Therapist Confidential 002
00:00:00 Travis Heath: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Therapist Confidential Podcast. I'm Travis Heath. I'm the dude that they've entrusted to captain this ship, this Therapist Confidential ship. Okay, part two. so who am I? How did I end up here? So as I told you, my name's Travis Heath. I have been a therapist now since, let's see, January of 2003 So when I saw my first client, I was a master's student at Pepperdine University, the Malibu campus. Oh boy. Lots of stories there. So in January of 2003 I started a practicum site. Like back then, I don't know. I haven't been to the campus in a minute. I don't know if they have an onsite clinic or something now, but Back then they didn't, so all the work was done at external practicum sites. So my first practicum site was called South Bay Center for Counseling. It was in El Segundo, California. It was really a wonderful experience. It asked a lot of me. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I still don't know if I know what the hell I'm doing now, but I really didn't know then, and I think that's true for most of us, right? So, South Bay Center for Counseling at that time was in El Segundo. I believe it has moved to Long Beach now, for those of you in Southern California. But I saw clients on site, you know, like the traditional sort of therapy that you would do in an office, right? Community mental health center. I did that, but I also saw clients in the community. And this was formative in how I've come to think about therapy. So, I went to school sites. And did therapy there. I went into people's homes and did therapy there. I sometimes had community meetings with people out in parks and things. So for me, I learned early on that there's the potential for something other than just sitting in an office. Sitting across from someone in a chair the whole time and talking. And I found, especially with young people, that a lot of my best work was happening when I was out in the community. And there was another advantage, too, about being out in the community early on, which was you got a lot fewer no-shows when you went to where people were. You know, and I felt like sometimes the wrong questions were being asked. Like people would have to take seven city buses to get to the location for therapy, right? Where we were located. And then the questions that were being asked were like, well, why are people no showing? And I felt like the better question is why the hell would they show up? Like, why would you take seven buses? You know? Doesn't make any sense. So for me and where I come from in my journey as a therapist. Very early on, I was out in the community and I saw benefits to that and it had me thinking about ways that therapy might function outside of the traditional way that it had. So I, tried a whole bunch of different things early on 2003 was like. Right when the manualized treatment thing was starting to heat up a little bit, so I went in with treatment manuals and stuff and I found out pretty quick this is not going to work and it is not working. I had supervisors that were like, hey, um, focus on forming a relationship. And I was like, okay, I don't know exactly what you mean. I didn't say that part, right? I just smiled and said, okay, like a good trainee. But I didn't know what the hell that was to form a relationship. I mean, I guess I knew what that meant at a certain level, but one of my supervisors was like, Travis, you're good at forming relationships. This is just go form relationships. Okay. But what, like, what am I doing here? Is that, is that it? Is that what I'm supposed to be doing? Now, not to minimize the relationship, of course, but as a twenty-two 23-year-old master student trainee That felt insufficient to me. There was some wisdom I think in asking me to do it, but it felt insufficient to me. So part of the ways that I form relationships, especially in like Inglewood and South Los Angeles and places where I was seeing the folks I was working with. Was rap music. Rap music became a great way to connect with young people. And so I used that, I thought just for relational purposes, as my career went on, I found out that maybe there were some other things going on there that I didn't realize at the time, but I was just trying to connect with young people. You know? Then towards the end of my master's degree, I graduated in May and this was in April, they would have these brown bag lunches, where they bring in a community speaker who speak for an hour. And this dude named Duncan Wigg came up and gave a talk about something called narrative therapy. I'd never heard of this. And I didn't really, I didn't expect to be interested in it, to be honest with you, but he gave this amazing talk about narrative therapy. And I felt like this is what I want to be doing. I don't think I could ever do it by the sounds of what I'm hearing him talk about, but I want to. And so I had gotten into a PhD program and I was starting a PhD in the fall of 2004, I came into learning what narrative therapy was April, 2004, And so I read a lot about it that summer and I thought to myself, well, when I complete my PhD, I'll study narrative therapy there. I'll practice it there. Because the place I was going to do my PhD had a training clinic. We called it the cave because there was like, I don't know, fifteen therapy rooms. with one-way mirrors, so all your, you know, your supervisors and the people in your class You know, your colleagues behind the mirror watching you, giving you feedback. Now back in these days, 2004, it was on a video, like a VHS tape. Some of you remember those days of using VHS tapes to record your sessions, right? And so I thought, hey, I'm gonna be at this cool clinic with great supervision. I'm gonna learn how to do narrative therapy. But there was one issue with that. I showed up. I did my PhD, by the way, at the University of Northern Colorado. I'm originally from Denver, Colorado. And so it was kind of back home, But I showed up in this program, I'm gonna do narrative therapy. And I found out very quickly that I probably wasn't gonna do narrative therapy because There really wasn't anyone that was too trained in narrative therapy. And, you know, depending on who the supervisor was, I kind of got the message that like, Uh, we don't really do that here. Narrative therapy, I mean, this is 2004, It wasn't exactly sanctioned by the APA at that time, so I got a lot of, well, it's not real therapy kind of thing. You know what I mean? And so... I did it anyway. And by the way, I had a supervisor. She also chaired my dissertation, Dr. Sean O'Halloran. She said to me early on, she goes, well, you can do narrative therapy with one client. You know, the more, the older I've gotten, the more I see that as being a pretty courageous act, actually. Cause no one else really wanted me doing this, and she's like, well, you can do it with one client. Which, you know, and she said something like, but you're gonna have to teach me a little bit about it so I can supervise you in it. I don't think I realized, like, what a gesture that was in that moment. I know I didn't. I didn't appreciate it. So, now I, but the thing is, I didn't know narrative, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I would go to conferences, most of them outside the US. There weren't a ton of people at that time, 2004, 2005, that were doing narrative therapy in the United States. So I'd go outside of the country, use the student funds I had in the PhD program to travel there. And I kinda patchworked together this version of narrative therapy. It's probably not a version of narrative therapy anyone would really recognize these days. But it was the best I could come up with. And you know, when we give our clients these surveys at the end of therapy, it was working, you know, clients were feeling like they were getting something out of it. So, so that's good. But there were many times I didn't really know what I was doing. I was kind of making it up as I went. My PhD program was an interesting experience. In many ways, as a multiracial person, uh, which that's worth knowing about my background, right? My birth father was what's called Pardo from Brazil, which is a Brazilian indigenous African and European, and my birth mother was Polish and German, so she was white. And I was adopted by two white parents when I was very young. I think it was like eight weeks old, whatever the hell in 1980, whatever the protocol was then, right? I was adopted at that time. So I think it was, I was about eight weeks old or something like that. And I think this is necessary context because a PhD program kind of felt like I didn't really ever feel like I belonged there. And I don't think it had to do with UNC, University of Northern Colorado. Like, I don't. I don't think there was something particular that they were doing wrong, you know? It was just sort of this whole system wasn't really made for me. And so I had some really cool moments. I definitely had some awesome supporters during my PhD program. And I had some really hard moments and probably some folks that, you know, felt more adversarial towards me. So it was a challenging experience in a lot of ways. I, uh, you know, those, it was a counseling site, an APA-approved counseling psychology program. So my master's program was an APA-approved program in clinical psychology with an emphasis in marriage and family therapy. So back then, AP actually approved some master's programs. My program was one of them. They at present don't approve master's programs, although I hear they might be getting back in the business of doing that. We shall see. For my Ph.D., I was in a counseling psychology program, an American Psychological Association-approved counseling psychology Ph.D. program. So when you do that, when you're in an APA program, you have to match for a pre-doc internship site, right? They use the same format that physicians use. It's a match system, you know? So basically you apply to a bunch of places you interview. I think I applied to twenty places. I think I interviewed at six. And then from those six, you rank. What order you would like out of those six and then all the sites rank all their interviewees and they put it into some big computer and you match somewhere or you don't. Now I'm sure this has changed to some degree, you know, they've tweaked it. I've heard over the years, but I was told, this is good advice, by the way, from some of my faculty members in my PhD program, Well, you shouldn't put that you do narrative therapy, you know, you should put that you do manualized therapy, all these things, you'll have a better chance of matching. And they were right. But, um, this is something you'll probably learn about me quickly. I didn't want to do that. I said, no, I'm gonna be who I am. And that can sound righteous or good, but sometimes it's just stupid, to be honest with you. And I think this was one of those times where it was just stupid. I probably should have just put, you know, that I do the therapy as usual, CBT, whatever. I didn't. And so, I did get interviews, but I did not match. And so I had to go through this clearinghouse thing, which is, I've heard they've changed this a little bit, but it was a riot. you basically, at that time you would fax out resumes still to people and you just, if you sent it to the site, they liked you, you liked them, boom. you just, you agreed to it. You kind of spit on your hand, shook their hand, and you ran. So I went through the clearinghouse and matched at a place called Schweitzer Learning Center, which was in Torrance, California. And it was working exclusively with young people. And what's called a non-public school in California, which can sound weird, that might sound like a private school, but really what it is is if you have a kid that has an IEP, And that kid, it's been shown that he can't, I say he, cause I was the only male therapist, so all my clients were boys. so they would say he, can't be served by a private school. that hasn't worked with his IEP. He can't be served by a public school. That hasn't worked. And so then at that time, I don't know if it's still the same, the state would have to fund For these kids to go to what's called a non-public school. And that's what Schweitzer Learning Center was, right? And so this was a really cool experience. I worked with young people who were up against a lot in their lives. And I learned a lot. It was like a trial by fire in a lot of ways. And I had already seen some people that had been through it during my first stint in Los Angeles, but this was kind of another level. So it taught me a lot. One of the things it taught me is that you kind of just have to do what works. And so there's all these sort of pretty theories you get taught in school And then when it really comes down to it, when you're in the trenches, you do what works. Right. And a lot of times you learn what works by the people who've come before you and you learn what works by paying close attention to your clients and the people you're serving. But I learned a lot in that setting. So then I graduate with a PhD. I defended my dissertation. I think it was 2010. I graduated. I was working in a small kind of private independent practice. When I say small, I was seeing two or three people a week, and I was making forty bucks per session. So this was not something I was gonna make a living doing at that time. I was also teaching at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Shout out to Metro State, the Roadrunners. I did my undergraduate degree there as a Young person before I was in graduate school. And then I went back there to teach and I was teaching intro to psych. It was all undergraduate psychology students. I was teaching these large sections of like a hundred students and intro to psych. And I just loved it. So after I graduated, I had this time where I was teaching at Metro State. I eventually got on a tenure track line there. And I was slowly building up an independent or private practice. emphasis on slowly. Like I went from one person. Then I was at three people. I was not taking insurance. I was working on what I call a radical sliding fee scale. I still work with that. And it probably took me six or seven years to go from one, literally one client to ten clients. I mean, I scaled this up very slowly. Now, I had the benefits of being able to do that because I was employed full time and had medical benefits, as a tenure line professor. But I learned a lot by building the practice up slowly. I don't have a website. I still don't have a website. Everything's been word of mouth and that's been a hell of a way to build a practice. It's worked out really well for me. And I acknowledged that I had the financial, not that I was getting paid a ton at Metro State, I mean, let's be real about this, but I was being paid enough, I was being paid a living wage, So I could build up my private practice slowly and I did. And it's, you know, now in 2025, I've gotten to a place where, have more people than I could possibly see. And it took many years to do that and I did it without marketing in a website or without intentional marketing. I mean, I kinda feel like the best marketing is good work. If you serve people well, they'll bring other people to you. But that takes a long time. It's not like getting on an insurance panel where you all of a sudden get fifteen clients. And to be honest, if I hadn't been able to lock up a tenure line full time teaching position, well, I probably would have had to go out on an insurance panel. Something like that, you know? But I was fortunate because I had this teaching job and it allowed me to build up the practice slowly. So then this event happened and it was formative for me. I think it was 2014, I was giving a workshop in Vancouver, British Columbia. And it was around using rap music and narrative therapy, something that I had been doing for a long time, but it never really shared. But now I'm an academic and you got to do presentations and publications and all this stuff. So I was like, well, shoot, I better share this thing. So I can keep my academic job. I better start presenting. So I'm up in Vancouver and I'm about to give this workshop. There's maybe, I don't know, fifty people or something like that in the room. And then, right before it starts, this dude walks in into the second row, and I recognize him immediately, it's David Epstein, one of the co-founders of Narrative Therapy, right? To which I said, I guess audibly, oh, shit. Like, I said that out loud. You ever say something out loud, but you meant to keep it inside? This is what happened. Apparently, I said it out loud. I don't recall saying it out loud, but I have an ungood authority that I said it out loud. And the reason I said oh shit out loud is because the first thirty minutes of this, workshop. Was me talking about the history of narrative therapy. Okay, well, what's the big deal? Well, the big deal is that's the taken for granted part. I just kind of put it on slides, for the people who don't know narrative therapy. But if you're doing a presentation on psychoanalytic therapy, The last thing you expect is for Sigmund Freud to walk in the room in the second row, right? And now he's there to interrogate your telling of His history. So, that's what this was like with David Epstein. And, David's like whispering, I don't know David as a person then. I mean, now I'd have an idea of what was going on, but I didn't really know him. So he's whispering to the person next to him, I'm kinda hyper fixated as I'm trying to present on what's David thinking, like, this could be good or bad that he's whispering to the person next to him, I don't know. I finished this workshop and I grabbed my stuff. Something you'll learn about me too. this is, I actually love this medium right here. Cause I'm in front of my computer with a microphone and no one else is here. I feel like this or speaking with one other person. That's where I feel most comfortable. I have presented in front of large groups for a long time, so I think It appears as though I'm comfortable, but I'm very much an introvert. I don't like being around lots of people. that is just not my preference. So after this workshop, I grabbed my backpack. I bolt out because I don't want any. I want to talk to David Epstein or anyone else. But there was this, basically mandatory, you know, this mandatory presenter's dinner, which was at someone's house, So it was pretty crowded, there was like forty people in this house, and I'm standing talking to some folks in there, I'm already feeling exhausted, and I see David Epston walk up. Now, he did not corner me. To be clear, I was already in a corner. But he approached me and I had no possibility for escape. Trust me, I tried. I looked everywhere and I had people around me and I could not escape. And so David comes up and he says, hey, I really enjoyed your presentation. I say, well, thank you, you know? And then I'm hoping that's the end of it. And he goes, hey, do you mind if I ask you a few questions? And inside I'm like, oh God, no. But of course I say, sure. Ask me a few questions. And so he goes, hey, why did you ask Australia and New Zealand questions? Hmm. Now that, that may not seem like much to you, but that's because you don't know a detail of the story that I know. So what I did, prior to this workshop, I changed the actual questions I asked. I didn't change like the spirit of them, but I changed them to look like. The way that narrative therapy questions are supposed to look like, right? And of course, narrative therapy originated in Australia and New Zealand. So that's the sort of classical narrative format. So I changed my questions to match that. so I didn't ask the actual questions that I asked. I changed them into proper narrative therapy questions. Okay. So in that moment, I'm like, this dude knows I'm lying about this. I mean, lying is a harsh word. I didn't know that I was lying. I was trying to take these questions and put them in a format that would be socially acceptable for the audience. Right. And those of you who maybe, speak languages that aren't academic English. You know exactly what I'm talking about, right? You have to translate what you say into proper academic English. And if you don't do that, you're deemed as unprofessional and other things, right? And so it's a form of code switching, really. And I was used to doing that. But I think I'm busted, right? I think David somehow knows that I had changed these questions to match classical, proper narrative therapy format. So he goes, why did you ask Australia and New Zealand questions? I was like, what? And I sort of played dumb. And he says to me, again, my presentation was on rap music and narrative therapy. He goes, why don't you let hip hop ask the questions? I'll tell you that question changed my life in a number of ways. So he said, why don't you let hip hop ask the questions? and then, you know, I was still kind of stunned. And he said in a very nice way, he goes, well, would you like my permission? And I sort of nodded my head, yes. And he goes, well, you have my permission. what he was saying is ask narrative therapy questions in your own cultural contexts in the way that you need to. Don't do what I did. Make sure that it is culturally near for the population that you are a part of and that you are serving. and I am being dead honest with you when I tell you that interaction changed my life. Because then David goes, hey, would you like to write a paper together? And I'm like, what? I mean, of course I would, you know? So I say yes, and... there's a longer story here, but David really mentored my practice in a lot of ways and has still been a mentor for me, a decade plus later. I had the good fortune of authoring a book with him and Tom Carlson. I mean, things I just never would have dreamed of doing. And on one hand, I look at this and I think, well, I've learned a lot from David. I really have. I've become a better therapist. And also, I think the spirit of my work Remains largely the same, even if the practices evolve and change. And so a part of me is like, hey, it's interesting that no one really cared about the work that I did until David gave it a platform. On the other hand, I thought like, well, I did some pretty good work prior to this. You know, why is this being recognized now? So I had this mixed relationship with what happened there. Overall, now, a decade plus later, I just look back and I feel grateful. You know, it was probably my ego talking when I said, I did good work before and I wanted it to be recognized. how work comes to become recognized, there's some interesting politics involved with that, right? I think the most important lesson that I learned is, as I get any kind of platform, I want to try to platform other people. And when I talk about wanting to have guests on, yes, like I said at the beginning, on this podcast, I'd love to have some guests that are legends in the field. That'd be awesome. And if I can build a platform here, I'd also like to platform other people just like David Epstein platformed me. Because I literally don't think I'd be talking to you right now if he hadn't done that. And I mean that sincerely. I mean, people say Oh, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for such and such, you know. But I think that's literally true in this case. And that's an important lesson among many that I've learned from David Epstein and something that I want to use this platform for. Now, where am I at now in my life? So I was in Denver for a number of years. That's why I was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. Go Nuggets. I'm a big NBA fan. the Nuggets are my team. Finally won a championship in 2023. So that feels really good. I can die in peace now. But I was in Denver until 2022. Most of that time was at Metropolitan State University of Denver. I took a job for two years at the University of Denver. I had the good fortune of co-directing the International Disaster Psychology program at the University of Denver with Gwen Mitchell for a couple of years. That was a really cool experience. And now I'm in San Diego, California. I was offered the position as chair of the counseling and school psychology program at San Diego State University, and I've been here since the summer of 2022. And San Diego, that is my place. I was born and raised in Denver. I always loved Denver. And San Diego is where my soul feels at peace. It is, just a, it's aesthetically beautiful, of course. I love the ocean in Southern California. And also where we live in Chula Vista, the sheer amount of diversity, the, all the food, the different languages spoken. I live about five miles north of the border. It's just been an incredible experience. And I feel really lucky to be out here and be where I'm at in my professional life. So that's where you find me now. I guess I'll add one more thing before I end this episode to that line. the good people at psychotherapy.net, brought me on board to, I don't, titles aren't my thing. I think it's like director of content or something. It's similar to the position that Victor Yalom has had for many years here. And let me just say, by the way, I hope to have Victor on the podcast relatively soon. He's a fascinating dude. Victor Yalom built up psychotherapy.net starting, I think it was like 1995. making VHS tapes of people actually doing therapy and bringing them to conferences and selling them. And from the telling that I've heard from Victor is basically like, nobody was showing their work and he wanted to create a platform where people were showing their work. And I couldn't be more on board with that mission, let me tell you. Because If I have to listen to one more theoretical lecture about therapy, I don't think I can do it. We have so, so, so many theories. And philosophies and ideas that we wax theoretical and philosophical about. And we show next to no practice. And so Victor's created this platform. I think the tagline is therapy in action. And so, to be honest, that's the main reason I came on board. I mean, I was fortunate enough to do a video with psychotherapy.net. so I knew some of the good folks here that are amazing and do amazing work here. So, I had that relationship with some of those folks and I enjoyed my time doing that project, but I wouldn't have taken on a position like this if I didn't really believe in the mission of what they're doing. And I do. And let me just tell you. Psychotherapy.net is gonna like, there's some cool stuff, a new websites, in the offing here that those things take a while. It'll be months down the road. But I couldn't be more excited about what the team's trying to do here. And so that takes you all the way to how I ended up hosting this particular podcast at this particular time. I hope that one, you're On board with some of the ideas, the hopes and intentions for this particular podcast. And I hope you'll come back and join us for some of those conversations. And then two, I hope you have some sense of who I am. Because if I'm the one that's gonna be in conversation with you, you deserve to know some things about my journey. And I shared some of them. Of course, our stories are Long and complex, I can't possibly share it all. But I hope you feel a little bit closer to me now than you did at the beginning of the episode. And I hope that each time we have one of these conversations together and we invite other guests into the mix, I hope you get a little bit more of that feeling and that we can foster that sense of community together. All right, that's all I got for you today. please come back I'll look forward to talking with all of you soon. All right, peace.
