Therapy with an Audience

Therapy with an Audience

An interview with Doug Friedman, LCSW, the host of Your Mental Breakdown, on why he chose to record therapy sessions for his podcast. Curt and Katie talk with Doug about the logistics and benefits of publicly providing therapy. We also look at how podcasting can decrease stigma and open up flexibility to learn as a therapist (rather than rigidly holding to a modality or to an expert status that doesn’t allow for mistakes).

It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

Interview with Doug Friedman, LCSW

Doug Friedman is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Los Angeles. He has spent nearly 20 years working with adults, adolescents and families with issues ranging from depression and anxiety to substance abuse, bipolar disorder and PTSD. He has supervised programs in community mental health settings and he continues to provide clinical supervision to therapists in his private group practice, Clear Mind Full Heart. Doug is the creator and co-host of the mental health/entertainment podcast, Your Mental Breakdown.

Doug received a Masters in Social Work from The Catholic University of America and a BA in Study of Religion from UCLA. Before becoming a psychotherapist, Doug worked for a music management company that oversaw bands like Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys, and Bonnie Raitt. Doug is also the artist and songwriter behind all the music heard on the podcast, Your Mental Breakdown.

In this episode we talk about:

• Doug’s mission of normalizing therapy and decreasing mental health stigma
• The importance of learning as a therapist and exploring mistakes or alternatives
• The experience of being a therapist on a public-facing podcast
• Why Doug doesn’t hold a modality sacred
• How therapy serves the client as a focus for treatment
• The logistics of setting up the podcast (laws, ethics, etc.)
• Navigating the relationship with the client on the podcast (dual relationships, confidentiality)
• The benefit of recording sessions and reviewing them later
• Exploration of opportunities and different choices that we can make in the room
• Cohost rapport and trust, inquiry, love, disagreement, calling out
• The comfort level in being recorded for a podcast: shifting from one on one to a public audience
• Creating a system to keep the work of making the podcast sustainable
• Being vulnerable and authentic as a value
• Being an expert does not mean having the right answer in the room, but knowing how to find the answer and seek additional advice
• How other clients respond to Doug’s podcast
• The possibility of the public persona and “fame”