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(00:06):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to the Abundant Practice Podcast.
I'm Allison from Abundance Practice Building.
I have a nearly diagnosable obsession with helping
therapists build sustainable, joy-filled private practices, just
like I've done for tens of thousands of
therapists across the world.
I'm excited to help you too.
If you want to fill your practice with
(00:26):
ideal clients, we have loads of free resources
and paid support.
Go to abundancepracticebuilding.com slash links.
All right, on to the show.
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(01:09):
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(01:30):
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(02:16):
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(02:37):
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(02:59):
Welcome back to the Abundant Practice Podcast.
I'm your host, Allison Parere.
I'm here with Lauren Gorley.
We're going to be talking about what it's
like to be a parent and be a
therapist and how to juggle it all because
I know a lot of people struggle with
this.
I know I've struggled with it and I'm
constantly having to find the new balance as
my kids age and things get different and
(03:22):
what it looks like to take care of
myself, take care of my kids, and take
care of my business.
So thanks so much for being here, Lauren.
Of course.
So glad to be here.
Yeah.
So you've written a book about this, which
we should talk about throughout.
Can you introduce us to that real quick
before we dive in?
Sure.
So my book is called Confluence, a reflective
workbook, and it's about sort of navigating the
(03:43):
journey as parent and helping professional.
It's something I've been thinking a lot about.
I've been a therapist for 20 years and
a parent for 11 now, and I had
no idea.
My title when I was pregnant was child
development specialist.
I thought, okay, that'll help me know some
things about being a parent, right?
Yeah.
And then, of course, becoming a parent is
one of the humbling, most humbling experiences of
(04:04):
all time, right?
And I had no idea how much those
sort of overlaps of identity would affect me
at home and also at work, how much
it would change my practice in good ways
and in hard.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Can we talk about some examples of that?
Because I'm thinking of 10 in my head
right now of how those overlapping identities have
(04:25):
really impacted me at different times in my
life.
Sure.
Well, let's talk about some of the good
things.
And I bet there's more than 10.
There's probably a thousand, right?
But, you know, some of the things for
me is I certainly did bring some of
my professional skills and training home, whether that
was sort of the content knowledge that we
know about or we've learned along the way
or some of the more sort of mindfulness
(04:47):
skills and things that in a hard moment
with our kids or at work, we know
maybe a little bit about how to get
regulated and how to get through a hard
thing.
We might have some understanding that there are
going to be hard parts in life, in
relationships, and that it's when those ruptures happen,
we can work on repair and not just
sort of imagine that we should be better
(05:08):
than this and never have a problem or
a difficulty.
Right.
Right.
You may know sort of when to be
worried, right, and then how to navigate those
systems and how to get the support that
we need.
At work, we're going to as a parent,
we're going to bring some of that lived
experience into our work.
Right.
And empathy grows.
(05:28):
Our maybe judgment of parents may shrink, hopefully,
as we realize just how freaking hard it
is to be a parent.
Yeah.
Right.
But there's some real risks, too, I think.
And I think it's really important to name
this because I don't know about you, but
this isn't written or talked about very much
at all.
We're talking about it together, but it's no
part of graduate training or preparation.
(05:51):
There's starting to be a little bit of
talk about it now and sort of expert
trainings and, you know, but not a lot.
So, becoming a parent can change our practice
at work for sure.
We know that parents will talk about, I
just feel extra sensitive.
I can't listen to the news anymore.
Oh, yeah.
I don't want to watch like violent movies.
It hits me too hard.
(06:11):
I'm thinking about my babies.
Think about what we do at work all
day, every day.
We hear about hard things.
And so, we may be not only extra
sensitive, but then more sensitive to what we
call in the field counter-transference, which are
all of those feelings and sensations that we
notice as we're doing the work with clients,
perhaps what they're bringing in or how our
relationship is going.
(06:32):
And so, we're going to need some help
managing that sometimes if it's starting to feel
overwhelming.
That sensitivity may also make us more vulnerable
to vicarious trauma and burnout.
Not only are we taking care of people
all day, every day at work, trying to
grow our practice, do all the things, we're
going home and doing it.
And that may mean, likely means, we have
less time in the day to take care
of ourselves.
(06:53):
And so, then we're hearing about the hard
stuff.
We're maybe struggling as parents or sort of
wondering.
And all of that can really compound into
putting us at risk for burnout, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting because I think about how a
couple years into being a therapist, before I
was a parent, I was like, I can't
(07:13):
watch any of this stuff anymore.
I can't watch.
If it won an Oscar, I cannot watch
it.
It's probably taking up the Yes.
And then I became a parent.
And like you said, if there's a kid
hurt or missing or anything like that in
a show or a movie, we're both like,
out.
We're not doing this.
(07:33):
And it has not occurred to me until
this one moment that we are basically watching.
Our nervous system is filing away our work
every day in the same way it would
file away a drama with a missing kid.
That's exactly it.
And when we are parents and we have
that closer connection to our own children, our
brains are rewiring for even more of that
(07:56):
sense of protection.
And then we're experiencing it as a threat,
right?
As a real little threat and bringing our
maybe the image of our child.
Can I tell a story that like this
happened to me in a session?
So, I was maybe six or seven weeks
back from maternity leave.
I worked in this early childhood mental health
clinic in the Bronx, a lot of training
and supervision.
I thought I was doing okay.
(08:17):
I kind of had a sense, okay, like
things might come up for me.
They might be different in the room with
parents who are struggling, or I might have
that sense of being like a little more
protective to very young children, right?
Like, okay.
So, I'm sitting with a very senior clinician
in her hour of clinical supervision.
She's talking to me about a very young
child in foster care who was really struggling,
(08:37):
really struggling.
He was two or three.
And she started to tell the story of
what had happened to get him into foster
care.
And it sort of, I think she had
kind of forgotten, but it dawned on her
in that moment that when this little one
was five or six months old, he had
sustained a skull fracture from one of his
parents.
It was a little bit of a mystery,
(08:57):
and they were still trying to figure out
what would be the good next step for
him.
But that was his early experience.
She continues talking, and I freeze, absolutely frozen.
All I could do was think about my
little guy who was five or six months
old, and I could think about his little
fuzzy head, and I just had this wave
of revulsion towards a parent who could hurt
(09:18):
her kid like that.
And that's an understandable feeling, but it's certainly
not a feeling that I could act on.
If I was in a moment, in a
session with that mother, right, I needed to
really slow down and think about that reaction,
make sure I had my own space to
reflect on that and get myself okay, so
(09:39):
that I could be present first with this
clinician, and then if I was in a
session with a client with a similar story,
I could not separate the two out of
my own experience in this client's story in
that moment.
And it was such a good example of
how I needed more support.
I needed to slow down and make sure
that I was okay so that I could
do my best work with clients.
(09:59):
And this stuff will hit us when we
least expect it, but it shows up sometimes.
Yeah.
It's interesting how you come back to, we
need the support.
Like you said, like we're in a career
that is all about offering that support.
And then we're taking care of our family
when we get home.
Like we are last on the list if
(10:21):
we're not very intentional.
Yes.
And that has dire consequences for everyone involved.
Absolutely.
That's the way you put it, last on
the list.
We go in this field because we want
to help, right?
And we have probably incredible compassion for the
folks that we're supporting or wanting to help
or building something for.
And yet at the end of the day,
(10:41):
are we able to use that compassion and
turn it towards ourself and think about what
we really need, right?
And so I talk a lot about the
need for self-compassion, just borrowing the incredible
work of Krista Neff, but also borrowing some
ideas from the field of infant mental health.
And one of those is called reflective consultation
and supervision, which is sort of built on
(11:03):
psychodynamic clinical supervision, but it can look a
lot of different ways.
It could be individual support that you're paying
for.
It might be within a group of other
providers doing sort of the same work that
you're doing, or even in a peer consultation
group.
And it sort of creates the space to
feel held, right?
Because we think of all the people that
we are holding.
(11:24):
And so that we need our own space
to unpack all of this, to feel validated,
to explore how these streams of identities and
being a parent and a therapist is some
of our multiple identities, of course, who we
are, all of the other ways that we
sort of navigate and identify in this world,
we all bring that in.
And we want to think about how those
(11:44):
identities sort of impact our clinical practice and
how our clinical practice impacts us, because the
work we do has a cost.
And that's not just the therapy work that
we're doing, but all the things we're doing
to try to support our businesses.
It's heavy sometimes.
It's very heavy.
Yeah.
And I think we deny the heaviness to
ourselves.
Like we're in denial a little bit and
(12:06):
just keep trucking.
I think you and I have the same
amount of experience.
We're probably the same generation, like we're about
the same age.
And so we're probably lying to ourselves if
we act like we're not still deeply impacted
by what we do day to day.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
One of the ideas of reflective practice is
that this is continuous that, you know, I
(12:28):
think to get over some of the imposter
syndrome, being a therapist, being a parent, being
a human, we kind of need to imagine,
OK, like we've probably got what we what
we need.
Right.
And we'll be OK.
And it's important.
Right.
But I think the other piece of the
truth is what if we admitted that this
is always really hard and that one of
the things we can do is say we're
always going to struggle.
That's normal.
(12:49):
And let's create opportunities to take a look
at our practice or get the support that
we need or slow down and look at
my book.
And there's just tons of reflective prompts.
You can do this on your own.
But having a place where you feel validated
and supported and held and also then vulnerable
and safe enough to take some risks and
take a look at when things are hard
or sort of not aligning with what they
(13:10):
need to be, that's going to help.
We are so hard on ourselves as therapists
and as parents, and I think that overlap,
we might think, OK, I've had some training
in this.
My job title, I think I said this.
I was a child development specialist when I
came in.
Suddenly I had no idea what I was
doing, but I thought I should.
And I was so hard on myself when
(13:30):
we struggled.
And when I was able to say, wait
a minute, I'm a parent, too.
We all struggle.
This is normal.
Then I was able to take a breath
and actually use the skills from my clinical
practice, which were helpful, which was self-compassion,
slowing down, getting support.
Yeah.
And I think as an ACT therapist, I
hear a lot of like, oh, yeah, this
(13:51):
is just going to suck on some level.
This is going to be heavy.
And if we pretend like it's not heavy,
then we can't feel those feelings and just
let it be heavy and let it release.
Exactly.
You're in that middle place, like suffering, but
not knowing either this is going to be
what it is or I could do something
different.
Mm hmm.
I love this.
(14:11):
And I think about for private practice therapist.
So like when you're in an agency, you
have no agency.
You have no autonomy.
You are told we don't have to be
there.
There's a lot less flexibility.
There's a lot less money.
It's why I'm always telling people who ask
me the private practice is like the absolute
best place for a new parent, because you
can create your own schedule.
(14:32):
You can work the hours that make sense
for your family.
The number of times my hours have changed.
It's astounding.
Just absolutely.
I let my family come first and accommodate
what needs accommodated.
Absolutely.
When my kiddo was almost two, we moved
to the Midwest.
My partner's job was here.
And so we moved in.
It was the opportunity to create my own
private practice.
One of the first things I read actually
(14:53):
was your guide to maternity leave, which was
a little bit late for me.
But oh, my gosh, it was like you
do what you need to do.
Here's how to keep your clients in mind.
But here's if you don't do the things
that you need to do to take care
of yourself throughout the day and on the
regular.
Do any of us.
Right.
And then ironically, COVID taught that same lesson
(15:13):
again when we were suddenly doing even more.
And I think I had sort of taken
that ethos from agency work of I need
to work eight to six.
I need to be available late so people
can come in.
I'd sort of carry that into my private
practice.
Honestly, it helped a little bit when I
was building to get people in the door.
But when COVID happened just a few years
(15:33):
later and I realized I have to do
even more of all these things and somehow
be a homeschool teacher and all the things.
What do I actually want to do right
now?
Right.
Once we were sort of in the oh,
my gosh, I can breathe maybe a year
later after the lockdown, I realized I didn't
want to work after school.
I wanted to be home with my kid.
And now I am three days a week.
Right.
We figured out child care for the other
(15:54):
two.
That's perfect balance for me.
I actually don't want to do math homework
every day with my kiddo because sometimes it's
a nightmare.
But I do want to be there more
days than not.
And I can because I'm my boss.
I get to choose.
Right.
That was my value.
Yeah.
The people who work with kids right now
are like, no, but you don't understand.
I have to if I want to see
kids, I have to work after school.
(16:16):
And so what I'm hearing you say, and
I know what I've said a lot is
like, not necessarily.
Yeah.
There are other ways.
I'm going to go back to one of
your resources, which is the what to say
when.
And I think about it all the time
when I say my availability is or my
hours are I'm available on Tuesdays at nine,
ten and one.
And then you wait.
(16:36):
Right.
Yes.
Parents will figure it out.
I'll provide a school note.
I'll talk to that teacher and find the
time that's like a little bit easier for
them to get out of school.
There are going to be a very small
handful of families.
They're two parent working families, whatever it is
that really are struggling to get there.
And you know what?
I do have a couple of spots for
them, but I'm not going to talk about
(16:57):
those spots right away until I really assess
the need.
And often than not, I can see them
at eight.
We can figure it out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My youngest just started in therapy and the
therapist was like, well, I'm assuming you want
some afterschool spots.
I've got this and that for that.
And I was like the practice builder in
me was like, don't do it.
(17:18):
But I was like, okay, I'll take that
afterschool spot, even though I was totally expecting
and totally willing to come in the middle
of the day.
Like, sure, I'm happy for it to be
a bit more inconvenient for me, but I
was willing for it to be inconvenient.
And maybe for that therapist, it works for
them.
Right.
Which is what I'm so grateful for.
Right.
But I know for me, I'm going to
(17:39):
be a better therapist and a better human
parent if I can sort of find a
schedule that works for me.
I'm a morning person.
Probably glad we're having this conversation first thing
in the morning.
That's actually when I'm best.
Yeah.
I'm going to do my absolute best on
Thursday at four, but you know, I'm not
going to do that every week because it
takes a toll.
Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
(18:00):
It brings them back to ACT, which is
being really clear about what your values are.
And I think as a parent and a
therapist, a practice builder, we have to do
that.
And then our life feels more manageable and
actually energizing rather than just depleting.
A hundred percent.
And when we're starting our practice and we
feel a little bit more desperate around it,
it's really hard to trust that you can
(18:21):
have what you want and that you can
put your values around your family first.
And sometimes I think most of us probably
have to prove it to ourselves that we
can do that.
And by doing the opposite, you know, like
I was working till seven because I thought
I needed to work until seven.
Until I had my baby, I did not
want to work.
I'm a morning person too.
I'd rather work at seven in the morning
than seven at night, any day.
(18:42):
Same.
But I was working till seven until I
had my oldest.
And then I had to, like, I absolutely
had to be like relieve the nanny trying
to find a daycare in Seattle.
You had to sign up a year ahead
of time, but the nanny had to go.
Before you were pregnant, right?
Yeah, a hundred percent.
So I was taught like, oh, people still
(19:02):
come.
I'm still full.
This is fine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Every year I've gotten clearer and clearer about
what hours I'm available and best at.
My practice has grown.
Like, so my income has actually gone up
as I've worked a little bit less or
been available for a little bit less.
And, you know, I'm not marketing a lot
now.
I've shifted.
I still see kids.
(19:22):
Right.
So they're coming in.
But these days I see a lot of
helping professionals.
It's real.
It's where my real passion lays.
Right.
And so whether that's in psychotherapy or reflective
consultation or supervision, you know, creating a space
where people can come and talk about those
struggles and feel validated, it makes such a
difference.
And because I'm sort of aligning with where
(19:43):
I feel energized and good and sort of
focusing my professional experience, people find me.
Yes, exactly.
Because people are getting results.
People are feeling good about the experience.
They're telling their friends who need therapy, you
know, so it's the when you're doing great
work, word of mouth spreads and it's harder
to do great work when you're burned out.
And think about, you know, as professional caregivers,
(20:05):
we're caring for people all day, every day
at work and then coming home and needing
to do probably even more with our families
and young children and adolescents to probably need
more of us than infants at some point,
like and maybe not as cute and cuddly
to like fill up that cup either.
And it's just it's too much.
And so creating sort of that way of
(20:27):
figuring out what's really workable and sustainable for
us is going to make such a difference.
And so how do you help people in
your book with trusting that they are important
to take care of and that they don't
need to be on the list?
I think the first part of the book
(20:48):
is sort of just the more information.
And so lots of research there, but also
a lot of stories.
And I think you've probably heard this, like
when people start telling the stories of what
it's like to be a parent and a
therapist, the whole room like joins in of
anyone that sort of tried to become a
parent is a parent is working on it.
Right.
It is so real.
(21:09):
And we need those experiences of feeling validated
and understood that we are not alone in
this struggle.
And so I think that's a really important
piece is finding people or professional support, whatever
it is, finding your friends that you can
really talk about how hard it is.
I think when we're a therapist and are
doing this work, our partners, our friends and
(21:30):
family might think like, oh, she's got this.
They've got this.
And maybe even like, you know, getting our
partners to pick up their own book about
parenting or about child development can be a
struggle because we're expected to be the expert
at home, too.
Right.
And we're also the ones reading the books
because we are like, here are my 37
parenting books that all conflict with each other.
(21:50):
I have a deep interest in reading a
lot of parenting books right at work and
at home because I am always doubting, like,
do I?
Right.
My partner, however, has read very few unless
I'm like, listen to this together in the
car.
He's trapped.
Right.
But, you know, can we find the places
where we can be far more vulnerable in
that and be not need to be the
expert, be with friends that where we can
(22:11):
say, oh, my God, this is so hard
right now.
And for them to know it is really
OK for us to talk about the struggle.
Like, I'm not talking to Lauren, the therapist
expert right now.
The irony here is that in the mental
health, we get as far away as possible
from an expert stance.
So it's funny that that word even keeps
coming out of my mouth, because I think
we all know that the more we can
sort of get away from anyone knowing what
(22:32):
they need to know and into a place
of like, let's be vulnerable and talk about
what's hard together and talk about what feels
OK and good and also where the struggle
is, we're going to do way better.
Right.
So that's an important piece.
So that's sort of a parenting thing.
But at work, too, if we are starting
to doubt ourselves, having hard moments with our
kids is that sort of oozing into our
(22:52):
work with clients, bringing in some self-doubt
or judgment of ourselves.
And then we need to really slow down
and take a look at, like, how do
I hold my stuff and know that it
is impacting me and maybe even my practice,
but also then be able to be very
present with whatever is happening in the room
and with your relationship.
Yeah.
And so that may be spending some time
(23:12):
journaling, answering some reflective prompts, finding someone to
talk it through with, a peer, a colleague
or a professional helper.
But just, you know, really thinking about it.
There are things that change in our practice.
I read a lot of research in pregnancy.
Therapists get really way more direct, which is
really interesting.
That's a magnet where I feel like time
(23:33):
is a little shorter.
And actually, sometimes that directness can really serve
the clinical stuff.
And sometimes we might be going a little
far.
Right.
Yeah.
Who isn't doing a little bit more self
-disclosure or at least feeling pulled to do
a little bit more self-disclosure than usual?
Once we become a parent, it can feel
very helpful to share those stories.
(23:54):
Sometimes it is clinically helpful.
Sometimes it's getting in the way of thinking
about what our client needs.
And so bringing in those like ideas of
reflective practice and getting the support that we
need to sort of continually look at our
practice and make sure we're good is going
to support us along the way.
Yeah.
I remember sharing something with a client that
(24:16):
I was like vetting in my head before
I shared it.
So it felt like it was a really
good share.
It went well.
But then maybe like a couple months later,
she like used my daughter's name as like,
well, you know, like how she did blah,
blah, blah.
And it felt really weird for one of
my clients to say my daughter's name for
some reason.
(24:37):
You know, she's a mom, like it was
totally fine, but it was like a little
jarring and helped me remember like, yeah, self
-disclosure is something.
It really, really matters.
And I always vet it first.
I think I was, you know, like a
lot of people train not to say a
damn word about yourself.
And then through really good supervision, learned how
to vet my head before anything comes out
of my mouth.
(24:57):
But yeah, it's interesting.
That's exactly it.
Yeah.
That's reflective practice is doing that work before
you vet it, during reading the room, and
then after.
And after is not just after you've said
it or the clients responded, but three, four
months later when they're still thinking about that
story or making it their own.
Right.
And so then we can hold in mind,
okay, this is could be a powerful thing.
(25:19):
Let's be careful.
Right.
How much do I want to share here?
Absolutely.
And I think, you know, this field has
come a long way from where we were
trained, which was really based in old, old,
old psychoanalytic stuff.
You know, the first psychoanalytic therapist thought, if
I do my own work, if I do
my own analysis, then actually when I'm in
a room with client, I am a blank
(25:40):
screen.
That was their word.
I have literally done all the work so
I can set it aside.
Time went on, right?
We're still kind of trained like that.
Yeah.
All better.
And I will be completely transparent.
It's all about the client.
And feminist psychotherapist showed up and went, wait
a minute, like, I think actually we do
need to share parts of ourselves so our
clients can make an informed decision and make
(26:02):
sure that we're aligned in the ways that
matter.
Maybe not in all the ways, but the
ways that are important to them to make
sure that they feel safe and comfortable to
do the best work they can.
Yeah.
So we've shifted and hopefully all of us
are sort of figuring out where we land
on that continuum with some reflective work and
then you can figure out what's right for
you and for your client.
(26:22):
And that'll change over time.
But if you're finding yourself pulled to tell
that story all the time or to think
that because of your experience with your kid
in a difficult moment, their sleep concerns or
whatever, that N equals one experience is going
to translate to every, every other story of
infant sleep that you hear about.
It's just not going to be true and
(26:42):
want to slow down and think about, okay,
like what do we best need to do
here?
And what are, where are we grounded in
the right sort of frame?
Yeah.
And I think too, when you're sleep deprived
and you're hanging out with other new moms,
for instance, and like, you're all sharing everything.
Like I remember when I came back from
maternity leave, that was something I really had
to like be on top of because I
(27:03):
was just like, whoa, with all my mom
friends who also had infants.
Which was instrumental to your survival.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
But here I am back at work.
This is a different scenario.
It's a different situation.
And I have to really like.
I have to shift.
Yeah.
So myself back up a little bit, you
know, like.
Yes.
Yes.
And how do I hold?
And we haven't even talked about, you know,
(27:24):
when things get really hard when we are
going through infertility struggles or have experienced a
miscarriage when all, when our child is struggling
with a severe medical crisis, what are we
going to need to do in those times?
First of all, to take deep, deep care
of ourselves and our kids and family, and
then to be able to set that down
(27:45):
just a little bit to be present at
work.
Or can we, or should we have a
think about do we need to reduce even
more so we can sustain this?
Yeah.
And in fact, I had an experience I'd
written in my newsletter about like my daughter's
epilepsy and it kind of rearing its ugly
head again and in more severe ways.
And literally two weeks after she'd had that
(28:07):
seizure, one of my client's kids had their
first seizure.
Oh my gosh.
And I was like, okay, I'm a social
worker.
I have lots of resources I can give
her.
I need to not fire hose her with
resources, even though the social worker in me
wants to do that.
I am a fellow mom who gets how
scary this is, but I need to not
show her how scared I was and am
(28:29):
still.
That's not for this specific client.
I can't leak all that out.
And so like really assessing in that moment
quickly how to respond and ended up disclosing
I had a child with epilepsy, but not
that we'd had this brand new reoccurrence and
what resources does she already have?
(28:49):
Who is she seeing doctor wise?
What's her pediatrician situation to make sure that
she just had without being like, here's who
we love and who we hate, you know,
like here's the medicine we use.
We didn't do any of that.
Even though with a friend, I might've, even
though what medicine works for one kid has
nothing to do with how it's going to
work for another, but on the week.
(29:10):
But with another, with fellow parent friend, I
would have a very different kind of conversation.
You knew your client well enough to slow
down and realize you needed to hold your
stuff, your own personal experience of it to
sort of understand where she was at.
You did a social work assessment is what
you did.
And then figured out and did disclose at
(29:33):
that point that you knew some things about
this, but you were sort of titrating what
they needed more than just making it into
probably also very needed support session, but that
wasn't that.
And so you could slow it down.
And that is such an incredible example of
that confluence.
Your lived experience as a parent and your
daughter's medical difficulties came into that session, but
(29:56):
you held it in a way that was
therapeutically.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to the Abundant Practice Podcast.
I'm Allison from Abundance Practice Building.
I have a nearly diagnosable obsession with helping
therapists build sustainable, joy-filled private practices, just
like I've done for tens of thousands of
therapists across the world.
I'm excited to help you too.
If you want to fill your practice with
(00:26):
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(02:59):
Welcome back to the Abundant Practice Podcast.
I'm your host, Allison Parere.
I'm here with Lauren Gorley.
We're going to be talking about what it's
like to be a parent and be a
therapist and how to juggle it all because
I know a lot of people struggle with
this.
I know I've struggled with it and I'm
constantly having to find the new balance as
my kids age and things get different and
(03:22):
what it looks like to take care of
myself, take care of my kids, and take
care of my business.
So thanks so much for being here, Lauren.
Of course.
So glad to be here.
Yeah.
So you've written a book about this, which
we should talk about throughout.
Can you introduce us to that real quick
before we dive in?
Sure.
So my book is called Confluence, a reflective
workbook, and it's about sort of navigating the
(03:43):
journey as parent and helping professional.
It's something I've been thinking a lot about.
I've been a therapist for 20 years and
a parent for 11 now, and I had
no idea.
My title when I was pregnant was child
development specialist.
I thought, okay, that'll help me know some
things about being a parent, right?
Yeah.
And then, of course, becoming a parent is
one of the humbling, most humbling experiences of
(04:04):
all time, right?
And I had no idea how much those
sort of overlaps of identity would affect me
at home and also at work, how much
it would change my practice in good ways
and in hard.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Can we talk about some examples of that?
Because I'm thinking of 10 in my head
right now of how those overlapping identities have
(04:25):
really impacted me at different times in my
life.
Sure.
Well, let's talk about some of the good
things.
And I bet there's more than 10.
There's probably a thousand, right?
But, you know, some of the things for
me is I certainly did bring some of
my professional skills and training home, whether that
was sort of the content knowledge that we
know about or we've learned along the way
or some of the more sort of mindfulness
(04:47):
skills and things that in a hard moment
with our kids or at work, we know
maybe a little bit about how to get
regulated and how to get through a hard
thing.
We might have some understanding that there are
going to be hard parts in life, in
relationships, and that it's when those ruptures happen,
we can work on repair and not just
sort of imagine that we should be better
(05:08):
than this and never have a problem or
a difficulty.
Right.
Right.
You may know sort of when to be
worried, right, and then how to navigate those
systems and how to get the support that
we need.
At work, we're going to as a parent,
we're going to bring some of that lived
experience into our work.
Right.
And empathy grows.
(05:28):
Our maybe judgment of parents may shrink, hopefully,
as we realize just how freaking hard it
is to be a parent.
Yeah.
Right.
But there's some real risks, too, I think.
And I think it's really important to name
this because I don't know about you, but
this isn't written or talked about very much
at all.
We're talking about it together, but it's no
part of graduate training or preparation.
(05:51):
There's starting to be a little bit of
talk about it now and sort of expert
trainings and, you know, but not a lot.
So, becoming a parent can change our practice
at work for sure.
We know that parents will talk about, I
just feel extra sensitive.
I can't listen to the news anymore.
Oh, yeah.
I don't want to watch like violent movies.
It hits me too hard.
(06:11):
I'm thinking about my babies.
Think about what we do at work all
day, every day.
We hear about hard things.
And so, we may be not only extra
sensitive, but then more sensitive to what we
call in the field counter-transference, which are
all of those feelings and sensations that we
notice as we're doing the work with clients,
perhaps what they're bringing in or how our
relationship is going.
(06:32):
And so, we're going to need some help
managing that sometimes if it's starting to feel
overwhelming.
That sensitivity may also make us more vulnerable
to vicarious trauma and burnout.
Not only are we taking care of people
all day, every day at work, trying to
grow our practice, do all the things, we're
going home and doing it.
And that may mean, likely means, we have
less time in the day to take care
of ourselves.
(06:53):
And so, then we're hearing about the hard
stuff.
We're maybe struggling as parents or sort of
wondering.
And all of that can really compound into
putting us at risk for burnout, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting because I think about how a
couple years into being a therapist, before I
was a parent, I was like, I can't
(07:13):
watch any of this stuff anymore.
I can't watch.
If it won an Oscar, I cannot watch
it.
It's probably taking up the Yes.
And then I became a parent.
And like you said, if there's a kid
hurt or missing or anything like that in
a show or a movie, we're both like,
out.
We're not doing this.
(07:33):
And it has not occurred to me until
this one moment that we are basically watching.
Our nervous system is filing away our work
every day in the same way it would
file away a drama with a missing kid.
That's exactly it.
And when we are parents and we have
that closer connection to our own children, our
brains are rewiring for even more of that
(07:56):
sense of protection.
And then we're experiencing it as a threat,
right?
As a real little threat and bringing our
maybe the image of our child.
Can I tell a story that like this
happened to me in a session?
So, I was maybe six or seven weeks
back from maternity leave.
I worked in this early childhood mental health
clinic in the Bronx, a lot of training
and supervision.
I thought I was doing okay.
(08:17):
I kind of had a sense, okay, like
things might come up for me.
They might be different in the room with
parents who are struggling, or I might have
that sense of being like a little more
protective to very young children, right?
Like, okay.
So, I'm sitting with a very senior clinician
in her hour of clinical supervision.
She's talking to me about a very young
child in foster care who was really struggling,
(08:37):
really struggling.
He was two or three.
And she started to tell the story of
what had happened to get him into foster
care.
And it sort of, I think she had
kind of forgotten, but it dawned on her
in that moment that when this little one
was five or six months old, he had
sustained a skull fracture from one of his
parents.
It was a little bit of a mystery,
(08:57):
and they were still trying to figure out
what would be the good next step for
him.
But that was his early experience.
She continues talking, and I freeze, absolutely frozen.
All I could do was think about my
little guy who was five or six months
old, and I could think about his little
fuzzy head, and I just had this wave
of revulsion towards a parent who could hurt
(09:18):
her kid like that.
And that's an understandable feeling, but it's certainly
not a feeling that I could act on.
If I was in a moment, in a
session with that mother, right, I needed to
really slow down and think about that reaction,
make sure I had my own space to
reflect on that and get myself okay, so
(09:39):
that I could be present first with this
clinician, and then if I was in a
session with a client with a similar story,
I could not separate the two out of
my own experience in this client's story in
that moment.
And it was such a good example of
how I needed more support.
I needed to slow down and make sure
that I was okay so that I could
do my best work with clients.
(09:59):
And this stuff will hit us when we
least expect it, but it shows up sometimes.
Yeah.
It's interesting how you come back to, we
need the support.
Like you said, like we're in a career
that is all about offering that support.
And then we're taking care of our family
when we get home.
Like we are last on the list if
(10:21):
we're not very intentional.
Yes.
And that has dire consequences for everyone involved.
Absolutely.
That's the way you put it, last on
the list.
We go in this field because we want
to help, right?
And we have probably incredible compassion for the
folks that we're supporting or wanting to help
or building something for.
And yet at the end of the day,
(10:41):
are we able to use that compassion and
turn it towards ourself and think about what
we really need, right?
And so I talk a lot about the
need for self-compassion, just borrowing the incredible
work of Krista Neff, but also borrowing some
ideas from the field of infant mental health.
And one of those is called reflective consultation
and supervision, which is sort of built on
(11:03):
psychodynamic clinical supervision, but it can look a
lot of different ways.
It could be individual support that you're paying
for.
It might be within a group of other
providers doing sort of the same work that
you're doing, or even in a peer consultation
group.
And it sort of creates the space to
feel held, right?
Because we think of all the people that
we are holding.
(11:24):
And so that we need our own space
to unpack all of this, to feel validated,
to explore how these streams of identities and
being a parent and a therapist is some
of our multiple identities, of course, who we
are, all of the other ways that we
sort of navigate and identify in this world,
we all bring that in.
And we want to think about how those
(11:44):
identities sort of impact our clinical practice and
how our clinical practice impacts us, because the
work we do has a cost.
And that's not just the therapy work that
we're doing, but all the things we're doing
to try to support our businesses.
It's heavy sometimes.
It's very heavy.
Yeah.
And I think we deny the heaviness to
ourselves.
Like we're in denial a little bit and
(12:06):
just keep trucking.
I think you and I have the same
amount of experience.
We're probably the same generation, like we're about
the same age.
And so we're probably lying to ourselves if
we act like we're not still deeply impacted
by what we do day to day.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
One of the ideas of reflective practice is
that this is continuous that, you know, I
(12:28):
think to get over some of the imposter
syndrome, being a therapist, being a parent, being
a human, we kind of need to imagine,
OK, like we've probably got what we what
we need.
Right.
And we'll be OK.
And it's important.
Right.
But I think the other piece of the
truth is what if we admitted that this
is always really hard and that one of
the things we can do is say we're
always going to struggle.
That's normal.
(12:49):
And let's create opportunities to take a look
at our practice or get the support that
we need or slow down and look at
my book.
And there's just tons of reflective prompts.
You can do this on your own.
But having a place where you feel validated
and supported and held and also then vulnerable
and safe enough to take some risks and
take a look at when things are hard
or sort of not aligning with what they
(13:10):
need to be, that's going to help.
We are so hard on ourselves as therapists
and as parents, and I think that overlap,
we might think, OK, I've had some training
in this.
My job title, I think I said this.
I was a child development specialist when I
came in.
Suddenly I had no idea what I was
doing, but I thought I should.
And I was so hard on myself when
(13:30):
we struggled.
And when I was able to say, wait
a minute, I'm a parent, too.
We all struggle.
This is normal.
Then I was able to take a breath
and actually use the skills from my clinical
practice, which were helpful, which was self-compassion,
slowing down, getting support.
Yeah.
And I think as an ACT therapist, I
hear a lot of like, oh, yeah, this
(13:51):
is just going to suck on some level.
This is going to be heavy.
And if we pretend like it's not heavy,
then we can't feel those feelings and just
let it be heavy and let it release.
Exactly.
You're in that middle place, like suffering, but
not knowing either this is going to be
what it is or I could do something
different.
Mm hmm.
I love this.
(14:11):
And I think about for private practice therapist.
So like when you're in an agency, you
have no agency.
You have no autonomy.
You are told we don't have to be
there.
There's a lot less flexibility.
There's a lot less money.
It's why I'm always telling people who ask
me the private practice is like the absolute
best place for a new parent, because you
can create your own schedule.
(14:32):
You can work the hours that make sense
for your family.
The number of times my hours have changed.
It's astounding.
Just absolutely.
I let my family come first and accommodate
what needs accommodated.
Absolutely.
When my kiddo was almost two, we moved
to the Midwest.
My partner's job was here.
And so we moved in.
It was the opportunity to create my own
private practice.
One of the first things I read actually
(14:53):
was your guide to maternity leave, which was
a little bit late for me.
But oh, my gosh, it was like you
do what you need to do.
Here's how to keep your clients in mind.
But here's if you don't do the things
that you need to do to take care
of yourself throughout the day and on the
regular.
Do any of us.
Right.
And then ironically, COVID taught that same lesson
(15:13):
again when we were suddenly doing even more.
And I think I had sort of taken
that ethos from agency work of I need
to work eight to six.
I need to be available late so people
can come in.
I'd sort of carry that into my private
practice.
Honestly, it helped a little bit when I
was building to get people in the door.
But when COVID happened just a few years
(15:33):
later and I realized I have to do
even more of all these things and somehow
be a homeschool teacher and all the things.
What do I actually want to do right
now?
Right.
Once we were sort of in the oh,
my gosh, I can breathe maybe a year
later after the lockdown, I realized I didn't
want to work after school.
I wanted to be home with my kid.
And now I am three days a week.
Right.
We figured out child care for the other
(15:54):
two.
That's perfect balance for me.
I actually don't want to do math homework
every day with my kiddo because sometimes it's
a nightmare.
But I do want to be there more
days than not.
And I can because I'm my boss.
I get to choose.
Right.
That was my value.
Yeah.
The people who work with kids right now
are like, no, but you don't understand.
I have to if I want to see
kids, I have to work after school.
(16:16):
And so what I'm hearing you say, and
I know what I've said a lot is
like, not necessarily.
Yeah.
There are other ways.
I'm going to go back to one of
your resources, which is the what to say
when.
And I think about it all the time
when I say my availability is or my
hours are I'm available on Tuesdays at nine,
ten and one.
And then you wait.
(16:36):
Right.
Yes.
Parents will figure it out.
I'll provide a school note.
I'll talk to that teacher and find the
time that's like a little bit easier for
them to get out of school.
There are going to be a very small
handful of families.
They're two parent working families, whatever it is
that really are struggling to get there.
And you know what?
I do have a couple of spots for
them, but I'm not going to talk about
(16:57):
those spots right away until I really assess
the need.
And often than not, I can see them
at eight.
We can figure it out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My youngest just started in therapy and the
therapist was like, well, I'm assuming you want
some afterschool spots.
I've got this and that for that.
And I was like the practice builder in
me was like, don't do it.
(17:18):
But I was like, okay, I'll take that
afterschool spot, even though I was totally expecting
and totally willing to come in the middle
of the day.
Like, sure, I'm happy for it to be
a bit more inconvenient for me, but I
was willing for it to be inconvenient.
And maybe for that therapist, it works for
them.
Right.
Which is what I'm so grateful for.
Right.
But I know for me, I'm going to
(17:39):
be a better therapist and a better human
parent if I can sort of find a
schedule that works for me.
I'm a morning person.
Probably glad we're having this conversation first thing
in the morning.
That's actually when I'm best.
Yeah.
I'm going to do my absolute best on
Thursday at four, but you know, I'm not
going to do that every week because it
takes a toll.
Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
(18:00):
It brings them back to ACT, which is
being really clear about what your values are.
And I think as a parent and a
therapist, a practice builder, we have to do
that.
And then our life feels more manageable and
actually energizing rather than just depleting.
A hundred percent.
And when we're starting our practice and we
feel a little bit more desperate around it,
it's really hard to trust that you can
(18:21):
have what you want and that you can
put your values around your family first.
And sometimes I think most of us probably
have to prove it to ourselves that we
can do that.
And by doing the opposite, you know, like
I was working till seven because I thought
I needed to work until seven.
Until I had my baby, I did not
want to work.
I'm a morning person too.
I'd rather work at seven in the morning
than seven at night, any day.
(18:42):
Same.
But I was working till seven until I
had my oldest.
And then I had to, like, I absolutely
had to be like relieve the nanny trying
to find a daycare in Seattle.
You had to sign up a year ahead
of time, but the nanny had to go.
Before you were pregnant, right?
Yeah, a hundred percent.
So I was taught like, oh, people still
(19:02):
come.
I'm still full.
This is fine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Every year I've gotten clearer and clearer about
what hours I'm available and best at.
My practice has grown.
Like, so my income has actually gone up
as I've worked a little bit less or
been available for a little bit less.
And, you know, I'm not marketing a lot
now.
I've shifted.
I still see kids.
(19:22):
Right.
So they're coming in.
But these days I see a lot of
helping professionals.
It's real.
It's where my real passion lays.
Right.
And so whether that's in psychotherapy or reflective
consultation or supervision, you know, creating a space
where people can come and talk about those
struggles and feel validated, it makes such a
difference.
And because I'm sort of aligning with where
(19:43):
I feel energized and good and sort of
focusing my professional experience, people find me.
Yes, exactly.
Because people are getting results.
People are feeling good about the experience.
They're telling their friends who need therapy, you
know, so it's the when you're doing great
work, word of mouth spreads and it's harder
to do great work when you're burned out.
And think about, you know, as professional caregivers,
(20:05):
we're caring for people all day, every day
at work and then coming home and needing
to do probably even more with our families
and young children and adolescents to probably need
more of us than infants at some point,
like and maybe not as cute and cuddly
to like fill up that cup either.
And it's just it's too much.
And so creating sort of that way of
(20:27):
figuring out what's really workable and sustainable for
us is going to make such a difference.
And so how do you help people in
your book with trusting that they are important
to take care of and that they don't
need to be on the list?
I think the first part of the book
(20:48):
is sort of just the more information.
And so lots of research there, but also
a lot of stories.
And I think you've probably heard this, like
when people start telling the stories of what
it's like to be a parent and a
therapist, the whole room like joins in of
anyone that sort of tried to become a
parent is a parent is working on it.
Right.
It is so real.
(21:09):
And we need those experiences of feeling validated
and understood that we are not alone in
this struggle.
And so I think that's a really important
piece is finding people or professional support, whatever
it is, finding your friends that you can
really talk about how hard it is.
I think when we're a therapist and are
doing this work, our partners, our friends and
(21:30):
family might think like, oh, she's got this.
They've got this.
And maybe even like, you know, getting our
partners to pick up their own book about
parenting or about child development can be a
struggle because we're expected to be the expert
at home, too.
Right.
And we're also the ones reading the books
because we are like, here are my 37
parenting books that all conflict with each other.
(21:50):
I have a deep interest in reading a
lot of parenting books right at work and
at home because I am always doubting, like,
do I?
Right.
My partner, however, has read very few unless
I'm like, listen to this together in the
car.
He's trapped.
Right.
But, you know, can we find the places
where we can be far more vulnerable in
that and be not need to be the
expert, be with friends that where we can
(22:11):
say, oh, my God, this is so hard
right now.
And for them to know it is really
OK for us to talk about the struggle.
Like, I'm not talking to Lauren, the therapist
expert right now.
The irony here is that in the mental
health, we get as far away as possible
from an expert stance.
So it's funny that that word even keeps
coming out of my mouth, because I think
we all know that the more we can
sort of get away from anyone knowing what
(22:32):
they need to know and into a place
of like, let's be vulnerable and talk about
what's hard together and talk about what feels
OK and good and also where the struggle
is, we're going to do way better.
Right.
So that's an important piece.
So that's sort of a parenting thing.
But at work, too, if we are starting
to doubt ourselves, having hard moments with our
kids is that sort of oozing into our
(22:52):
work with clients, bringing in some self-doubt
or judgment of ourselves.
And then we need to really slow down
and take a look at, like, how do
I hold my stuff and know that it
is impacting me and maybe even my practice,
but also then be able to be very
present with whatever is happening in the room
and with your relationship.
Yeah.
And so that may be spending some time
(23:12):
journaling, answering some reflective prompts, finding someone to
talk it through with, a peer, a colleague
or a professional helper.
But just, you know, really thinking about it.
There are things that change in our practice.
I read a lot of research in pregnancy.
Therapists get really way more direct, which is
really interesting.
That's a magnet where I feel like time
(23:33):
is a little shorter.
And actually, sometimes that directness can really serve
the clinical stuff.
And sometimes we might be going a little
far.
Right.
Yeah.
Who isn't doing a little bit more self
-disclosure or at least feeling pulled to do
a little bit more self-disclosure than usual?
Once we become a parent, it can feel
very helpful to share those stories.
(23:54):
Sometimes it is clinically helpful.
Sometimes it's getting in the way of thinking
about what our client needs.
And so bringing in those like ideas of
reflective practice and getting the support that we
need to sort of continually look at our
practice and make sure we're good is going
to support us along the way.
Yeah.
I remember sharing something with a client that
(24:16):
I was like vetting in my head before
I shared it.
So it felt like it was a really
good share.
It went well.
But then maybe like a couple months later,
she like used my daughter's name as like,
well, you know, like how she did blah,
blah, blah.
And it felt really weird for one of
my clients to say my daughter's name for
some reason.
(24:37):
You know, she's a mom, like it was
totally fine, but it was like a little
jarring and helped me remember like, yeah, self
-disclosure is something.
It really, really matters.
And I always vet it first.
I think I was, you know, like a
lot of people train not to say a
damn word about yourself.
And then through really good supervision, learned how
to vet my head before anything comes out
of my mouth.
(24:57):
But yeah, it's interesting.
That's exactly it.
Yeah.
That's reflective practice is doing that work before
you vet it, during reading the room, and
then after.
And after is not just after you've said
it or the clients responded, but three, four
months later when they're still thinking about that
story or making it their own.
Right.
And so then we can hold in mind,
okay, this is could be a powerful thing.
(25:19):
Let's be careful.
Right.
How much do I want to share here?
Absolutely.
And I think, you know, this field has
come a long way from where we were
trained, which was really based in old, old,
old psychoanalytic stuff.
You know, the first psychoanalytic therapist thought, if
I do my own work, if I do
my own analysis, then actually when I'm in
a room with client, I am a blank
(25:40):
screen.
That was their word.
I have literally done all the work so
I can set it aside.
Time went on, right?
We're still kind of trained like that.
Yeah.
All better.
And I will be completely transparent.
It's all about the client.
And feminist psychotherapist showed up and went, wait
a minute, like, I think actually we do
need to share parts of ourselves so our
clients can make an informed decision and make
(26:02):
sure that we're aligned in the ways that
matter.
Maybe not in all the ways, but the
ways that are important to them to make
sure that they feel safe and comfortable to
do the best work they can.
Yeah.
So we've shifted and hopefully all of us
are sort of figuring out where we land
on that continuum with some reflective work and
then you can figure out what's right for
you and for your client.
(26:22):
And that'll change over time.
But if you're finding yourself pulled to tell
that story all the time or to think
that because of your experience with your kid
in a difficult moment, their sleep concerns or
whatever, that N equals one experience is going
to translate to every, every other story of
infant sleep that you hear about.
It's just not going to be true and
(26:42):
want to slow down and think about, okay,
like what do we best need to do
here?
And what are, where are we grounded in
the right sort of frame?
Yeah.
And I think too, when you're sleep deprived
and you're hanging out with other new moms,
for instance, and like, you're all sharing everything.
Like I remember when I came back from
maternity leave, that was something I really had
to like be on top of because I
(27:03):
was just like, whoa, with all my mom
friends who also had infants.
Which was instrumental to your survival.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
But here I am back at work.
This is a different scenario.
It's a different situation.
And I have to really like.
I have to shift.
Yeah.
So myself back up a little bit, you
know, like.
Yes.
Yes.
And how do I hold?
And we haven't even talked about, you know,
(27:24):
when things get really hard when we are
going through infertility struggles or have experienced a
miscarriage when all, when our child is struggling
with a severe medical crisis, what are we
going to need to do in those times?
First of all, to take deep, deep care
of ourselves and our kids and family, and
then to be able to set that down
(27:45):
just a little bit to be present at
work.
Or can we, or should we have a
think about do we need to reduce even
more so we can sustain this?
Yeah.
And in fact, I had an experience I'd
written in my newsletter about like my daughter's
epilepsy and it kind of rearing its ugly
head again and in more severe ways.
And literally two weeks after she'd had that
(28:07):
seizure, one of my client's kids had their
first seizure.
Oh my gosh.
And I was like, okay, I'm a social
worker.
I have lots of resources I can give
her.
I need to not fire hose her with
resources, even though the social worker in me
wants to do that.
I am a fellow mom who gets how
scary this is, but I need to not
show her how scared I was and am
(28:29):
still.
That's not for this specific client.
I can't leak all that out.
And so like really assessing in that moment
quickly how to respond and ended up disclosing
I had a child with epilepsy, but not
that we'd had this brand new reoccurrence and
what resources does she already have?
(28:49):
Who is she seeing doctor wise?
What's her pediatrician situation to make sure that
she just had without being like, here's who
we love and who we hate, you know,
like here's the medicine we use.
We didn't do any of that.
Even though with a friend, I might've, even
though what medicine works for one kid has
nothing to do with how it's going to
work for another, but on the week.
(29:10):
But with another, with fellow parent friend, I
would have a very different kind of conversation.
You knew your client well enough to slow
down and realize you needed to hold your
stuff, your own personal experience of it to
sort of understand where she was at.
You did a social work assessment is what
you did.
And then figured out and did disclose at
(29:33):
that point that you knew some things about
this, but you were sort of titrating what
they needed more than just making it into
probably also very needed support session, but that
wasn't that.
And so you could slow it down.
And that is such an incredible example of
that confluence.
Your lived experience as a parent and your
daughter's medical difficulties came into that session, but
(29:56):
you held it in a way that was
therapeutically.
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