← Abundant Practice Podcast
Abundant Practice Podcast
Episode #646: Navigating The Journey As Parent & Helping Professional, feat. Lauren Gourley
00:31:59
, MSW, LSCW, IMH-E®, PMH-C joins me to explore the unique challenges and rewards of balancing life as a professional helper/practice builder with the ongoing journey of parenting. She highlights how our professional experiences can influence our...
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- [00:00]
Alison Perior
Foreign hi, welcome to the Abundant Practice Podcast. I'm Alison from Abundance Practice Building. I have a nearly diagnosable obsession with helping therapists build sustainable, joy filled private practices, just like I've done for tens of thousands of therapists across the world. I'm excited to help you too. If you want to fill your practice with ideal clients, we have loads of free resources and paid support. Go to abundance practice building.com Links all right, onto the show so I've talked about therapy notes on here for years. I could talk about the features and the benefits in my sleep. But there are a couple things I want you to know about Therapy notes that doesn't typically make it into an ad script. First is that they actually care if you like their platform. They don't only make themselves available on the phone to troubleshoot so you don't pull your hair out when you get stuck. They also take member suggestions and implement those that there's client demand for. Like Therapy Search, an included listing service that helps clients find you internal and external secure messaging Clinical outcome measures to keep an eye on how your clients are progressing A super smooth super bill process Real time eligibility to check on your client's insurance. In my conversations with the employees there at all levels, they all really believe in their product and they want you to love it too. Second, they are proudly independently owned. Why should you care about that? Because as soon as venture capital becomes involved, the focus shifts from making customers happy to making investors happy. Prices go way up. Innovation plateaus. Making more money with as little output as possible becomes the number one focus. With over 100,000 therapists using their platform, they've been able to stay incredibly successful and they don't have to sacrifice your experience to stay there. You can try two months free@therapynotes.com with the coupon code Abundant.
- [01:58]
Lauren Gourley
Some of y'all.
- [01:59]
Alison Perior
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- [03:29]
Lauren Gourley
Of course. So glad to be here.
- [03:31]
Alison Perior
Yeah. So you've written a book about this, which we should talk about throughout. Can you introduce us to that real quick before we dive in?
- [03:38]
Lauren Gourley
Sure. So my book is called Confluence, A Reflective Workbook. And it's about sort of navigating the journey as parent and helping professional. It's something I've been thinking a lot about. I've been a therapist for 20 years and a parent for 11 now, and I had no idea my title when I was pregnant was child development Specialist. I thought, okay, that'll help me know some things about being a parent. Right?
- [04:01]
Alison Perior
Yeah.
- [04:01]
Lauren Gourley
And then, of course, becoming a parent is one of the humbling, most humbling experiences of all time. Right. And I had no idea how much those sort of overlaps of identity would affect me at home and also at work, how much it would change my practice in good ways and in hard. Right.
- [04:18]
Alison Perior
Yeah. Yeah. Can we talk about some examples of that? Because I'm like, I'm thinking of 10 in my head right now of how those overlapping identities have really impacted me at different times in my life.
- [04:29]
Lauren Gourley
Sure. Well, let's talk about some of the good things. And I bet there's more than 10. There's probably a thousand. Right. But some of the things for me is I certainly did bring some of my professional skills and training home, whether that was sort of the content knowledge that we know about or we've learned along the way or some of the more sort of mindfulness skills and things that in A hard moment with our kids or at work. We know maybe a little bit about how to get regulated and how to get through a hard thing. We might have some understanding, understanding that there are going to be hard parts in life, in relationships, and that it's when those ruptures happen, we can work on repair and not just sort of imagine that we should be better than this and never have a problem or a difficulty. Right.
- [05:12]
Alison Perior
Right.
- [05:12]
Lauren Gourley
We may know sort of when to be worried. Right. And then how to navigate those systems and how to get the support that we need at work. We're going to, as a parent, we're going to bring some of that lived experience into our work. Right. And I. Empathy grows. Our maybe judgment of parents may shrink, hopefully, as we realize just how freaking hard it is to be a parent. Right. But there's some real risks too, I think. And I think it's really important to name this because I don't know about you, but this isn't written or talked about very much at all. We're talking about it together, but it's no part of graduate training or preparation. There's starting to be a little bit of talk about it now and sort of expert trainings and, you know, but not a lot. So becoming a parent can change our practice at work. For sure. We know that parents will talk about. I just feel extra sensitive. I can't listen to the news anymore.
- [06:08]
Alison Perior
Oh, yeah.
- [06:08]
Lauren Gourley
I don't want to watch like violent movies. It hits me too hard. I'm thinking about my babies. Think about what we do at work. All day, every day we hear about hard things. And so we may be not only extra sensitive, but then more sensitive to what we call in the field, countertransference, which are all of those feelings and sensations that we notice as we're doing the work with clients, perhaps what they're bringing in or how our relationship is going. And so we're going to need some help managing that sometimes if it's starting to feel overwhelming. That sensitivity may also make us more vulnerable to vicarious trauma and burnout. Not only are we taking care of people all day, every day at work, trying to grow our practice, do all the things we're going home and doing it. And that may mean likely means we have less time in the day to take care of ourselves. And so then we're hearing about the hard stuff. We're maybe struggling as parents or sort of wondering. And, you know, all of that can really compound into putting us at risk for burnout. Right?
- [07:05]
Alison Perior
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting Because I think about how a couple years into being a therapist, before I was a parent, I was like, I got. I can't watch any of this stuff anymore. Like, I can't watch. If it won an Oscar, I cannot watch it.
- [07:20]
Lauren Gourley
Probably.
- [07:22]
Alison Perior
Yes. And then I became a parent. And like you said, like, every. Like, if there's a kid hurt or missing or anything like that in a show or a movie, we're both like, out. We're not doing this. And it has not occurred to me until this one moment that we are basically watching. Like, our nervous system is filing away our work every day in the same way it would file away a drama with a missing kid.
- [07:47]
Lauren Gourley
That's exactly it. And when we are parents and we have that closer connection to our own children, our brains are rewiring for even more, that sense of protection. And then we're experiencing it as a threat, right. As a real little set and bringing our. Maybe the image of our child. Can I tell a story that, like, this happen for me in a session? So I was maybe six or seven weeks back from maternity leave. I worked on this early childhood mental health clinic in the Bronx. A lot of training and supervision. I thought I was doing okay. I kind of had a sense, okay, like, things might come up for me. They might be different in the room with parents who are struggling, or I might have that sense of being, like, a little more protective to very young children. Right. Like, okay. So I'm sitting with a very senior clinician in her hour of clinical supervision. She's talking to me about a very young child in foster care who was really struggling, really struggling, who's two or three. And she started to tell the story of what had happened to. To get him into foster care. And it sort of. She. I think she had kind of forgotten, but it dawned on her in that moment that when this little one was five or six months old, he had sustained a skull fracture from one of his parents, a little bit of a mis. And they're still trying to figure out what would be the good next step for him. But that was his early experience. SHE CONTINUES TALKING and I freeze. Absolutely frozen. All I could do was think about my little guy who was five or six months old, and I could think about his little fuzzy head. And I was just had this wave of revulsion towards a parent who could hurt her kid like that.
- [09:20]
Alison Perior
Yeah.
- [09:21]
Lauren Gourley
And that's an understandable feeling, but it's certainly not a feeling that I could act on if I was in a moment, in a session with that. With that Mother. Right. I needed to really slow down and think about that reaction, make sure I had my own space to reflect on that and get myself okay so that I could be present first with this clinician and then if I was in a session with a client with a similar story, I could not separate the two out of my own experience and this client's story in that moment. And it was such a good example of how I needed more support. I needed to slow down and make sure that I was okay so that I could do my best work with clients. And this stuff will hit us when we least expect it, but it shows up sometimes.
- [10:05]
Alison Perior
Yeah. It's interesting how you come back to we need the support. Like you said, like we are in a career that is all about offering that support. Yeah. And then we're taking care of our family when we get home. Like we are last on the list if we're not very intentional.
- [10:23]
Lauren Gourley
Yes.
- [10:24]
Alison Perior
And that has dire consequences for everyone involved.
- [10:28]
Lauren Gourley
Absolutely. That's the way you put it. Last on the list. We go in this field because we want to help. Right. And we have probably incredible compassion for the folks that we're supporting or wanting to help or building something for. And yet, at the end of the day, are we able to use that compassion and turn it towards ourselves and think about what we really need? Right. And so I talk a lot about the need for self compassion, just borrowing the incredible work of Kristin Neff, but also borrowing some ideas from the field of infant mental health. And one of those is called reflective consultation and supervision, which is sort of built on psychodynamic clinical supervision. But it can look a lot of different ways. It could be individual support that you're paying for. It might be within a group of other providers doing sort of the same work that you're doing or even in a peer consultation group. And it sort of creates this space to feel held right. Because we think of all the people that we are help holding and that so that we need our own space to unpack all of this, to feel validated, to explore how these streams of identities. And being a parent and a therapist is some of our multiple identities, of course, who we are, all of the other ways that we sort of navigate and identify in this world. We all bring that in. And we want to think about how those identities sort of impact our clinical practice and how our clinical practice impacts us. Because the work we do has a cost. And that's just not just the therapy work that we're doing, but all the things we're doing to Try to support our businesses. It's heavy. Sometimes it's very heavy.
- [12:02]
Alison Perior
Yeah. And I think we deny the heaviness to ourselves. Like, we're in denial a little bit and just keep trucking. I think you and I have the same amount of experience. We're probably the same generation, you know, like we're about the same age. And so we're probably lying to ourselves if we act like we're not still deeply impacted by what we do day to day.
- [12:21]
Lauren Gourley
Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the ideas of reflective practice is that this is continuous. That, you know, I think to get over some of the imposter syndrome, being a therapist, being a parent, being a human, we kind of need to imagine, okay, like, we've probably got what we. What we need, right. And we'll be okay. And it's important. Right. But I think the other piece of the truth is what if we admitted that this is always really hard and that one of the things we can do is say, we're always going to struggle. That's normal. And let's create opportunities to take a look at our practice or get the support that we need, or slow down and look at my book and there's just tons of reflective prompts. You can do this on your own. But having a place where you feel validated and supported and held and also then vulnerable and safe enough to take some risks and take a look at when things are hard or sort of not aligning with what they need to be, that's only going to help. We are so hard on ourselves as therapists and as parents. And I think that overlap, we might think, okay, I've had some training in this, my job title, I think I said this. I was a child development specialist when I came. And suddenly I had no idea what I was doing, but I thought I should. And I was so hard on myself when we struggled and when I was able to say, wait a minute, I'm a parent too, we all struggle. This is normal. Then I was able to take a breath and actually use the skills for my clinical practice, which were helpful, which was self compassion, slowing down, getting support.
- [13:46]
Alison Perior
And I think, like, as an ACT therapist, I hear a lot of like, like, oh, yeah, this is just gonna suck on some level. Like, this is gonna be heavy. And if we pretend like it's not heavy, then we can't feel those feelings and just let it be heavy and let it release, you know?
- [14:02]
Lauren Gourley
Exactly. You're in that middle place, like suffering, but not knowing either this is gonna be what it is, or I could do something different.
- [14:11]
Alison Perior
I love this, and I think about for private practice therapists. So, like, when you're in an agency, you have no agency. You have no autonomy. When you have to be there, there's a lot less flexibility. There's a lot less money. That's why I'm always telling people who ask me, the private practice is, like, the absolute best place for a new parent because you can create your own schedule. You can work the hours that make sense for your family. The number of times my hours have changed, it's astounding just to, like, absolutely let my family come first and accommodate what needs accommodating.
- [14:43]
Lauren Gourley
Absolutely. When my kiddo was almost two, we moved to the Midwest. My partner's job was here, and so we moved, and it was the opportunity to create my own private practice. One of the first things I read, actually, was your guide to maternity leave, which was a little bit late for me, but, oh, my gosh, it was like, you do what you need to do. Here's how to keep your clients in mind. But here's if you don't do the things that you need to do to take care of yourself throughout the day and on the regular, do any of us. Right. And then, ironically, Covid taught that same lesson again when we were suddenly doing even more. And I think I had sort of taken that ethos from agency work of, I need to work eight to six, I need to be available late so people can come in. I'd sort of carry that into my private practice. Honestly, it helped a little bit when I was building to get people in the door. But when Covid happened just a few years later, and I realized I have to do even more of all of these things and somehow be a homeschool teacher and all the things, what do I actually want to do right now? Right. Once we were sort of in the. Oh, my gosh, I can breathe. Maybe a year later, after the lock lockdown, I realized I didn't want to work after school. I wanted to be home with my kid. And now I am three days a week. Right. We figured out childcare for the other two. That's the perfect balance for me. I actually don't want to do math homework every day with my kiddo because sometimes it's a nightmare. But I do want to be there more days than not. And I can, because I'm a boss. I get to choose. Right. That was my value.
- [16:08]
Alison Perior
Yeah. The people who work with kids right now are like, no, but you don't understand. I have to. If I want to see kids, I have to work after school. And so what I'm hearing you say, and I know what I've said a lot, lot is like, not necessarily there are other ways.
- [16:23]
Lauren Gourley
I'm going to go back to one of your resources, which is the what to say when. And I think about it all the time. When I say my availability is or my hours are. I'm available on Tuesdays at 9, 10 and 1. And then you wait, Right? Yes. Parents will figure it out. I'll provide a school note. I'll talk to that teacher and find the time that's like a little bit easier for them to get out of school. There are going to be a very small handful of families. They're two parent working families, whatever it is, that really are struggling to get there. And you know what, I do have a couple of spots for them, but I'm not going to talk about those spots right away until I really assess the need. And more often than not, I can see them at 8. We can figure it out.
- [17:04]
Alison Perior
Yeah, yeah. My youngest just started in therapy and the therapist was like, well, I'm assuming you want some after school spots. I've got this and that for that. And I was like, the practice builder in me was like, don't do it. But I was like, okay, I'll take that after school spot. Even though I was totally expecting and totally willing to come in the middle of the day, like, sure, I'm happy for it to be a bit more inconvenient for me, but I was willing for it to be inconvenient and maybe.
- [17:32]
Lauren Gourley
For that therapist, it works for them. Right. Which is why I'm so grateful for. Right. But I know for me I'm going to be a better therapist and a better, a better human best parent if I can sort of find the schedule that works for me. I'm a morning person. Really glad we're having this conversation first thing in the morning. That's actually when I'm best.
- [17:50]
Alison Perior
Yeah.
- [17:51]
Lauren Gourley
I'm going to do my absolute best on Thursday at 4. But you know, I'm not going to do that every week because it takes a toll, right?
- [17:59]
Alison Perior
Yeah, absolutely.
- [18:00]
Lauren Gourley
It brings me back to act, which is being really clear about what your values are. And I think as a parent and a therapist, a practice builder, we have to do that. And then our life feels more manageable and actually energizing rather than just depleting. Right.
- [18:14]
Alison Perior
100%. And when we're starting our practice and we feel a little bit more desperate around it, it's really hard to trust that you can have what you want and that you can put your values around your family first. And sometimes I think most of us probably have to prove it to ourselves that we can do that. And by doing the opposite. I was working till seven because I thought I needed to work until seven. Until I had my baby, I did not want to work. I'm this morning person too. I'd rather work at 7 in the morning than 7 at night.
- [18:41]
Lauren Gourley
Any day, same.
- [18:43]
Alison Perior
But I was working till 7 until I had my oldest. And then I had to, like, I absolutely had to be like, relieve the nanny trying to find a daycare in Seattle. You had to sign up a year ahead of time, but then nanny had.
- [18:55]
Lauren Gourley
To go before you were pregnant, right?
- [18:57]
Alison Perior
Yeah, 100%. So I was taught, like, oh, people still come. I'm still full. This is fine.
- [19:05]
Lauren Gourley
Yeah, yeah. Every year I've gotten clearer and clearer about what hours I'm available and best at my practice has grown, like, so my income has actually gone up as I've worked a little bit less or been available for a little bit less. And, you know, I'm not marketing a lot now. I've shifted. I still see kids, right? So they're coming in. But these days I see a lot of helping professionals. It's real. It's where my real passion lays, Right. And so whether that's in psychotherapy or reflective consultation or supervision, you know, creating the space where people can come and talk about those struggles and feel validated, it makes such a difference. And because I'm sort of aligning with where I feel energized and good and sort of focusing my professional experience, people find me.
- [19:49]
Alison Perior
Yes, exactly. Because people are getting results. People are feeling good about the experience. They're telling their friends who need therapy, you know, so it's the. When you're doing great work, word of mouth spreads and it's harder to do great work when you're burned out and.
- [20:03]
Lauren Gourley
Think about, you know, as professional caregivers, we're caring for people all day, every day at work and then coming home and needing to do probably even more with our families and young children and adolescents too, probably need more of us than infants at some point. And maybe not as cute and cuddly to like fill up that cup either. It's just, it's too much. And so creating sort of that way of figuring out what's really workable and sustainable for us, it's going to make such a difference. Right.
- [20:35]
Alison Perior
And so how do you help people in your book with Trusting that they are important to take care of and that they don't need to be last on the list.
- [20:46]
Lauren Gourley
I think the first part of the book is sort of just the more information and so lots of research there, but also a lot of stories. And I think you've probably heard this, like, when people start telling the stories of what it's like to be a parent and a therapist, the whole room, like, joins in of anyone that sort of tried to become a parent, is a parent, is working on it. Right. It is so real. And we need those experiences of feeling validated and understood that we are not alone in this struggle. And so I think that's a really important piece is finding people or professional support, whatever it is, finding your friends that you can really talk about how hard it is. I think when we're a therapist or doing this work, our partners, our friends and family might think like, oh, she's got this, they've got this. And maybe even like, you know, getting our partners to pick up their own book about parenting or about child development can be a struggle because we're expected to be the expert at home too, right?
- [21:44]
Alison Perior
And we're also the ones reading the books because we were like, here are my 37 parenting books that all conflict with each other.
- [21:51]
Lauren Gourley
I have a deep interest in reading a lot of parenting books and working at home because I am always doubting, like, do. My partner, however, has read very few unless I'm like, listen to this together in the car. He's trying, right? But, you know, can we find the places where we can be far more vulnerable in that and be not need to be the expert, be with friends that where we can say, oh, my God, this is so hard right now. And for them to know it is really okay for us to talk about the struggle. Like, I'm not talking to Lauren, the therapist expert right now. The irony here is an infant mental health. We get as far away as possible from an expert stance. So it's funny that that word even keeps coming out of my mouth. Think we all know that the more we can sort of get away from anyone knowing what they need to know and into a place of like, let's be vulnerable and talk about what's hard together and talk about what feels okay and good and also where the struggle is, we're going to do way better, right?
- [22:42]
Alison Perior
100%.
- [22:42]
Lauren Gourley
So that's an important piece. So that's sort of a parenting thing. But at work too, if we are starting to doubt ourselves having hard moments with our kids, is that sort of oozing into our work with clients, bringing in some self doubt or judgment of ourselves. And then we need to really slow down and take a look at like, how do I hold my stuff as separate and know that it is impacting me and maybe even my practice, but also then be able to be very present with whatever's happening in the room and with your relationship.
- [23:10]
Alison Perior
Yeah.
- [23:11]
Lauren Gourley
And so that may be spending some time journaling, answering some reflective prompts, finding someone to talk it through with a peer colleague or a professional helper, but just, you know, really thinking about it. There are things that change in our practice. I read a lot of research in pregnancy. Therapists get it really way more direct, which is really interesting.
- [23:30]
Alison Perior
That's fascinating.
- [23:31]
Lauren Gourley
Pregnant, where like, I feel like time is a little shorter. And actually sometimes that directness can really serve the clinical set. And sometimes we might be going a little far. Right.
- [23:43]
Alison Perior
Yeah.
- [23:44]
Lauren Gourley
Who isn't doing a little bit more self disclosure or at least feeling pulled to do a little bit more self disclosure than usual? Once we become a parent, it can feel very helpful to share those stories. Sometimes it is clinically helpful. Sometimes it's getting in the way of thinking about what our client needs. And so bringing in those like, ideas of reflective practice and getting the support that we need to sort of continually look at our practice and make sure we're good is going to support us along the way.
- [24:13]
Alison Perior
Yeah. I remember sharing something with a client that I was like vetting in my head before I shared it. So I felt like it was a really good share. Yeah, it went well. But then maybe like a couple months later she like used my daughter's name as like, well, you know, like how she did, blah, blah, blah. And I. And it felt really weird for one of my clients to say my daughter's name for some reason. You know, she's a mom. Like, it was totally fine, but it was like a little jarring and helped me remember. Like, yeah, self disclosure is something. It really, really matters. And I always vet. At first I think I was, you know, like a lot of people train not to say a damn word about yourself. And then through really good supervision, learned how to vet my head before anything comes out of my mouth. But yeah, it, it's.
- [25:00]
Lauren Gourley
That's exactly it.
- [25:01]
Alison Perior
Yeah, yeah, that's.
- [25:02]
Lauren Gourley
Reflective practice is doing that work before you vetted it, during reading the room and then after. And after is not just after you've said it or the client's responded, but three, four months later when they're still thinking about that story or Making it their own.
- [25:15]
Alison Perior
Right.
- [25:16]
Lauren Gourley
And so then we can hold in mind, okay, this is. Is. Could be a powerful thing. Let's be careful. Yes. How much do I want to share here? Absolutely. And I think, you know, this field has come a long way from where we were trained and which was really based in old, old, old psychoanalytic stuff. You know, the first psychoanalytic therapist thought, if I do my own work, if I do my own analysis, then actually, when I'm in a room with client, I am a blank screen. That was their word. I have literally done all the work, so I can set it aside. Time went on. Right. We're still kind of trained like that.
- [25:49]
Alison Perior
Yeah.
- [25:50]
Lauren Gourley
All better. And I will be completely transparent. It's all about the client. And feminist psychotherapists showed up and went, wait a minute. Like, I think actually we do need to share parts of ourselves so our clients can make an informed decision and make sure that we're aligned in the ways that matter. Maybe not in all the ways, but the ways that are important to them to make sure that they feel safe and comfortable to do the best work they can.
- [26:11]
Alison Perior
Yeah.
- [26:12]
Lauren Gourley
So we've shifted, and hopefully all of us are bringing sort of figuring out where we land on that continuum with some reflective work, and then you can figure out what's right for you and for your client, and that'll change over time. But if you're finding yourself pulled to tell that story all the time, or to think that because of your experience with your kid in a difficult moment, their sleep concerns or whatever that N equals, one experience is going to translate to every. Every other story of infant sleep that you hear about. It's just not going to be true. And we want to slow down and think about, okay, like, what do we best need to do here? And what are. Where are we grounded? Right in the right sort of frame.
- [26:50]
Alison Perior
Yeah. And I think, too, when you're sleep deprived and you're hanging out with other new moms, for instance, and, like, you're all sharing everything. Like, I remember when I came back from maternity leave, that was something I really had to, like, be on top of, because I was just, like, with all my mom friends who also had.
- [27:06]
Lauren Gourley
Infants, which was instrumental to your survival.
- [27:09]
Alison Perior
100%. Yeah. But here I am back at work. This is a different scenario. It's a different situation. And I have to really.
- [27:17]
Lauren Gourley
I have to shift. Yeah.
- [27:18]
Alison Perior
Sew myself back up a little bit, you know, like, yes, yes.
- [27:22]
Lauren Gourley
And how do I hold? And we haven't even talked about, you know, when things get really hard when we are going through infertility struggles or have experienced a miscarriage when all. When our child is struggling with a severe medical crisis. What are we going to need to do in those times? First of all, to take deep, deep care of ourselves and our kids and family and then to be able to set that down just a little bit to be present or at work or can we. Or then should we have a think about do we need to reduce even more so we can sustain this?
- [27:55]
Alison Perior
Yeah. And in fact, I had an experience I'd written in my newsletter about like my daughter's epilepsy and it kind of rearing its ugly head again and in more severe ways. And. And literally two weeks after she'd had that seizure, one of my clients kids had their first seizure.
- [28:11]
Lauren Gourley
Oh my gosh.
- [28:12]
Alison Perior
And I was like, okay, I'm a social worker. I have lots of resources I can give her. I need to not fire hose her with resources, even though the social worker in me wants to do that. I am a fellow mom who gets how scary this is, but I need to not show her how scared I was and am still. That's not for this specific client. I can't leak all that out. And so like really assessing in that moment quickly how to respond and you know, ended up disclosing I had a child with epilepsy, but not that we'd had this brand new reoccurrence. And what resources does she already have? Who is she seeing? Dr. Wise? What's her pediatrician, you know, situation to make sure that she just had resources without being like, here's who we love and who we hate. You know, like, here's the medicine we use. We didn't do any of that. Even though with a friend I might have. Even though what medicine works for one kid has nothing to do with how it's going to work for another.
- [29:09]
Lauren Gourley
But on the week too, right? Yeah.
- [29:11]
Alison Perior
But with another fellow parent friend, I would have a very different kind of conversation.
- [29:16]
Lauren Gourley
You knew your client well enough to slow down and realize you needed to hold your stuff. Right. Your own personal experience of it to sort of understand where she was at. You did their social work assessment is what you did. Right. And then figured out and did disclose at that point that you knew some things about this, but you were sort of titrating what they needed. Right. More than just making it into probably also very needed support session. But that wasn't that.
- [29:44]
Alison Perior
Yeah, right. Yeah, absolutely.
- [29:46]
Lauren Gourley
And so you could slow it down. And that is such an incredible example of that confluence Your lived experience as a parent and your daughter's medical difficulties came into that session, but you held it in a way that was therapeutically for doing that work.
- [30:01]
Alison Perior
Absolutely. Lauren, this is so good. What's the best place for people to get your book?
- [30:07]
Lauren Gourley
The book is on Amazon and it is so. It's Confluence Navigating the Journey of Helping provider and Parent. And my website is www.mapletreewellness.com. there is a page just for Confluence and you can get on my mailing list. I promise not to melt to get in touch very often, but I am working on some groups that will be ongoing for support if people want to talk more about this.
- [30:30]
Alison Perior
Yeah.
- [30:31]
Lauren Gourley
So those are coming probably in the fall. I have loved writing a book, but I'll tell you, the course I didn't take is how to publicize your book. So I'm still figuring it all out. But those. Those are the best ways to reach me and be in touch. I'd love to talk more.
- [30:44]
Alison Perior
Thank you so much.
- [30:45]
Lauren Gourley
This was really.
- [30:46]
Alison Perior
This was really good. And I think especially for the people thinking about being parents or the people. Yeah. Like just in the thick of it, you know, it's helpful to hear there's a whole book written about this specific.
- [30:56]
Lauren Gourley
Overlap because it's difficult and you're not alone. Right. And we. There's places and spaces that we can get support and be better because of it. Right.
- [31:05]
Alison Perior
Absolutely. Awesome.
- [31:06]
Lauren Gourley
I'm so glad to be here.
- [31:08]
Alison Perior
Yeah. I really appreciate it. Yeah. All right. Well, take care.
- [31:12]
Lauren Gourley
Okay. Bye. Bye.
- [31:13]
Alison Perior
Bye. If you're ready for a much easier practice, TherapyNotes is the way to go. Go to therapynotes.com and use the promo code abundant for two months free. Make sure your email is actually HIPAA compliant with Powell Box. Use code abundant to get Palbox for less than $100 your first year@paubox.com if you're listening, you probably need some support building your practice. If you're a super newbie, grab our free checklist using the link in the show notes. I'd love for you to follow rate and review, but I really want you to share this episode with a therapist friend. Let's help all our colleagues build what they want.