Therapist Confidential 01
00:00:00 Travis Heath: Hello everybody and welcome to the inaugural episode of the Therapist Confidential Podcast. I'm Travis Heath. I'm the dude that they've entrusted to captain this ship. This therapist confidential ship. We'll see how it goes. I've never hosted a podcast before. I've listened to many. I've been on a few, but I've never hosted one before. So I'm actually really excited to do this. I want to cover in this first episode, the hopes and intentions that I have, uh, for this podcast. And next time I'll introduce myself a bit because I'm imagining some folks listening probably don't know me. And since I'm the one who Is gonna facilitate this whole thing, I feel like I owe it to all of you to tell you a little bit about my story and how I got here. So the first part, talking about, you know, hopes and intentions for the podcast, I mean... There's like many podcasts, right? And to be real honest with you, I don't listen to a ton of therapy podcasts or mental health podcasts. I really don't. And I don't know, maybe that's because I get enough of that. With the job that I do and all that fun stuff, but I think also some of the mental health therapy sort of podcasts I've listened to, they're a little well, like they're too well groomed for my taste, if that makes sense. It's like a news broadcast or something and it just doesn't quite land. And one way I'm hoping to show up and I'm sure y'all will let me know if, if I have even a reasonable degree of success in doing this or not, but I'd like to try to show up like it with all my complexity as a human being, you know? I'd like to show up imperfectly. I'd like to show up messy. I'd like to show up honest, you know, like, like anyone. I mean, I'm sure there'll be times more of that shows up than other times, but that's what I'm aiming for. I'm aiming for less news anchory. And more just sort of messy complex me. So what, what does that mean in terms of like what this podcast will look like? I mean, one is I, you know, I'd like to have some guests. Uh, psychotherapy.net is y'all know psychotherapy.net, all the cool videos, right? I mean, that's who's driving this podcast and. You know, one thing about psychotherapy.net if you go on to the site is that Pretty much anyone who's anyone has a video there, right? Like there's some really cool old school legends of the field. And then, you know, some of the more new school folks that are coming up, there's some videos there too. Um, it's just a really cool site with all kinds of folks. And I would like to have guests like that on the show. I'd also like to have other kinds of guests. I'd like to have the kinds of guests that maybe aren't as well known to the public quite yet. And I say quite yet because I think like, look, some of the best therapists I know Um, maybe most of the world doesn't know about them, but that doesn't mean that they're not masters of their crafts. I also want some folks that aren't therapists at all, to be honest with you. You know, who might critique therapy. Uh, might help us look at it from another angle. I mean, what I don't want is a bunch of group think where We get a therapist together and we all agree about how great therapy is, you know, and how, how it's saving the world. I think therapy does have something to offer, no doubt. I think. First of all, I don't even know if I know what therapy is, so at some point we're gonna have to define that on this particular show because I don't know if I know what therapy is, okay? When we have guests on, I'd really like to ask, I'm hopeful that some of my questions will be weird questions. Because I think weird questions. Take us to interesting places. And I think when we go to interesting places, sometimes we see what's behind the curtain. And for as much as we as therapists talk about things like genuineness and authenticity, I don't know that we always practice that stuff, you know? I feel like most of the time as therapists, we have some kind of like little veil up and I don't know if it's as obvious to the general public as it is to other therapists, but man, like I feel like most of us can see when that thing's up. And, you know, there's a place for that. You know, there's a place for this kind of professionalized way of being. I'm less interested in that on this particular show. I'd like to talk some about when we've failed spectacularly. Right. Wondering like, you know, am I even cut out to do this? Because I think a lot of us have those feelings and yet most of what we see Is especially from quote unquote master therapists is just how great we are. Right. And I think even, even those quote unquote master therapists, if we can have a real conversation, I think they'll also admit that like. No, there's a lot of times we don't know where we're going. You know? We're trying to find our way as we go. We're having doubt. We're having insecurity. We're wondering, am I even doing anything for this person? You know, and then you, you mix capitalism in with all of this and it's like, oh my gosh, people were paying me money. Am I like even doing anything worth getting paid for? Right. But no matter what it is we're practicing, I think it's often messier than we let on. And so I'm hopeful that I can ask some weird questions. I don't know what those will always be, but I hope they're weird enough. That we can pull the curtain back a little and we can get into some of the mess and some of the ambiguity. I think along with that, I'm always interested in what's happening that's different in the field, or if we want to use that word again, weird in the field. I think that there are always people. Who are doing things that are pushing the limits. They're at the margins. Now, often we don't hear about this work, of course, until it makes its way more into the mainstream. But like, I'm really interested in people that are doing things differently. And usually we know that people are doing things sufficiently differently from the therapeutic establishment is angry. Or the therapeutic establishment is saying, this isn't real therapy. Usually when I hear those kind of comments, I lean in because I'm like, ooh, something interesting is probably happening here. So I'd love to talk about what's different in the field. What are people trying? I mean, one of my mentors, David Epstein, who co-founded Narrative Therapy, he and Michael White talked about a spirit of adventure in therapy. And I'll tell you more about this in my story at the end of this episode, but I feel like I was, I didn't know if I could continue doing therapy before I met David Epson. And this idea of having a spirit of adventure in therapy really appealed to me. It was freeing in a lot of ways, right? It was opening us up to trying new things, taking risks, and of course failing in all of that, which I've done plenty of. So. I'm really interested in trying to tap into what are people doing that's different. Now, having said that, I'm also interested in the history of the field. I mean, as an undergraduate professor for over a decade, I taught the history and systems of psychology course. So I'm also very interested in Historical aspects of therapy and I'm interested in how what, what we started with has been redesigned, refashioned, recreated, reimagined, right? So I am interested in what's being done that's different and I have a historical interest as well. I don't think we have to limit ourselves in what we might look at. Another topic I'd like to open ourselves up to is current controversies. Listen, I just did air quotes. Air quotes are not great for a podcast. So I'm going to have to figure this stuff out. So current controversies, controversies in air quotes, because like everything feels like a controversy these days. You know what I mean? Like in its heyday. Uh, therapy Twitter or Twitter therapy, or I don't know what the hashtag was. Let's just say therapy Twitter. I mean, lots of interesting conversation. Everything was a controversy, right? And it seems like in the world we live in these days, everything's a controversy. So that's why I put it in air quotes. Some of those, and by the way, I will never call it X or whatever it is, I'll still call it Twitter. But I remember one controversy in particular. Here's what it was, it was, should therapists eat during session? And I remember seeing the question. I was like, oh, that's an interesting question. But I didn't, um, I didn't have any real strong feelings about it. You know, I just thought about it relative to my experience. I'm like, I don't think I've really done that. And boy, over the next like twenty-four hours, it became forty-eight hours, it became a week. I mean, this thing blew up and people were getting militant about, you know, one side saying, absolutely. It's self care. You can eat, you know, and the other side going, you should never eat a crumb of food or you're unprofessionalized. Wow. So, you know, um, yes, I'd like to have guests on here and sometimes when there's like a controversy quote unquote, I just like to talk about that. I may just come on here and talk a little bit about it. And. Of course, when we do that, and I'm like right now, I'm the only one talking, so of course my opinion is here. Like, I'm not gonna say I'm neutral in what I'm presenting. My opinions are here. They're a part of this, right? Also, I'm not interested in just giving my opinion in this sort of format. What I'm more interested in is like exploring all the different aspects or maybe not all that would be hard, but exploring multiple different aspects of a particular topic. And, and my hope is that this feels like a conversation. Like my favorite podcast, I noticed myself, I don't know if y'all do this. I'll listen to podcasts. And I'll actually talk back to the host. Sometimes I'll laugh at that. Well, sometimes I'll laugh at the host cause they're funny, but sometimes I'm like, that's a, that's a ludicrous point. And then I'm speaking back to the host. And if that could happen here, that would be amazing. Like I'd consider that a win because I hope that this feels like a conversation where I raise some questions, even when I'm just on here, just talking. That you feel like I'm not talking at you or through you, but I'm talking with you. I hope in the spirit, just building off of kind of what I just said, I hope this can build a spirit of community. Now communities aren't built in one episode. You don't like right now, you don't have any reason to feel connected quite yet to me or to the show. But my hope is that y'all will stick with us. And that over time we will build a community. And my hope is it'll be a diverse community with people that practice therapy in different ways and who have different ideas. I'd even like to have community members on as guests. I'd like to have multiple guests where we could have panels where we're talking about particular topics and people that might have relative expertise in those topics. But out of all of that, I hope emerges a sense of community. Because I think when we have that sense that Even if we're not doing therapy the exact same way, even if we have different perspectives, even if we come from different quote unquote therapeutic generations, that in a very general sense, we're all trying to move the boat to the same shore. We're all rowing in the same direction here. Now we might disagree about how we're going to get there, but I do think that the vast majority of people that I've encountered in this field, they really want to do well by the people we're serving. Whether you think therapy is about processing or whether you think it's about healing, whether you think it's about learning how to think differently, like whatever it is that we think therapy is about. I see people that are all trying to move towards the same shore. And so I hope there can be definitely a spirit of disagreement. And different perspectives with an understanding that at least the folks I've run into over twenty years of doing this, we're all trying to get to the same place, even if we have disagreements about how to get there. So those are some of my hopes and intentions for the podcast. I don't know. Those can evolve. Those can change. This is episode one. I'm just kind of stepping in front of this microphone and just telling you what I'm thinking about today. And I fully acknowledge these hopes and intentions can change and I bet they will and I hope they do. You know, but hopefully this at least gives you some idea of what I'm hoping for out of this Therapist Confidential podcast.
