The Modern Therapist's Survival Guide with Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy When is it Discrimination?
Jan 21, 2019
37:48
Curt and Katie talk about how niche, safety considerations, or competence can be used by therapists to discriminate against specific classes of people. Specifically looking at therapists who decide to no longer work with men.
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.
In this episode we talk about:
- How therapists might be discriminating when they refuse to work with a specific gender
- Niche, specialization, scope of competence (or scope of excellence)
- How to assess whether you are discriminating or providing the highest level of care (i.e., referral)
- Having a thoughtful process and clear conversation to help clients find the best match
- Assessing safety in deciding who to take into your practice
- The importance of good screening tools
- The problem of refusing to see clients when you are fearful of a whole protected class of individuals
- Marketing to your ideal client to help the clients you’re best suited to help call you
- When there is a competence issue to be a therapist when you are not able to work professionally with specific protected classes
- The role that past traumas and wounding experiences have on our ability to be effective therapists
- Self-awareness versus discrimination
- The argument about whether we “have to” serve everyone who reaches out to us for help
- Options when you don’t feel capable of serving specific issues or specific classes of people
- Referring out, learning more, working on your own triggers
- The standard that therapists are held to
- How not to discriminate – helping clients to make an informed choice, providing professional assistance (referring out)
- When you must see clients according to the ethics codes
- How to take care of yourself as a therapist
- Respecting that we are human beings with limits, while still understanding the higher standard that we are held to