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Therapynotes is the highest rated EHR practice management and billing software for mental health professionals. Its all in one platform is designed to streamline all aspects of your practice from connecting with clients via secure messages to scheduling, notes, billing and more. You can trust TherapyNotes has you covered and one of the best parts 24. 7 customer service with a live person, it's beyond easy to get help over the phone or by email at any time of day from their knowledgeable and friendly representatives. The best time to give TherapyNotes a try is now. Sign up for your free trial by going to therapynotes.com, clicking Start My Free Trial and accessing your first two months free with the promo code. Chat See why TherapyNotes is the most trusted EHR for behavioral health professionals today. Therapy chat podcast episode 497.
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This is the therapy chat podcast with Laura Reagan, LCSWC. The information shared in this podcast is not a substitute for seeking help from a licensed mental health professional. And now here's your host, Laura Reagan, lcswc.
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Hi, welcome back to Therapy Chat. I'm your host, Laura Reagan, and this week I'm bringing you a conversation about a topic that I think many therapists wonder about. In my Community Trauma Therapist Network, which is also called TTN for short, we often talk about bringing your presence as a relational therapist to your practice with clients. And it's the relationship that is the most important factor. That's not just what we talk about in ttn, but most therapists know that the relationship is the most important intervention in successful outcomes, according to meta analyses. So we talk about the importance of self awareness and identifying and working on and working through our own issues, which we as humans who are therapists all have. Just like everyone else in life, we all have our own wounds, our own sore places, and very importantly for therapists, blind spots. And how do we how do we work through those blind spots, especially if we don't really know what they are? That's why they're blind spots. They're not in our conscious awareness. Obviously, it's important to have our own therapy. It's very valuable to have excellent clinical supervision and consultation on an ongoing basis, even after you're independently licensed. Clinical consultation is really important because sometimes you're just not going to see what you don't see. And this week's guest is talking about a way that therapists can do this too. My guest today is Stephanie Klein, a licensed clinical social worker, a norm master therapist and somatic experiencing practitioner with 30 years of experience practicing psychotherapy with adults. And she's based in Los Angeles where she has a private practice. She is specialized in treating trauma and anxiety for the last 20 years. But in addition to her clinical practice, she serves as the assistant training director for the Complex Training center where she's a consultant and faculty and the neuroaffective relational model, narm. As I said. And what we're talking about in this week's episode is their new program called Space. And it's a program for psychotherapists. And what Stephanie does with her space program, which she and Brad Kammer of NARM created, is mentors and teaches psychotherapists who work with complex trauma, supporting them to not only feel more effective in their work with clients, but experience more ease and fulfillment in their professional roles. Our work is hard, but it doesn't have to be as hard as it is when we're white knuckling through the the stuff that we don't see or understand about our own wounds. So we are going to talk much more about that and you'll hear in this conversation how you can get involved with the space program, if you're interested. Sounds like a wonderful program and I can't wait for you to hear all about it. Even if you're not a therapist. I hope you'll find this conversation about how our developmental experiences can impact us even when we're not aware of it. So let's dive right in. Hi, welcome back to Therapy Chat. I'm your host, Lara Reagan, and today I'm so happy to be talking with Stephanie Klein, lcsw. Stephanie, thank you so much for being my guest on Therapy Chat today.
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Thank you so much for having me, Laura.
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You're welcome. I'm really happy to be talking to you. We connected through Brad Kammer at narm and I really appreciate and value Brad's work and had an awesome conversation with him on this podcast a few years ago and also went on the, I guess the NARM podcast, Transforming Trauma. Yeah, yeah. Which I loved. That was so wonderful. You know, I'm, I'm super grateful for what you all are doing to help with complex trauma in the world. And I'm excited to hear about a new program and offering that you and Brad are doing together. So before we get into that, though, let's start off by you letting our listeners know a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
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B
All right, I would love to. So I'm based in Los Angeles, California, and I've been in private practice here for the past 30 years. As you mentioned, I'm NELCSW and I think I started out more as a psychodynamic therapist who wasn't really trauma informed a little bit, worked in addiction and got trauma informed to some degree there. But I really wasn't trained in any kind of somatic model. I really kind of was a neck up therapist and sort of discovered about halfway through my career that there is a body and that it's really important. And so I was trained first in a shock trauma model, working through somatic experiencing. So I became an scp. But I was realizing that my clients were really coming in more with developmental and complex trauma. And so the path led me to narm and the work of Dr. Lawrence Heller. And I became an arm therapist and narm trainer and consultant and really have devoted the past 15 years of my career to working with developmental complex trauma through a narm approach. And then Brad Cameron, Marsha Black and I created the Complex Trauma Training center where we teach narm, but we also are developing other programs for supporting therapists. And that's what I'm here to talk to you about today.
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Beautiful. Tell me the name again. The Complex Trauma.
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Complex Trauma Training Center. Yeah.
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Great. I'm so passionate about complex trauma and I've had the same, you know, a similar trajectory with less time that, you know, starting in my way of practicing, it was talk oriented, you know, it was talk therapy, it was psychodynamically oriented awareness that past experiences impacted the way that people feel today, especially childhood experiences and, but without the really depth of understanding about development and attachment development. And I appreciate that you said that somatic experiencing was a shock trauma training program because that's what, you know, I was choosing between SE and sensory motor psychotherapy. And how I made the decision was I went with sensory motor psychotherapy because they have the shock trauma for level level one and then the developmental trauma for level two. And it's just astounding the way that the, the body holds so much information, not just the traumatic experiences and the developmental wounds, but also so much wisdom, so much resource. It's really incredible when you begin practicing somatically. And I think one of the things that, I mean, this isn't specifically related to narm or any of these other methods, but just the, the way that people are hearing about somatics, they're like, oh, somatics. That's what you have to do for trauma. But it's not just to find the trauma and excavate it. It's. It's like getting beyond head only just opens up a whole world of experience. To us that we have lost access to because of trauma.
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B
Yeah. And I'm really grateful to Somatic Experiencing for that. And, you know, it is a model now being applied more developmentally. It was designed originally as a shock trauma model. So I don't want to limit that model by what I said, but I definitely. When I took the training, which was a long time ago, that was more the focus. And, you know, things keep evolving, which is great. But you're right. I mean, when we're working. When. We just need to understand that when we're working with shock trauma, we're working with the. You know, we're working with a fear response. And when we're working with developmental and complex trauma, we're working with the fear response. But on top of that, really, the. The. The physiology, the nervous system response, the psychobiology of shame. And so we just. They're different skill sets, and it's great to have both. I. I veered more towards narm because I really wanted to learn about how to work with the shame. That's sort of the glue that holds all these patterns together.
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A
Yes. I think why I brought up what I did in response to what you said there was that I wanted to say that I had the same problem with. It's like, who has trauma, shock trauma, that doesn't have developmental wounding. That was the problem in the experience. And so if you don't have access to that. That body of information that's out there, to use a sort of a double entendre. I don't know if that's the right word, but. Body of information. The body. Yes, that's right. That's.
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Yeah.
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Is. Is just. There's so much more available when we do get to connect with what's inside and all of it, and not just the trauma.
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Yeah. It's really a dance between those two things. You know, it's like sometimes the developmental pieces are in the way of completing the fear response or the mortal threat response. And sometimes the mortal threat response is in the way of being able to work with some of the relational pieces. So it's really this back and forth.
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Yes. And very confusing when you're the person whose body, all of this is in and holding that.
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Yeah.
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And as the therapist, when we're sitting with someone who has complex trauma, developmental trauma.
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And we do too, of course, because we're human beings.
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We do.
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Human beings.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah, of course.
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So it's not just like. If you're a therapist who has experienced trauma and developmental, you know, wounds.
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I've yet to meet a human who hasn't experienced trauma or developmental wounds. So, I mean, same. Yeah, that's just the nature of it. But now the degree, the intensity of that varies and the impact of that varies. But yeah, we're all in that boat.
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A
Exactly. So what we want to talk about today is your space program, which is part of your complex trauma training center. Yes. So tell us about that. Okay, what is it?
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B
Yeah, well, you know, Brad and Marcia, Marcia Black, the other CTTC faculty member, and I met in the context of narm. We all combined have about a hundred years total of experience in the field and trained in a lot of different models. And we started providing a lot of consultation to NARM students. And through that, all of us really realized that our passion, aside from working with people to heal complex trauma, was supporting the people who were working with people healing complex trauma. You know, but we really felt very passionate about the mentorship and support that is needed and so often not received by therapists in general. And, you know, especially the specific kind of support for therapists who are working in this area of complex trauma because it's relational trauma, complex trauma. And that means that how we're in relationship with our clients in the no matter what model we practice is going to have a huge impact on the work. And we were also, you know, just tracking these themes over and over again in the consults that we were doing around the degree of burnout and dread and people just powering through their work life and just trying to get it done and get to the end of the day and losing connection with why they came into the field in the first place and what they wanted and the meaning and the vitality. So we created this program to support both those things, to support people in being more effective through a deeper connection to themselves as therapists, and also to support them enjoying their work more or being revitalized in their work again through this inside out learning through connecting to themselves in. In a program rather than focusing on what are the steps or methods to help my client. So it's a very different kind of program that way. It's not a training, it's. We call it a program because we're not training a clinical model. We're supporting a way of being in the role that is rooted in connection to the self. On. I guess I'll go one more step and then I'll pause. Connection to the self on three levels of experience. The personal. So the self, which is something, as therapists we often completely leave out the interpersonal or the Relational, which is therapists. We're often very, very focused on our clients, what's going on with them. And the third level is the transpersonal, which is for some people, something that they're very comfortable talking about or connecting to the spiritual or kind of more collective belonging. And for other people, they maybe don't even recognize that they're. That there is that level of experience for them.
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A
I. I can relate to that. As I was saying to you before we started, how I wasn't even comfortable with people using a word spiritual. If something said this is on a spiritual level, I would be like, ah, no, not for me. Yeah. Like, oh, no. Cult.
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Yeah.
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Indoctrination. Religious trauma. No, no, no. And so I think that it's, it's really one. You know, it just shows how people's understanding of life can evolve, usually under stressful circumstances, to, you know, where my spiritual life is so rich now and so much such a important holding space for myself and compared to where I used to be. And it's really through a process of developing a sense of belonging in connection with others in the grand scheme, like community, the collective, you know, the big.
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B
Collective, you know, just our humanity can be like, there's so many different ways to relate to that level of experience. And for some people, it can be very cosmic, it can be very spiritual, it can be religious, it can be anything. But for a lot of us, it's just starting to feel more a part of even our professional group or a group of people just starting to let ourselves feel more human with other humans, you know, connection to nature. There's so many different ways to start to recognize that we even have this level of experience. So we're not trying to get anybody anywhere a spiritual way as much as we're trying to include that level of experience in the conversation to give people an opportunity to check in with themselves and see where they are with it, wherever they are.
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Well, it's really important that you are doing this, the three of you. I think about the despair that so many of us feel in the times that we're living through and therapists who, you know, like other helping professionals. We want, we want to make a positive change in individuals and groups being thriving, not in despair. And it's pretty difficult to just when someone is feeling burned out, disillusioned, hopeless, to just say, well, get your own therapy. Or you need to find a spiritual practice, or you need to find some type of intentional practice to hold you. It is true that those things can really make a difference, but it's not easy to just go from A to B or really it's like A to Z in the. In the development or the reconnection to the self. Our self as a human.
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Yeah.
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And ourselves as professionals.
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B
And I think it's for a lot of complex reasons that that isn't easy. You know, so many of us became therapists in the first place because that was a way being a helper or taking care of other people at the expense of our own personal needs was a way of surviving whatever our early circumstances were. And, you know, so. So prioritizing like, not. Not our clients, not another model, not another way to make ourselves better at something, but prioritizing our connection to ourself and our own support. Support as therapists is. Is kind of goes against the adaptive strategy for a lot of therapists. We. We feel really privileged that the group of people who are taking space this year are. Are really trusting us to go on this different kind of journey and to spend, you know, two days with us every other month. That's. That's about them. And ultimately it is about being more effective with their clients.
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But.
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But not outside in learning, but inside out learning. What can they connect to in their own inner wisdom? What patterns can they start to unearth that are getting in the way of their enjoyment of the work or their effectiveness? Like, it is definitely a leap for people who are so good at trying to help others. But, you know, we're holding this question of, like, whatever the model, whatever the clinical skills or interventions that somebody is using or learning, like, practicing, like, who is supporting the person who's practicing those skills? And often the answer is no one, or, you know, no one very consistently, you know, so we feel like this is really an important niche to fill in our field. And especially right now, like you mentioned, when, you know, your clients are coming in and they're despairing about people, and I'm sitting there as a therapist, I don't know about you, but I'm sitting here. I'm going, yeah, yeah, me too. You know, me too. I mean, it's a heavy time to be supporting other people. It's very complex right now.
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Yeah, we're sitting with people who are seeing horrible things happening to people they care about, or their own safety is at risk. And I think people will say, therapy shouldn't be political, but if you can't see that the person you're sitting with is at risk with their human rights and say, yes, I. I see why you're worried. I feel afraid with you for what you're sharing about. I mean, we still need to be able to have the capacity to be the person who's there to help and not in despair with the client. But, you know, yeah, it's a scary time. And sometimes reality is, you know, so how are you safety planning? What are you, you know, what do you need to do? What is the real threat? How real is this threat right now? Where is the safety?
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Yeah, I mean, our. Our whole approach is really that the more we have the capacity, the therapist has the capacity to be present to whatever is authentic inside of them, the fear, the despair, and the more effective they're going to be with the. Whatever interventions they bring, whether it's a safety plan or whether it's just holding space with somebody, you know, validation, whatever it is. If we can't be with that stuff inside of us, then it's very hard for us to really support somebody else in their complexity. So that's the basis of this and makes a lot of sense that these are very trying times that we're living in right now. But even beyond that, there are so many things that therapists feel and experience that they tell themselves they shouldn't feel and experience. And from our perspective and in space, we invite that, all of that material, because the more we can be in, really, like, maybe you're resentful at your clients, or maybe you're bored, or maybe you wish they would move and go somewhere else, or, you know, you feel totally helpless and like you're never going to be able to fix this person. Or maybe you feel like an imposter, like you don't know enough or you're not smart enough or whatever it is, though, bringing those things to. To the surface, sharing them relationally, hearing other people relate to them as well, opens something up inside of us that then on the other side, we see over and over and over again, we start to feel more curious about that client. We start to feel more hopeful about that client because we've been in our. We've humanized ourselves, we've stopped objectifying ourselves by trying to shut that down. We've welcomed our authentic experience. And in so doing, it makes it easy for us to welcome our clients. So ideally, we would all have consultation, supervision, peer groups. We would all have tons of support to be able to really deeply explore what's going on inside of us. But a lot of times when we do get that support, the pattern continues where we focus on our clients, trying to figure them out, trying to figure out how to fix something. And the supervisor or consult provider focuses on the client, analyzing, interpreting. And what's missed is this incredible resource source, which is what's really going on inside the therapist. That's. That's where we're at right now with this program. And, you know, people who are in the program are sharing that. It is really a game changer for them to have that level of support and to be able to show up with that kind of authenticity and also, you know, have that relationally reflected in the group. You know, to be in a collective of people that are like, yeah, me too. I get that. It's powerful.
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A
Okay, so I have a lot of thoughts about what you're saying. I. I just love that you have. The three of you have created this program, that it exists. I love that, that there's a place for therapists, and not just trauma therapists, but therapists, to explore themselves and build that community. So one thing I want to ask you is about if you would go a little more into what are some of the themes that you've seen in doing supervision and consultation with narm therapists that led you to create this? So that maybe therapists who are listening, and again, trauma therapists are not who are listening, may say, oh, wow, I have had that thought. Oh, I didn't know that was something that could be different.
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B
Yeah, you know, the. The very first one that pops up for me is pressure. Pressure is just such a huge theme for human beings. But, you know, we're. This program is about us in our role as a therapist, and we pressure ourselves so much to know something, to be able to fix something, to have the answers, to be the expert, to, I don't know, give somebody their money's worth to make sure we don't get a bad Yelp review, like, whatever it might be. We are usually pressuring ourselves. And if we are, we're in a strategy of disconnection. So if what we're wanting to be able to create in therapy with our clients, especially when we're working with relational trauma, is the kind of conditions that support somebody to be able to connect. If we're in a strategy of disconnection, objectifying ourselves, pressuring ourselves, then it's not going to land the same. We could do the exact same thing or ask the exact same question, but if we're coming from a place inside of ourselves that is more disconnected than connected, it's not going to land as powerfully. And so pressure is a big, big strategy of disconnection that a lot of therapists use. Another big theme is like, trying to be very helpful, like seeing ourselves as the ones who have to make the change happen or get the client somewhere. We take on an enormous amount of responsibility. This is obviously very related to pressure. You're nodding. Are you relating?
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A
So much? So much. And when I said there were two things, the second thing I was gonna ask was about that. I saw this. So I hope I don't throw you off on your thought here by. Oh, it's okay sharing this, but I saw this. See if she can get back.
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B
Yeah, or we'll just go there. It's great. It's all good.
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A
Yes. No head games here. But I saw this video someone shared on Facebook this weekend, and I saved it to share with my newsletter for people just to think about. And it was Dr. Lawrence Heller talking about. Is he.
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Dr. Yeah, yeah, got it.
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Dr. Lawrence Heller talking about efforting and. And I think that's what he was talking about. This deep desire to be helpful, but also feels like a responsibility to make something happen, and it can come through as this fixing energy. And I feel like. I mean, that was so resonant for me because. Well, first of all, the person who shared it, what they were saying was that they had a therapist who. That was like, what was happening in the relational dynamic between the client and therapist is that the therapist was intensely feeling like they needed to fix. And the client was reporting from their experience that it didn't feel like they could get to where they were trying to get to until they started working with a therapist who was actively not doing that. And, you know, that means they were consciously and intentionally not using that strategy, so doing something different, so just allowing the process to unfold. And. And what Dr. Heller said in the video was it was deeply trusting the process. And I feel like in today's world of therapist development. So, in other words, people who've been educated in the last, say. I'll say, even like the last five to 10 years, especially, there seems to have been. And this is just based on my experience with hiring newer therapists and interns. Seems like the schools are telling them you need skills. And they. They. They feel like, literally the school is telling them that to be a therapist means to perform, to, like, deliver tricks. Show them. Show them the impact and do it fast. And, you know, that's so averse to the older way of therapy that really saw it as an art and something that develops and unfolds. And some would argue people stay in therapy too long, but, you know, it's what can happen. I think a lot of therapists really don't even know that that's possible.
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B
Well, like what I hear, what I hear you talking about is sort of more of the universal roots of the healing arts. Like, you know, that's what we're, there's this huge evidence based movement like right now, which is all about like what can we do? And then how can we assess, you know, and, and show evidence what we did, measure and prove. And if you go back to the roots of healing and these universal principles and themes that connect all these different healing arts, what it's, it's not, it's not evidence based, you know, there's nothing you can prove or point to. So it doesn't work for our systems. But that again, you couldn't have cued me up better actually, because that is exactly what we're doing in this program is we're going back to these underlying universal themes. And one of them which also does connect to narm and what Dr. Heller was saying is that human beings, living, living organisms, let's go beyond even human beings are self organizing systems. Like they're designed to, to move towards connection and health and aliveness. And then all sorts of adaptations and strategies get in the way of that because we're put in environments that aren't meeting our psychobiological needs. But we can trust that underneath all of that is a system that is designed to, and equipped to move towards more connection, more health, more aliveness. So when we try to get someone somewhere, we're, we're, it's like getting in a power struggle with something that we're not going to win. Because these strategies that help them survive are so much stronger than whatever cool trick we have. You know, even maybe if something works temporarily. These strategies and dynamics and patterns are so deep, so in many ways in, you know, from an ARM perspective, that's, that's what we're holding when we're working with our clients. From a space perspective, we are helping therapists identify their own patterns and strategies that are in the way of their own natural movement towards more connection and aliveness in their roles and in life. Because again, we have all of these strategies. I've yet to meet a therapist that didn't come into this field in part because of developmental trauma, because of ways that they had to adapt and become the family therapist. I mean, I'll just speak for myself. I was my family therapist and identified patient. You know, I was a fifth grader who people called Dr. Steffi, which was a nickname from an advice column called Dear Dear Abby. So they would call me Dr. Steffi or dear Steffi, because I gave advice to everybody all the time. Like, that's not normal when you're 10. Why are you doing that? You're doing that because that's a way that you have found belonging and gratification or some kind of control or hope at home in the midst of some kind of chaos. Right. So I'm kind of on a tangent right now, but I think that's perfect that for therapists to have the opportunity to not just push down the pressure or keep pressuring themselves or not just to get through the dread, but to explore the dread. I work with a lot of therapists who are like, I don't want to sit in the chair. I look at my calendar and I have six, seven clients and I don't want to sit in the chair. Well, let's slow that down. Let's take a look at that. Let's. Let's invite that into the mix versus effort to try to get rid of it. Like, well, have you tried spacing out your clients differently? Have you tried. You know, it doesn't speak to the deeper underlying patterns that we need to be in relationship with, you know, in order to, to be more alive and fulfilled in the role. One of the reflective exercises that we do in the space program is just asking people to reflect on, why did you become a therapist? What were you hoping that this role would give you or that you would experience? And from that place of connecting to that, what are some of the obstacles that you're finding are in your way of feeling that way of having that experience in your work? So we're going back to who we are and what we wanted out of this in the first place, which is very different than just, like, what can I do to get my client to result.
- [34:51]
A
Yes. Today's episode is sponsored by Psychotherapy Networker and pessi. If you're a therapist, be sure to check out the partner page, which is linked in the show Notes, where you can get discounted trainings with previous therapy chat guests like Courtney Armstrong, Dr. Leslie Korn, Dr. Arielle Schwartz, Dr. Tammy Nelson, Dr. Janina Fisher, Rebecca Case, Dr. Peter Levu Bean, Dr. Lindsay Gibson, Deb Dana, Lori Gottlieb, and many, many others. You'll find the link in the show notes to my Partner page with PESSI and Psychotherapy Networker where you can find all these discounted training. If you need CES, this is a great place to go. TherapyNotes is consistently transforming the way therapists manage their practices with continuous Updates designed to save money and improve efficiency. Their latest game changer Changer Therapy Fuel a powerful and fully integrated suite of AI tools that streamline documentation so you can focus more on your clients. With AI features that help by generating progress notes from summaries or transcriptions, creating contact notes directly from client secure messages, and automated summaries of client history forms, TherapyNotes users are already reporting hours of saved time and energy. Some other recent feature improvements include automated recurring client payments, electronic secondary insurance billing, and their constantly expanding library of outcome measures. The best time to give TherapyNotes a try is now. Sign up for your free trial by going to therapynotes.com, clicking Start My Free Trial and accessing your first two months free with the promo code CHAT. See why TherapyNotes is the most trusted EHR for behavioral health professionals today? It is really different. And you know, I've thought a few times when you've said like, reconnecting to why we went into this work. I know that when I, when I went into this work, even what you said, I don't wanna jump around too much, but I loved when you said your Dear Steffi or Dr. Steffi like moniker came from advice giving because you said something like that was what gave approval. Or maybe you said like approval or attention. Then you said, or some control or hope. I was like, okay, that's why I pointed because I was like, yeah, there you go.
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B
Related A lot of times.
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A
Yeah. When people, you know, you'll see on Instagram or people will say, oh, you were the one in your family that everyone came to for advice. No, nobody really paid any attention to me and my family. I wasn't the one that anyone came to for any advice or hope or any advice or any, you know, I didn't get attention. I didn't get approval for that. It was more like, I wish someone would listen to me. I wanted someone to listen to me. I made a podcast because I wanted someone to listen to me, you know.
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B
But that's another pathway. That's another pathway is, is I never got listened to and I want to do work where people are coming to me to listen to me. You know, there are all these different ways that we're.
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A
So it's like a sense of power and control to be, to be someone that people think could help them or something like that, you know.
- [38:02]
B
Yeah. And if you're not in relationship with that need that's coming from early life that we, we can never get that need met through our role as a therapist.
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A
Right.
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B
Because it's a, it's an irrevocable loss. If we didn't get hurt as a child, we never get to be a child again and get heard. So if we're not in relationship with where that need is living inside of us that might get enacted in our, with our clients, then you know, things can happen in there that maybe aren't serving either of us that well. Right. So it's inviting the relationship to these themes and needs where, where we, you know, having a space to do that without judgment, with a lot of support and compassion.
- [38:51]
A
Right. Because that's the other thing. If I think, hey, I really went into this because I wanted to feel important or I wanted people to pay attention to me or something like that. That's a, that's a feeling that brings up like, ooh, like you sound like a jerk. You just want all this attention, you know, like I can be very judgmental about that, that idea. But I think the real reason why I'm sharing this is that I am aware of that isn't what I'm here for. That's not what I have to give. What I can do is bring presence to allow someone to feel safe, to explore what they need to explore and facilitate a process. But when I, if I ask myself with less self awareness, if I ask myself why did I go into this, it's like I want to help people. I want to, you know, be the person that I needed when I was young or I didn't even think that when I went into this, why I wanted to do it was I felt like at first it started with I want to be a, like a marriage counselor because my parents got divorced when I was growing up. And I want to help people work out their relationship problems so that they don't get divorced and their kids don't, you know, the subtitle would be so the kids don't suffer. But that's not what I had awareness of. I didn't have awareness of the suffering that came from my parents divorcing. I was disconnected from knowing that. So it went from wanting to be a marriage counselor to. Then it became as I was going through school and I was learning more and I started to really get a lot more understanding about trauma. I want to help kids who felt like I felt when I was little or, or really it was like a family member, a kid in my family who I saw who was suffering because of their parents relationship. And so it was sort of like if I could save that kid, if I could only save that kid. But really it was me that I wanted to save, you know, and that's like many years of, of exploring and, and being in therapy and, you know, self discovery to find that that's really what it was all about all along. So there's so many beautiful adaptations that have helped me survive and so many defenses and protections that have kept me from knowing that that can also get in our way so much when we're trying to work and cause us to feel an outside sense of responsibility that can be so burdensome that we become burned out. And I've been there too.
- [41:28]
B
Yeah, it's so rampant in our field. And you're right. I like how you're describing these strategies and adaptations as beautiful because they really are, all of it, the disconnection, the, you know, being inspired to help other people because we don't want other people to suffer because we suffered or, you know, like all of that. You asked earlier about themes, recurring themes, and helplessness is such a big theme. You know, when we're little, we're helpless. We can't change our environment. We can't, like, drive away and go find another family.
- [42:07]
A
We can't take care of ourselves.
- [42:09]
B
Can't take care of ourselves. So all we can do is react and adapt. So, you know, helplessness and having to experience a lot of helplessness as young children inspires a lot of us to be very helpful adults. And what's so interesting is that the more we try to be helpful in our role as therapists, the less helpful we actually end up being. Because, well, people like you said, need the opportunity to fuel their own change and find that inside of themselves. And. And so it's counterintuitive that if. If we're coming from a place of trying to be very helpful, we're probably more taking care of ourselves. And if we're coming from a place of wanting to support our clients, to feel into their own capacity to feel more adult, more capable, whatever it might be that they want for themselves. And we don't have to be the one helping them and get that gratification. We can probably support more. And then the third part of this is that the road to being able to sort all that out is having a space to be supported in relating to your desire to be helpful, to our desire to not be helpless. So again, that's why we feel so excited about this program, because it's. It feels like the. A need that we aren't even. We don't even know we have, because as a group of professionals, we're so good at just not thinking of ourselves at all in this process.
- [43:56]
A
That's so true. And, and you know, I want to name out loud, I know you're very well aware of this, I'm sure, but I just want to say out loud that our training process does encourage self reliance, you know, both self reliance and disregarding our own needs. You know, when we go through an unpaid internship or two, we have when we're told, well, you know, if you're relating, if you're identifying with what your client's feeling, then you need to go to therapy, you need to work on that. You know, so it's sort of this, I mean, I got a lot of different ways a message in school, don't need help. And if you do need help, that's your problem. You better get some help. Oh, you're not going to be good at this.
- [44:44]
B
You know, you don't even know how perfect what you're saying is right now. Because our topic, we have a, our space class for this weekend and our topic is countertransference as a support for relational depth. Because we take, we, we instead of like, you better work that out, you better get rid of that. We look at countertransference as the road to knowing ourselves better and the road to knowing our clients better and like such a rich territory for exploration. Like, and, and you know, you're talking about the things that come up internally and being told, you know, your needs or your reactions are, you know, a lot of us are trained that that's something to go get rid of somewhere.
- [45:26]
A
That'S a problem, right?
- [45:28]
B
And we're like, no, that's the territory, man. Like in later next year, we're going to start exploring in the space program enactments because when we're not connected to what's going inside, we start enacting in all sorts of different ways. Like that story you described where the person was efforting to help and the client then was having a reaction to that efforting. And, and they were probably stuck in that enactment, the two of them. You're. I, I so agree with you. Our training tells us, be hopeful, be responsible.
- [46:01]
A
Put your, it's not about you.
- [46:03]
B
It's not about you. And yeah, we're, we're kind of rewriting that. We're saying, no, it so is about you. Even if you just think about attachment, if you think about parents and children.
- [46:16]
A
Right.
- [46:16]
B
It doesn't matter what we're doing. The state that we're in when we're doing it has the impact. Like if you read this parenting book and do the 1, 2, 3, technique, or if you do this parenting technique instead, in many ways, it doesn't matter. It's where are you coming from inside. That's what your children are responding to and reacting to. So we are so in the room. We are so much a part of it. And I think it's a privilege to support people, to get to prioritize that part of the experience.
- [46:56]
A
This is so true. Everything, I think everything you're talking about and everything you're doing is so deeply needed. I love that you mentioned enactments because I'm feeling like, you know, I talk to a lot of people and I talk to a lot of therapists and I have a community for therapists as myself too. That's like for trauma therapists. And we were just together today and we do themed calls once a week. This week, we have two this week because I was on vacation last week. So this week, today we did our self care call and it was a small group and we were just talking about what we're holding and carrying and we were doing some nervous system techniques to just soothe our systems. And I realized how much now I just came back from a week of vacation. I have so much tension, so much tension in my back, my neck, my shoulders. I mean, and I was. I was just reminded of how this isn't just me and my family. I mean, it is a societal thing in a way, like we have to keep it together. We have to keep it together, but as therapists, we feel that we have to keep it together and don't react to what is happening. But there's so much happening relationally in the interaction between ourselves and our clients.
- [48:21]
B
Yes. Moment to moment.
- [48:22]
A
Yep. Right. And to perform not being human as you know, one part of that interaction is not only incongruent because we are having this whole reaction inside, whether or not we're consciously aware of it. Yep. But it can. That could be a reenactment of the parent who's internally in distress while the child's in distress, and the child's reacting to their distress when the parent is telling them maybe all the right words, I'm fine. Yeah, yeah, calm down. You just need to be calm. You just need to take some deep breaths or whatever. And the. But the parent's nervous system is just as jangled as the child's, if not more. And the child's feeling, no one's here, you know. Yeah. And I. And when you say you're safe, it doesn't feel that way right now. And that's. You know, that feels terrifying. So enactments are so crucial and such a always there part of therapy. Not just something that we have to watch out for and don't let it happen.
- [49:26]
B
No, always there. And it's more about how do we recognize it, how do we support ourselves out of an enactment when we find ourselves in one. Not if, but when. And also sometimes even how to use the enactments in, in a, in a way directly to deepen the therapy and to support the work that's being done. So, yeah, next year in space, we're going to go more specifically into deeper, into territory around countertransference and enactments. We've introduced it this year, you know, as, as a topic, but we're just going to keep going deeper and deeper as we, as we go forward. We hope that space will be the kind of program that people, if they want to, can stick around in for as long as it feels supportive to them. Because we don't have a lot like you created a cool group of therapists that support each other, but most, many, many if not most people don't have no, that kind of support in their career, especially the private practice people who are just out there on their own.
- [50:31]
A
Yeah. And people in agencies, too. They may work in an agency, but they often don't feel supported and then they don't usually have enough money to pay for extra services to support them. So, yeah, I think you said it's not a training program and I understand it's not for continuing education, but this should be a part of every therapist training program. And it's, it should.
- [50:54]
B
And, and, and when I say it, I, we do provide CEUs. I'm. Oh, so it, it, you can get.
- [51:00]
A
Sorry, my bad.
- [51:00]
B
By coming to this program. So it's just that we're not training a particular model. We're not going to be teaching people skills other than this. The, the skill set of being able to build our capacity to be with ourselves on these three levels. We're not, you know, you can be, ifs, emdr, narm se, you can be trained in. So all these models and it, we're, we're meeting people in the human experience rather than something to do.
- [51:30]
A
Wow. So it does provide CES. That's even better.
- [51:33]
B
I, I, I'm, I'm 90%. I'm 95% sure it does.
- [51:41]
A
We think provides CES.
- [51:42]
B
We're pretty sure. We're pretty sure. Right now I'm doubting myself for some reason, but we're pretty sure it provides CEUs. Yeah.
- [51:50]
A
So as we Come to a close. I wish we could keep talking because there's so much goodness in this conversation. But as we come to a close, will you tell people a little bit about like how it is structured, what they would expect if they joined space?
- [52:04]
B
Yeah. So as I already mentioned, we meet every other month for. We meet on a Friday and a Saturday from about 8 to 3:30 Pacific Time. We have people who join from all over the world. So we have people who do it in the middle of the night from Europe and which is also cool. Building the community that's, you know, because it's online. It's all online that we can connect to people from all over the place. And we present topics, we have a theme like this. This coming class is countertransference as a support for relational depth. And then we have four topics under that theme. And so Brad and I alternate and just present a little bit of material to be thought provoking as a jumping off point for conversation. We, we want the class to kind of evolve and be a conversation. So there's, there's dialogue, there's an invitation for people to share reflections. And then we break off, we do a lot of self reflection, guided self reflection. And then we break off into dyads and triads to explore different themes and prompts. And then we come back as a, as a group and we support these guided explorations. So we break down into little groups and medium groups and then the large group. So there's a lot of connection. Everything is sort of steeped in connection and relationship. And the intent of all of these exercises is this inside out learning to be invited, to know ourselves more deeply in this role and then to get curious together on what that brings in our work, both in our experience of our work and in our effectiveness in our work. And so far people are reporting that they go back to work and they do feel quite revitalized and much more interested and calmer, more easeful in their roles and that they're finding that having the opportunity to get more in touch with themselves is inviting more depth in their sessions as well with their clients.
- [54:14]
A
Yes, exactly. I mean that's what it is. It's like as we work with ourselves and ideally a really great therapy experience. Experience would, would have us, you know, doing that already. But so many of us, it's hard to find a therapist, hard to afford a therapist. It's hard to get the one that's the right match or find one that you don't already know from your professional.
- [54:35]
B
Circles, but really hard. Yeah. The reality is so many therapists are not in therapy and haven't been doing therapy for years and years for all of the reasons that you just mentioned. And this isn't therapy, this isn't personal process group. We are the, you know, the frame we're holding is getting to know ourselves in the role. But that does tap into so much personal material because this is relational work between human beings. So.
- [55:03]
A
Yes, exactly. And so you were telling me that this year it's, it's kind of. It has one structure, but starting in 2026 there will be a different structure. So do you want to say a little about that?
- [55:15]
B
Yeah. We've got three classes left this year and we're inviting people who want to, to just come take a class. You don't have to sign up for all three. You can just come take class three, four or four, five or six. And they can go to complex traumatrainingcenter.com and click on space 2025 if they're interested in signing up for a class. And then starting in 2026, we're going to be only offering the program as a whole.
- [55:48]
A
Just year long cohort.
- [55:50]
B
Year long cohort, yeah, exactly. Just to help support the going deeper and deeper and deeper together and building that kind of cohesion. Of course, we know that sometimes people will have to miss a weekend or something, and so we have recordings and other supplemental materials if someone has to miss. But we're inviting people to sign up for all six classes. They can, I believe even next year they can try out the first class before making the full decision. But if they want to continue, it would be joining the whole rest of the class. There's lots of information on our website about space, so I invite anybody who's interested to check it out. I know we're talking to a lot of therapists out there and just love therapists and appreciate that the work that we're all doing and also just appreciate what a hard job it is.
- [56:41]
A
It is. And it's such a noble pursuit to be a therapist and it's such a sacred privilege and it really is. It's such a beautiful gift to be able to do. But there's so much disillusionment and burnout and sometimes people leave the field before they even really get their feet under them. And that's tragic because they went into this because they really cared and then they end up doing something different and feeling disillusioned about it. So I am huge supporter of therapists and our important work and I'm so grateful for the way that you, Brad and Maria.
- [57:26]
B
Marcia.
- [57:26]
A
Marcia. Sorry.
- [57:27]
B
Marcia Black. No, it's okay.
- [57:30]
A
Are supporting therapists too.
- [57:33]
B
Thank you. And I'm so grateful the way that you are through your podcast.
- [57:37]
A
Thank you.
- [57:38]
B
You just shared with me that you're on year 10, we're about to have your 10th anniversary, and I just. It's unimaginable how many people that you've supported through what you're doing here. So thank you so much for inviting me and let letting me be a part of that.
- [57:52]
A
Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. I'm looking forward to you and I staying connected. But for now, you said that people can find out about space@complex traumatrainingcenter.com, right?
- [58:07]
B
Yep. You can look at the 2025 remaining classes and also look at our program for 2026.
- [58:13]
A
Beautiful. Well, Stephanie, thank you again for the important, meaningful, really life saving work that you're doing right now, both with your clients and in supporting therapists. And thank you for being my guest today on Therapy Chat.
- [58:28]
B
So. My pleasure. Thanks, Laura.
- [58:29]
A
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- [59:13]
B
Thank you for listening to Therapy Chat with your host, Laura Reagan, LCSWC. For more information, please visit therapychatpodcast.com.