July 11, 2026 • 47 mins
We all know that therapy is amazing, in fact it’s life-changing for many people. But what does therapy actually do? And what makes a good therapist?
In today’s episode we’re joined by Dr Sandra Espinoza, Associate Professor of the Couple and Family Therapy Program at Alliant University. Our discussion includes:
- Her journey into helping others
- Why the best therapists, go to therapy
- What to look for in your therapist
- Why we can’t just rely on our friends
- Our greatest misconceptions around therapy
- Why stigma and affordability continue to be the biggest barriers
- How Alliant University is leading the next generation of helpers and therapists to support their communities
If you’ve ever considered therapy, been curious about therapy or want to be a therapist yourself, this is your ultimate guide.
Follow Dr Espinoza: HERE
Find out more about Alliant University: HERE
Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast
Subscribe on Substack: @thepsychologyofyour20s
For business: psychologyofyour20s@gmail.com
The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spaike and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back
(00:25):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is
so great to have you here, back for another episode
as we, of course break down the Psychology of your twenties. Today,
I have a very special episode for you all, basically
an hour of free therapy. A huge focus of this
podcast is mental health and it's psychology. Psychology is in
(00:46):
the name, and we talk about so many concepts and theories,
even therapeutic practices and interventions. We talk about it all
the time. But what I have never done is just
sat down and done a full episode on what therapy
actually is, what it aims to do, what it means
to be a therapist, what it means to be in therapy.
(01:07):
Everybody tells us that it's helpful. Everybody tells us it's
this magical thing. Why why just talking to a stranger help?
What can you expect? Why does it change people? So
in this episode, we're going to break down exactly what
therapy does, the real psychology behind why change happens, and
what it means to be a therapist, what it means
to go to therapy. We're also bringing on a very
(01:29):
special guest, doctor Sandra Espinoza. She is the associate professor
and the former branch director for the Couple and Family
Therapy program at Alliance University. She's going to share some
amazing expertise with us today. Doctor Espinosa, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Thank you so much for having me. Janma, I'm excited
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah, I'm so excited to have you here. Do you
want to introduce yourself and just like talk about the
work that you do at Alliant and also beyond because
you do some cool stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Sure. Yeah. So I am in associate professor at l
I have been at Alliant now for I think ten years,
and I have been a therapist for about thirteen I
think going on fourteen. So I'm a clinician and an educator.
I have a really small private practice where I see clients,
(02:18):
and I see mostly couples as well as a lot
of women and a lot of clients that identify as immigrants.
So I have my clinical work I have my teaching,
I do some research, and then I think the part
that brings the most meaning to my work is that
I'm also an organizer for a volunteer group of therapists
(02:39):
who donate their time to serving immigrants, specifically undocumented immigrants,
and I've been organizing for that for the past year.
So there are folks who are just again donating their
time to provide therapy for people who might not have
access to it otherwise, and that has just been a
really exciting and meaningful part of my career the past year.
(03:00):
I'm also a mom. I am a mom of three.
I have three little kids. I have a five year old,
a three year old, and a six month old, so
I know, so I have my hands full with that.
And I am a Mexican American. I am a proud
daughter of immigrants, and so I'm bilingual and I speak
(03:21):
Spanish and so just really passionate about doing clinical work
with the LATINX community.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I'm that is so impressive, but also double thanks for
being here today, because you have a lot of stuff
probably is a little bit more important, but I honestly
feel like that was why I really wanted to speak
to you, because You've just done so much over so
many different so many different parts of the psychology discipline
and the therapy discipline, and like what you can do
(03:48):
and how you can help at every single level. And
a lot of our listeners are doing psychology want to
become therapists or just in general trying to figure out
who they want to become. You specifically, what did your
journey into this field actually look like? Like? Did you
come into it? Did you always know this is what
you wanted to be doing? Give us Yeah?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Sure. So when I was in my undergrad I was
really interested in working with kids and working kind of
more in the education field, and so I worked in
a lot of after school programs I wad for, like
the Boys and Girls Club, I did a MERACORPS and
that work was really meaningful, and you know, I still
(04:30):
carry so many of the like amazing memories that I
made and working with children. But what I noticed is
that when I was working with the kids, you know,
a lot of them came from some challenging backgrounds, and
even though they had these amazing programs that they were
attending with me after school, I didn't feel like it
was enough to really make an impact. In their lives.
(04:52):
I would, you know, I could spend two three hours
with them after school, but then they would kind of
go back home to sometimes homes that I didn't have
a lot of resources, homes where the parent relationship wasn't great,
and I kept asking myself, like what more can I do.
I would spend weekends with them, take them on field trips,
and I still kept coming across as like I don't know,
(05:13):
just kind of inner challenge of like I need to
be doing more. I want to help in another way.
And so then I started researching different programs, different schools,
and a friend had always told me, you need to
go to Alliant. Alliant trains really good therapists. You need
to go look into it. So I started looking into Alliant,
(05:34):
and then from there I came across the couple and
family therapy program and I was like, yes, I want
to work with families. I want to work with couples
because I want to make that larger impact with the
children that I'm serving. And what's the best way to
reach a child. It's through their parent, It's through their family.
I also had I think, pretty I came from a
(05:55):
really good family. I will say my family you know,
my parents were supportive, they sacrificed the for me. But
I had a lot of trouble with my romantic relationships
growing up, and I think didn't just didn't have like
a blueprint for what to do in a couple's relationship.
And so I mentioned this part because I think that
also inspired me to go specifically into like couple work
(06:16):
where I think I wanted answers, so like why aren't
my romantic relationships working? And so it was like both,
it was like, I want to work with families, I
want to make that impact, and then also I kind
of want to find out more about myself about relationships,
like what makes a healthy relationship, what makes it work?
So I think it was a combination of both of
those things.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Honestly, I feel like the best therapists are the ones
who have have had like tangible experiences themselves, so they
can see somebody come into their office and just know
where that sits kind of in the soul and in
the body and in the mind. Something I want to
ask you, maybe this is a postal question, before becoming
a therapist, did you go to therapy yourself?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
No knows, And this is very embarrassing because I tell
all my students, like, you have to go to therapy
before becoming a therapist. And I think we'll probably dive
into a little bit more of like why that's so
important later, but I'll mention it kind of like briefly here.
You know, when you are doing this work with other people,
it's so important that you have fully examined right your
(07:22):
own biases, values, belief systems, et cetera, so that when
you are in a therapeutic relationship with somebody else, you
are making sure that those things aren't transcending into the
relationship with the other that you are. You have fixed
your you have figured out yourself so well right, or
(07:42):
at least in some ways, to make sure that when
you are how we're doing counseling somebody else like that
that isn't informing the way that you do it. I'll
give you an example. Some people are still carrying such
deep wounds about again their own couple relationship that they'll
then start working with a couple and side with one
(08:05):
partner because that's what resonates more personally to them in
terms of their lived experience. And so we want folks
to go to therapy first to make sure that that
doesn't happen, that you are trying your best right to
remain as neutral as possible, even though neutrality is also
impossible because all of us are bringing in our own
(08:26):
lived experiences as therapists. We want to be able to
remain impartial, right. We want to have what we call
contextual therapy is like multidirective partiality, that we're able to
hear every single person out, we're not citing right, etc.
But back to your original question of like did I
ever go No, I think that it was really taboo
in my family. My parents definitely didn't go to therapy. Again,
(08:49):
they were like immigrants, they came from Mexico, they didn't
speak English. It just wasn't talked about in my family.
And it was only until I became a therapist and
soar in doing the work that then finally I went.
I went to individual therapy, ve into couple therapy, And
now I'm like, oh my god, I should have done
this so much sooner. It would have helped before even
(09:11):
becoming a therapist in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
I really like that that's the advice that you give
to your students because you're like, I did it the
other way, and so now like I I'm not going
to say, like, don't make the same mistakes, but it's
like I, no, I can see that I would have
been aided through this and it must have been Yeah,
it must have been difficult. Oh, not difficult, but interesting
for you, like becoming a therapist and maybe never having
(09:36):
experience therapy. And I know so many people listening to
this believe to their call like therapy is an amazing thing.
I really like, it's great, but I've just never done it.
So there is this specific idea of therapy is like
lying on a couch being maybe like asked questions about
your dreams, about your parents. What do you actually do
in therapy?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, well that is also such a big question because
depending on who you're asking, you're going to get a
different response. So if you are interviewing a psychiatrist, psychologist,
a social worker, an MFT like me, you're going to
get a different response probably from each person. And that's
(10:18):
because we all do it or approach it in different ways. Right,
So for us as couple in family therapists, we are
working with an individual and trying to figure out what
they're inner world is right, what their belief systems are
how they're thinking about things, how they're feeling about things.
(10:39):
But we're also looking at it in the context of
relationships and systems. So yes, we want to understand what
you're experiencing, what's hurting you, what's painful, what's bothering you,
But how how is that being experienced in the relation
to your family, in the relation to your neighborhood, and
the relation to your society, because we believe as MFTs
(11:03):
that all of those things impact the way that you
are navigating the world. And so that's really our emphasis.
Whereas if you were to ask I don't know, a
psychologist or a different kinds of therapist, they might say, well,
we're really concerned about behavior and helping you modify your
behavior so that you have less emotional distress, so that
(11:27):
you have less anxiety, and that is also valuable. Right,
So I'm thinking about like people who have like OCD,
for example, who really need help managing some of their
behaviors so that they experience like symptom relief. Right. But
again it just depends on who you're going to ask
that you'll get that kind of like different response. But
(11:47):
again I think for me, like where I live as
an MFT, it's really about helping a person better understand
themselves in relation to their family context and their socio
politic contacts so that they can make sense of what
they're experiencing.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I like the emphasis on like how the how the
environment has shaped you in ways that you probably don't understand,
and how you need to have that baseline or maybe
do understand. Actually we probably do, but you, you know,
need to get to that next layer of depth. Something
I want to ask you because you work with so
many different types of people. You know, when you meet
(12:26):
someone as a therapist and you're looking into their you know,
their family history, their the socio political environment that they
live in, just everything that's going on around them and
within them and in their past specifically. And maybe this
is a difficult, difficult quession to answer. What are you
looking for? What are you trying to figure out about
(12:48):
that individual in the first couple of sessions.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah, I'm usually trying to look for a pattern. So
whether that's where I'm working with an individual, whether I'm
working with a couple, or whether I'm not working with
a family, I'm trying to find the pattern that keeps
getting them stuck because Most of the time when people
are coming to therapy, it's because they want to change
something right, They want something about their lives to be different.
(13:12):
And many times they're telling me, we keep getting stuck,
or I keep getting stuck, I keep dating the same
guy over and over again, or we keep fighting about
the same exact thing. Help us through it. And so
my job is to look for that pattern or we
even call it like a cycle, or we call it
a dance, and figure out how can we interrupt this
(13:35):
pattern so that you have a new way of being
in relationship with yourself or others, And that will entail right,
what we just talked about, which is like, okay, looking
back at your family, what are some things that you
learned about your family, what was passed on? What kind
of messages were sent to you about being afraid about
(13:55):
being sad? It might inquire again us to look at
your socio political contexts. Do you have a real reason
to be scared to leave outside of your door? Right?
How is that also impacting the way that you're showing
up in your relationships? What have your past relationships look like,
(14:17):
just like as a young adult, how is that informing
the way that you're showing up in the hearing now, right,
So a lot of it is looking back at the past,
looking at different systems, and then tying it back to
how is that impacting you in this present moment?
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Can I ask a question if you have somebody come
in and, like you said, you know, they're an immigrant,
they're scared to go outside the door, or there's somebody
who's experienced racism and they're terrified of that happening, how
do you handle those like very real environmental things that
(14:54):
you can't change as a therapist. Absolutely, I've always like,
I just yeah, I think that's such an interesting th.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yes, And I think that that is a question that
a lot of people ask themselves, even like therapists are
like how do I help this person when I have
no control over their environment? And the truth is like,
first just like naming that right and validating that and
saying you are not crazy. There is nothing innately wrong
(15:21):
with you. You are having a very normal response to
an abnormal situation. And we think about it that way
with like any kind of trauma really where a person
actually has a real reason to be scared. Maybe they
had gotten in a really bad car accident, or they've
lost a family and a car accident, lost their family
in an airplane, and they're scared of flying, they're scared
(15:45):
of driving. It makes sense to me that people are
terrified of doing that thing again. And I think that
that is so important to first just like name that
you are having again a very normal response to an
abnormal situation that shouldn't have happened to you, that shouldn't
have happened to your family, and then also again acknowledging
(16:06):
that no matter what I do right, I won't be
able to fix what is happening outside of these four walls. However,
this is going to be your space where you can
talk about these things. I can hear you, and I
can help you figure out a way to navigate what
is happening outside as best as possible, because you know,
(16:27):
and a lot of the work that I do, I
tell my therapists. You know, if you are feeling frustrated
that your client is not getting better, you are feeling
like maybe I'm not a good therapist because I can't
relieve all of their human suffering. You have to remember
that it's not your fault and a lot of the
times we are just dealing with a broken socio political system. Right,
(16:49):
it's beyond your control, and you just have to trust
that your relationship with this person is enough and it's
going to be enough to make a difference and relieve
some of that pain that they are experiencing.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
I wish I had you as a professor when I
was studying. I feel like that's never spoken about of
Just like you, you have to know your limits as
somebody as a helper and as an EmPATH and as
somebody just doing their job. Speaking of what makes a
good therapist, Yeah, what makes a good therapist? Like should
you as if somebody is new to therapy and they're like,
(17:26):
how do I know this person is right for me?
Is this person going to help me? Is this person
good at their job? But like what do we and
should we look out for?
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah? I think that goes back to what we were
talking about earlier in terms of, you know, should you
go to therapy before becoming a therapist? And that's really
why I highly recommend that because it ties into what
makes a good therapist. So I think a good therapist
has done a lot of that self examination prior to
(17:54):
becoming a therapist and doing that work, or at least concurrently,
whenever ourronments in our program is that our students have
to complete at least fifty hours of individual psychotherapy while
completing their program because the training that we give them
brings up so much stuff and so much sometimes like
(18:17):
baggage for people that we want to make sure they're
kind of like sorting out before they are seeing clients,
because you know, it's impossible to predict what clients bring
into the room with you, and the therapist can easily
be triggered just as much as the client. A lot
(18:39):
of therapists again, are kind of bringing in their own wounds,
family stories, belief systems, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and if
those go unexamined, they can harm the client relationship. Therapists
might recommend a client to do something based on their
(19:01):
lived experience, and that might not be what's best for
that particular client, right, A good therapist has to be
capable of being wrong. Right, just because you have extensive training,
that doesn't mean that you're always going to know what's
best for your clients. Sometimes I even tell students, once
you think that you know what's best for your client,
(19:22):
that's a red flag, right because even if you have
shared identities. We have no idea, right what this person
is really experiencing.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
I love that, My god, once you think you know
what's right, that's a red flag, absolutely just and it
just kind of is like a I think there's no
room for ego arrogance on either end when you are
in therapy, right. I also like that Alliance does that,
like fifty hours of like you have to complete fifty
(19:55):
hours of therapy to become a therapist. Seems like such
a of course, that's such a sensical idea, and I
haven't heard of many programs doing that, So that.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Is yeah, and you can do it, you know. We
tell our students it could be individual but it could
also be a couple therapy, or it could be family therapy,
like maybe sometimes our students want to go back and
do therapy with their parents to figure out with some
of these you know, issues that they want to work through.
Might be But I think again, also, a good therapist
is just someone who's willing to be wrong, somebody who's
(20:27):
really curious and genuinely right wants to learn about you
and your story, versus assuming that they already know right
what your problem is and what you should be working
on and a good therapist, i'd lastly say, also always
has a map. They have direction of where they want
to go with what you are bringing in. A good therapist.
(20:50):
A bad therapist, I would say, is someone who's just
kind of like listening and validating. I've had friends tell
me like, oh, well, my therapist just agrees with me
and they don't really like say much in session, and
that's also a red flag for me. I'm like, you know,
a good therapist should be able to also disagree. They
should be able to challenge, right that our job isn't
(21:11):
to just like listen and nod. Our job is to
kind of go back to one of my earlier points,
which was like, we want to interrupt those patterns that
are keeping you stuck, and sometimes that requires challenging you.
And I just asked that client's trust that we're trying
to come from a good place. It's not that we are,
you know, trying to pull you around in session, but
(21:31):
we are trying to help you think about things differently.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
So this really leads super well into my next question,
which is I hear a lot especially from maybe my parents'
generation as well, or even just people actually from everybody
which is I don't need therapy. I have my friends.
I have my friends, and I talk to them. I
think you mentioned like your friends. Obviously, if your friend
turned around and was like, I'm gonna I'm going to
(21:56):
correct you or I'm going to tell you that you're wrong,
it would probably feel very difficult to hear. I think
what a lot of people probably want to know is
what is actually happening in therapy that makes it different
from just talking to your friends, Like, is it you
know you're talking to a stranger, why does that seem
(22:18):
to work? Is it the talking, is it the strategies,
is it the knowledge like or is it something else?
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah? Absolutely. When I'm doing admissions to bring people into
the program, we'll ask people, you know, what makes you
want to be a therapist, and they'll say, well, my
friends have always said that I'm a good listener, and
that is, you know, a good quality. That is something
that we want from therapists that they're able to listen.
(22:43):
And there's just so much more, right, there's so much
more training that people need if they really want to
practice therapy. When you meet a therapist and you're starting
that work with them, like there's a whole treatment plan
that they have to create before working with you, and
that treatment plan is really what's going to give them
(23:04):
that direction and map of knowing how to help you
towards your goal. They probably should also have like a
theoretical orientation that they're practicing from, and again that's going
to vary depending on if you're working with a social worker,
a psychiatrist, a psychologists and mft. So there's just like
so much again like training that goes into it. And
(23:26):
another stark difference is that I think friends, even though
they are I think a lot of the times trying
to remain as like quote unquote unbiased as possible, Like,
they still have a stake in the relationship with you.
There's an investment. They don't want to hurt your feelings
a lot of the times, and right justly so, they're
your friend, right they're looking out for you, and a
therapist isn't necessarily going to hurt your feelings. But again,
(23:49):
they should be able to be in a position where
they can challenge you and offer an outsider perspective. Right
that Also, I think sometimes like friends can we're kind
of looking at things from the outside in, and I
think that that is really helpful for people who are
feeling stuck versus getting input from somebody who has has
(24:12):
a lens of like seeing them in their day to
day life.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
So when somebody walks into like a therapist's office for
the first time, you're speaking about this treatment plan or
it's like just like a framework, or they want a
direction to your treatment, right, they want to know where
they're going. They're trying to figure out, as you said,
where you sit in like a broader environmental, social context, history,
(24:36):
all these things. What can you expect is somebody, what
kind of questions are you going to be asked? What
kind of things are going to come up in the
first couple of sessions.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, I think a lot of it will be based
on the past, and then some of it will be
based on the present. So usually one of the first
questions that I ask is, you know, tell me what
brings to brings you to therapy? Now, what is it
about what you're experiencing that is making you want to
seek help in this present moment? And again that gives
(25:10):
me usually like a good picture of what is happening
in the hearing. Now, Oh, well, it's because I can't
sleep well or again, I keep dating the same guy
over and over again. I just went through a breakup,
and then I'll ask questions more about the past. So
tell me a little bit about your family life. And
they're pretty open ended so that the person can really
like take them anywhere. It's really rare that we're asking
(25:31):
like very specific, detail oriented questions because we want to
hear your story. Right, I tell my clients, you know,
you have lived your life for thirty five years, forty years.
You are the expert in your story and I am
going to be a witness to that. Right, you really
are the expert here. I'm just here to kind of
(25:53):
like listen and help you figure things out. So we
want to hear that story. Tell me a little bit
about what your life was like growing up and what
were what were some of the messages that your parents
sent you around love, around apologizing. How do you think
that's playing into what you're experiencing now? So I think again,
(26:13):
it's a little bit of both. It's like tying the
past to the present and kind of going back and
forth and seeing kind of like where the client lives
again in the here and now.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
And I like that you said, it's it's kind of
like a write your own story situation. Right, it's very
much like that they're not going to a therapist, isn't
going to find ways to trick you. I think that's
a big thing, like they that's not going to help them,
Like trying to trick you into admitting things, trying to
you know, double cross you, or like suddenly make big
(26:45):
revelations about your life, is actually like therapeutically unhelpful. So
that's just something I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, it's like we're not really supposed to wear like
the detective hats. We're not trying to catch a lot
a client lying. Like when we're working with substance use,
a lot of the times clients will say, you know,
like I'm not using, and sometimes they are right because
recovery is hard, and our job isn't to figure out
(27:14):
whether or not a client is telling the truth. Again,
our job is to listen. Again. Sure, we're going to challenge,
right if there's discrepancy sometimes if things aren't matching up,
because we want to interrupt those patterns. But our job
isn't to be an investigator, right. Our job isn't to
be a police officer and tell you what is wrong.
(27:35):
Tell you what is right, kind of taking on that
carcoral kind of like perspective. Our job is again, like
you said, to focus on that story. Listen. Some therapists
that are like narrative therapists will even say, like, our
job is to help you rewrite that story, be a
co author to that story, and write your preferred story, right,
(27:56):
the one that you want to live.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Love that, big fan. Let's talk about therapy and stigma.
Something we've said a lot throughout this is, you know, well,
your parents didn't go to therapy, and there's a lot
of people who come in and they wish their families
had gone to therapy and they haven't, or people saying
(28:19):
I don't need that, I have my friends. Why do
some people and some communities still see therapy is something
that is only for people in cristis or something that
is unnecessary full stop. Where does that come from?
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, I think that that is really just like the
dominant narrative that we have socially constructed in a lot
of parts of the world. So I think for some
specific culturals that are just like so taboo to ask
for any kind of help, for medical help, for psychiatric help,
(28:55):
just because certain cultures just believe that that is not appropriate.
Some cultures will believe like you solve your problems within
your family, for example, the only people that should know
that you are in pain, that you're in emotional distress
are your family members. So that's definitely like something that
I see quite often. And then I think that there's
(29:16):
also just like other bigger social messages, like around gender,
for example, how we socialize men to believe that they're
not supposed to cry, that emotional expression means that they
are weak, that they're going to be a burden. And
even to women, right, I think that we can send
(29:37):
messages that are really conflicting because we do expect women
to be emotional and like soft and nurturing and maternal,
and at the same time we expect them to keep going, right,
we overburden them with tasks and psychological labor, and so
it's hard even if you kind of want to get help,
to ask for it, because you're expected to keep the
(30:00):
world moving, keep your family moving, keep society moving. And
so I just I think that all of those messages
that we send people can really confuse them, is what
I'm feeling. Valid Is it enough to ask for help?
My culture says that it is, you know, not right.
My community is telling me that it's not right, and
(30:20):
so it is really hard to get people to finally
do it again. I'm a victim to that. Like I
didn't go to therapy until my mid twenty late twenties.
I think it was almost and it was a career
that I was pursuing, and I was still nervous. I
was still nervous, like when am I going to uncover?
And is that going to mean X, Y and Z
(30:41):
about me? So again, I think it's like these just
big kind of social messages, cultural messages that we send people,
and you'd be surprised because I do think we've made
a lot of strides. Like it's twenty twenty six. Mental
health is pretty widely talked about, but we're still seeing
so many people and young people even say I'm too
nervous to go see.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Obviously a lot of my friends a therapists because we
all went to school together, right, you know, I studied psychology,
and something I hear all the time from friends will
be like, oh, you know, I had three patients just
like not show up, like made appointments and get so
close and then just feel like they can't take that
next step, and sometimes it takes a couple of times
(31:23):
to feel ready, to feel ready to kind of take
a peek behind the door. So I think the fact
that like, if you're even listening to this episode considering therapy,
you the listener, you have made it so far on
that journey as something that is like available to you
and something that you're considering for someone who can't afford therapy,
(31:45):
Because we've got there's a couple of barriers here, like
it's difficult. There is the internal battle of like do
I do this, as the cultural battle of like if
you do this, we will think this of you. And
then there's just an availability issue for someone who can't
currently afford therapy, what are some meaningful alternatives or starting
(32:06):
points before that becomes available?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
So if therapy is completely inaccessible, which it is to
a lot of people, I would encourage you to kind
of look at your current support systems. So I know
we also talked about like, well, friends shouldn't be doing therapy,
but I would rather somebody be able to vent and
open up to another any other human being, right instead
(32:34):
of carrying this pain and distress on their own. So
for example, if somebody is having suicidal thoughts and therapy
is completely inaccessible, I would rather than be able to
turn to a trusted friend and say, you know what,
I'm carrying these feelings with me. I think I need help.
That is a starting point, right at least somebody else
(32:56):
knows that you are in trouble. Another a suggestion would
be like relaying, I don't know. Some people are religious.
Faith communities can be really helpful in navigating painful experiences.
A lot of the immigrant communities that I work with,
because therapy is so taboo, they'll tell me I went
(33:17):
to church and prayed about this, I went and talked
to a pastor about this and they were actually really helpful.
Or I went and talked to another church goer and
they really helped me through this dark time. They were
able to bring themselves to access that kind of help
before actually seeking out therapeutic services. And again, that is amazing.
Like you said, it's a starting point. So I think
(33:40):
first just kind of like reaching out to your local
network and saying, you know, I'm feeling this way, I
need help. Starting there, and a lot of the times
my experience has also been that like once people start
reaching out to others and saying I'm experiencing X, Y
and Z. They connect them to resources because there are
a lot of resources that offer free therapy. There's so many,
(34:01):
And you know, if any of your listeners are interested,
they can reach out to me directly, and I'm happy
to kind of point them in the right direction. But
it's not impossible. And there's so many therapists who are
just like willing again to donate their time and doing
good work and just helping people make therapy accessible, that
we can find a way to get people connected.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
This is a great segue speaking of therapists who want
to help people. I also think this is a big thing.
I think very few therapists get into this for any
kind of selfish reason. Right, you have to study for
so long, there's so much that you have to learn.
I know, we spoke about people who come to Alliance
(34:44):
and who apply and they're like, Oh, my friends just
always want to talk to me. They I'm just such
a good listener. Strangers on the street tell me stuff
all the time speaking of like wanting to become a therapist.
People like that. Do you think that some people just
born to help others in this way or what's your
(35:04):
take on that. Do you think that there are some
people who are just like, oh, of course, that is
like your purpose.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
I think it's kind of like twofold. I think that
there are some people that are born knowing that they
want to help others, that they want to dedicate their
lives to helping others in some way, shape or form,
whether that's being through like being a medical doctor, being
a social worker, being a teacher, being a nurse. They
(35:33):
just there's this desire to help, right, And I think
that you also don't have to be like a natural
born listener or good talker to be a therapist, Like
I want to empower people that if they were quiet
their whole lives, for example, and are just like super
(35:55):
shy and introverted, like, you can still learn how to
be a good therapist. If you are somebody who maybe
they said, you know, you talk too much in class,
you socialize too much, We're just a big talker, you're
very outgoing. You could be a good therapist. Right, And
so the skill is teachable, right, the skill is teachable.
We can train you how to hone in on certain
(36:17):
traits and how to highlight certain skills. So I want
to empower people, like, if this is something that you
want to approach, it's possible, even if maybe you got
messages sent throughout your life that would contradict that. And
I think that there is people who were just born
to help. And so if you're both great, right, if
you were feeling like I was put on this earth
(36:38):
to help people and I want to be taught this skill, wonderful.
But if you land on either of the spectrum to
know that it's still possible, I guess that's kind of
how I want to answer that.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
I love that answer, kind of not gonna lie. I
set you up for that answer because I was like,
I feel the same way. I think also, you'd be
surprised some people, well who you think would be amazing therapists,
really struggle because you know, like you said, like you
can't help everybody. Oh, they used to dealing with a
specific kind of of individual who was just like them,
(37:13):
and you know, can't apply that to everybody else.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Yeah, I think another yeah, sorry, justum. Another good example
is like people who have been in recovery, like a
lot of people who struggled with addiction, Like I imagine
that throughout their life they were probably sent really bad
messages about who they are and their character and whatnot,
and they end up making amazing therapists, like people in
recovery are amazing therapists because they have that lived experience
(37:40):
that really can bring a lot of expertise. And so
again I think that if you are somebody who's just
like really interested in pursuing this, really not listen to
a lot of that like outside noise and ask, get mentorship,
get the training, and you know, the world is your oyster.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
After that, let's talk about a lot because you went
to school there and now you teach that you've been
with them, But like when did you start thirteen years ago?
You said, how did they kind of prepare you? And
how do they continue to prepare people to work effectively
(38:20):
as therapists? Like what's unique about this program?
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah, I think it's probably would highlight like three things.
Number one is like mentorship. I think something that sets
the line apart is like outstanding mentorship. Because we are
a smaller school, You're not going to be in a
classroom with one hundred and fifty people, so the professor
is going to know every single student, which I think
gives a lot of opportunity again for them to get
(38:45):
to know you and know your goals and reach out
for reach out to you if you were struggling or
want extra help. I really feel like for me as
a first gen college student, like that's what really made
a huge difference for me was that my professor or
doctor Davis, who's in our Sacramento campus. I always give
him a shout out. He changed my life because he
(39:05):
actually took the time to find out what I wanted
to do and helped me answer a lot of questions
that I wouldn't have had answered if I was kind
of doing this on my own. So I think that's one.
Number two is like bridging the like clinical training with
like practical real world training. So yes, we'd like teach
you all of the theories, you get really good paper knowledge,
(39:30):
but then we also give you the opportunity to apply
it and give you so much supervision and mentorship while
doing it. So it's like a balance, right, And so
you're getting all of your book knowledge and then you
were getting that bridge to like actually going out there
and seeing clients and applying everything that you know. I
feel like Aligance does a really good job at that
and then the last part is like the emphasis on diversity.
(39:52):
I think that if you are living in the United
States in this current moment, like there's a good chance
that you are going to be working with diverse groups
because the United States is changing so incredibly fast. I mean,
the whole world really is right globally, and Alignance does
such a good job at preparing students to work with
(40:12):
diverse populations. Again, we're asking you, you know, are you
examining these biases? Our cohorts are so incredibly diverse, Like
my cohorts I have. I'll have like a twenty three
year old fresh college grad sitting next to seventy year
old retired attorney. The cohorts are just so different, and
(40:38):
the students are so different, and so they're bringing in
that lived experience. They're talking about their stories in class,
and so you're getting exposure right to all of these
different stories. And I just I think that align does
such a good job about the professors diverse. I mean,
I can go on and on about how well we
prepare students for the current landscape.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, I love that, And obviously, flipping to the other side,
like the people listening to this who want to be therapists.
What can you expect from learning to be a therapist?
Birth it online and just in general.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Yes, so I know I keep harping on this, but
really doing that, like self examination, is such a big part.
It is painful in some ways, but I promise you
will come out a better person on the other side
once you take a good look at your story with
genuine curiosity and a critical lens. So you'll do a
(41:32):
lot of that, like examining your family, examining your past,
and then also of course like learning different models that
will help you really understand how human behavior works again
within that relational context, So you'll learn a lot of
the foundational theories about human behavior, and you'll learn a
lot of those like listening skills that we also kind
(41:54):
of talked about today, like how to be a good listener,
because it's so much more than just kind of having
your ears open, right. There is a lot of like
reflective listening. So you'll learn so many things. But I
think that the best part is learning a lot about yourself,
Like I am a much better wife, daughter, friend, mom
(42:17):
because I'm a therapist, because I'm constantly asking myself why
did this happen? Well, why did I say this? How
could I have done that better? Right? So, like that
self reflection I think just makes you such a good
human being. So even though it's hard to move through
that while you're in training, in the end, I think again,
you just come out so much more of a self
(42:42):
aware person because of it.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
I love that. I've want two more questions for you.
Want to do with therapy and then want to do
purely with you as a person. What kind of inspires
you about this field at the moment and the people
who are entering it. What is something to kind of
look forward to when it comes to the therapy space.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, that's a good question. I think. You know, I
have the privilege of seeing new waves of therapists come
in every single year because I'm a professor and we
teach you know, a different gohurt every single year, And
it is really inspiring to see so many people come
in every single year genuinely wanting to make a difference
(43:24):
in the world, genuinely wanting to be people that can
hold space for people who are experiencing like trauma and pain.
So like, just like the fact that we have so
many helpers to me is so incredibly inspiring. Because the
world can be a place right where there is so
(43:45):
much pain and trauma. The fact that we have so
many people with a desire to change that to meet
it with kindness and warmth and love is so incredibly
inspiring to me and wants me to keep going year
after year in terms of my teaching. And then what
was the other part of that question, Gemma?
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Honestly, I think you answered it super well. I feel
like I love that and I love that you Honestly,
it would be just such a great experience just being
on the frontline of people who you were just sending
out to just like help. I feel like that'd be
a really great place to be. Right now, It's like
and the world is just so chaotic and awful and
just being like, oh, and then here are these people
(44:27):
who just really want to help people, right I can't
imagine it. Final question. This is a question we ask
every single guest, and it has literally nothing to do
with what we spoke about today. Maybe one percent of
what we spoke about today make up in this question,
which is, what is one thing you wish you knew
in your twenties that has nothing to do with what
(44:49):
we spoke about In this episode.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Yeah, one thing that I wish I knew was like
that my life was just beginning, and I reflect back
in my twenties, they felt so like finite. It felt
like I had to find the perfect partner to get
married too, I had to find the perfect career. I
had to figure out where I was going to live,
(45:13):
should I be buying a house. It was just like
all of these social expectations that I thought I had
to like check off, and that was just so much pressure.
When I wish I would have just expect my twenties
having fun and living life and traveling and exploring. But
I just really felt like I had to have it
all figured out. And I wish that I knew that
(45:35):
it was just the beginning and I could take my
time finding that perfect partner. I could find my time
finding that perfect career. I could take risks right versus
just playing it really safe and figuring out. Again, like
I just kind of had to get it all done
in my twenties. So my message is like it's just starting.
It's going to get so much better, and again, the
(45:57):
world is your oyster, and it's just going to be amazing,
you know what.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
I kind of needed to hear that today. I mean,
having so many conversations with people about this, and I
love when people call on the podcast and it just
like your twenties is just the start point. So yeah,
thanks to that wonderful advice.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
It's exciting.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Well yeah, I know it's scary, but exciting as well.
Thank you again for coming on the podcast. I really
appreciate you taking the time out of very meaningful and
busy work to discuss the truth about therapy with us,
discuss the stigma, discuss how to become a therapist. Is
(46:37):
there anything else you want to say before we wrap
up the episode?
Speaker 2 (46:41):
No, just that again. I think if you are feeling
like you need help because you're not feeling you know,
emotionally well, to know that there's always going to be
someone to listen. I know it's scary, but do it anyway.
Good things happen when you're a brave.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
That's a great way to end the episode. Great things
happen when you're a brave. I actually just started therapy again,
and it's hard at first, and then you just experience
it's like a bit of a fong is kind of
lifted from life, even if it's a bit difficult, so
we're gonna leave so much additional information in the description,
including where to find doctor Espinoza, information about Alliant University
(47:20):
and their amazing programs and the way they do things differently,
and so much more. Thank you. If you've made it
to the end, leave a comment down below. Are you
currently in therapy? I want to know yes or no?
Leave a comment if you're listening on Spotify, and as always,
be safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself. We will
talk very very soon.
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spaike and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back
(00:25):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is
so great to have you here, back for another episode
as we, of course break down the Psychology of your twenties. Today,
I have a very special episode for you all, basically
an hour of free therapy. A huge focus of this
podcast is mental health and it's psychology. Psychology is in
(00:46):
the name, and we talk about so many concepts and theories,
even therapeutic practices and interventions. We talk about it all
the time. But what I have never done is just
sat down and done a full episode on what therapy
actually is, what it aims to do, what it means
to be a therapist, what it means to be in therapy.
(01:07):
Everybody tells us that it's helpful. Everybody tells us it's
this magical thing. Why why just talking to a stranger help?
What can you expect? Why does it change people? So
in this episode, we're going to break down exactly what
therapy does, the real psychology behind why change happens, and
what it means to be a therapist, what it means
to go to therapy. We're also bringing on a very
(01:29):
special guest, doctor Sandra Espinoza. She is the associate professor
and the former branch director for the Couple and Family
Therapy program at Alliance University. She's going to share some
amazing expertise with us today. Doctor Espinosa, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Thank you so much for having me. Janma, I'm excited
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah, I'm so excited to have you here. Do you
want to introduce yourself and just like talk about the
work that you do at Alliant and also beyond because
you do some cool stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Sure. Yeah. So I am in associate professor at l
I have been at Alliant now for I think ten years,
and I have been a therapist for about thirteen I
think going on fourteen. So I'm a clinician and an educator.
I have a really small private practice where I see clients,
(02:18):
and I see mostly couples as well as a lot
of women and a lot of clients that identify as immigrants.
So I have my clinical work I have my teaching,
I do some research, and then I think the part
that brings the most meaning to my work is that
I'm also an organizer for a volunteer group of therapists
(02:39):
who donate their time to serving immigrants, specifically undocumented immigrants,
and I've been organizing for that for the past year.
So there are folks who are just again donating their
time to provide therapy for people who might not have
access to it otherwise, and that has just been a
really exciting and meaningful part of my career the past year.
(03:00):
I'm also a mom. I am a mom of three.
I have three little kids. I have a five year old,
a three year old, and a six month old, so
I know, so I have my hands full with that.
And I am a Mexican American. I am a proud
daughter of immigrants, and so I'm bilingual and I speak
(03:21):
Spanish and so just really passionate about doing clinical work
with the LATINX community.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I'm that is so impressive, but also double thanks for
being here today, because you have a lot of stuff
probably is a little bit more important, but I honestly
feel like that was why I really wanted to speak
to you, because You've just done so much over so
many different so many different parts of the psychology discipline
and the therapy discipline, and like what you can do
(03:48):
and how you can help at every single level. And
a lot of our listeners are doing psychology want to
become therapists or just in general trying to figure out
who they want to become. You specifically, what did your
journey into this field actually look like? Like? Did you
come into it? Did you always know this is what
you wanted to be doing? Give us Yeah?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Sure. So when I was in my undergrad I was
really interested in working with kids and working kind of
more in the education field, and so I worked in
a lot of after school programs I wad for, like
the Boys and Girls Club, I did a MERACORPS and
that work was really meaningful, and you know, I still
(04:30):
carry so many of the like amazing memories that I
made and working with children. But what I noticed is
that when I was working with the kids, you know,
a lot of them came from some challenging backgrounds, and
even though they had these amazing programs that they were
attending with me after school, I didn't feel like it
was enough to really make an impact. In their lives.
(04:52):
I would, you know, I could spend two three hours
with them after school, but then they would kind of
go back home to sometimes homes that I didn't have
a lot of resources, homes where the parent relationship wasn't great,
and I kept asking myself, like what more can I do.
I would spend weekends with them, take them on field trips,
and I still kept coming across as like I don't know,
(05:13):
just kind of inner challenge of like I need to
be doing more. I want to help in another way.
And so then I started researching different programs, different schools,
and a friend had always told me, you need to
go to Alliant. Alliant trains really good therapists. You need
to go look into it. So I started looking into Alliant,
(05:34):
and then from there I came across the couple and
family therapy program and I was like, yes, I want
to work with families. I want to work with couples
because I want to make that larger impact with the
children that I'm serving. And what's the best way to
reach a child. It's through their parent, It's through their family.
I also had I think, pretty I came from a
(05:55):
really good family. I will say my family you know,
my parents were supportive, they sacrificed the for me. But
I had a lot of trouble with my romantic relationships
growing up, and I think didn't just didn't have like
a blueprint for what to do in a couple's relationship.
And so I mentioned this part because I think that
also inspired me to go specifically into like couple work
(06:16):
where I think I wanted answers, so like why aren't
my romantic relationships working? And so it was like both,
it was like, I want to work with families, I
want to make that impact, and then also I kind
of want to find out more about myself about relationships,
like what makes a healthy relationship, what makes it work?
So I think it was a combination of both of
those things.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Honestly, I feel like the best therapists are the ones
who have have had like tangible experiences themselves, so they
can see somebody come into their office and just know
where that sits kind of in the soul and in
the body and in the mind. Something I want to
ask you, maybe this is a postal question, before becoming
a therapist, did you go to therapy yourself?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
No knows, And this is very embarrassing because I tell
all my students, like, you have to go to therapy
before becoming a therapist. And I think we'll probably dive
into a little bit more of like why that's so
important later, but I'll mention it kind of like briefly here.
You know, when you are doing this work with other people,
it's so important that you have fully examined right your
(07:22):
own biases, values, belief systems, et cetera, so that when
you are in a therapeutic relationship with somebody else, you
are making sure that those things aren't transcending into the
relationship with the other that you are. You have fixed
your you have figured out yourself so well right, or
(07:42):
at least in some ways, to make sure that when
you are how we're doing counseling somebody else like that
that isn't informing the way that you do it. I'll
give you an example. Some people are still carrying such
deep wounds about again their own couple relationship that they'll
then start working with a couple and side with one
(08:05):
partner because that's what resonates more personally to them in
terms of their lived experience. And so we want folks
to go to therapy first to make sure that that
doesn't happen, that you are trying your best right to
remain as neutral as possible, even though neutrality is also
impossible because all of us are bringing in our own
(08:26):
lived experiences as therapists. We want to be able to
remain impartial, right. We want to have what we call
contextual therapy is like multidirective partiality, that we're able to
hear every single person out, we're not citing right, etc.
But back to your original question of like did I
ever go No, I think that it was really taboo
in my family. My parents definitely didn't go to therapy. Again,
(08:49):
they were like immigrants, they came from Mexico, they didn't
speak English. It just wasn't talked about in my family.
And it was only until I became a therapist and
soar in doing the work that then finally I went.
I went to individual therapy, ve into couple therapy, And
now I'm like, oh my god, I should have done
this so much sooner. It would have helped before even
(09:11):
becoming a therapist in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
I really like that that's the advice that you give
to your students because you're like, I did it the
other way, and so now like I I'm not going
to say, like, don't make the same mistakes, but it's
like I, no, I can see that I would have
been aided through this and it must have been Yeah,
it must have been difficult. Oh, not difficult, but interesting
for you, like becoming a therapist and maybe never having
(09:36):
experience therapy. And I know so many people listening to
this believe to their call like therapy is an amazing thing.
I really like, it's great, but I've just never done it.
So there is this specific idea of therapy is like
lying on a couch being maybe like asked questions about
your dreams, about your parents. What do you actually do
in therapy?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, well that is also such a big question because
depending on who you're asking, you're going to get a
different response. So if you are interviewing a psychiatrist, psychologist,
a social worker, an MFT like me, you're going to
get a different response probably from each person. And that's
(10:18):
because we all do it or approach it in different ways. Right,
So for us as couple in family therapists, we are
working with an individual and trying to figure out what
they're inner world is right, what their belief systems are
how they're thinking about things, how they're feeling about things.
(10:39):
But we're also looking at it in the context of
relationships and systems. So yes, we want to understand what
you're experiencing, what's hurting you, what's painful, what's bothering you,
But how how is that being experienced in the relation
to your family, in the relation to your neighborhood, and
the relation to your society, because we believe as MFTs
(11:03):
that all of those things impact the way that you
are navigating the world. And so that's really our emphasis.
Whereas if you were to ask I don't know, a
psychologist or a different kinds of therapist, they might say, well,
we're really concerned about behavior and helping you modify your
behavior so that you have less emotional distress, so that
(11:27):
you have less anxiety, and that is also valuable. Right,
So I'm thinking about like people who have like OCD,
for example, who really need help managing some of their
behaviors so that they experience like symptom relief. Right. But
again it just depends on who you're going to ask
that you'll get that kind of like different response. But
(11:47):
again I think for me, like where I live as
an MFT, it's really about helping a person better understand
themselves in relation to their family context and their socio
politic contacts so that they can make sense of what
they're experiencing.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I like the emphasis on like how the how the
environment has shaped you in ways that you probably don't understand,
and how you need to have that baseline or maybe
do understand. Actually we probably do, but you, you know,
need to get to that next layer of depth. Something
I want to ask you because you work with so
many different types of people. You know, when you meet
(12:26):
someone as a therapist and you're looking into their you know,
their family history, their the socio political environment that they
live in, just everything that's going on around them and
within them and in their past specifically. And maybe this
is a difficult, difficult quession to answer. What are you
looking for? What are you trying to figure out about
(12:48):
that individual in the first couple of sessions.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah, I'm usually trying to look for a pattern. So
whether that's where I'm working with an individual, whether I'm
working with a couple, or whether I'm not working with
a family, I'm trying to find the pattern that keeps
getting them stuck because Most of the time when people
are coming to therapy, it's because they want to change
something right, They want something about their lives to be different.
(13:12):
And many times they're telling me, we keep getting stuck,
or I keep getting stuck, I keep dating the same
guy over and over again, or we keep fighting about
the same exact thing. Help us through it. And so
my job is to look for that pattern or we
even call it like a cycle, or we call it
a dance, and figure out how can we interrupt this
(13:35):
pattern so that you have a new way of being
in relationship with yourself or others, And that will entail right,
what we just talked about, which is like, okay, looking
back at your family, what are some things that you
learned about your family, what was passed on? What kind
of messages were sent to you about being afraid about
(13:55):
being sad? It might inquire again us to look at
your socio political contexts. Do you have a real reason
to be scared to leave outside of your door? Right?
How is that also impacting the way that you're showing
up in your relationships? What have your past relationships look like,
(14:17):
just like as a young adult, how is that informing
the way that you're showing up in the hearing now, right,
So a lot of it is looking back at the past,
looking at different systems, and then tying it back to
how is that impacting you in this present moment?
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Can I ask a question if you have somebody come
in and, like you said, you know, they're an immigrant,
they're scared to go outside the door, or there's somebody
who's experienced racism and they're terrified of that happening, how
do you handle those like very real environmental things that
(14:54):
you can't change as a therapist. Absolutely, I've always like,
I just yeah, I think that's such an interesting th.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yes, And I think that that is a question that
a lot of people ask themselves, even like therapists are
like how do I help this person when I have
no control over their environment? And the truth is like,
first just like naming that right and validating that and
saying you are not crazy. There is nothing innately wrong
(15:21):
with you. You are having a very normal response to
an abnormal situation. And we think about it that way
with like any kind of trauma really where a person
actually has a real reason to be scared. Maybe they
had gotten in a really bad car accident, or they've
lost a family and a car accident, lost their family
in an airplane, and they're scared of flying, they're scared
(15:45):
of driving. It makes sense to me that people are
terrified of doing that thing again. And I think that
that is so important to first just like name that
you are having again a very normal response to an
abnormal situation that shouldn't have happened to you, that shouldn't
have happened to your family, and then also again acknowledging
(16:06):
that no matter what I do right, I won't be
able to fix what is happening outside of these four walls. However,
this is going to be your space where you can
talk about these things. I can hear you, and I
can help you figure out a way to navigate what
is happening outside as best as possible, because you know,
(16:27):
and a lot of the work that I do, I
tell my therapists. You know, if you are feeling frustrated
that your client is not getting better, you are feeling
like maybe I'm not a good therapist because I can't
relieve all of their human suffering. You have to remember
that it's not your fault and a lot of the
times we are just dealing with a broken socio political system. Right,
(16:49):
it's beyond your control, and you just have to trust
that your relationship with this person is enough and it's
going to be enough to make a difference and relieve
some of that pain that they are experiencing.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
I wish I had you as a professor when I
was studying. I feel like that's never spoken about of
Just like you, you have to know your limits as
somebody as a helper and as an EmPATH and as
somebody just doing their job. Speaking of what makes a
good therapist, Yeah, what makes a good therapist? Like should
you as if somebody is new to therapy and they're like,
(17:26):
how do I know this person is right for me?
Is this person going to help me? Is this person
good at their job? But like what do we and
should we look out for?
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah? I think that goes back to what we were
talking about earlier in terms of, you know, should you
go to therapy before becoming a therapist? And that's really
why I highly recommend that because it ties into what
makes a good therapist. So I think a good therapist
has done a lot of that self examination prior to
(17:54):
becoming a therapist and doing that work, or at least concurrently,
whenever ourronments in our program is that our students have
to complete at least fifty hours of individual psychotherapy while
completing their program because the training that we give them
brings up so much stuff and so much sometimes like
(18:17):
baggage for people that we want to make sure they're
kind of like sorting out before they are seeing clients,
because you know, it's impossible to predict what clients bring
into the room with you, and the therapist can easily
be triggered just as much as the client. A lot
(18:39):
of therapists again, are kind of bringing in their own wounds,
family stories, belief systems, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and if
those go unexamined, they can harm the client relationship. Therapists
might recommend a client to do something based on their
(19:01):
lived experience, and that might not be what's best for
that particular client, right, A good therapist has to be
capable of being wrong. Right, just because you have extensive training,
that doesn't mean that you're always going to know what's
best for your clients. Sometimes I even tell students, once
you think that you know what's best for your client,
(19:22):
that's a red flag, right because even if you have
shared identities. We have no idea, right what this person
is really experiencing.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
I love that, My god, once you think you know
what's right, that's a red flag, absolutely just and it
just kind of is like a I think there's no
room for ego arrogance on either end when you are
in therapy, right. I also like that Alliance does that,
like fifty hours of like you have to complete fifty
(19:55):
hours of therapy to become a therapist. Seems like such
a of course, that's such a sensical idea, and I
haven't heard of many programs doing that, So that.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Is yeah, and you can do it, you know. We
tell our students it could be individual but it could
also be a couple therapy, or it could be family therapy,
like maybe sometimes our students want to go back and
do therapy with their parents to figure out with some
of these you know, issues that they want to work through.
Might be But I think again, also, a good therapist
is just someone who's willing to be wrong, somebody who's
(20:27):
really curious and genuinely right wants to learn about you
and your story, versus assuming that they already know right
what your problem is and what you should be working
on and a good therapist, i'd lastly say, also always
has a map. They have direction of where they want
to go with what you are bringing in. A good therapist.
(20:50):
A bad therapist, I would say, is someone who's just
kind of like listening and validating. I've had friends tell
me like, oh, well, my therapist just agrees with me
and they don't really like say much in session, and
that's also a red flag for me. I'm like, you know,
a good therapist should be able to also disagree. They
should be able to challenge, right that our job isn't
(21:11):
to just like listen and nod. Our job is to
kind of go back to one of my earlier points,
which was like, we want to interrupt those patterns that
are keeping you stuck, and sometimes that requires challenging you.
And I just asked that client's trust that we're trying
to come from a good place. It's not that we are,
you know, trying to pull you around in session, but
(21:31):
we are trying to help you think about things differently.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
So this really leads super well into my next question,
which is I hear a lot especially from maybe my parents'
generation as well, or even just people actually from everybody
which is I don't need therapy. I have my friends.
I have my friends, and I talk to them. I
think you mentioned like your friends. Obviously, if your friend
turned around and was like, I'm gonna I'm going to
(21:56):
correct you or I'm going to tell you that you're wrong,
it would probably feel very difficult to hear. I think
what a lot of people probably want to know is
what is actually happening in therapy that makes it different
from just talking to your friends, Like, is it you
know you're talking to a stranger, why does that seem
(22:18):
to work? Is it the talking, is it the strategies,
is it the knowledge like or is it something else?
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah? Absolutely. When I'm doing admissions to bring people into
the program, we'll ask people, you know, what makes you
want to be a therapist, and they'll say, well, my
friends have always said that I'm a good listener, and
that is, you know, a good quality. That is something
that we want from therapists that they're able to listen.
(22:43):
And there's just so much more, right, there's so much
more training that people need if they really want to
practice therapy. When you meet a therapist and you're starting
that work with them, like there's a whole treatment plan
that they have to create before working with you, and
that treatment plan is really what's going to give them
(23:04):
that direction and map of knowing how to help you
towards your goal. They probably should also have like a
theoretical orientation that they're practicing from, and again that's going
to vary depending on if you're working with a social worker,
a psychiatrist, a psychologists and mft. So there's just like
so much again like training that goes into it. And
(23:26):
another stark difference is that I think friends, even though
they are I think a lot of the times trying
to remain as like quote unquote unbiased as possible, Like,
they still have a stake in the relationship with you.
There's an investment. They don't want to hurt your feelings
a lot of the times, and right justly so, they're
your friend, right they're looking out for you, and a
therapist isn't necessarily going to hurt your feelings. But again,
(23:49):
they should be able to be in a position where
they can challenge you and offer an outsider perspective. Right
that Also, I think sometimes like friends can we're kind
of looking at things from the outside in, and I
think that that is really helpful for people who are
feeling stuck versus getting input from somebody who has has
(24:12):
a lens of like seeing them in their day to
day life.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
So when somebody walks into like a therapist's office for
the first time, you're speaking about this treatment plan or
it's like just like a framework, or they want a
direction to your treatment, right, they want to know where
they're going. They're trying to figure out, as you said,
where you sit in like a broader environmental, social context, history,
(24:36):
all these things. What can you expect is somebody, what
kind of questions are you going to be asked? What
kind of things are going to come up in the
first couple of sessions.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, I think a lot of it will be based
on the past, and then some of it will be
based on the present. So usually one of the first
questions that I ask is, you know, tell me what
brings to brings you to therapy? Now, what is it
about what you're experiencing that is making you want to
seek help in this present moment? And again that gives
(25:10):
me usually like a good picture of what is happening
in the hearing. Now, Oh, well, it's because I can't
sleep well or again, I keep dating the same guy
over and over again. I just went through a breakup,
and then I'll ask questions more about the past. So
tell me a little bit about your family life. And
they're pretty open ended so that the person can really
like take them anywhere. It's really rare that we're asking
(25:31):
like very specific, detail oriented questions because we want to
hear your story. Right, I tell my clients, you know,
you have lived your life for thirty five years, forty years.
You are the expert in your story and I am
going to be a witness to that. Right, you really
are the expert here. I'm just here to kind of
(25:53):
like listen and help you figure things out. So we
want to hear that story. Tell me a little bit
about what your life was like growing up and what
were what were some of the messages that your parents
sent you around love, around apologizing. How do you think
that's playing into what you're experiencing now? So I think again,
(26:13):
it's a little bit of both. It's like tying the
past to the present and kind of going back and
forth and seeing kind of like where the client lives
again in the here and now.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
And I like that you said, it's it's kind of
like a write your own story situation. Right, it's very
much like that they're not going to a therapist, isn't
going to find ways to trick you. I think that's
a big thing, like they that's not going to help them,
Like trying to trick you into admitting things, trying to
you know, double cross you, or like suddenly make big
(26:45):
revelations about your life, is actually like therapeutically unhelpful. So
that's just something I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, it's like we're not really supposed to wear like
the detective hats. We're not trying to catch a lot
a client lying. Like when we're working with substance use,
a lot of the times clients will say, you know,
like I'm not using, and sometimes they are right because
recovery is hard, and our job isn't to figure out
(27:14):
whether or not a client is telling the truth. Again,
our job is to listen. Again. Sure, we're going to challenge,
right if there's discrepancy sometimes if things aren't matching up,
because we want to interrupt those patterns. But our job
isn't to be an investigator, right. Our job isn't to
be a police officer and tell you what is wrong.
(27:35):
Tell you what is right, kind of taking on that
carcoral kind of like perspective. Our job is again, like
you said, to focus on that story. Listen. Some therapists
that are like narrative therapists will even say, like, our
job is to help you rewrite that story, be a
co author to that story, and write your preferred story, right,
(27:56):
the one that you want to live.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Love that, big fan. Let's talk about therapy and stigma.
Something we've said a lot throughout this is, you know, well,
your parents didn't go to therapy, and there's a lot
of people who come in and they wish their families
had gone to therapy and they haven't, or people saying
(28:19):
I don't need that, I have my friends. Why do
some people and some communities still see therapy is something
that is only for people in cristis or something that
is unnecessary full stop. Where does that come from?
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, I think that that is really just like the
dominant narrative that we have socially constructed in a lot
of parts of the world. So I think for some
specific culturals that are just like so taboo to ask
for any kind of help, for medical help, for psychiatric help,
(28:55):
just because certain cultures just believe that that is not appropriate.
Some cultures will believe like you solve your problems within
your family, for example, the only people that should know
that you are in pain, that you're in emotional distress
are your family members. So that's definitely like something that
I see quite often. And then I think that there's
(29:16):
also just like other bigger social messages, like around gender,
for example, how we socialize men to believe that they're
not supposed to cry, that emotional expression means that they
are weak, that they're going to be a burden. And
even to women, right, I think that we can send
(29:37):
messages that are really conflicting because we do expect women
to be emotional and like soft and nurturing and maternal,
and at the same time we expect them to keep going, right,
we overburden them with tasks and psychological labor, and so
it's hard even if you kind of want to get help,
to ask for it, because you're expected to keep the
(30:00):
world moving, keep your family moving, keep society moving. And
so I just I think that all of those messages
that we send people can really confuse them, is what
I'm feeling. Valid Is it enough to ask for help?
My culture says that it is, you know, not right.
My community is telling me that it's not right, and
(30:20):
so it is really hard to get people to finally
do it again. I'm a victim to that. Like I
didn't go to therapy until my mid twenty late twenties.
I think it was almost and it was a career
that I was pursuing, and I was still nervous. I
was still nervous, like when am I going to uncover?
And is that going to mean X, Y and Z
(30:41):
about me? So again, I think it's like these just
big kind of social messages, cultural messages that we send people,
and you'd be surprised because I do think we've made
a lot of strides. Like it's twenty twenty six. Mental
health is pretty widely talked about, but we're still seeing
so many people and young people even say I'm too
nervous to go see.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Obviously a lot of my friends a therapists because we
all went to school together, right, you know, I studied psychology,
and something I hear all the time from friends will
be like, oh, you know, I had three patients just
like not show up, like made appointments and get so
close and then just feel like they can't take that
next step, and sometimes it takes a couple of times
(31:23):
to feel ready, to feel ready to kind of take
a peek behind the door. So I think the fact
that like, if you're even listening to this episode considering therapy,
you the listener, you have made it so far on
that journey as something that is like available to you
and something that you're considering for someone who can't afford therapy,
(31:45):
Because we've got there's a couple of barriers here, like
it's difficult. There is the internal battle of like do
I do this, as the cultural battle of like if
you do this, we will think this of you. And
then there's just an availability issue for someone who can't
currently afford therapy, what are some meaningful alternatives or starting
(32:06):
points before that becomes available?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
So if therapy is completely inaccessible, which it is to
a lot of people, I would encourage you to kind
of look at your current support systems. So I know
we also talked about like, well, friends shouldn't be doing therapy,
but I would rather somebody be able to vent and
open up to another any other human being, right instead
(32:34):
of carrying this pain and distress on their own. So
for example, if somebody is having suicidal thoughts and therapy
is completely inaccessible, I would rather than be able to
turn to a trusted friend and say, you know what,
I'm carrying these feelings with me. I think I need help.
That is a starting point, right at least somebody else
(32:56):
knows that you are in trouble. Another a suggestion would
be like relaying, I don't know. Some people are religious.
Faith communities can be really helpful in navigating painful experiences.
A lot of the immigrant communities that I work with,
because therapy is so taboo, they'll tell me I went
(33:17):
to church and prayed about this, I went and talked
to a pastor about this and they were actually really helpful.
Or I went and talked to another church goer and
they really helped me through this dark time. They were
able to bring themselves to access that kind of help
before actually seeking out therapeutic services. And again, that is amazing.
Like you said, it's a starting point. So I think
(33:40):
first just kind of like reaching out to your local
network and saying, you know, I'm feeling this way, I
need help. Starting there, and a lot of the times
my experience has also been that like once people start
reaching out to others and saying I'm experiencing X, Y
and Z. They connect them to resources because there are
a lot of resources that offer free therapy. There's so many,
(34:01):
And you know, if any of your listeners are interested,
they can reach out to me directly, and I'm happy
to kind of point them in the right direction. But
it's not impossible. And there's so many therapists who are
just like willing again to donate their time and doing
good work and just helping people make therapy accessible, that
we can find a way to get people connected.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
This is a great segue speaking of therapists who want
to help people. I also think this is a big thing.
I think very few therapists get into this for any
kind of selfish reason. Right, you have to study for
so long, there's so much that you have to learn.
I know, we spoke about people who come to Alliance
(34:44):
and who apply and they're like, Oh, my friends just
always want to talk to me. They I'm just such
a good listener. Strangers on the street tell me stuff
all the time speaking of like wanting to become a therapist.
People like that. Do you think that some people just
born to help others in this way or what's your
(35:04):
take on that. Do you think that there are some
people who are just like, oh, of course, that is
like your purpose.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
I think it's kind of like twofold. I think that
there are some people that are born knowing that they
want to help others, that they want to dedicate their
lives to helping others in some way, shape or form,
whether that's being through like being a medical doctor, being
a social worker, being a teacher, being a nurse. They
(35:33):
just there's this desire to help, right, And I think
that you also don't have to be like a natural
born listener or good talker to be a therapist, Like
I want to empower people that if they were quiet
their whole lives, for example, and are just like super
(35:55):
shy and introverted, like, you can still learn how to
be a good therapist. If you are somebody who maybe
they said, you know, you talk too much in class,
you socialize too much, We're just a big talker, you're
very outgoing. You could be a good therapist. Right, And
so the skill is teachable, right, the skill is teachable.
We can train you how to hone in on certain
(36:17):
traits and how to highlight certain skills. So I want
to empower people, like, if this is something that you
want to approach, it's possible, even if maybe you got
messages sent throughout your life that would contradict that. And
I think that there is people who were just born
to help. And so if you're both great, right, if
you were feeling like I was put on this earth
(36:38):
to help people and I want to be taught this skill, wonderful.
But if you land on either of the spectrum to
know that it's still possible, I guess that's kind of
how I want to answer that.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
I love that answer, kind of not gonna lie. I
set you up for that answer because I was like,
I feel the same way. I think also, you'd be
surprised some people, well who you think would be amazing therapists,
really struggle because you know, like you said, like you
can't help everybody. Oh, they used to dealing with a
specific kind of of individual who was just like them,
(37:13):
and you know, can't apply that to everybody else.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Yeah, I think another yeah, sorry, justum. Another good example
is like people who have been in recovery, like a
lot of people who struggled with addiction, Like I imagine
that throughout their life they were probably sent really bad
messages about who they are and their character and whatnot,
and they end up making amazing therapists, like people in
recovery are amazing therapists because they have that lived experience
(37:40):
that really can bring a lot of expertise. And so
again I think that if you are somebody who's just
like really interested in pursuing this, really not listen to
a lot of that like outside noise and ask, get mentorship,
get the training, and you know, the world is your oyster.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
After that, let's talk about a lot because you went
to school there and now you teach that you've been
with them, But like when did you start thirteen years ago?
You said, how did they kind of prepare you? And
how do they continue to prepare people to work effectively
(38:20):
as therapists? Like what's unique about this program?
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah, I think it's probably would highlight like three things.
Number one is like mentorship. I think something that sets
the line apart is like outstanding mentorship. Because we are
a smaller school, You're not going to be in a
classroom with one hundred and fifty people, so the professor
is going to know every single student, which I think
gives a lot of opportunity again for them to get
(38:45):
to know you and know your goals and reach out
for reach out to you if you were struggling or
want extra help. I really feel like for me as
a first gen college student, like that's what really made
a huge difference for me was that my professor or
doctor Davis, who's in our Sacramento campus. I always give
him a shout out. He changed my life because he
(39:05):
actually took the time to find out what I wanted
to do and helped me answer a lot of questions
that I wouldn't have had answered if I was kind
of doing this on my own. So I think that's one.
Number two is like bridging the like clinical training with
like practical real world training. So yes, we'd like teach
you all of the theories, you get really good paper knowledge,
(39:30):
but then we also give you the opportunity to apply
it and give you so much supervision and mentorship while
doing it. So it's like a balance, right, And so
you're getting all of your book knowledge and then you
were getting that bridge to like actually going out there
and seeing clients and applying everything that you know. I
feel like Aligance does a really good job at that
and then the last part is like the emphasis on diversity.
(39:52):
I think that if you are living in the United
States in this current moment, like there's a good chance
that you are going to be working with diverse groups
because the United States is changing so incredibly fast. I mean,
the whole world really is right globally, and Alignance does
such a good job at preparing students to work with
(40:12):
diverse populations. Again, we're asking you, you know, are you
examining these biases? Our cohorts are so incredibly diverse, Like
my cohorts I have. I'll have like a twenty three
year old fresh college grad sitting next to seventy year
old retired attorney. The cohorts are just so different, and
(40:38):
the students are so different, and so they're bringing in
that lived experience. They're talking about their stories in class,
and so you're getting exposure right to all of these
different stories. And I just I think that align does
such a good job about the professors diverse. I mean,
I can go on and on about how well we
prepare students for the current landscape.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, I love that, And obviously, flipping to the other side,
like the people listening to this who want to be therapists.
What can you expect from learning to be a therapist?
Birth it online and just in general.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Yes, so I know I keep harping on this, but
really doing that, like self examination, is such a big part.
It is painful in some ways, but I promise you
will come out a better person on the other side
once you take a good look at your story with
genuine curiosity and a critical lens. So you'll do a
(41:32):
lot of that, like examining your family, examining your past,
and then also of course like learning different models that
will help you really understand how human behavior works again
within that relational context, So you'll learn a lot of
the foundational theories about human behavior, and you'll learn a
lot of those like listening skills that we also kind
(41:54):
of talked about today, like how to be a good listener,
because it's so much more than just kind of having
your ears open, right. There is a lot of like
reflective listening. So you'll learn so many things. But I
think that the best part is learning a lot about yourself,
Like I am a much better wife, daughter, friend, mom
(42:17):
because I'm a therapist, because I'm constantly asking myself why
did this happen? Well, why did I say this? How
could I have done that better? Right? So, like that
self reflection I think just makes you such a good
human being. So even though it's hard to move through
that while you're in training, in the end, I think again,
you just come out so much more of a self
(42:42):
aware person because of it.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
I love that. I've want two more questions for you.
Want to do with therapy and then want to do
purely with you as a person. What kind of inspires
you about this field at the moment and the people
who are entering it. What is something to kind of
look forward to when it comes to the therapy space.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, that's a good question. I think. You know, I
have the privilege of seeing new waves of therapists come
in every single year because I'm a professor and we
teach you know, a different gohurt every single year, And
it is really inspiring to see so many people come
in every single year genuinely wanting to make a difference
(43:24):
in the world, genuinely wanting to be people that can
hold space for people who are experiencing like trauma and pain.
So like, just like the fact that we have so
many helpers to me is so incredibly inspiring. Because the
world can be a place right where there is so
(43:45):
much pain and trauma. The fact that we have so
many people with a desire to change that to meet
it with kindness and warmth and love is so incredibly
inspiring to me and wants me to keep going year
after year in terms of my teaching. And then what
was the other part of that question, Gemma?
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Honestly, I think you answered it super well. I feel
like I love that and I love that you Honestly,
it would be just such a great experience just being
on the frontline of people who you were just sending
out to just like help. I feel like that'd be
a really great place to be. Right now, It's like
and the world is just so chaotic and awful and
just being like, oh, and then here are these people
(44:27):
who just really want to help people, right I can't
imagine it. Final question. This is a question we ask
every single guest, and it has literally nothing to do
with what we spoke about today. Maybe one percent of
what we spoke about today make up in this question,
which is, what is one thing you wish you knew
in your twenties that has nothing to do with what
(44:49):
we spoke about In this episode.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Yeah, one thing that I wish I knew was like
that my life was just beginning, and I reflect back
in my twenties, they felt so like finite. It felt
like I had to find the perfect partner to get
married too, I had to find the perfect career. I
had to figure out where I was going to live,
(45:13):
should I be buying a house. It was just like
all of these social expectations that I thought I had
to like check off, and that was just so much pressure.
When I wish I would have just expect my twenties
having fun and living life and traveling and exploring. But
I just really felt like I had to have it
all figured out. And I wish that I knew that
(45:35):
it was just the beginning and I could take my
time finding that perfect partner. I could find my time
finding that perfect career. I could take risks right versus
just playing it really safe and figuring out. Again, like
I just kind of had to get it all done
in my twenties. So my message is like it's just starting.
It's going to get so much better, and again, the
(45:57):
world is your oyster, and it's just going to be amazing,
you know what.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
I kind of needed to hear that today. I mean,
having so many conversations with people about this, and I
love when people call on the podcast and it just
like your twenties is just the start point. So yeah,
thanks to that wonderful advice.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
It's exciting.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Well yeah, I know it's scary, but exciting as well.
Thank you again for coming on the podcast. I really
appreciate you taking the time out of very meaningful and
busy work to discuss the truth about therapy with us,
discuss the stigma, discuss how to become a therapist. Is
(46:37):
there anything else you want to say before we wrap
up the episode?
Speaker 2 (46:41):
No, just that again. I think if you are feeling
like you need help because you're not feeling you know,
emotionally well, to know that there's always going to be
someone to listen. I know it's scary, but do it anyway.
Good things happen when you're a brave.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
That's a great way to end the episode. Great things
happen when you're a brave. I actually just started therapy again,
and it's hard at first, and then you just experience
it's like a bit of a fong is kind of
lifted from life, even if it's a bit difficult, so
we're gonna leave so much additional information in the description,
including where to find doctor Espinoza, information about Alliant University
(47:20):
and their amazing programs and the way they do things differently,
and so much more. Thank you. If you've made it
to the end, leave a comment down below. Are you
currently in therapy? I want to know yes or no?
Leave a comment if you're listening on Spotify, and as always,
be safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself. We will
talk very very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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