Therapists Shaming Therapists

Therapists Shaming Therapists

An interview with Katie Read about therapists shaming each other when they raise their fees or start playing bigger. Curt and Katie talk with Katie about the puritanical culture within the therapist community that leads to group think, public shaming, and milquetoast messaging to mitigate their fear that anything different will be attacked. We look at reasons behind this (jealousy, guilt, shame, and moralism) as well as what therapists can do to step outside of this culture to create more success. 

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 Katie Read, LMFT, Six Figure Flagship

Katie takes lessons from her nearly-20 successful years in the field to help clinicians grow...then OUTgrow...their practices.

Immediately upon licensure, Katie was made Director of a large Transitional Aged Youth program in Oakland, CA. Later, she was recruited to Direct one of Sacramento’s largest Wraparound Programs, and from there she moved into the role of Director of Clinical Supervision, personally supervising 40+ interns towards licensure.

Concurrently, Katie had private practices in multiple cities, taught graduate psychology students, and wrote and created therapist training materials.

Katie is also a special needs mom and loves helping other moms tune into their own intuition and lead their best-possible lives by taking the sometimes-scary leap into following what’s best for them, deep down.

She is the creator of:

The Clinician to Coach® Academy,

The Clini-Coach® Certification,

and the Six-Figure Flagship™ Program.

She’s a little bit obsessed with helping therapists get profitable doing the creative, out-of-the-box, authentic work you're called to do!

In this episode we talk about:

• How therapists are treating each other
• The concept of trolling, piling on, shame
• The Article in the Atlantic – New Puritans – and the concept of the illiberal left
• How identity plays a role and the group dynamics within therapist Facebook groups
• The shaming related to increasing your fees
• Katie Read’s origin story as an on the street social work
• The value placed on sacrifice and avoiding guilt for the difference in privilege when working with clients who are impoverished
• Socially-prescribed perfectionism, self-imposed perfectionism
• The fine line about what is acceptable to charge or make as a therapist
• Cancel culture and the lack of allowance for errors
• Echo chambers, factions, and exclusion
• The fear of dissenting opinions
• The low context of the internet paired with the high context nature of a therapist’s job
• Milquetoast messaging to avoid getting attacked
• Dialing down authenticity to fit into what is acceptable
• Challenging our financial mindset
• Cultural and societal factors that frame us as cheap labor
• The seeming requirement for therapists to suffer in order to understand our clients
• The reality of therapists as business owners
• Therapist guilt for “earning money”
• Feminized professions and the expectation of doing things out the goodness of our hearts
• Rapidly changing social rules versus entrenchment in what has been
• How this identity shift is spilling over into real life
• Jealousy, guilt, and shame, and moralism
• The best therapists have the worst impostor syndrome
• How to navigate when you’re a therapist going against the grain
• The importance of every therapist doing their own money mindset work