably, I don't know, I don't know how old he is. I would guess.
50s maybe late 40s, early 50s. But he looked he looks pretty young, but I mean, he's already
got kids in their 20s. So I'm just kind of guessing from Yeah, so it all depends on when they
started having kids and it feels rude to ask like, well, but, but he's told me this before that, you
know, if he if he feels like he's getting burned out, you know, on seeing too many couples, then
he takes a step back. He doesn't take new couples and then he works with teams for a while.
And so what's nice about I think being a therapist is you have so much flexibility in the type of
cases that you take. So when I've got to make some phone calls in a bed here, you know not to
not to disconnect from what we're talking about here. But to but to mention that if I decide so
one of the reasons I'm not taking couples right now is, you know, one, we have other therapists
who specialize that and really enjoys seeing seeing couples, but also, you know, there's more
than enough trauma kind of stuff to work on right now. That it's like, okay, well, I'll focus on that,
you know, and we'll and we'll go from there. So just, again, it's not a it's not a right or wrong, it's
just a different, a different perspective, different, you know, you know, opinion as to, you know,
what's the what's the what's the focus? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 55:51
All right. Well, thank you. And

Unknown Speaker 55:54

I would say that's something good to keep in mind, you know, for yourself as well as you know,
what's your what's your focus what's you know, are you locked into doing, you know, one
particular thing or do you have flexibility within your particular job or things like that? So, for me,
I mean, a life the idea of therapy because a lot. Did you ever watch that TV show? House back
in the day? You're a little young for that one, but they're

Unknown Speaker 56:26

probably I I've seen, like shows, you know, from like, years ago, but I haven't seen that one.
Okay,

Unknown Speaker 56:32

so there's a there's a scene in the first season episode four, it's a Christmas episode, actually.
Where house is supposed to be this this very, very intelligent, you know, doctor and everything,
but he's, he's, he's very misanthropic at the same time. And so he's complaining about having to
do you know, his, you know, his charting and, you know, notes and everything like that, which I
kind of get because if I'm honest, that is kind of the bane of our existence as therapists but I
mean, at the same time, it's like it's really not that big of a deal, you know, and it just needs to
grow up and you know, not complain about it so much. But he said, one of the other characters
Wilson says to house he says, some, some doctors have the god complex, they just want to,
you know, say to save the world, he said, you've got you've got the Rubik's complex you just,
you just have to solve the puzzle. And that show came out probably 20 years ago now. But I
think the idea of that resonates with me a lot, is that you just have to solve the puzzle. And so
that that's what I like about I think, for me, and trying to understand kind of mental health stuff.
It's a it's a puzzle to be solved in so many ways. And so it's looking at okay, how can we address
this how can we treat this how can we, you know, respond to this and if we can if we can identify
all of these kinds of things, you know, then then we can address all the, all the problems and
what have you and move on from there. And see, but again, it's it's just gonna depend on that,
on that, on that overall kind of perspective that you have and what you want to trade. There's
not there's not kind of a it's not as it's not as simple as a right or wrong way. You know, to think
about you know, the the the stuff so, yeah, the your Yeah, your sorry. Your, your your overall
approach in terms of what you're looking for. And so for me that that being self employed was
just was was gonna be so much more important than anything else. But then I, I, there's, there's
a number of therapists here that are just kind of like I don't want to deal with all the business
stuff that stuff gives me a headache. I just want to be able to out I mean, one of the other
therapists he's like, I want to focus on being a dad and, and spending time so I don't want to
have to figure out how to how to manage all the taxes. I don't want to figure out how to you
know, do this and that and I'm like, I don't blame you, you know. So, you know, it just, it just
depends on you know, what is the what is the, what is it? What's important to you, you know,
and I would also say, I mean, you know, it's not something that you have to figure out all at
once. In terms of everything, I mean, for me, the this this overall kind of, you know, attitude and,
and perspective on mental health is not something that that just kind of, you know, occurred to
me all one day, it's, I mean, I mean, I'm almost 40. So, it's something that progressively bit by
bit, you learn, you learn various kinds of things, you see different kinds of things, and I'm always
kind of evaluating kind of where I am and what season of life I'm in. So, this past year, I haven't
worked evenings, usually by about five, I'm done. And I go home. You know, sometimes even by
four, you know, but again, that's part of that lifestyle. And how I wanted to live you know, so so
that that to me, you know, is more important. Start at the end result that you have and work your
way backward. Identify what what is the you know, what is the lifestyle that you want to live? If
you can identify that the then what you do to get there will fall into place and then I would also
mean, I think the other thing I mean, you're gonna need a lot of school I mean, so, if you want to
get a master's degree for counseling, I mean, you're talking, you know, four years of undergrad,
plus another two to three years of grad school. So I was 27. I think by the time i i started grad
school, or was maybe some URL essay or somewhere in there. I think I got licensed just before
I turned 30. So now that's not right. I was 31 was 31. Okay. Yeah. When I got licensed, so it just,
it just depends. I mean, could you do it faster? Sure. I mean, in my in my master's program,
there was a woman who was only 22. But then there were people that were were 40 plus. So a
lot of people do it. As a second career. So it just, it's just a matter of what you want to be able to
do if I was to if I was to do it again, what I might look at doing would be maybe considering you
know, doing I mean, the way I did it was bad, you know doing solando Because you saved a
bunch of money there. But the other option would have been, you know, you know, going into
like the Air Force or something like that, you know, having a full time job or career and building
up, you know, saving, saving a bunch of money

Unknown Speaker 1:02:57

and working full time. And then trying to do school on the side. But, again, it's just it is what it is.
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:07

I see. All right. I think now is a good time to to stop here. So again, thank you very much for
audience. I feel like we've actually come full circle with like, everything that we've discussed,
regarding like, school and like how this also plays into your own personal life. See, so this is
gonna be very helpful for me, not just for school, but also for myself. So, again, thank you very
much.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:42

You're welcome. I'm really glad this is I'm glad this is helpful. So yeah, just let me know. If you
have any questions or things in the future and you want to chat. I mean, you're more than
welcome to take me up and we can we can revisit, you know, cars.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:02

Alright, so yeah. Lastly, how will this in the otter, Otter AI thing? It should,

Unknown Speaker 1:04:11

it should email you a. a, what's the word I'm looking for? It should email you basically kind of a
thing that's, you know, as far as what's, you know, what we talked about and everything and just
go from there.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:30

I see like me immediately after like, it might

Unknown Speaker 1:04:34

take you know, a few minutes but it's pretty quick. It's pretty quick. So it should email you that
directly if you don't get something by six what my phone's been off, but yeah, call me text me.
And I can figure out how to export it or share it or whatever. And I'll get it to you. No problem.
Sure. And you

Unknown Speaker 1:04:57

should also get to those business calls pretty soon and that's also so my laptop is saying that it's
pretty low. So okay. So yeah. All right. Well, I

Unknown Speaker 1:05:08

very much. Appreciate your questions and hope. I hope this was helpful.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:12

It is possible. Thank you. All

Unknown Speaker 1:05:16

right, great. Well, we'll talk to you more soon then. Of

Unknown Speaker 1:05:19

course. Alright, take care. Take care have a good day. All right. Bye. Bye.