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
