June 4, 2025 • 51 mins
What happens when a mental health professional decides the system no longer serves the people it was designed to help? In this powerful and deeply personal episode, Dian Griesel speaks with Anna Holtzman, a psychotherapist who made the radical decision to walk away from her license -- and the conventional mental health system altogether -- to build a coaching practice.
The conversation covers various topics, including the changing norms in therapy, the role of authenticity in coaching, and the impact of social media on mental health services. They explore how the boundaries between coaching and therapy are blurring and debate the merits and drawbacks of this shift. Recorded in the iconic Manhattan Center, this episode offers a deep dive into the modern dynamics of mental health support. Follow Anna Holtzman and subscribe for more insightful episodes!
Please SUBSCRIBE! I’m Dian Griesel, Ph.D. aka @SilverDisobedience I am a perception analyst, hypnotherapist, author of books and a Wilhelmina model & creative who works both sides of the camera. For 30 years I have helped my clients to achieve greater understanding as to how perceptions impact everything we do whether personally or professionally. Text to book an appointment: 212-825-3210
I share inspiring and actionable ideas for free via my podcast, on my website: DianGriesel.com and also on my social media accounts which you might like to follow.
https://open.spotify.com/show/3XD5QTQSyxK6c6Qm4rorpe
00:00 Introduction to the Podcast
00:18 Meet Anna Holtzman: From Counselor to Coach
00:56 The Evolving Landscape of Psychology
01:48 Therapist vs. Coach: A New Approach
10:19 The Role of Social Media in Therapy
21:35 Defining Authenticity in Coaching
26:00 Understanding the Nervous System
26:18 Fear vs. Flow: Navigating Emotional States
26:47 Authenticity and Communication
29:28 The Role of Instincts and Thoughts
31:47 Coaching vs. Therapy: Personal Experiences
42:14 Choosing the Right Coach or Therapist
44:25 Future of Coaching and Therapy
48:50 The Impact of Social Media on Therapy
50:55 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello everyone. I'm Diane Grissell, also known
as Silver Disobedience, and thisis the Silver Disobedience
Perception Dynamics podcast where we explore all kinds of
operating systems within society.
And today I have a very interesting guest.
She got her master's in counseling and then went on to
(00:22):
get licensed as a counselor, butshe's giving up that license.
Her name is Anna Holtzman, and we're going to talk to her about
shifts in psychology, therapy judgments, self worth issues,
how these things shift, what's changing within psychology and
(00:45):
how the landscape's changing. So please say hi to Anna
Holtzman. Hi, Diane, thank you so much for
having me here. I am very happy to have you.
As we talked a little bit beforethis show started, the entire
landscape of psychology, which is basically a relatively new
science, is changing on all different cylinders for a lot of
(01:11):
different reasons. Tell me what some of your
thoughts are on the current state of psychology.
Yeah, Well, part of me, the current state of psychology
could be a pretty broad topic. But I know that one of the
things we were chatting about just earlier is that for a long
time, therapists were trained tobe kind of a blank slate, you
(01:36):
know, not to really share anything about themselves
personally, maybe even not to share their own emotions.
And that is something that's changing quite a bit.
And I'm a big fan of that change.
And it's it's one of the reasonsI really like, I work as both a
therapist and a coach, but I'm no longer taking on new therapy
(01:59):
clients. I'm phasing that out.
And I really enjoy working in under the umbrella of coaching
where it's kind of anything goes.
You know, you can trust your owninstincts and use your own life
experience as part of the work. And I think that that's a really
(02:19):
powerful way that we relate as human beings.
You know, like, have you ever had a conversation with any
human being other than a therapist where you felt heard
and connected and, you know, like just engaged in human
connection where they were just sitting there like a blank slate
and not sharing any of their ownhumanity with you?
(02:42):
Well, it's an interesting shift in psychology and I'm not 100%
on board with it. Yeah, I love, I love that we
have different tastes on this. And when I first read a, you
know, when I first read about itin Psychology Today and I had
seen that all these this new younger breed of therapists are
all saying no, we have sharing sessions.
(03:04):
I share how I feel about this and the client shares how they
feel. And my thought was why you're
bringing your opinions into it. And the idea about a good
therapy session is one that someone's not judging you.
They're not giving their opinions.
They're letting you explore whatyou think by asking provocative,
(03:26):
thought provoking questions. So I think there's a I'm curious
as to where you think the benefits are of sharing your
insights. I mean, that's interesting.
I, I don't often share my own opinions on things in a session,
but things I will share are, youknow, if I've had a life
experience that relates to what someone I'm working with is
(03:49):
experiencing, I'll share. You know, I'll say something
like I'm just in AI, you know, I'm a coach, but I'm also just
another human being. And, you know, the feelings that
you're having totally make senseto me because I've had those
feelings as well. And I it just helps to to
(04:10):
normalize what the person is feeling, you know?
But in a therapy session, suppose your feelings were
repulsed by what someone shared.So if you enter an area.
If you enter an area. Which is why I don't think it
ever belongs. I mean, when you are in a
situation where a therapist is sharing their in some, in some
(04:34):
ways it's easier you're getting their approval or your their
reprimand or dislike if someone is if that's the environment
you're in. I mean, that's an interesting I,
I'm like, that's just so different from how I, how I work
or really how I think about it when it's kind of like a, an all
or nothing. Like I'm, I'm not going to share
(04:57):
every feeling that I have with aclient.
I'm going to share things that Ithink can be helpful and
supportive to them, that can help them feel less alone with
their experience. That can, you know, help them
feel less isolated in their experience.
That can help them feel like they're a part of humanity and
(05:19):
not some alien who's broken and weird and disconnected from
everyone. So I'm not going to share things
just to throw spaghetti at the wall, right?
I'm going to share things that Ifeel would support them.
And if we're? Just where do you draw that
line? How does how does a therapist
(05:40):
draw that line though? You know, which is what I wonder
when I see this as a new trend, and I'm not saying I think it's
totally right or wrong. I want to have a discussion on
it because it is such a huge shift.
And you know, I mean, some people will say, well, I, I
didn't want to do therapy because I feel like the person's
(06:01):
just listening to me. But a good therapist is
listening and asking thought provoking questions to make the
person understand themselves. The focus is I'm paying you and
the focus is 100% on me and helping me understand myself.
When it starts to become that sharing dynamic, I don't see how
judgment can't enter the equation one way or another.
(06:24):
Well, judgement can enter the equation even if you're not
sharing anything verbally about yourself.
I mean, judgement can come out in a vibe, in a look.
And it usually does come out if,if the therapist is judging you,
I mean, you're going to know even if they don't say something
(06:46):
that tells you that. But you were asking about where
do you draw the line? And I think, I think this goes
to something that you talk abouta lot, which is like rules and
you know, codification. And I think it's really whether
it's therapy or coaching, it's arelationship.
(07:08):
So I really draw on the relationship skills that I use
in any other relationship. I'm, I'm noticing what I'm
feeling and I'm using my intuition and I OfferUp
something and I check in with the client like here's what's
coming up, here's a reflection that's coming up for me.
(07:32):
How does this land for you? And if it lands in a way that's
not helpful, like that's information that helps us figure
out where to go next. How do you differentiate between
when you think I'm wearing my therapist hat versus my coaching
hat? Yeah, it's, that's a really
interesting question, people. I've have asked me that a lot
(07:54):
and I've sort of 2 answers to that.
One answer is that I'm when I'm working with someone, I'm
working with someone and it's about presence and it's about
relationship. And it's not about whether the
title I'm being given in that moment is therapist or coach.
So I really attuned to the person that I'm working with.
(08:17):
And so in that sense, I'm kind of working in the same way,
whether it's called therapy or coaching.
And there's just like this legaldelineation between the two.
You know, if it's therapy, they can get reimbursed by their
their insurance provider. And if it's therapy, I can only
work with folks who reside in the state of New York because
(08:40):
that's where my license is. But in another sense, there's
something in the back of my mindthat just knows, you know, that
what's happening right now is being called therapy or that
knows what's happening right nowis being called coaching.
And that very subtly impacts me and how I show up in those
(09:05):
sessions because when when I know like this is therapy, all
this stuff that I heard in grad school kind of comes in and it's
not in the foreground, but it's somewhere there in the
background. And there's all this stuff
about, you know, there's kind oflike a right way and a wrong way
to do things. And well, if you do this, you
(09:26):
could use your lose your license.
And it's not that there isn't a purpose to all of these
guidelines and education, but there's also, and I've spoken to
many therapists who have had a similar experience.
I experienced the, the atmosphere in Graduate School as
(09:47):
having quite a bit of like fear mongering, like, you know, if
you step outside the side the line, you could, you're doing
things wrong, You could really harm the client.
If you share anything about yourself, it could harm the
client relationship or and so there's just this kind of like.
Subtle. Weird.
So we're back to that idea of sharing about yourself.
(10:09):
Crossing the line, yes. So, and that's just one of the
ways in which you know. But but that is a big area in
therapy because it is, you know,the sharing about yourself
crossing the line. And I really wonder how much,
you know, social media, which has disintermediated so many
(10:29):
industries and changed how people think in so many, many
areas. And all of a sudden, you know
what, when I used to, you know, when I'd work with public
relations clients and they'd say, wait a second, we need to
that newspaper to retract that statement.
And I'd say, OK, well, we can ask them to retract it.
But they're, I think it was maybe Thomas Jefferson who said,
(10:52):
you know, never go to battle with people who buy ink by the
barrel, you know, because a newspaper has unlimited pages to
attack you if that's what they want to do because they're extra
aggravated. You just annoyed them.
And the Internet, we've seen that crowd mentality where
everyone has a voice. Anyone can say anything they
want with no restriction whatsoever.
(11:13):
And I really wonder how that impacted psychology.
You know, are we raising a groupof new psychologists that have
grown up with, well, I can say whatever I want and therefore in
my sessions, because I do think it creates a false, a very false
sense of importance, which is a whole other discussion.
That's that's so interesting because I also I have like a
(11:35):
completely different take on this.
Let's hear it. And I'm very active on social
media and I love it. I think it's a great thing.
I think that, you know, I mean social media, just like the
printed word, it can be used forfor good, bad and everything in
between. It's how you use it and how you
interact with it. But I feel that social media has
(11:59):
really democratized therapy. It has taken away the sense of,
you know, there are the authorities who are going to
tell you if you were well or unwell or who are going to tell
you what's right and wrong. And it's really opened things up
for everyone to interact and have their, you know, just
(12:21):
survey a wide range of differentideas and express their own
ideas. And to me it's a tool for
developing self trust, which howI believe is.
How how to help teach self trust?
I'm curious. To me, it teaches self trust
because it it takes us out of this context that we formerly
(12:45):
were in where there were like, you know, several famous books
by famous psychologists or, or therapists.
And those were the people that we perceived as having all the
authority. And they know better than I do
because they're the only ones who have a voice and they're the
(13:06):
only ones whose voices I can find.
And I don't have a platform to have a voice.
So that means my voice doesn't matter and I should just listen
to them. Whereas in this world of social
media, sure, it can be used in all kinds of different ways, but
one of the ways in which it's used is it it shows you that
(13:31):
everyone has a voice and can useit if they want to.
And you have a voice too and canuse it if you want to.
There are 1,000,000 zillion different ideas out there about
different things. Like there is no one word of
authority on what therapy modality is the best.
Or, you know, there's just lots of different ideas out there and
(13:56):
they're there for you to synthesize and come up with your
with your own feelings and viewsabout things.
That's, that's a very intriguingperspective because I do believe
in the disintermediation that's occurred from the Internet and
particularly social media. We also have a point where
there's so much self diagnosis going on and the running joke of
(14:25):
a Google doctor. But and then where are those
boundaries that you draw on social media or are there none?
Do you feel it's a free for all?You know, because you're you're
sometimes wearing the therapist hat and sometimes you're not.
(14:45):
Well, when I, when I use social media, I use it as a coach and I
don't even, I mean, I, I may mention, you know, as part of a
story that I, I am licensed as atherapist and that's part of my
background, but I'm not, I don'tuse the letters after my name on
my Instagram profile, for example.
(15:07):
How do you define the differencebetween a therapist and a coach
from your perspective? Yeah.
You know, the way that I would define the difference is
probably very different from howmost other therapists or coaches
would define it, because I define it as, to me, this is
(15:29):
controversial to most people. To me, it's largely a difference
in legal specifications and marketing.
It's a difference in marketing because marketing yourself as a
therapist with the letters afterthe name projects a certain kind
(15:50):
of image and there's a certain kind of client who's looking for
a particular style of support that is attracted to that type
of marketing. Whereas if I market myself as a
coach, I'll just say very broadly, and there are tons of
exceptions to this, but a clientwho's looking for a therapist is
(16:16):
generally looking to bring a problem to this therapist and
get this therapist expertise in solving that problem.
And they are looking to the therapist as an authority who
knows more than them. Someone who is looking for a
(16:41):
coach, I would say is more oftensomeone who has a particular
goal in mind, less about something they want to solve and
get rid of like a problem, but more more often a goal that they
want to reach or achieve. And they are looking for someone
who's maybe like walked the pathalready who might know more by
(17:05):
virtue of being further along onthe path that they want to walk
on than they presently are. So kind of like a a mentor and
they're looking to do the work and have someone's guidance and
support. I'm curious, you prefaced that
by saying this is controversial.What part of that statement was
controversial? Because it sounded like a good
(17:27):
differentiator. I think the controversial part
is that I see the difference more as being about the
marketing aspect. Whereas what I generally hear
from therapists and coaches, butparticularly from therapists, is
that, you know, a therapist is first of all, delving into the
(17:47):
past and also, you know, has particular training so that they
are qualified to work on certaindiagnosable disorders and where
as a coach is future focused. But also they're, you know,
they're not qualified to deal with certain diagnosable issues.
(18:09):
And those should be left for a therapist.
I think there is, you know, there are, there are situations
it's, it's very important to know the limits of your scope.
Honestly, even if you're, if youare a licensed therapist, like
I'm not an expert in eating disorders, for example.
(18:30):
So that's really out of my scope.
It would be irresponsible for meto take on a client to say, you
know, I'm going to help you healfrom this eating disorder.
I don't have that training or that expertise, but I know
coaches who have great expertisein eating disorders and and tons
(18:52):
of experience in that field who help people in that realm.
I think what's, what's controversial is in my opinion,
it's about the relationship you have with the client and your
personal area of expertise more so than to me, it's, it's really
not that important if you have the letters after your name or
(19:14):
not. Do you have but legally you
know? Do you have coaching clients who
ask if they can run you through run their invoices through their
therapy bills? I've had that question, but I'm
very, very clear with that with folks like right at the
beginning of working together, I, I say, you know, what we're
doing is coaching. And one of the things that means
(19:36):
is that this is not billable through insurance.
When you think of the shifts going on, why do you think
they're happening? Why do you think there are more
coaches coming up? Is it that they don't want to go
through school like you did, they don't want to deal with the
licensing? Or is it just plain a different
mentality? I think it's a different
(19:56):
mentality. And what do you think that is?
I think it's a different mentality and what what I see is
there are a lot of people in thefield who similar to me.
Our do have a therapy license and they're either they're
leaving their license to go intocoaching or they're adding
coaching and they're doing both.And in the broadest terms, the
(20:22):
the main reason is it just givesyou a lot more freedom in a lot
of different ways. It gives you more freedom.
I feel it gives you more freedomto be yourself more
authentically. And to me, that's a really
useful tool in helping people grow when I'm being myself
authentically. Like what do every one of my
(20:44):
clients want? They want to be themselves
authentically at the end of the day, you know, whether they're
coming to me because they they want to heal from chronic pain,
which was a specialty of mine for about five years.
Or whether they're coming to me because they want to grow their
own business or they want to write a book, or they want to
(21:05):
put their art out into the world, which are some of the
things that people are coming tome for.
And now at the, you know, the underpinning of it all is they
want to feel like they are beingtheir authentic selves, that
they're authentically expressingthemselves and sharing that with
the world. And so if I'm not doing that as
(21:27):
I'm working with them, it doesn't really, it's not
conducive to them growing into that either.
Well, that to me is where I would draw the line between
therapy and coaching. If you're, if you're going to
share your experiences to me andto guide someone, I would think
(21:50):
that leans a little more into the coaching.
I mean, because even leading a group, you know, you know, even
if it was a group discussion, it's still you have the
moderator who's leading it. That is not necessarily sharing
their, his or her opinion. Yeah, yeah, I coaching is
(22:14):
certainly a lot more conducive to the coach sharing themselves
authentically. And I think that's one of the
big reasons that a lot of people, whether they're coming
from being a therapist and having a license or not, are
being drawn to coaching now. And some of the other reasons
(22:35):
are, as I was mentioning before,when you're a therapist, you can
only work with clients who are residing in the state in which
you are licensed. And it's kind of a pain in the
butt to get licensed in multiplestates, although people do it,
but it's just more paperwork. Do you think this shift happened
(22:56):
when people started to work fromhome?
Yes, yes, that's exactly what I was going to say.
Yeah. So when the COVID lockdown
started, we all went remote. My work went remote.
I was not happy about the reasons that was happening, but
I was happy to go remote becauseit just gives you a lot more
(23:18):
freedom and flexibility in lots of ways.
And then you start thinking, well, why am I only working with
people who live in my state? There's so many people around
the world who need and want my help and it just feels so
limiting to be limited to those who live locally when, you know,
we're we're working with each other on Zoom, so you could be
(23:39):
anywhere. What?
How do you define your work set today?
Let's say in the coaching area, What would be your area of
expertise? So my area of expertise is the
nervous system. I work through a nervous system
lens and the people that I work with are creatives, coaches and
entrepreneurs, people who are very passionate about what they
(24:05):
do. They're people who are a lot
like me. They're they're, they have big
passions about what they do. This very strong need to express
themselves authentically to be seen and heard.
And also they're sensitive people.
So along with that big passion is like very intense fears of
(24:25):
saying what they really want to say, of putting themselves out
there in a more authentic way, of truly letting themselves be
seen. And so I am helping those people
learn how to work with their nervous system so they can kind
of dance with this passion and fear.
(24:46):
They can help them work togetherand not have the the fear just
be blocking the passion and be in conflict that way.
You know, it's interesting. One of the words you use a lot
is authentic and authenticity. And they say in psychology
courses, when someone repeats the same word over and over
again, that's the word you should probably pay attention to
(25:07):
because you're getting hidden clues about the person you're
speaking with. Yeah.
So considering you use the word authentic a few times in this
interview, what does that mean? Because it's, in many ways, it's
a very, in my opinion, it's an extremely overused word that has
lost a lot of its meaning because it's so overused.
(25:28):
I mean, people want to be just plain jerks and say, well, I'm
being authentic. And it's no, you're being a
jerk. You know, your, your rights have
gone beyond. So how do you define
authenticity? Here's how I'll define what it
means to me. And I'll I'll describe this
using the lens of the nervous system, which is the lens that I
(25:52):
find really useful. So the nervous system, our
nervous systems are, are pretty simple.
Like they're, they're pretty. They're very similar to like the
nervous system. Primitive touch something, it's
hot, you know it in a second and.
So you could say there's kind oflike a switch in our nervous
(26:15):
system and it has two basic settings.
One setting is fear, threat response, and the other setting
I'll call flow. When we feel connected with
ourselves and we're able to connect with other people, we're
able to think expansively and consider that there are many
different options. We can feel like we're in the
(26:37):
creative flow. We feel in tune with our bodies.
We feel present. That's what I mean by
authenticity. When you feel connected to
yourself and to others and to your to your flow of energy.
Where do you think the boundaries are in authenticity
these days? What?
(26:58):
Do you mean by that? Well.
You know, someone could say I feel very connected with myself
and therefore I feel I can say whatever I want.
I personally, my opinion is thatthat I can say whatever I want
like without any consideration for how that might affect other
(27:20):
people. I feel that comes from a fear
place to me like that fear setting.
When we're in that fear mode, wetend to either suppress what we
think and feel or we express it explosively.
Like we, we push it through, butwhen we're in that flow setting,
(27:45):
we express things relationally. So we express to connect with
other people. And when if I'm just going to
say whatever the hell I want without caring how that's going
to impact other people, that's not communicating relationally
and that's not connecting, that's projecting.
(28:07):
Right, so there is that, there is that line you see in
projecting verse. How would you define projecting
since you just said it? Yeah, and I wouldn't even see it
as a line. I would.
I would. I see it as like there's left
and there's right, and those arekind of like the two fear
directions and then there's up, which would be the flow
(28:30):
directions. So like fear.
Yeah. It leads to either suppressing
ourselves or just black. You know, just like shouting at
someone instead of communicatingwith someone.
What do you think of the expression Think Before you
Speak? Where would the acronym is?
(28:51):
Is it thoughtful, hurtful, Yeah.Intelligent, necessary, or kind?
I mean, I, I think it's a good policy and I would, maybe, I
would maybe tweak it for myself to feel before you speak, like
feel. And you know, I'll feel into my
body like 'cause I can tell by sensing into my body if I'm in
(29:13):
fear or if I'm in flow. And I don't want to speak from
fear. If I'm in fear, I want to come
have a conversation with myself 1st and melt through that fear
and get into flow before I express this to anyone else.
What do you think comes first, the feeling or the thought?
It really depends. It depends, and it depends how
(29:36):
tuned in or not tuned in we are to our feelings which are, which
are in our bodies, like fear. If I want to know what I'm
feeling, I'll ask myself, like, is my body feeling like it's
contracting or does it feel open?
And if it's contracting, I mean,there's nothing wrong with that.
(29:59):
It's perfectly natural and normal and it's a sign that
there there's some fear going through me, which is a common
thing. I mean, we feel fear about a
bazillion times a day. I do agree with you.
I think there's a difference andthere's a time 11 precedes the
other. I would hate to rule out
instincts. You know, one of my favorite
books was The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker when he talks
(30:22):
about, you know, if you were in a dark building and you're about
to get in an elevator and you see someone in the elevator, if
you have that split second instinct of fear, don't get in.
Just say, you know, turn around,you forgot your keys.
You don't have to explain it, but he talks about how most
people overrule that instinct and they get in the elevator
(30:45):
anyway. And so those are times I think
you absolutely have a feeling 1st.
And then there's times people ruminate.
They get in the middle of a thought and that thought becomes
obsessive to some degree or another, and now they're having
little feelings of what they cando, what they can't do.
You know how things are going tounfold.
(31:06):
Yeah, absolutely. I kind of feel like it's a
chicken and egg thing, you know,like I think of the body
reaction to fear and the mind reaction to fear as just
different, different expressionsof fear.
You know, when I am in fear, I'll know it because maybe my
(31:27):
body's contracting. Maybe I feel like my shoulders
are tight, or I have a headache,or I might notice it because I'm
talking to myself in a really mean way.
Or maybe it's all the above. But these are all just
expressions. These are all the different ways
that fear makes itself known to me.
One of the things you said was interesting.
(31:48):
You said you know, you'll with your coaching clients, for
example, you might share some ofyour experiences.
Yeah. And I often think about
professional sports, which I've never played and I'm completely
uncoordinated, so no one's signing me up at any phase of my
life for those. But I've often thought about,
you know, the coaches that played the game and the coaches
(32:09):
that didn't. And if I was a player at the,
you know, top of my game, which what it takes to be a
professional athlete in this country, it's a, you know,
funnel that really narrows it down.
You know, would I, would I be able to shelve my ego and listen
to a coach that maybe had never played the game but really knew
the game? Well, yeah.
(32:32):
What do you think about that when it comes to coaching
clients? If you're coaching a business
leader, where where your. Yeah, you know, it's
interesting. So I have 2 answers to this.
One is like when I look for a coach, I specifically look for
someone who has already been on the path that I'm beginning to
(32:57):
walk on. For example, as I mentioned, I
had been working in the area of helping people recover from
chronic pain, stress related chronic pain syndromes.
And that's something I got into because I had struggled with
migraine headaches for like 10 years.
And I recovered through the workof chronic pain therapists who
(33:24):
speak a lot about their own recovery on podcasts and stuff
like that. And that just helped me so much
because they were showing me what, you know, not exactly what
my path was going to look like, but what a path could look like
because they had been on the path and then they had, you
know, subsequently led many clients on that path.
(33:47):
I work with two coaches at the moment.
I have a business coach that I work with, and I work with her
because of her experience in business and her success in
business. And I am a stepmom and so the
life coach that I work with withfor, you know, on all kinds of
stuff, emotions all, etcetera. I first started working with her
(34:11):
because she is a stepmom coach, because she is a stepmom and
she, you know, uses all of her experience to help other
stepmoms who are just starting out in that role.
So on the one hand, I think it'svery, very helpful when the
coach has had a very relevant experience to you.
(34:33):
And a lot of the people that come to work with me, a lot of
them are creatives and I have a creative background.
I used to work in film and TV, and before that I was a
journalist and worked in publishing at the same time.
One of my favorite clients is a corporate lawyer, and that work
is like completely out of my realm.
(34:55):
I've never worked in that type of setting.
I've never worked in law. But we're a great fit.
And I think what makes us a great fit is that I bring the
nervous system lens to the humanexperiences that this client is
having. And while I may not have
(35:15):
experience with that context, I certainly have experiences with
feeling intimidated at a meetingfull of other people even though
I'm on their same level. But somehow I'm not.
Like my nervous system doesn't know that I have the same level
of authority, you know? I really find it fascinating how
you, when you speak, you zoom inon the nervous system, which is
(35:38):
phenomenal and fascinating and endlessly worthy of exploration.
And I've never heard of something, you know, I think of
it as, you know, instant reactions to things.
And it's very interesting how you're at, you know, pain
pleasure, you know, the the scope of it.
But it's very interesting how you are saying you're bringing
(36:01):
that into your counseling process.
Yeah, I'm. How did you zoom in on that?
Because of the pain. Yes, that was exactly it.
So it, it was funny enough, it was while I was in Graduate
School to become a licensed mental health counselor that I
(36:22):
began studying the nervous system.
But I mean, this will might seemsurprising, but I was not
studying it as part of my studies like, and I wasn't even
initially thinking of it in thatway.
The reason I was studying it wasbecause I was, I had been
experiencing migraine headaches for the last 10 years when I was
(36:44):
working in reality TV, doing totally different work as a
video editor. And then when I left my TV
career and went to grad school to become a therapist, I thought
that the headaches would subsidebecause, you know, it's like
leaving this very high stress, high pressure career.
And I thought the stress is going to go down, the headaches
(37:05):
are going to go down. But the opposite happened.
And the way I understand it now,I certainly was confused by it
at the time, but the way I understand it now is that I
thought I was going to be stepping into a new environment
where I would feel free to be me.
(37:27):
I would feel like I could just be fully self expressed and talk
about my feelings and just, you know, feel all this ease.
But there were a lot of great things about grad school, but
there were also, you know, a lotof rules and a lot of things I
didn't agree with and a lot of situations where I felt like I
had to sort of hold my tongue inorder to pass the class.
(37:50):
And so coming into it, like, ready to just open up and, like,
melt. But then getting there and kind
of like tightening up and contracting, I think that that
just sort of sent my nervous system into a spiral.
So the, the migraines started toreally take over my life at that
point. And it finally, it hadn't been a
(38:13):
huge part of my life up until then.
But when it really started to take over, you know, like
anybody who has a symptom that'sreally taking over their life, I
finally went to Google and was like, what the heck do I do
about this? And I have a holistic
orientation. So I'm looking for, you know,
things that match that. And I discovered this whole
(38:35):
world of mind body medicine and specifically nervous system
education that was helping otherpeople to recover from symptoms
like migraine. And it ultimately helped me
recover. So that was my motivation was to
to fix the problem I was having of of migraine headaches.
(38:56):
You know, something you said that was interesting was the
idea of, you know, I went to school and I thought this was
going to be freeing and instead there were these different
rules. That's actually something I hear
a lot from people now. And I also think about the, I
think there's pluses of that andI think there's minuses because
(39:18):
if you want to be, let's say, a brain surgeon, well, there are
definite rules on how you put capillaries back together, you
know, and you better know them, you know, but it's almost like
there's a in a lot of different industries.
And it's also where I wonder about the impact of the Internet
that people are saying, well, I want to skip that part of the
learning, but it might be an essential part of the learning
(39:42):
because when you learn it and you have to suffer a little
through what you learn, you learn different forms of
discipline going forward. And it's also how you decide
what you like going forward or not.
Yes, I completely agree with youand especially on the brain
surgeon point, but but also I'm really glad that I went to grad
school. I'm glad that I went through the
(40:03):
process of getting licensed. I learned so much, and a lot of
it was learning what I didn't agree with.
But I, you know, coming to deciding that you disagree with
something based on deep knowledge of that thing you're
disagreeing with is very different from just skipping
(40:24):
over it. That's an excellent point.
Yeah. And for me, that for me, that
really helped me build a lot of confidence and self trust.
I'm not saying that everyone needs to get licensed in order
to work with people. Then as a coach, I work.
I have been the client of many coaches who don't have therapy
(40:46):
licenses. They have other life experience
and expertise in training and they're fantastic.
But for me, that was really a helpful part of my developing
self trust as a coach actually. Well, I think your, your
background is actually what drewme to want to speak with you.
I get tons of people reaching out to me who are psychologists
(41:11):
in different fields and I'm really looking for experts in
certain areas. And then I, you know, get a lot,
obviously the hurdles to becoming a coach are a lot lower
than the hurdles of getting licensed.
OK, so that let's just put that on the table.
There's actually no hurdle to becoming a coach because it's
not a regulated field. Meaning like there are all kinds
(41:32):
of certifications you can get ifyou want to, but there are no
legal repercussions for just waking up one day and putting up
a website and an advertisement and saying I'm a coach.
Whereas if you put up a website and you know Psychology Today
listing saying I'm a psychotherapist and you aren't
(41:54):
licensed, that's a problem and you can get in trouble for it.
And let's talk about that since you're you said I'm giving up my
license over here on therapy side and there's no restrictions
to being a coach. How do you think people in
general, obviously it would be great if they called you, but if
(42:17):
you're if you're not in their, you know, their issue is not
your core expertise. How would you go about telling
people to look for that coach ortherapist that's going to be?
Oh yeah, like, like my advice onon what people should look for.
Yeah, yeah, people do ask me this a lot.
(42:39):
And often times people ask me like, if I, especially if
they're looking for a therapist,they'll say what, what modality
should I look for 'cause there are all these different
modalities and you know, they know that I, I'm familiar with
these modalities. So what do I think would be best
for them? And you know, if, if there is a
(43:01):
particular mode, if I know them reasonably well and there is a
particular modality I think theywould like, I'll mention that to
them. But then the caveat is the most
important thing is how you feel when you're having a
conversation with this person. So prioritize that over what
training or modality they say that they use.
(43:23):
Because if you feel safe with someone and supported by them,
that means your nervous system is feeling safe.
And that means in their presence, you're able to soften
and open up enough to for changes to happen in your
(43:47):
nervous system, in your body andyour mind and your spirit.
Like that means it's an environment in which you're
going to be able to open up enough to make the changes that
you want to make. Whereas if you have a
conversation with this person and you're like, their resume
really impresses me and it's like ticks all my boxes.
(44:08):
And when I'm, but when I'm speaking to them, like I feel
all tense and self-conscious andI don't really feel like I trust
them on a gut level or I feel like I have to hide parts of
myself. It's just not going to be a
context in which you're going tobe able to do the work you want
to do. If you were going to Fast
forward into five years into thefuture with the changes of
(44:31):
what's going on in healthcare insurance, psychology, and being
a therapist and licensed therapist versus a coach, what
would your crystal ball, your guts say of where those changes
are going to go? Just out of curiosity?
A fun a fun question. I mean, I don't have a crystal
(44:52):
ball, obviously, but where whereI see that things are going at
the present is deregulation, meaning that a lot of people are
leaving the licensure world to be free and do their own thing
and not be limited by a lot of the restrictions that exist in
(45:14):
that world. And the other thing that I see
is happening has to do with social media, like people are
finding coaches that they want to work with on platforms like
Instagram or through podcasts like this one.
You know, they're, they just have access to getting to know
(45:35):
people before deciding that theywant to work with them.
And so, you know, I think thingsare moving more and more in the
direction of things being based on forming personal
relationships with people ratherthan with licensing boards or
(45:57):
with names of well known modalities.
What that will look like, I'm really not sure because, you
know, somehow the the world of licensure is going to have to
adapt and yeah, evolve. That it's certainly an
(46:20):
intriguing thought and I think it's going to shift.
And where are those shifts fall out?
I'm not sure. But one of the things I think
about a lot because I'm constantly reading what's going
on in the field of psychology, is I'll equate it to a makeup
artist, OK, an Instagram makeup artist.
(46:41):
I've been on set a lot of times doing commercials,
advertisements and ads. And a few times someone would
say, well, I hired this makeup artist because I've seen their
Instagram page. It looks great.
Well, that makeup artist comes on set and within 10 minutes the
set is entirely destroyed. The tension level has gone up
(47:01):
exponentially because that makeup artist was really good at
doing their own makeup. Yeah, but they weren't good at
doing makeup on, let's say, somebody with a different skin
tone or different skin texture or a different age skin or
worse. They only bought their makeup
kit for their own, their own self instead of the entire
(47:24):
makeup kit for a realm of ethnicities, ages, and
everything else that a professional would bring.
And I know it's say a stretch onan analogy, but it's not.
And when everyone starts gettingtheir advice from Instagram and
I have a very big community, over 1,000,000 people read my
(47:45):
contact content the month, I wouldn't necessarily tell them.
And I tell them constantly, Don't take advice from me.
I don't know you, you don't knowme.
So I am sharing thoughts I have,but I certainly don't suggest
you. You know, it's like my I maybe
because I grew up with a mother who said, OK, so if John jumps
(48:06):
off the Brooklyn Bridge, you're going to do it too.
You know, so I were, I wonder about this.
I wonder about it for future generations, grabbing their info
and thinking just because someone has a lot of followers,
they're the person I should listen to.
I I think that's wrong. So I'm going to share the a flip
side. To the I love it.
Yes, that's what that's our goalin these discussions.
(48:28):
Yeah, I, I, I these are the mostinteresting kind of in
conversations, right? When when we're not like exactly
on the same page because we get to learn from each other and
like. And we can do it without
shouting, which is the goal of this show.
When isn't that really what the world needs, especially right
now? So, you know, I, I've been a, a
(48:53):
therapy client since before thisage of social media.
And when I first went about looking for a therapist, all,
all I really knew about them wasthat they had a license.
And I read their brief bio in Psychology Today.
(49:15):
If that was even if they even had one, because I remember my,
my first real therapist, I just my best friend was seeing a
therapist and he said, you know,can your therapist recommend a
therapist to me? Which is a perfectly legit way
of going about it. So I got this recommendation.
I went to see her and, you know,I didn't even, I wasn't even
(49:39):
going to shop around because howdo you even shop around in those
days? And I was pretty fortunate.
It was I, I benefited from that therapy relationship.
But I know lots of other people who had similar experiences
where they just, you know, they're like, well, that
person's licensed and they were recommended to me and they, you
could have any range of different kind of experience.
(50:00):
I know people have had horrific experiences and they didn't know
that this wasn't unusual becausethere's no context.
They're not seeing other people on social media talk about what
a good therapist is, right? They they don't.
Yeah, they're they're not hearing other people's
experiences. Whereas nowadays, when I want
(50:24):
someone to help me with an issue, like struggling with my
role as a stepmom, for example, I can listen to all these
different podcasts, interviews that this person spoke on.
I can read everything they've ever written on Instagram.
So I really get a sense of what is their point of view, what is
their style, Who are they as a person?
(50:45):
I can kind of get to know them and make an informed decision in
a way that I couldn't have before social media and
podcasting. That's a very interesting
perspective. And you you raised some very
good points and I've been speaking with Anna Holtzman and
you are really just very fascinating.
(51:06):
I enjoyed every aspect of this conversation truly from start to
finish. Me too, this is just a really
enlivening conversation. Thank you so much.
Everybody, I'm Diane Grassell. This has been the silver
disobedience perception Dynamicspodcast and we've been recording
in iconic Manhattan center. We're in TV Studio 2 where, Oh
(51:28):
my gosh, some greats have eitherpracticed here or played here or
filmed shows here. So it's a true honor to be here.
Anna Holtzman was my guest. We had a great conversation and
all her information is below. And I highly encourage you
follow her on social media, get in touch, say hello, tell her
(51:49):
how much you enjoyed her episode, and please hit
subscribe. I'm Diane Grissel again, please
hit subscribe and share this with your friends and come back
often. Thank you.
Hello everyone. I'm Diane Grissell, also known
as Silver Disobedience, and thisis the Silver Disobedience
Perception Dynamics podcast where we explore all kinds of
operating systems within society.
And today I have a very interesting guest.
She got her master's in counseling and then went on to
(00:22):
get licensed as a counselor, butshe's giving up that license.
Her name is Anna Holtzman, and we're going to talk to her about
shifts in psychology, therapy judgments, self worth issues,
how these things shift, what's changing within psychology and
(00:45):
how the landscape's changing. So please say hi to Anna
Holtzman. Hi, Diane, thank you so much for
having me here. I am very happy to have you.
As we talked a little bit beforethis show started, the entire
landscape of psychology, which is basically a relatively new
science, is changing on all different cylinders for a lot of
(01:11):
different reasons. Tell me what some of your
thoughts are on the current state of psychology.
Yeah, Well, part of me, the current state of psychology
could be a pretty broad topic. But I know that one of the
things we were chatting about just earlier is that for a long
time, therapists were trained tobe kind of a blank slate, you
(01:36):
know, not to really share anything about themselves
personally, maybe even not to share their own emotions.
And that is something that's changing quite a bit.
And I'm a big fan of that change.
And it's it's one of the reasonsI really like, I work as both a
therapist and a coach, but I'm no longer taking on new therapy
(01:59):
clients. I'm phasing that out.
And I really enjoy working in under the umbrella of coaching
where it's kind of anything goes.
You know, you can trust your owninstincts and use your own life
experience as part of the work. And I think that that's a really
(02:19):
powerful way that we relate as human beings.
You know, like, have you ever had a conversation with any
human being other than a therapist where you felt heard
and connected and, you know, like just engaged in human
connection where they were just sitting there like a blank slate
and not sharing any of their ownhumanity with you?
(02:42):
Well, it's an interesting shift in psychology and I'm not 100%
on board with it. Yeah, I love, I love that we
have different tastes on this. And when I first read a, you
know, when I first read about itin Psychology Today and I had
seen that all these this new younger breed of therapists are
all saying no, we have sharing sessions.
(03:04):
I share how I feel about this and the client shares how they
feel. And my thought was why you're
bringing your opinions into it. And the idea about a good
therapy session is one that someone's not judging you.
They're not giving their opinions.
They're letting you explore whatyou think by asking provocative,
(03:26):
thought provoking questions. So I think there's a I'm curious
as to where you think the benefits are of sharing your
insights. I mean, that's interesting.
I, I don't often share my own opinions on things in a session,
but things I will share are, youknow, if I've had a life
experience that relates to what someone I'm working with is
(03:49):
experiencing, I'll share. You know, I'll say something
like I'm just in AI, you know, I'm a coach, but I'm also just
another human being. And, you know, the feelings that
you're having totally make senseto me because I've had those
feelings as well. And I it just helps to to
(04:10):
normalize what the person is feeling, you know?
But in a therapy session, suppose your feelings were
repulsed by what someone shared.So if you enter an area.
If you enter an area. Which is why I don't think it
ever belongs. I mean, when you are in a
situation where a therapist is sharing their in some, in some
(04:34):
ways it's easier you're getting their approval or your their
reprimand or dislike if someone is if that's the environment
you're in. I mean, that's an interesting I,
I'm like, that's just so different from how I, how I work
or really how I think about it when it's kind of like a, an all
or nothing. Like I'm, I'm not going to share
(04:57):
every feeling that I have with aclient.
I'm going to share things that Ithink can be helpful and
supportive to them, that can help them feel less alone with
their experience. That can, you know, help them
feel less isolated in their experience.
That can help them feel like they're a part of humanity and
(05:19):
not some alien who's broken and weird and disconnected from
everyone. So I'm not going to share things
just to throw spaghetti at the wall, right?
I'm going to share things that Ifeel would support them.
And if we're? Just where do you draw that
line? How does how does a therapist
(05:40):
draw that line though? You know, which is what I wonder
when I see this as a new trend, and I'm not saying I think it's
totally right or wrong. I want to have a discussion on
it because it is such a huge shift.
And you know, I mean, some people will say, well, I, I
didn't want to do therapy because I feel like the person's
(06:01):
just listening to me. But a good therapist is
listening and asking thought provoking questions to make the
person understand themselves. The focus is I'm paying you and
the focus is 100% on me and helping me understand myself.
When it starts to become that sharing dynamic, I don't see how
judgment can't enter the equation one way or another.
(06:24):
Well, judgement can enter the equation even if you're not
sharing anything verbally about yourself.
I mean, judgement can come out in a vibe, in a look.
And it usually does come out if,if the therapist is judging you,
I mean, you're going to know even if they don't say something
(06:46):
that tells you that. But you were asking about where
do you draw the line? And I think, I think this goes
to something that you talk abouta lot, which is like rules and
you know, codification. And I think it's really whether
it's therapy or coaching, it's arelationship.
(07:08):
So I really draw on the relationship skills that I use
in any other relationship. I'm, I'm noticing what I'm
feeling and I'm using my intuition and I OfferUp
something and I check in with the client like here's what's
coming up, here's a reflection that's coming up for me.
(07:32):
How does this land for you? And if it lands in a way that's
not helpful, like that's information that helps us figure
out where to go next. How do you differentiate between
when you think I'm wearing my therapist hat versus my coaching
hat? Yeah, it's, that's a really
interesting question, people. I've have asked me that a lot
(07:54):
and I've sort of 2 answers to that.
One answer is that I'm when I'm working with someone, I'm
working with someone and it's about presence and it's about
relationship. And it's not about whether the
title I'm being given in that moment is therapist or coach.
So I really attuned to the person that I'm working with.
(08:17):
And so in that sense, I'm kind of working in the same way,
whether it's called therapy or coaching.
And there's just like this legaldelineation between the two.
You know, if it's therapy, they can get reimbursed by their
their insurance provider. And if it's therapy, I can only
work with folks who reside in the state of New York because
(08:40):
that's where my license is. But in another sense, there's
something in the back of my mindthat just knows, you know, that
what's happening right now is being called therapy or that
knows what's happening right nowis being called coaching.
And that very subtly impacts me and how I show up in those
(09:05):
sessions because when when I know like this is therapy, all
this stuff that I heard in grad school kind of comes in and it's
not in the foreground, but it's somewhere there in the
background. And there's all this stuff
about, you know, there's kind oflike a right way and a wrong way
to do things. And well, if you do this, you
(09:26):
could use your lose your license.
And it's not that there isn't a purpose to all of these
guidelines and education, but there's also, and I've spoken to
many therapists who have had a similar experience.
I experienced the, the atmosphere in Graduate School as
(09:47):
having quite a bit of like fear mongering, like, you know, if
you step outside the side the line, you could, you're doing
things wrong, You could really harm the client.
If you share anything about yourself, it could harm the
client relationship or and so there's just this kind of like.
Subtle. Weird.
So we're back to that idea of sharing about yourself.
(10:09):
Crossing the line, yes. So, and that's just one of the
ways in which you know. But but that is a big area in
therapy because it is, you know,the sharing about yourself
crossing the line. And I really wonder how much,
you know, social media, which has disintermediated so many
(10:29):
industries and changed how people think in so many, many
areas. And all of a sudden, you know
what, when I used to, you know, when I'd work with public
relations clients and they'd say, wait a second, we need to
that newspaper to retract that statement.
And I'd say, OK, well, we can ask them to retract it.
But they're, I think it was maybe Thomas Jefferson who said,
(10:52):
you know, never go to battle with people who buy ink by the
barrel, you know, because a newspaper has unlimited pages to
attack you if that's what they want to do because they're extra
aggravated. You just annoyed them.
And the Internet, we've seen that crowd mentality where
everyone has a voice. Anyone can say anything they
want with no restriction whatsoever.
(11:13):
And I really wonder how that impacted psychology.
You know, are we raising a groupof new psychologists that have
grown up with, well, I can say whatever I want and therefore in
my sessions, because I do think it creates a false, a very false
sense of importance, which is a whole other discussion.
That's that's so interesting because I also I have like a
(11:35):
completely different take on this.
Let's hear it. And I'm very active on social
media and I love it. I think it's a great thing.
I think that, you know, I mean social media, just like the
printed word, it can be used forfor good, bad and everything in
between. It's how you use it and how you
interact with it. But I feel that social media has
(11:59):
really democratized therapy. It has taken away the sense of,
you know, there are the authorities who are going to
tell you if you were well or unwell or who are going to tell
you what's right and wrong. And it's really opened things up
for everyone to interact and have their, you know, just
(12:21):
survey a wide range of differentideas and express their own
ideas. And to me it's a tool for
developing self trust, which howI believe is.
How how to help teach self trust?
I'm curious. To me, it teaches self trust
because it it takes us out of this context that we formerly
(12:45):
were in where there were like, you know, several famous books
by famous psychologists or, or therapists.
And those were the people that we perceived as having all the
authority. And they know better than I do
because they're the only ones who have a voice and they're the
(13:06):
only ones whose voices I can find.
And I don't have a platform to have a voice.
So that means my voice doesn't matter and I should just listen
to them. Whereas in this world of social
media, sure, it can be used in all kinds of different ways, but
one of the ways in which it's used is it it shows you that
(13:31):
everyone has a voice and can useit if they want to.
And you have a voice too and canuse it if you want to.
There are 1,000,000 zillion different ideas out there about
different things. Like there is no one word of
authority on what therapy modality is the best.
Or, you know, there's just lots of different ideas out there and
(13:56):
they're there for you to synthesize and come up with your
with your own feelings and viewsabout things.
That's, that's a very intriguingperspective because I do believe
in the disintermediation that's occurred from the Internet and
particularly social media. We also have a point where
there's so much self diagnosis going on and the running joke of
(14:25):
a Google doctor. But and then where are those
boundaries that you draw on social media or are there none?
Do you feel it's a free for all?You know, because you're you're
sometimes wearing the therapist hat and sometimes you're not.
(14:45):
Well, when I, when I use social media, I use it as a coach and I
don't even, I mean, I, I may mention, you know, as part of a
story that I, I am licensed as atherapist and that's part of my
background, but I'm not, I don'tuse the letters after my name on
my Instagram profile, for example.
(15:07):
How do you define the differencebetween a therapist and a coach
from your perspective? Yeah.
You know, the way that I would define the difference is
probably very different from howmost other therapists or coaches
would define it, because I define it as, to me, this is
(15:29):
controversial to most people. To me, it's largely a difference
in legal specifications and marketing.
It's a difference in marketing because marketing yourself as a
therapist with the letters afterthe name projects a certain kind
(15:50):
of image and there's a certain kind of client who's looking for
a particular style of support that is attracted to that type
of marketing. Whereas if I market myself as a
coach, I'll just say very broadly, and there are tons of
exceptions to this, but a clientwho's looking for a therapist is
(16:16):
generally looking to bring a problem to this therapist and
get this therapist expertise in solving that problem.
And they are looking to the therapist as an authority who
knows more than them. Someone who is looking for a
(16:41):
coach, I would say is more oftensomeone who has a particular
goal in mind, less about something they want to solve and
get rid of like a problem, but more more often a goal that they
want to reach or achieve. And they are looking for someone
who's maybe like walked the pathalready who might know more by
(17:05):
virtue of being further along onthe path that they want to walk
on than they presently are. So kind of like a a mentor and
they're looking to do the work and have someone's guidance and
support. I'm curious, you prefaced that
by saying this is controversial.What part of that statement was
controversial? Because it sounded like a good
(17:27):
differentiator. I think the controversial part
is that I see the difference more as being about the
marketing aspect. Whereas what I generally hear
from therapists and coaches, butparticularly from therapists, is
that, you know, a therapist is first of all, delving into the
(17:47):
past and also, you know, has particular training so that they
are qualified to work on certaindiagnosable disorders and where
as a coach is future focused. But also they're, you know,
they're not qualified to deal with certain diagnosable issues.
(18:09):
And those should be left for a therapist.
I think there is, you know, there are, there are situations
it's, it's very important to know the limits of your scope.
Honestly, even if you're, if youare a licensed therapist, like
I'm not an expert in eating disorders, for example.
(18:30):
So that's really out of my scope.
It would be irresponsible for meto take on a client to say, you
know, I'm going to help you healfrom this eating disorder.
I don't have that training or that expertise, but I know
coaches who have great expertisein eating disorders and and tons
(18:52):
of experience in that field who help people in that realm.
I think what's, what's controversial is in my opinion,
it's about the relationship you have with the client and your
personal area of expertise more so than to me, it's, it's really
not that important if you have the letters after your name or
(19:14):
not. Do you have but legally you
know? Do you have coaching clients who
ask if they can run you through run their invoices through their
therapy bills? I've had that question, but I'm
very, very clear with that with folks like right at the
beginning of working together, I, I say, you know, what we're
doing is coaching. And one of the things that means
(19:36):
is that this is not billable through insurance.
When you think of the shifts going on, why do you think
they're happening? Why do you think there are more
coaches coming up? Is it that they don't want to go
through school like you did, they don't want to deal with the
licensing? Or is it just plain a different
mentality? I think it's a different
(19:56):
mentality. And what do you think that is?
I think it's a different mentality and what what I see is
there are a lot of people in thefield who similar to me.
Our do have a therapy license and they're either they're
leaving their license to go intocoaching or they're adding
coaching and they're doing both.And in the broadest terms, the
(20:22):
the main reason is it just givesyou a lot more freedom in a lot
of different ways. It gives you more freedom.
I feel it gives you more freedomto be yourself more
authentically. And to me, that's a really
useful tool in helping people grow when I'm being myself
authentically. Like what do every one of my
(20:44):
clients want? They want to be themselves
authentically at the end of the day, you know, whether they're
coming to me because they they want to heal from chronic pain,
which was a specialty of mine for about five years.
Or whether they're coming to me because they want to grow their
own business or they want to write a book, or they want to
(21:05):
put their art out into the world, which are some of the
things that people are coming tome for.
And now at the, you know, the underpinning of it all is they
want to feel like they are beingtheir authentic selves, that
they're authentically expressingthemselves and sharing that with
the world. And so if I'm not doing that as
(21:27):
I'm working with them, it doesn't really, it's not
conducive to them growing into that either.
Well, that to me is where I would draw the line between
therapy and coaching. If you're, if you're going to
share your experiences to me andto guide someone, I would think
(21:50):
that leans a little more into the coaching.
I mean, because even leading a group, you know, you know, even
if it was a group discussion, it's still you have the
moderator who's leading it. That is not necessarily sharing
their, his or her opinion. Yeah, yeah, I coaching is
(22:14):
certainly a lot more conducive to the coach sharing themselves
authentically. And I think that's one of the
big reasons that a lot of people, whether they're coming
from being a therapist and having a license or not, are
being drawn to coaching now. And some of the other reasons
(22:35):
are, as I was mentioning before,when you're a therapist, you can
only work with clients who are residing in the state in which
you are licensed. And it's kind of a pain in the
butt to get licensed in multiplestates, although people do it,
but it's just more paperwork. Do you think this shift happened
(22:56):
when people started to work fromhome?
Yes, yes, that's exactly what I was going to say.
Yeah. So when the COVID lockdown
started, we all went remote. My work went remote.
I was not happy about the reasons that was happening, but
I was happy to go remote becauseit just gives you a lot more
(23:18):
freedom and flexibility in lots of ways.
And then you start thinking, well, why am I only working with
people who live in my state? There's so many people around
the world who need and want my help and it just feels so
limiting to be limited to those who live locally when, you know,
we're we're working with each other on Zoom, so you could be
(23:39):
anywhere. What?
How do you define your work set today?
Let's say in the coaching area, What would be your area of
expertise? So my area of expertise is the
nervous system. I work through a nervous system
lens and the people that I work with are creatives, coaches and
entrepreneurs, people who are very passionate about what they
(24:05):
do. They're people who are a lot
like me. They're they're, they have big
passions about what they do. This very strong need to express
themselves authentically to be seen and heard.
And also they're sensitive people.
So along with that big passion is like very intense fears of
(24:25):
saying what they really want to say, of putting themselves out
there in a more authentic way, of truly letting themselves be
seen. And so I am helping those people
learn how to work with their nervous system so they can kind
of dance with this passion and fear.
(24:46):
They can help them work togetherand not have the the fear just
be blocking the passion and be in conflict that way.
You know, it's interesting. One of the words you use a lot
is authentic and authenticity. And they say in psychology
courses, when someone repeats the same word over and over
again, that's the word you should probably pay attention to
(25:07):
because you're getting hidden clues about the person you're
speaking with. Yeah.
So considering you use the word authentic a few times in this
interview, what does that mean? Because it's, in many ways, it's
a very, in my opinion, it's an extremely overused word that has
lost a lot of its meaning because it's so overused.
(25:28):
I mean, people want to be just plain jerks and say, well, I'm
being authentic. And it's no, you're being a
jerk. You know, your, your rights have
gone beyond. So how do you define
authenticity? Here's how I'll define what it
means to me. And I'll I'll describe this
using the lens of the nervous system, which is the lens that I
(25:52):
find really useful. So the nervous system, our
nervous systems are, are pretty simple.
Like they're, they're pretty. They're very similar to like the
nervous system. Primitive touch something, it's
hot, you know it in a second and.
So you could say there's kind oflike a switch in our nervous
(26:15):
system and it has two basic settings.
One setting is fear, threat response, and the other setting
I'll call flow. When we feel connected with
ourselves and we're able to connect with other people, we're
able to think expansively and consider that there are many
different options. We can feel like we're in the
(26:37):
creative flow. We feel in tune with our bodies.
We feel present. That's what I mean by
authenticity. When you feel connected to
yourself and to others and to your to your flow of energy.
Where do you think the boundaries are in authenticity
these days? What?
(26:58):
Do you mean by that? Well.
You know, someone could say I feel very connected with myself
and therefore I feel I can say whatever I want.
I personally, my opinion is thatthat I can say whatever I want
like without any consideration for how that might affect other
(27:20):
people. I feel that comes from a fear
place to me like that fear setting.
When we're in that fear mode, wetend to either suppress what we
think and feel or we express it explosively.
Like we, we push it through, butwhen we're in that flow setting,
(27:45):
we express things relationally. So we express to connect with
other people. And when if I'm just going to
say whatever the hell I want without caring how that's going
to impact other people, that's not communicating relationally
and that's not connecting, that's projecting.
(28:07):
Right, so there is that, there is that line you see in
projecting verse. How would you define projecting
since you just said it? Yeah, and I wouldn't even see it
as a line. I would.
I would. I see it as like there's left
and there's right, and those arekind of like the two fear
directions and then there's up, which would be the flow
(28:30):
directions. So like fear.
Yeah. It leads to either suppressing
ourselves or just black. You know, just like shouting at
someone instead of communicatingwith someone.
What do you think of the expression Think Before you
Speak? Where would the acronym is?
(28:51):
Is it thoughtful, hurtful, Yeah.Intelligent, necessary, or kind?
I mean, I, I think it's a good policy and I would, maybe, I
would maybe tweak it for myself to feel before you speak, like
feel. And you know, I'll feel into my
body like 'cause I can tell by sensing into my body if I'm in
(29:13):
fear or if I'm in flow. And I don't want to speak from
fear. If I'm in fear, I want to come
have a conversation with myself 1st and melt through that fear
and get into flow before I express this to anyone else.
What do you think comes first, the feeling or the thought?
It really depends. It depends, and it depends how
(29:36):
tuned in or not tuned in we are to our feelings which are, which
are in our bodies, like fear. If I want to know what I'm
feeling, I'll ask myself, like, is my body feeling like it's
contracting or does it feel open?
And if it's contracting, I mean,there's nothing wrong with that.
(29:59):
It's perfectly natural and normal and it's a sign that
there there's some fear going through me, which is a common
thing. I mean, we feel fear about a
bazillion times a day. I do agree with you.
I think there's a difference andthere's a time 11 precedes the
other. I would hate to rule out
instincts. You know, one of my favorite
books was The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker when he talks
(30:22):
about, you know, if you were in a dark building and you're about
to get in an elevator and you see someone in the elevator, if
you have that split second instinct of fear, don't get in.
Just say, you know, turn around,you forgot your keys.
You don't have to explain it, but he talks about how most
people overrule that instinct and they get in the elevator
(30:45):
anyway. And so those are times I think
you absolutely have a feeling 1st.
And then there's times people ruminate.
They get in the middle of a thought and that thought becomes
obsessive to some degree or another, and now they're having
little feelings of what they cando, what they can't do.
You know how things are going tounfold.
(31:06):
Yeah, absolutely. I kind of feel like it's a
chicken and egg thing, you know,like I think of the body
reaction to fear and the mind reaction to fear as just
different, different expressionsof fear.
You know, when I am in fear, I'll know it because maybe my
(31:27):
body's contracting. Maybe I feel like my shoulders
are tight, or I have a headache,or I might notice it because I'm
talking to myself in a really mean way.
Or maybe it's all the above. But these are all just
expressions. These are all the different ways
that fear makes itself known to me.
One of the things you said was interesting.
(31:48):
You said you know, you'll with your coaching clients, for
example, you might share some ofyour experiences.
Yeah. And I often think about
professional sports, which I've never played and I'm completely
uncoordinated, so no one's signing me up at any phase of my
life for those. But I've often thought about,
you know, the coaches that played the game and the coaches
(32:09):
that didn't. And if I was a player at the,
you know, top of my game, which what it takes to be a
professional athlete in this country, it's a, you know,
funnel that really narrows it down.
You know, would I, would I be able to shelve my ego and listen
to a coach that maybe had never played the game but really knew
the game? Well, yeah.
(32:32):
What do you think about that when it comes to coaching
clients? If you're coaching a business
leader, where where your. Yeah, you know, it's
interesting. So I have 2 answers to this.
One is like when I look for a coach, I specifically look for
someone who has already been on the path that I'm beginning to
(32:57):
walk on. For example, as I mentioned, I
had been working in the area of helping people recover from
chronic pain, stress related chronic pain syndromes.
And that's something I got into because I had struggled with
migraine headaches for like 10 years.
And I recovered through the workof chronic pain therapists who
(33:24):
speak a lot about their own recovery on podcasts and stuff
like that. And that just helped me so much
because they were showing me what, you know, not exactly what
my path was going to look like, but what a path could look like
because they had been on the path and then they had, you
know, subsequently led many clients on that path.
(33:47):
I work with two coaches at the moment.
I have a business coach that I work with, and I work with her
because of her experience in business and her success in
business. And I am a stepmom and so the
life coach that I work with withfor, you know, on all kinds of
stuff, emotions all, etcetera. I first started working with her
(34:11):
because she is a stepmom coach, because she is a stepmom and
she, you know, uses all of her experience to help other
stepmoms who are just starting out in that role.
So on the one hand, I think it'svery, very helpful when the
coach has had a very relevant experience to you.
(34:33):
And a lot of the people that come to work with me, a lot of
them are creatives and I have a creative background.
I used to work in film and TV, and before that I was a
journalist and worked in publishing at the same time.
One of my favorite clients is a corporate lawyer, and that work
is like completely out of my realm.
(34:55):
I've never worked in that type of setting.
I've never worked in law. But we're a great fit.
And I think what makes us a great fit is that I bring the
nervous system lens to the humanexperiences that this client is
having. And while I may not have
(35:15):
experience with that context, I certainly have experiences with
feeling intimidated at a meetingfull of other people even though
I'm on their same level. But somehow I'm not.
Like my nervous system doesn't know that I have the same level
of authority, you know? I really find it fascinating how
you, when you speak, you zoom inon the nervous system, which is
(35:38):
phenomenal and fascinating and endlessly worthy of exploration.
And I've never heard of something, you know, I think of
it as, you know, instant reactions to things.
And it's very interesting how you're at, you know, pain
pleasure, you know, the the scope of it.
But it's very interesting how you are saying you're bringing
(36:01):
that into your counseling process.
Yeah, I'm. How did you zoom in on that?
Because of the pain. Yes, that was exactly it.
So it, it was funny enough, it was while I was in Graduate
School to become a licensed mental health counselor that I
(36:22):
began studying the nervous system.
But I mean, this will might seemsurprising, but I was not
studying it as part of my studies like, and I wasn't even
initially thinking of it in thatway.
The reason I was studying it wasbecause I was, I had been
experiencing migraine headaches for the last 10 years when I was
(36:44):
working in reality TV, doing totally different work as a
video editor. And then when I left my TV
career and went to grad school to become a therapist, I thought
that the headaches would subsidebecause, you know, it's like
leaving this very high stress, high pressure career.
And I thought the stress is going to go down, the headaches
(37:05):
are going to go down. But the opposite happened.
And the way I understand it now,I certainly was confused by it
at the time, but the way I understand it now is that I
thought I was going to be stepping into a new environment
where I would feel free to be me.
(37:27):
I would feel like I could just be fully self expressed and talk
about my feelings and just, you know, feel all this ease.
But there were a lot of great things about grad school, but
there were also, you know, a lotof rules and a lot of things I
didn't agree with and a lot of situations where I felt like I
had to sort of hold my tongue inorder to pass the class.
(37:50):
And so coming into it, like, ready to just open up and, like,
melt. But then getting there and kind
of like tightening up and contracting, I think that that
just sort of sent my nervous system into a spiral.
So the, the migraines started toreally take over my life at that
point. And it finally, it hadn't been a
(38:13):
huge part of my life up until then.
But when it really started to take over, you know, like
anybody who has a symptom that'sreally taking over their life, I
finally went to Google and was like, what the heck do I do
about this? And I have a holistic
orientation. So I'm looking for, you know,
things that match that. And I discovered this whole
(38:35):
world of mind body medicine and specifically nervous system
education that was helping otherpeople to recover from symptoms
like migraine. And it ultimately helped me
recover. So that was my motivation was to
to fix the problem I was having of of migraine headaches.
(38:56):
You know, something you said that was interesting was the
idea of, you know, I went to school and I thought this was
going to be freeing and instead there were these different
rules. That's actually something I hear
a lot from people now. And I also think about the, I
think there's pluses of that andI think there's minuses because
(39:18):
if you want to be, let's say, a brain surgeon, well, there are
definite rules on how you put capillaries back together, you
know, and you better know them, you know, but it's almost like
there's a in a lot of different industries.
And it's also where I wonder about the impact of the Internet
that people are saying, well, I want to skip that part of the
learning, but it might be an essential part of the learning
(39:42):
because when you learn it and you have to suffer a little
through what you learn, you learn different forms of
discipline going forward. And it's also how you decide
what you like going forward or not.
Yes, I completely agree with youand especially on the brain
surgeon point, but but also I'm really glad that I went to grad
school. I'm glad that I went through the
(40:03):
process of getting licensed. I learned so much, and a lot of
it was learning what I didn't agree with.
But I, you know, coming to deciding that you disagree with
something based on deep knowledge of that thing you're
disagreeing with is very different from just skipping
(40:24):
over it. That's an excellent point.
Yeah. And for me, that for me, that
really helped me build a lot of confidence and self trust.
I'm not saying that everyone needs to get licensed in order
to work with people. Then as a coach, I work.
I have been the client of many coaches who don't have therapy
(40:46):
licenses. They have other life experience
and expertise in training and they're fantastic.
But for me, that was really a helpful part of my developing
self trust as a coach actually. Well, I think your, your
background is actually what drewme to want to speak with you.
I get tons of people reaching out to me who are psychologists
(41:11):
in different fields and I'm really looking for experts in
certain areas. And then I, you know, get a lot,
obviously the hurdles to becoming a coach are a lot lower
than the hurdles of getting licensed.
OK, so that let's just put that on the table.
There's actually no hurdle to becoming a coach because it's
not a regulated field. Meaning like there are all kinds
(41:32):
of certifications you can get ifyou want to, but there are no
legal repercussions for just waking up one day and putting up
a website and an advertisement and saying I'm a coach.
Whereas if you put up a website and you know Psychology Today
listing saying I'm a psychotherapist and you aren't
(41:54):
licensed, that's a problem and you can get in trouble for it.
And let's talk about that since you're you said I'm giving up my
license over here on therapy side and there's no restrictions
to being a coach. How do you think people in
general, obviously it would be great if they called you, but if
(42:17):
you're if you're not in their, you know, their issue is not
your core expertise. How would you go about telling
people to look for that coach ortherapist that's going to be?
Oh yeah, like, like my advice onon what people should look for.
Yeah, yeah, people do ask me this a lot.
(42:39):
And often times people ask me like, if I, especially if
they're looking for a therapist,they'll say what, what modality
should I look for 'cause there are all these different
modalities and you know, they know that I, I'm familiar with
these modalities. So what do I think would be best
for them? And you know, if, if there is a
(43:01):
particular mode, if I know them reasonably well and there is a
particular modality I think theywould like, I'll mention that to
them. But then the caveat is the most
important thing is how you feel when you're having a
conversation with this person. So prioritize that over what
training or modality they say that they use.
(43:23):
Because if you feel safe with someone and supported by them,
that means your nervous system is feeling safe.
And that means in their presence, you're able to soften
and open up enough to for changes to happen in your
(43:47):
nervous system, in your body andyour mind and your spirit.
Like that means it's an environment in which you're
going to be able to open up enough to make the changes that
you want to make. Whereas if you have a
conversation with this person and you're like, their resume
really impresses me and it's like ticks all my boxes.
(44:08):
And when I'm, but when I'm speaking to them, like I feel
all tense and self-conscious andI don't really feel like I trust
them on a gut level or I feel like I have to hide parts of
myself. It's just not going to be a
context in which you're going tobe able to do the work you want
to do. If you were going to Fast
forward into five years into thefuture with the changes of
(44:31):
what's going on in healthcare insurance, psychology, and being
a therapist and licensed therapist versus a coach, what
would your crystal ball, your guts say of where those changes
are going to go? Just out of curiosity?
A fun a fun question. I mean, I don't have a crystal
(44:52):
ball, obviously, but where whereI see that things are going at
the present is deregulation, meaning that a lot of people are
leaving the licensure world to be free and do their own thing
and not be limited by a lot of the restrictions that exist in
(45:14):
that world. And the other thing that I see
is happening has to do with social media, like people are
finding coaches that they want to work with on platforms like
Instagram or through podcasts like this one.
You know, they're, they just have access to getting to know
(45:35):
people before deciding that theywant to work with them.
And so, you know, I think thingsare moving more and more in the
direction of things being based on forming personal
relationships with people ratherthan with licensing boards or
(45:57):
with names of well known modalities.
What that will look like, I'm really not sure because, you
know, somehow the the world of licensure is going to have to
adapt and yeah, evolve. That it's certainly an
(46:20):
intriguing thought and I think it's going to shift.
And where are those shifts fall out?
I'm not sure. But one of the things I think
about a lot because I'm constantly reading what's going
on in the field of psychology, is I'll equate it to a makeup
artist, OK, an Instagram makeup artist.
(46:41):
I've been on set a lot of times doing commercials,
advertisements and ads. And a few times someone would
say, well, I hired this makeup artist because I've seen their
Instagram page. It looks great.
Well, that makeup artist comes on set and within 10 minutes the
set is entirely destroyed. The tension level has gone up
(47:01):
exponentially because that makeup artist was really good at
doing their own makeup. Yeah, but they weren't good at
doing makeup on, let's say, somebody with a different skin
tone or different skin texture or a different age skin or
worse. They only bought their makeup
kit for their own, their own self instead of the entire
(47:24):
makeup kit for a realm of ethnicities, ages, and
everything else that a professional would bring.
And I know it's say a stretch onan analogy, but it's not.
And when everyone starts gettingtheir advice from Instagram and
I have a very big community, over 1,000,000 people read my
(47:45):
contact content the month, I wouldn't necessarily tell them.
And I tell them constantly, Don't take advice from me.
I don't know you, you don't knowme.
So I am sharing thoughts I have,but I certainly don't suggest
you. You know, it's like my I maybe
because I grew up with a mother who said, OK, so if John jumps
(48:06):
off the Brooklyn Bridge, you're going to do it too.
You know, so I were, I wonder about this.
I wonder about it for future generations, grabbing their info
and thinking just because someone has a lot of followers,
they're the person I should listen to.
I I think that's wrong. So I'm going to share the a flip
side. To the I love it.
Yes, that's what that's our goalin these discussions.
(48:28):
Yeah, I, I, I these are the mostinteresting kind of in
conversations, right? When when we're not like exactly
on the same page because we get to learn from each other and
like. And we can do it without
shouting, which is the goal of this show.
When isn't that really what the world needs, especially right
now? So, you know, I, I've been a, a
(48:53):
therapy client since before thisage of social media.
And when I first went about looking for a therapist, all,
all I really knew about them wasthat they had a license.
And I read their brief bio in Psychology Today.
(49:15):
If that was even if they even had one, because I remember my,
my first real therapist, I just my best friend was seeing a
therapist and he said, you know,can your therapist recommend a
therapist to me? Which is a perfectly legit way
of going about it. So I got this recommendation.
I went to see her and, you know,I didn't even, I wasn't even
(49:39):
going to shop around because howdo you even shop around in those
days? And I was pretty fortunate.
It was I, I benefited from that therapy relationship.
But I know lots of other people who had similar experiences
where they just, you know, they're like, well, that
person's licensed and they were recommended to me and they, you
could have any range of different kind of experience.
(50:00):
I know people have had horrific experiences and they didn't know
that this wasn't unusual becausethere's no context.
They're not seeing other people on social media talk about what
a good therapist is, right? They they don't.
Yeah, they're they're not hearing other people's
experiences. Whereas nowadays, when I want
(50:24):
someone to help me with an issue, like struggling with my
role as a stepmom, for example, I can listen to all these
different podcasts, interviews that this person spoke on.
I can read everything they've ever written on Instagram.
So I really get a sense of what is their point of view, what is
their style, Who are they as a person?
(50:45):
I can kind of get to know them and make an informed decision in
a way that I couldn't have before social media and
podcasting. That's a very interesting
perspective. And you you raised some very
good points and I've been speaking with Anna Holtzman and
you are really just very fascinating.
(51:06):
I enjoyed every aspect of this conversation truly from start to
finish. Me too, this is just a really
enlivening conversation. Thank you so much.
Everybody, I'm Diane Grassell. This has been the silver
disobedience perception Dynamicspodcast and we've been recording
in iconic Manhattan center. We're in TV Studio 2 where, Oh
(51:28):
my gosh, some greats have eitherpracticed here or played here or
filmed shows here. So it's a true honor to be here.
Anna Holtzman was my guest. We had a great conversation and
all her information is below. And I highly encourage you
follow her on social media, get in touch, say hello, tell her
(51:49):
how much you enjoyed her episode, and please hit
subscribe. I'm Diane Grissel again, please
hit subscribe and share this with your friends and come back
often. Thank you.
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