Upcoming Episodes 

Episode 63

The Qualities of Effective Psychotherapists and Using Motivational Interviewing to Partner with Clients in Creating Change

with William Miller, Ph.D.
Recorded April 24, 2024
In this episode, I speak with Bill Miller about his road to developing Motivational Interviewing.  Bill explained that he started off heading into pastoral ministry but instead chose to be trained as a clinical psychologist.  His behavioral PhD program required a two-semester course on how to work with clients before engaging in behavior therapy, and that's where he was introduced to Carl Rogers and a person-centered approach, which significantly influenced his career.  He mentioned watching Gerald Patterson doing behavior therapy with families and seeing how he was with clients: warm, engaging, empathic, and funny, which was not covered in published descriptions of the method.  On a sabbatical leave in Norway, Bill was asked to demonstrate his own therapeutic approach through role plays in which the clinicians would stop him and ask good questions: "What are you thinking just now? "Why did you ask that particular question?"  "How did you decide what tor reflect from all that the client said?"  These interactions helped him reflect on what he was doing and why he was doing it, and he wrote down a description that became the first description of motivational interviewing.  Seven years later, on sabbatical leave in Australia, he found himself officed next to Stephan Rollnick who would become his career-long co-author.  Rollnick had already been teaching motivational interviewing based on Bill's first article and they decided to write together the first book about motivational interviewing that was published in 1991.  When they began teaching the method they noticed that some trainees seemed to be using MI techniques “on” rather than “with” clients.  What had they left out?  They began writing and teaching about the underlying spirit or attitude with which MI is to be practiced.  Therapists also shared with them that this way of practicing seems to prevent burnout.  In a later book with Theresa Moyers, Bill discussed eight clinical skills that characterize more effective therapists, which are: accurate empathy, genuineness, positive regard, acceptance, hope, evocation, giving advice, and having shared goals or direction.  Bill and I explored the term “resistance” and how it is something that happens between people yet is often attributed to client pathology.  In yet another book he argued that ambivalence is natural human nature and even a virtue, as it means the person is weighing the options.  He and Rollnick reformulated "resistance" as sustain talk (a natural part of ambivalence) and/or discord in the therapeutic relationship.  We discussed how in motivational interviewing the therapist is a guide rather than an expert-director.  Lastly, he touched on his work on quantum change, which is transformational change that that can occur within a matter of moments or hours and tends to be both permanent and benevolent.
Dr. William R. (Bill) Miller, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico.  He is the author of 67 books including four editions of Motivational Interviewing, Effective Psychotherapists: Clinical Skills That Improve Client Outcomes, Listening Well: The Art of Empathic Understanding , and On Second Thought: How Ambivalence Shapes Your Life.  He has been teaching the skill of accurate empathy for over 50 years.

Episode 62

Working with Adult Children and Families Using Core Focused Family Therapy

with Judye Hess, Ph.D.
Recorded September 11, 2024
​In this episode, Judye discusses growing up in a family where her father was a psychoanalyst and became interested in the field.  In graduate school, she became interested in family therapy, and worked at a youth guidance center in Massachusetts, but didn’t find working with children and play to be a way she really wanted to work.  Her supervisor had trained at the Ackerman Institute in New York City and had her start working with families, which really fit well for her and her work.  She explained she moved to California and worked at Xanthos, now Alameda Family Services, and studied with Alan Leviton, one of the founders of the Association of Family Therapists of Northern California. Additionally, she started teaching at California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco, where she taught family therapy by having the students bring in their families to have a family therapy session, or role play if the family was unable to come in.  She discussed her work and how she ended up writing a book about her approach called Core Focused Family Therapy.  She discussed one of her strategies in the beginning of a family session was to do some dyadic work with two members of the system who were not the central focus, which seemed to help open up conversation and soften stuck systems, and then moving on to the focus on the areas the system might be struggling. Judye explained that one of the reviewers of her book wrote that her approach is love and truth, using a warm, but direct approach.  She explained another strategy is to move the focus off of the identified patient, and look at how the whole system is involved with the difficulties that are happening, so they can make a systemic change, which she calls increasing the surface area of the problem.   She discussed connecting with he vulnerabilities behind the defenses, and in helping the dyad that seems most open, the rest of the system then usually also become more open to vulnerabilities.  She talked about using this model to make significant changes in the family system in a short period of time.  She discussed how she focuses on working with families with adult children, and the variety of clients who reach out to her, with family cut offs being a common issue clients are seeking help in repairing their family. 
Judye Hess, PhD, has worked with families since 1974 when she began her family therapy career at Worcester Child Guidance Center in Worcester, Mass. In 1977, Judye moved to the west coast and found a home at Xanthos, a family counseling center in Alameda, CA, where she worked for the next three years. In 1984, she began teaching at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she was on the core faculty and taught family dynamics, couples counseling and group process until 2015. She is the author of Core Focused Family Therapy: Moving From Chaos to Clarity and she is now Professor Emerita from CIIS, and since then has maintained a private practice, seeing couples and families of adult children exclusively. 

Episode 61

The New Paradigm of Online Therapy and a Career as an Analytic Relational Group Therapist

with Dr. Haim Weinberg, Ph.D.
Recorded April 3rd, 2024
In this episode, Haim discusses his extensive experience providing group therapy and being an early adopter of group therapy online in 2006, which lead to his work on the effectiveness of telehealth. He discussed how in 1995 he started an internet forum called GP Listserv which now consists of 400 group therapists from all over the world who join together to discuss group therapy. Haim talked about his group analytic relational approach to therapy and discusses the difference between psychodynamic and relational approaches. He talked about how the research has found clinicians experience four obstacles to online therapy, and discusses the various ways one can address them. He explained that these obstacles include (1) Setting (2) Disembodied Environment (3) Presence and (4) Ignoring the Background in Online Settings. He discusses the body of research surrounding online therapy which is very promising and explains how a meta-analysis concluded that for individual therapy, there is no difference in the results for online vs in person therapy. According to research, the best predictor of success in individual therapy is the therapeutic alliance and goes on to list the three components of the therapeutic alliance which are agreeing on goals, agreeing on tasks, and bonding. While online group therapy is less researched, Haim’s experience suggests that it is very effective. He explained how in group therapy, the factor that is most predictive of success is the cohesion of the group, rather than the therapeutic alliance. He goes on to discuss how the preference of modality –such as having an auditory or visual preference– influences one’s ability to effectively do online therapy. He talked about how in groups, time, space, and attention are always shared, which can create turmoil for group members. He also discussed how keeping attention can be difficult online because there are more distractions and people may feel more unnoticed, which can promote disengagement in an online group setting. He recommends that small group therapy should consist of group sizes between six and ten people and for people who are not as skilled or experienced, groups should not exceed eight people. In 2018, Haim created an online training process group for therapists, and these groups consist of therapists from all over the world where they discuss their experiences with group therapy and learn how to improve their practice, but also use them to work on their personal issues, thus providing professional and personal growth. 

Dr. Haim Weinberg is a licensed psychologist in California (PSY 23243) & Israel and has a private practice in Sacramento, California, with more than 40 years of experience. He is also a group analyst and Certified Group Psychotherapist. He is past President of the Israeli Association of Group Psychotherapy and of the Northern California Group Psychotherapy Society, and list-owner of the group psychotherapy professional online discussion forum. Haim was the Academic Vice-President of the Professional School of Psychology in which he created and coordinates an online doctoral program in group psychotherapy and marital therapy. He published books on Internet groups and about Fairy Tales and the Social Unconscious, and co-edited a book about the large group and a series of books about the social unconscious. He is on the clinical faculty of Psychiatry at UC Davis Medical Center and Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association and of the International Group Psychotherapy Association, as well as a Distinguished Fellow of the Israeli Group Psychotherapy Association. He has received several awards including the Harold Bernard Group Psychotherapy Training Award and the Ann Alonso Award for Excellence in Psychodynamic Group Therapy.  He also co-edited the books: 1. Theory and Practice of Online Therapy: Internet-delievered Interventions for Individuals, Groups, Families, and Organizations. 2. Advances in Online Therapy: Emergence of a New Paradigm. 3. The Virtual Group Therapy Circle: Advances in Online Group Theory and Practice with Arnon Rolnick and Adam Leighton.

Episode 60

Utilizing Intrapsychic and Larger Systemic Systems to Create and Support Resiliency in Individuals, Families and Communities

with Michael Ungar, Ph.D.
Recorded February 27th, 2024
In this episode, Michael discusses his work in therapy, resilience research, and helping people find diverse systems to support their well-being. Michael explains how he became interested in predictions of psychopathology and pathways to adolescent well-being through resilience and advocacy. Throughout his early career, he noticed how there had been greater efforts to suppress disorders, but these efforts did not create a sustainable, clinical outcome for people. He explores how intrapsychic systems and larger, systemic environments are important for supporting and maintaining resilience. Michael defines resilience as 1) a navigation to the resources you need and 2) a negotiation for these resources in culturally relevant ways. He states that stimulating optimism for teenagers doesn't just come from internal self-affirmation, but also from living in predictable environments. He also emphasizes the importance of caregivers and social networks in an adolescent's life. These relationships support a positive identity in adolescents, allowing them to have control and self-efficacy. We discuss how both stimulating a social network and giving young people a sense of identity are vital to promoting resilience. Michael then moves on to explain how there are differences between positive psychology and the study of resilience. The study of resilience is about matching the right protective factor to a particular risk profile. He explains that through his research, he has identified a core list of 52 potential resilience predictors. He developed a program, R2, where he takes the list of 52 predictors and identifies which factors are most relevant to the population in a specific region. Through this process, Michael and his team have been able to provide a more tailored approach to promoting resilience. For example, he mentions how in certain cities, transportation systems and housing are the key factors for promoting resilience in people. We then go on to discuss how changes in even just one of these systems can result in virtuous or negative cycles in someone’s well-being. Changes in transportation and housing may have a cascading effect on co-occurring systems of a person’s life, which may then affect their overall well-being. We emphasize how in therapy with an individual, it is important to work in the context of their external systems, such as their school or their workplace, instead of simply focusing on the individual’s depression. Though it may seem like social work, he believes it is vital to not delineate between what psychologists do and what social workers do. Michael finds that expanding various aspects of one’s identity and engaging their social networks in therapy can cultivate better mental health and resilience for a person. Finally, he touches upon the idea of wear and tear on adolescents. There is a toll that resilience and stress take on adolescents: They may seem successful in some ways, but then may crash later in life. Michael states that resilience is a constant dance between helping people navigate and negotiate for their needs, but never assuming that the journey for healing is complete.

Michael Ungar, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Child, Family and Community Resilience. In 2022, Michael was ranked the number one Social Work scholar in the world in recognition of his ground-breaking work as a family therapist and resilience researcher. That work has influenced the way human development and organizational processes are understood and studied globally, with much of Dr. Ungar’s clinical work and scholarship focused on the resilience of marginalized children and families, and adult populations experiencing mental health challenges at home and in the workplace. In addition to providing consultation to international NGOs like the Red Cross and Save the Children, government agencies in more than a dozen low, middle, and high income countries, and educational institutions at all levels of study, Dr. Ungar’s research has also influenced the HR and corporate social responsibility initiatives of Fortune 500 companies like Unilever, DHL and Cigna. Michael’s work emphasizes how to use the theory of resilience to increase both individual and institutional agility during crises, with numerous organizations having adopted his concept of resilience as a negotiated process that enhances wellbeing and social responsibility. He is the author of over 250 peer reviewed articles and book chapters and 17 books. His blog, Nurturing Resilience, can be read on Psychology Today’s website.

Episode 59

Effecting Third Order Change in Therapy Using Socioculturally Attuned Family Therapy to Address Power and Create More Loving and Equitable Relationships

with Carmen Knudson-Martin, Ph.D., LMFT
Recorded February 14th, 2024
In this episode, Carmen discusses her work in family therapy and her Socioculturally Attuned Family Therapy.  Carmen shared that she entered the field when there were feminist critiques of family therapy and a focus on power in the therapeutic relationship.  She explained that she went to Loma Linda University to direct the family therapy doctoral program, and worked with Douglas Huenerardt, Ph.D. doing cotherapy.  They invited students to observe, and their goal was to be able to articulate the work they were doing, and later finalized it into a research study.  She explained that the model that evolved out of that work was named Socioemotional Relationship Therapy.  Later, she moved to Oregon to teach at Lewis and Clark College, and worked with Teresa McDowell, EdD, LMFT, and wrote the textbook, Socioculturally Attuned Family Therapy, with Teresa and Maria Bermudez, Ph.D., LMFT.  We discussed how Carmen’s background in sociology led her to always be thinking about sociocultural aspects and how they play out in relationships.  She explained that Teresa introduced the idea of Third Order Thinking or Third Order Change to her, which goes beyond the Systemic concept of Second Order change, to bring awareness to the therapist and client of how the sociocultural system the relationships are embedded in and influence their experiences.  She also discussed how this helps therapists be aware of how they are accountable for possibly unknowingly reinforcing and repeating larger societal patterns.  Carmen discussed the Socio-Emotional Relationship Therapy Model and how it is influenced by experiential, structural therapy, and social constructionist theory and technique, while centering  sociocultural awareness.  She discussed how emotions are the window into the larger context by helping us see the thinking that is happening and how that thinking may be a product of social-cultural influences.  She also discusses the role of power in the model, and being aware of how that determines what is important, what is valued and the meaning of things, and seeing how power plays out in the couple or family dynamics.  She explained that they operationalize relational equity as the Circle of Care, which consists of four parts: 1) Mutual Vulnerability - openness and willingness to admit mistakes, safe to express one’s sensitivities, 2) Mutual Attunement - that each person is aware of the other person and their needs, as often the person with more power is less attuned, 3) Mutual Influence - whose interests are organizing the relationship and whether there is a willingness to be influenced, and 4) Shared Relational Responsibility - where both are taking responsibility for the wellbeing of the relationship.  Carmen discusses how when these are balanced, there is a more equitable relationship, and by the therapist’s awareness of power, they can support the changes in the relationship to be more equitable and mutually supportive.  

Carmen Knudson-Martin, Ph.D., LMFT is a professor emerita in the Marriage, Couple, and Family Therapy program at Lewis and Clark College. Her scholarship focuses on how the larger social context influences health and well-being and how therapists can address the inequities that result.  Carmen especially loves working with couples and is widely recognized for her work regarding gender, marital equality, and relational health.  She is a founder of Socio-Emotional Relationship Therapy, an approach that attends to the ways couple interaction, emotion, and socio-cultural context come together in clinical process. Carmen’s teaching and practice are based on her conviction that how therapists conceptualize client concerns is an ethical issue and that clinical practices have consequences that are never neutral. Carmen is an AAMFT approved supervisor and licensed MFT.  She served as an associate editor of the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, vice-president of the Family Process Institute, board member of the American Family Therapy Academy (AFTA), and president of the California Division of the American Association for Marital and Family Therapy (AAMFT-CA). She is currently editor of the AFTA Springer Series in Family Therapy.  Prior to coming to Lewis and Clark, she directed family therapy programs at Loma Linda University in Southern California, Montana State University, and Valdosta State University in Georgia.

Episode 58

Positive Reinforcement: Setting Intention to Do More of What We Know Works

with Terrance M. Scott, Ph.D.
Recorded February 7th, 2024
In this episode, Terry discusses starting off his career working in residential treatment programs for kids and becoming interested in the idea of probability, and how in making behavior goals, he could increase the probability for the child’s success.  In grad school he focused on instructional strategies for kids with challenging behaviors, and finding effective ways to intervene.  He discussed how many people think that positive and negative feedback are equal, but positive reinforcement has more of an effect.  He discussed focusing on creating opportunities for success, including being intentional about how you want to be (e.g., body posture, tone) with children.  He talks about the research on the optimal ratio of positive to negative interactions, which is somewhere between five to one and three to one, but how this is very difficult for teachers, parents and others to do.  He explained that in elementary school, teachers make positive statements once every 6-7 minutes, in middle school every 13 minutes and in high school every 23 minutes.  He discussed his interest in why it is so difficult for adults to increase their positive statements, whether it may be related to culture or human nature or other factors.  He explained that there is not a great deal of variance between teachers and that the research has found teachers tend to overestimate the number of positive statements they make, including himself when he steps in to teach a class.  He said that his research has found that you can predict behavioral disruptions in classrooms by by looking at whether there is active engagement with the children and a higher ratio of the number of opportunities to respond positively and the positive responses, which may even be just a thumbs up or nod.  He explained that kids with problem behaviors often need more in the range of 14 to 1 ratio of positive to negative because they have often had a lifetime of 1 to 1 million positive to negative.  He discussed how teachers are able to give instruction when it comes to correcting academic mistakes, but very little instruction is given when correcting behavioral mistakes, with corrective statements being so low that in their research it was only observed once per nine schools.  Terry talked about how many times teachers might say that they’ve already told the child before or after getting a consequence like being sent to the principal’s office that child has not been punished enough, asking how they are supposed to treat them like nothing happened?  He explained that although teachers know that repetition is fundamental to learning academically, they struggle applying that to behavioral learning and often don’t persist in how often, how intense and how long they change their approach, since they may not see results immediately.  He discussed his next research project which looks at the physiological responses of children in classrooms, similar to a study done on the physiological reactions teachers have when viewing video of misbehavior, and possibly looking at the interaction effects of the child’s physiology and the teacher’s physiology and their interaction effect with a focus on emotional regulation.  

Terrance M. Scott, Ph.D. is a professor, distinguished scholar and director of the Center for Instructional and behavioral Research in Schools in the Department of Special Education, Early Childhood and Prevention Science at the University of Louisville. Dr. Scott spent 24 years as a professor and researcher in special education and was the senior principal education researcher at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).  He began his career as a counselor in residential treatment and has worked with students with challenging behaviors across a variety of settings. Since receiving his PhD in Special Education at the University of Oregon in 1994, Dr. Scott has written over 100 publications, has conducted well more than 1,000 presentations and training activities throughout the United States and across the world, and has successfully competed for more than $24 million in external grant funding. In 2004 he received the Distinguished Early Career Award from the Research Division of the International Council for Exceptional Children, and in 2012 he received the Outstanding National Leadership Award from the Council for Children with Behavior Disorders. He was elected president of this organization in 2013 and served as a two term editor of the journal, Beyond Behavior. His research interests focus on schoolwide prevention systems, the role of instructional variables in managing student behavior, functional behavior assessment/intervention, video-based training for school personnel, and scientific research in education.

Episode 57

Identifying Core Pain and Healing It Through Emotion Focused Therapy

with Ladislav Timulak, Ph.D.
Recorded February 6th, 2024
In this episode, I speak with Laco about his work and research in the area of Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT).  Laco discusses how he originally was trained in Client Centered Therapy and was drawn to Les Greenberg’s, Emotion-Focused Therapy as it was an extension of Carl Rogers’ work, with Les Greenberg being a student of one of Rogers’ students.  We discussed Emotion-Focused Therapy and how Les Greenberg and others were studying the change moments in therapy, and were conducting process research on Gestalt interventions using empty chair work and two-chair dialogues with self-criticism.  He explained that in EFT, the therapist is trying to access the core of the pain and the unmet needs.  He discussed how emotions are seen as either being at the symptom level, or are the underlying emotions, and the therapists is identifying those underlying emotions and emotion schemes, which are the target of intervention.  He discussed his work on identifying transdianostic features of Emotion-Focused Therapy and discussed how most of these pivotal painful moments had to do with either the emotions of feeling sad/lonely, shame, or fear.  He explained that through the imaginary chair dialogues, the client is able to have a corrective experience, where compassion is elicited, like speaking to their younger self who was hurt, or healthy boundary setting anger for protection.  These processes help the person’s emotion schemes become more flexible, moving them from sad/lonely to feeling connected, from shame to validation and acceptance, and from fear to safety or protection.  We discuss how EFT conducts extensive process research, and discussed Laco’s work in research and writing, recently publishing the Transdiangosic Emotion-Focused Therapy: A Clinical Guide for Transforming Emotional Pain book with Daragh Keogh, Ph.D., and also creating a workbook for clients to be able to continue the work outside of therapy.  He also discussed his work in making resources available online and possibly creating more online programs for clients to continue their work.  
 
​Ladislav Timulak, PhD is Professor in Counselling Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. He is Course Director of the Doctorate in Counselling Psychology. Ladislav (or short Laco; read Latso) is involved in the training of counselling psychologists. His main research interest is psychotherapy research, particularly the development of emotion focused therapy as well as online mental health interventions. He has written (or co-written) 10 books, over 100 peer reviewed papers and chapters in both his native language, Slovak, and in English. His most recent books include Transforming Emotional Pain in Psychotherapy: An Emotion‐Focused Approach (Routledge, 2015) and Transforming Generalized Anxiety: An Emotion-Focused Approach (Routledge, 2017)(with James McElvaney; 2018), and Essentials of Descriptive-Interpretive Qualitative Research: (with co-author Robert Elliott) and Transdiagnostic Emotion-Focused Therapy (with co-author Daragh Keogh) published by the American Psychological Association (2021). His latest books include Essentials of Qualitative Meta-Analysis (with Mary Creaner; American Psychological Association) and Transforming Emotional Pain: An Emotion-Focused Workbook (with several co-authors; Routledge). He provides trainings for clinicians using the approach presented in his books internationally. He directs Emotion-Focused Therapy Research Group and co-directs an E-Mental Health Research group.He previously co-edited Counselling Psychology Quarterly. He serves on various editorial boards and provides expert reviews of academic papers and research grants internationally. 

Episode 56

The Rest of the Story: A Pioneer in Psychotherapy Podcasting

David Van Nuys, Ph.D.
Recorded January 11, 2024
In this episode, I speak with Dave about his journey to becoming the first podcaster in the field of psychology and his prolific career publishing over a 1,000 interviews.  Dave explained that he had learned about podcasting very early on and it fit with his interest in radio, which, as a teenager, he got involved with amateur radio, had taken the FCC exams, and built his own components.  This lead him to go to college to study electrical engineering, but he quickly learned that his high school had not prepared him for an engineering major.  He said he took a Psychology 101 course, but it was completely focused on behaviorism, which turned him off to the field, and instead got a degree in creative writing.  At the end of college, he explained that a friend told him he was studying to become a Rogerian psychologist, which sounded interesting, and Dave had always enjoyed helping people with their problems, so he took an abnormal Psychology class, and then went to graduate school for a doctorate in psychology.  Dave discussed how his graduate school was focused on psychoanalytic theory, which he didn’t find to be a good fit for him, so he gravitated more towards Humanistic Psychology.  He discussed running encounter groups and we discussed the Human Potential Movement in the 60s and how he and others were seeking alternative perspectives.  He explained that he had published articles in the Human Behavior journal and after learning about podcasting, thought that interviewing his fellow professors at Sonoma. State University where he met, which was Humanistically focused, would be a great way to begin his program Shrink Rap Radio and Wise Counsel.  We discussed that during the 80s, when personal computers were becoming more popular, he became interested in the tech and business world, and began doing market research focus groups, and used online focus groups in the early days of the internet.  He continued this work while he taught, had a psychotherapy practice and all of these skills assisted him in his podcast interviews.  He explained that he challenged himself to be open to a wide variety of perspective, interviewing a broad range of clinicians and non-clinicians.  Dave lastly discussed his interest in Positive Psychology and how he saw it as an outgrowth of Humanistic psychotherapy, and how Positive Psychology’s coaching aspects have been adopted in the business world.  

David Van Nuys, Ph.D. is past-chair and professor emeritus in Psychology at Sonoma State University, a department with an international reputation for humanistic, existential, and transpersonal psychology.  He also taught at the University of Montana, the University of Michigan, and the University of New Hampshire.  In addition, David runs a market research business, e-FocusGroups, which has served a distinguished list of clients, including The New York Times, Apple Computer, IBM, Hewlett Packard, and QuickenLoans, among others.  He leads personal growth workshops at various growth centers around the U.S. and abroad.  David earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan and has worked as a licensed psychotherapist in both New Hampshire and California.  A frequent public speaker, he has also published in professional journals, popular magazines, and co-authored a book on the infamous Zodiac serial killer.  He also produces two popular podcasts: Shrink Rap Radio and Wise Counsel.  David is a longtime dreamworker himself and a past IASD presenter and for many years taught a course on Myth, Dream, and Symbol at Sonoma State University. In 2018, he received an award from the American Psychological Association for his pioneering podcast, Shrink Rap Radio. The award was presented at Harvard University by the APA president before a crowd of several hundred educational podcasters. Since 2005, he has conducted around one thousand interviews with movers and shakers around the broad world of psychology (including dreamworkers , dream researchers, and Jungian analysts).

Episode 55

Sex Therapy, Porn Literacy and a Sex Positive Approach

with Diane Gleim, LMFT, CST, CST-S
Recorded January 15th, 2024
In this interview, I speak with Diane about her expertise in sex therapy, and her American Association of Sexual Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) certification.  She discusses sex therapy, couples therapy with sex issues, and she discusses the PLISSIT model, which describes various levels of intervention, which include Permission, Limited Information, Specific Suggestions and Intensive Therapy.  She discusses her eclectic approach, which is grounded in a Humanistic perspective, helping clients accept themselves and address shame.  She explains that sexual relationships are complex involving how each partner feels about each other, the challenges people experience in their life, and their different stages in their relationships.  She discusses her blog article, “To the Wife Upset About Her Husband’s Porn Viewing: An Open Letter From a Sex Therapist”, and how she addresses how porn is symbolic and is a “fantasy” and what we can learn from this about our partner.  She explains how she often sees men who come in by themselves, because they’re partner is upset with them about their pornography use, and how this often suggests an Identified Patient perspective, and missing the couple dynamics and how the couple can heal and improve their relationship together.  We also discuss the conflict between being respectful of women, but then also, for heterosexual men particularly, to also be enjoying pornography and objectification of women.   She discussed perpetrator fear and how it become more pronounced after the #MeToo movement, and how a number of clients came to work with her to discuss their past sexual encounters.  She discusses consent and what that means and looks like in sexual encounters and relational sexual relationships.      

Diane Gleim, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and Supervisor practicing online throughout California and in-person in Santa Rosa, California. As the first Certified Sex Therapist in Sonoma County, Diane treats the many diverse issues related to sexual identity, sexual expression, sexual behavior, and sexual relationships. Her clients include everyone with a sexual concern: individuals and couples ages 18-85, and the LGBTQ+, kinky, and poly populations. In addition to her private practice, Diane’s work also includes providing trainings and consultations on sex therapy; writing the blog "Underneath the Sheets" on Psychology Today’s website; and supervising sex-therapists-in-training. She has been quoted in various press and a guest on podcasts. Diane has been voted Sonoma County’s Best Sex Therapist by the readers of the North Bay Bohemian five times.

Episode 54

Working Systemically with One or More Parts of the System Using Problem Solving Brief Therapy from the Mental Research Institute (MRI)

with Karin Schlanger, LMFT
Recorded November 28th, 2023
In this workshop, Karin discussed her career where she trained in Argentina, then came to Palo Alto to learn at the Mental Research Institute forty years ago.  She discussed the place the MRI has in the history of developing family and systemic therapy.  She worked with Paul Watzlawick, Dick Fisch, and John Weakland, and eventually became the Director of the Brief Therapy Center, a title she still holds.  In 1966, the group was interested in seeing what type of changes they could help create within 10 sessions (hence the term brief), which was very different from the prevailing psychoanalytic approach during the time.  She discussed how the approach based in systems theory, but is a minimalistic family therapy/systems therapy way of promoting change, where they don’t need the whole system to be present in the office for change to occur.  Interactions are always in the clinician’s mind, understanding who is this effecting, how is someone reacting to this, which allows you to intervene with the person who is the most motivated for change in the system.   She explained that they’re not necessarily trying to achieve perfection, but instead help the person in pain and asking for help at the time to get out of a hole.  She shared the quote by John Weakland that “when you have a problem, life is the same damn thing over and over again, and when you no longer have a problem, life is one damn thing after another”.  Karin discussed identifying whom to focus on in the therapy by identifying who is most in pain and therefore is most motivated to work with the therapist to promote a positive change.  If working with a family, the therapist might not put all of their energy into the child since they have the least power in the system, and the most motivated one in the family might be the parent, so they will be the one you need to engage to make change.  She also pointed out that they go straight into the problem that brought clients in, and stay in the here and now, and try not to “open doors” to the past, which is what allows the work to be so brief.  We discussed how the approach postulates that the attempted solution is what has become the problem, keeping the system stuck, so instead, having the individual, couple or family do the 180 degree opposite of that, even if it goes against common sense, then observing what happens and discussing in the following session.  As opposed to many other models of systemic and family therapy, the Brief Therapy Center works with fewer people and change happens outside of the session.  She pointed out that they were able to make significant change in a matter of ten sessions, with the average amount of sessions being six.  Karin explained that there have been many different models and techniques developed over the years, although the simplicity of the Brief Therapy approach still stands as an effective treatment and could be the key to reduce the mental health crisis in the U.S. currently.  

Karin Schlanger, LMFT was the Director of the Brief Therapy Center in MRI since 2008 until the sale of the building in 2019. She continues to be the director of the BTC currently. She has worked as a psychologist, supervisor in the Brief Therapy Model and professor at several universities internationally.  She studied Psychology in the Universidad of Buenos Aires – Argentina and graduated in 1982. She arrived at the MRI in 1983 having heard of the work of John Weakland, Dick Fisch and Paul Wazlawick and worked with them until the end of their days. In 1990, she opened the Centro Latino de Terapia Breve to do research on how this pure American model of Problem solving can be applied in other cultures. This project continues today, working with low income Spanish-speaking families, who are at the worse end of society’s inequality.  In 2012, she founded a NGO, Room to Talk, to offer psychological services to students, families and school staff at the school. She was the Executive Director.  She has been a professor in several local Universities — University of San Francisco, Stanford University, School of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, College of Notre Dame de Namur, and other Universities of Spain — Valencia International University, Universidad de Abat Oliva, Institute Systemic de Barcelona. She is a supervisor in the Hospital of San Pau, in Barcelona.  Karin is the author of a book that has been translated to 5 languages, and the author of many articles and chapters of lots of books throughout the years. Also, in 2012, she has started the Grupo Palo Alto Internacional, which was officially launched in Mexico, January – 2016. Currently, Karin trains and supervises therapists internationally as well as locally through county mental health programming.  She provides trainings through the https://www.brieftherapycenter.org/ 

Episode 53

From Partners to Parents: The Research on Interventions to Support Couples' Relationships After the Birth of the First Child and to Foster Fathers' Positive Involvement in the Family

with Philip A. Cowan, Ph.D. and Carolyn Pape Cowan, Ph.D.
Recorded November 30th, 2023
In this episode, I interview Carolyn and Phil about their decades of research on couples and the changes they experience after the birth of the first child.  They discussed how Carolyn had been an elementary school teacher and was pregnant with their second child when they moved to Berkeley where Phil was starting his new job at the University of California, Berkeley.  They discussed how their own life experiences led them to be interested in the effect of having children on the couple’s relationship, and created a study where couples joined a group during their third trimester of a first pregnancy, and worked together until their child was four months old.  In comparison to the control group, who were not offered the couples group intervention, the couples in the groups maintained their relationship satisfaction, while the couples in the control couples with no intervention experienced a significant decrease in satisfaction, which was also reflected in studies by others that followed.  The Cowans then worked with another group of couples from when their first child was making the transition to school, and followed them until the children entered high school at 14-15 years old.  They discussed the exercises they used during these inventions, and how it was so significant for these couples to talk with their partners in a safe setting about the key issues in their lives and to hear others’ experiences and discover that they were not alone during these difficult times.  The first two studies were with nonclinical couples in the community. Later, they received a grant to work with low-income couples who had few resources for support, which was designed to increase fathers' engagement with the mothers and their children.  Once again, they found positive results in terms of the quality of the couples' relationships as partners and parents, of parenting that was less harsh, of the children having fewer troubling behaviors, and in many cases, increases in income.  Phil and Carolyn explained that the majority of current grant funding is siloed, with separate funding for children, for mothers, and for fathers, and and almost no programs taking a family systems view.  They feel that the lack of a systemic perspective misses opportunities to take a broader perspective on family development and to work with parents, non parental caregivers, children, and fathers, which can lead to improved outcomes for parents and children, and be more efficient and cost effective.  They referenced a study they are overseeing now that has also included employment support, since this is so integral in family functioning for low-income families. Their intervention work has been replicated in the U.K., Germany, Malta, and most recently in Israel. 

Philip A. Cowan, Ph.D. and Carolyn Pape Cowan, Ph.D. are clinical psychologists and professors Emeriti at University of California, Berkeley who have conducted three significant longitudinal research studies on couples relationships after the birth of the first child.  They have received grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the California Office of Child Abuse Prevention.  Their three projects, the Becoming a Family Project, the Schoolchildren and Families Project, and the Supporting Father Involvement Project, which is an ongoing collaboration with Marsha Kline Pruett, Ph.D., M.S.L. ABPP at Smith College and Yale University, have studied the effects of interventions on the couples relationship, father involvement, child wellbeing and a number of other factors.  Their group model for couples is being conducted throughout California, in Connecticut, Alberta Canada, England, and Malta.  Carolyn and Phil Cowan received the the Distinguished Contribution to Family Systems Research award from the American Family Therapy Academy (AFTA) and the Best Research Article award, along with Marsha and Kyle Pruett, Ph.D., M.S.L. ABPP and Jessie Wong, Ph.D., from the Men in Families Focus Group of the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR).  They are the authors of When Partners Become Parents: The Big Life Change for Couples, and there are “training the trainer” trainings in their Supporting Father Involvement program through Brazelton Touchpoints Center, which is part of the Division of Developmental Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.  

Episode 52

​Competency Based Supervision Including Alliance, Integrity, Feedback and Cultural Humility in Supporting Supervisees in Their Development

with Carol Falender, Ph.D.
Recorded August 8th, 2023
In this episode, Carol discusses how early in her career she was hired to be the assistant director of training for a child and family guidance clinic, and became very intrigued in the processes of clinical supervision.  After a decade, she became Director of Training at another American Psychological Association accredited program and developed the site visit documentation, which led her to collaborate with her future coauthor, Ed Shafranske, Ph.D., to develop a model of supervision.  She explained how their model is transtheoretical, providing a framework for supervisors to provide supervision systematically and intentionally.  She said that most clinicians provide supervision the way they were supervised, through osmosis, or internalizing practices done unto them, rather than using a particular model or being guided by research and evidence.  She pointed out that increasingly,  high rates of inadequate and even harmful supervision are being reported by supervisees, and how the process of becoming a supervisor varies dramatically.  Some supervisors simply begin, utilizing practices that were done unto them during their training trajectory; others have taken a workshop,  and some have a longer training period with  a substantial sequence of courseswork, experiential training, video review, and targeted feedback to develop their skills as a supervisor.  She explained that in their model focus is on a process that includes development of the supervisory alliance, monitoring that alliance over time attentive to the perspectives of cultural humility with respect to the clients, supervisees, and supervisor.  Additionally it includes focus on reacivity or countertransference,  supervisee self-care, legal and ethical issues, attending to a communitarian constellation, an environment of caring, respect, and support.  We discussed having strong boundaries around supporting the supervisee in instances of reactivity in regards to client, while at the same time, never crossing the boundary to provide  psychotherapy to the supervisee.  In talking about supporting supervisees, she discussed trauma informed supervision and helping supervisees to have an understanding how their nervous system is affected, as well as helping them have tools for regulating their activation.  She pointed out that the ultimate job of the supervisor is to protect clients, and gatekeeping, ensuring that  unsuitable supervisees do not enter the profession.  Carol discussed cultural humility and power in the supervisory relationship and how she and her co-author encourage supervisors to be open about their various identities and privilege from the outset of the supervisory relationship and throughout.  She encourages giving feedback regularly throughout supervision, and being honest and transparent about the supervisee’s development and scaffolding their strengths to improve the areas that are in development, rather than avoiding giving corrective feedback until review time.  She discusses how monitoring client outcomes and feedback is critical and often left out in supervision, as well as encouraging supervisee self-assessment and not being fearful of give needed feedback to the supervisee.    
Carol Falender, Ph.D. is co-author of multiple books on clinical supervision including Clinical Supervision: A Competency-based Approach (2004; second edition, 2021), Getting the Most Out of Clinical Training and Supervision: A Guide for Practicum Students and Interns (2012) The Essentials of Competency-based Clinical Supervision (2017), co-editor of Casebook for Competency-based Clinical Supervision and all with Edward Shafranske; Multiculturalism and Diversity in Clinical Supervision: A Competency-based Approach (2014) edited with Edward Shafranske and Celia Falicov. She edited one book on consultation, Consultation in Psychology: A Competency-based Approach (2020) with Edward Shafranske. She has written numerous articles and conducted workshops and symposia internationally. She directed APA approved training programs for over 20 years and was a member of the Supervision Guidelines Group of the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB) and Chair of the Supervision Guidelines Task Force of the Board of Educational Affairs of APA. Dr. Falender is a Fellow of American Psychological Association (APA; Divisions 37. 29 and 43). She is an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University, Clinical Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychology. She was the recipient of a Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association for innovative contributions to the theory and practice of clinical supervision, nationally and internationally, and in 2018 received the Distinguished Career Contributions to Education and Training in Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association.  In 2023, she received The Chuck Faltz Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Psychological Association and the Distinguished Award for the International Advancement of Psychotherapy by APA's Division 29.  

Episode 51

Infant and Child's Sleep: A Process of Separation and Emotional Regulation

with Dr. Angelique Millette
Recorded February 23rd, 2023
In this episode, Angelique discusses her career as a sleep consultant for parents of newborns.  She explained that she started off as a midwife, then a birth doula, and a post partum doula, and spent a great deal of time helping babies sleep through the night, and new families navigate the transition to parenthood.  She explained that she saw sleep as a portal into multiple areas such as post partum depression, parent-infant bonding, and other aspects of the transition to parenthood.  She found that there was not a great deal of research on the subject, only research focused on extinction or “cry it out” method of helping infants with sleep issues when she started in the field.  She went to conferences, obtained a doctorate in psychology, and used her field work to develop an approach to helping children sleep, which she named the MIllette Method, which takes into account development, temperament, attachment, culture, and numerous other factors that play in to sleep and separation between caregiver and child.  She talked about assessing the proximity of the parent to the child, range of crying, parental responsiveness, and charting these factors in order to develop a plan for the family.  She discussed the “rinse and repeat” method where the parent will notice sleep signs, put the baby down, soothe them, step away, and then come back again after a little bit to continue soothing, then stepping away again.  She explained that sleep is also a process of developing self regulation and the different self regulating behaviors that babies aquire as they develop.  Angelique pointed out that the research is mixed on cosleeping or having the child sleep in another room, so it really depends on the family’s preferences, although early on, the rate of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is lower when the baby is sleeping in the room with the parents for the first six months.  She discussed the interval method of sleep training, which allows for more crying, where there may be more crying, but isn’t used until the infant has a number of self soothing abilities.  Lastly, she described her approach to helping toddlers and children falling asleep, using two phases.  The first is based on her child psychology background, and using play activities to help parents and children practice separation, since separation is the key element of sleeping alone.  Sometimes, that in itself leads to better sleep, but if not, she institutes the second phase where the parent sleeps in the child’s room for a few nights, and slowly moves out of the room after consecutive nights.  She explained that the key element of separation that is inherent in helping infants and children sleep.      ​
Angelique Millette, PhD, CLE, CD/PCD is a parent-child coach, pediatric sleep consultant, and family sleep researcher. Angelique’s diverse background includes training in child play, art, and nature therapies, child development and  sleep, and work as a child psychologist. Her commitment to children and parents spans twenty-five  years and she continues to develop programs to meet families “where they are at.” Her approach allows her  to work with diverse communities both nationally and internationally. Angelique has developed The Millette  Method™ a multi-disciplinary approach to family sleep and child behavior. The Millette Method™ does not  follow one specific sleep or behavioral method, but rather uses a “tool-box” of different methods and  approaches and takes into account various factors including child temperament and history, culture, family  social support, access to nature/play, parental overwhelm, history of trauma, and parent/child mental health  and wellness. Angelique has worked with more than 15,000 families, and presents professional workshops to  non-profits, government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, universities, and parents groups across the  country and internationally. She also consults with juvenile products manufacturers in their  development of innovative sleep and child development designs.

Episode 50

Couples With Substance Disorders: Strategies for Treating the Trauma of the Addiction Helping To Develop a “Couple Recovery”

with Robert Navarra, Psy.D, LMFT, MAC
Recorded February 21st, 2023
In this episode, Bob discussed how originally substance misuse was not an area that he worked with, but after it kept showing up with his clients he decided he needed and pursued more training.  He discussed how he was part of the Family Recovery Project at the Mental Research Institute with Drs. Stephanie Brown and Virginia Lewis, a study aimed at what happens in couple and family systems after beginning recovery. Bob’s research, a qualitative study on long-term couple recovery, led to him creating a model called the “Couple Recovery Development Approach (CRDA), a theory for explaining how couples can successfully navigate the challenges found in the transition from active addiction to active recovery.  Bob talked about the impact of the trauma of addiction, and the trauma of recovery relating that the first year in recovery was challenging, and that relapse rates are high in that first year. He explained how with couples he externalizes addiction and explores how it has invaded their relationship, in a way so that they can both talk about the impact of this unwanted intruder.  He discussed how clinicians often believe it’s important not to work on the couple relationship in the beginning of recovery, because each partner is supposed to focus on their individual recovery, but he pointed out that couples impacted by addiction have the highest divorce rate of any other comorbidities, and there actually isn’t any empirical studies to support that approach; in fact research does support the concept that healthy relationships are found to be the biggest predictor of long-term sobriety.  It turns out that couples work is one of the most effective ways to identify addiction and move people into recovery. Rather than the common belief that addiction is contraindicated for couples therapy,  We addressed the issues of codependency. While it can be helpful in defining issues for the non-using partner, it’s limited.  Bob said he feels it is important to add the concept of secondhand harm, and post-traumatic-stress-disorder to normalize partner’s experiences and not pathologize them with the singular term “codependency”.  He described his intervention called H.E.A.R.T. (Healing Emotions from Addiction Recovery and Trauma), which helps partners to process the trauma from addiction, without blame or defensiveness.  
Robert Navarra, Psy.D, LMFT, MAC is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Certified Gottman Therapist and Master Trainer, and holds National Certification as a Master Addiction Counselor. He has trained counselors and therapists nationally and internationally. Dr. Navarra has co-authored several book chapters with Drs. John and Julie Gottman, and co-authored articles on Gottman Therapy for The Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy with Dr. John Gottman. Based on his research at Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto California, Bob created “Roadmap for the Journey: A Path for Couple Recovery”, a two-day workshop for couples in recovery from an addictive disorder. “Roadmap for the Journey” has been a featured workshop at Hazelden Betty Ford and has been given at treatment programs as well as in small, semi-private workshop settings. Bob and John Gottman are currently researching the impact of Roadmap for the Journey in helping couples integrate recovery into their relationship, a missing element in most treatment programs. In collaboration with the Gottman Institute, Bob has also created a one-day training workshop for counselors and therapists, called “Couples and Addiction Recovery.” He also teaches graduate classes on addictive disorders at Santa Clara University. You can learn more about Bob at www.drrobertnavarra.com.

Episode 49

​Understanding Shame and Using it to Evolve, Open, and Unleash Creativity

with Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT
Recorded February 10th, 2023
In this episode, I speak with Sheila about her lifelong work of working with clients with shame.  She explained that she got interested in this subject from her experience as a child and being shy, but overcoming it by becoming a children’s magician and performing.  She explained how she trained in a number of approaches such as Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Drama Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, AEPD, Accelerated Experiential-Dynamic Psychotherapy, Hakomi and others, but wasn’t finding a particular approach really addressing shame.  She discussed how she helps clients to understand that shame has an evolutionary purpose, both in protecting us when we are young, but also helping us to evolve in the present, using it as a signal the client to set boundaries, make changes, and take risks to be more of their authentic self.  Sheila talked about how shame is evolutionary by subduing an anger response towards a parent, because it might not be safe, or threaten the connection with parents.  She talks about the continuum of shame, which goes from stage fright or imposter syndrome, to never feeling good enough, having a lot of shoulds and perfectionism, and all the way to experiences of humiliation.  She discussed how PolyVagal Theory was a great addition to the puzzle, where she was able to have language and a biological explanation for the freeze or shut down that happens for someone when shame comes up.  Sheila discussed noticing it in the moment, in the session, when the interpersonal bridge breaks, and helping clients to see the shame, and how it shifts their nervous system.  She talked about working with the inner critic, the parent who might have been the critic, using parts work and drama therapy to help clients replay those experiences and becoming the person that could be the hero and protect and save their younger parts.  Sheila discussed how helping clients to use mindfulness to notice when the shame comes up, sitting with it, and using compassion for themselves, leads them to be able to be open, rather than shutting down.

Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT is a marriage and family therapist and a leading authority on Healing Shame. She developed the Healing Shame Therapy work over the last two decades and is the co-director, with Bret Lyon, of the Center for Healing Shame. in Berkeley, California. Sheila has delivered talks, presentations and workshops across the country and around the world, at conferences from Canada to Romania. She is a Board Certified Trainer through NADTA and past adjunct faculty for the CIIS Drama Therapy Program and JFK University’s Somatic Psychology Department. Sheila's expertise, teaching, and writing contributions have been featured in numerous publications, including seven books. Her writings on shame include the chapter “Women, Food and Feelings: Drama Therapy with Women Who Have Eating Disorders” in the book The Creative Therapies and Eating Disorders, the chapter “Almost Magic: Working with the Shame that Underlies Depression: Using Drama Therapy in the Imaginal Realm” in the book The Use of Creative Therapies in Treating Depression, and the chapter “Unpacking Shame and Healthy Shame: Therapy on the Phone or Internet” in Combining the Creative Therapies with Technology: Using Social Media and Online Counseling to Treat Clients (all books edited by Stephanie L. Brooke). Sheila offers therapy through her private practice in Berkeley and online via Zoom. She also provides consultations to therapists via Skype and leads workshops in Berkeley, internationally, and online.  You can learn more about her workshops, writing, and on demand trainings at www.HealingShame.com 

Episode 48

​Regulating Together: An Evidence Based Group for Children with Autism That Utilizes the Parents As Coaches, Creating Lasting Change

with Rebecca C. Shaffer, Ph.D.
January 26, 2023
In this episode, I speak with Rebecca, who discusses her career working with children, which led her to focusing on treatment and research of children on the autism spectrum.  She discussed being influenced by her training in Philadelphia, which had a strong family systems component, and how working with the parents and children is a foundation for her Regulating Together work.  She explains that the children are in a group where they learn affect regulation skills, while the parents are in another group, also learning affect regulation skills, how to coach the kids at home, and prevention and behavioral management skills.  The skills the children learn are relaxation skills, identifying triggers and physical reactions, rating emotions, problem solving skills, mindfulness, radical acceptance and cognitive flexibility.  She discussed how the caregiver training has a lot of focus on preventing the emotional dysregulation, as well as techniques for managing the dysregulation and behavior problems when they do occur.  Additionally, the caregivers are encouraged to use the skills in order to regulate themselves, and how this helps with coregulation with their child.  Rebecca discussed using CBT with a child with autism and modifications you might make since many autistic children can struggle with rigidity.  She also remarked on how the group leaders have the ability to work with the children in vivo, at the end of the group where the kids earn time to play games.  The group facilitators help the children implement the skills they learned if they become triggered during that time socializing.  We discuss the research and how they found that the biggest gains were realized between five to ten weeks after the regulating together series was over, which highlights that the benefits of affect regulation and that a shift in behavior may take time to appear.  We discussed other applications for the model and future potential research directions and a trial starting using a canine assisted version of the model.  Rebecca explains that her and her team will be publishing their manual and are currently training clinicians in the use of this model.
 
Rebecca C. Shaffer, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist and currently serves as an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital with an affiliated appointment at the University of Cincinnati. Rebecca is the director of Psychological Services for the Cincinnati Fragile X Center, where she oversees the assessment and treatment of individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS). Rebecca and her team have created an emotion dysregulation treatment program for children with ASD called Regulating Together. Regulating Together treats emotion dysregulation, especially with reactivity and irritability, in a group setting with concurrent caregiver training. She currently leads several research studies, as well as publications, focused on the development and efficacy of this program. She also serves as the primary investigator of the Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research (SPARK) study at Cincinnati Children’s and other ASD-specific studies. Rebecca has had numerous publications and trains clinicians in Regulating Together throughout the country.  To learn more about training in Regulating Together and the research behind it, check out the Shaffer Lab and contact by clicking here.

Episode 47

Cognitive Behavioral Play Therapy (CBPT) : Adapting CBT For Young Children Using Play

with Susan M. Knell, Ph.D.
Recorded December 14, 2022
In this episode, I speak with Susan about how she came to develop Cognitive Behavioral Play Therapy (CBPT).  She explained that she was originally trained in psychodynamic play therapy, and found it helpful.   Talking with and reflecting on a child’s experience was important,  but she wanted to find ways to help children gain more adaptive skills to deal with their emotions and difficulties.  At the time, it was thought that you could not use CBT with young children, so she used CBT techniques and ideas and incorporated them into play. Finding ways to bring CBT into play involved modeling with puppets, dolls, toys, books and other child-oriented materials.  We discussed numerous case studies using CBPT with young children, as well as the research on Cognitive Behavioral Play Interventions (CBPI), currently being used with non-clinical populations.  Susan shared case examples of using puppets to model various interventions, such as Systematic Desensitization and Cognitive Change strategies,  and using workbook activities, like drawing the Worry Monster/Worry Bully to help anxious and fearful children.  We discuss using toys, puppets, books, movies and art with children.  She also talked about her work with parents and assessing whether the presenting problems are better treated by working with just the parents or the child and parents together in different combinations.  

Susan M. Knell, Ph.D. is a psychologist who received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Case Western Reserve University and did her internship and NIMH Postdoctoral Fellowship at The Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI), UCLA, specializing in clinical child psychology and developmental disabilities.  She is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor in Psychology at Case Western Reserve University, maintains a private practice, supervises graduate students in training,  and is the author of the book, “Cognitive-Behavioral Play Therapy” (Jason Aronson, 1993). Susan was the first to study and write about the application of cognitive-behavioral therapy with young children. In addition to her book, she has published many chapters in edited books on play therapy, with recent chapters on creative applications of CBPT and treating young children with anxiety and phobias. She lectures throughout the country and internationally on Cognitive-Behavioral Play Therapy with preschool and early school-age children.   
 
Most recently, Susan has been working with Maria Angela Geraci, Ph.D., Meena Dasari, Ph.D. and colleagues,  as part of the Cognitive Behavioral Play Therapy Institute, in Rome, Italy.  The Institute will be disseminating relevant research and providing online training in CBPT.  Online training is available through the institute website:  www.cognitivebehavioralplaytherapy.com. ​  

Episode 46

Using Polyvagal Theory To Use the Nervous System to Help Clients Heal

with Deb Dana, LCSW
Recorded November 30th, 2022
In this episode, Deb discussed how she was inspired after hearing Stephen Porges, Ph.D. speak about his polyvagal theory, and found ways to use this theory in helping clients to heal.  She explained that there are three states of the autonomic nervous system, which are the ventral (feeling regulated, safe, connected), sympathetic (fight or flight, activated), and dorsal (collapse, shut down, disconnected) and that there are cues that trigger these states.  We discussed how emotions are the labels that we attach to these states, although the same states may have different labels (anxiety vs. excitement).  She pointed out that our nervous system takes in information from three pathways, which are embodied (interoceptive or internal sensations), environmental (external cues), and between nervous systems (how our nervous system is reacting to another’s nervous system).  She discussed how the polyvagal theory allows therapists to help clients identify the cues that trigger these states, understand these states, and they also inform the therapist as they help coregulate the client through the therapist being in a ventral state.  The polyvagal theory, she pointed out, sees these states in a hierarchy, where when the sympathetic is overwhelmed, then the person moves into the dorsal state of collapse or dissociation, and to move from the dorsal state, one must go back through the sympathetic, fight or flight, state to return to a ventral state.  Deb discussed how we learn to move through this system through coregulation and we discuss how this plays out with parents and children and in couple relationships.  She explained that survivors of Complex PTSD, who grew up in an unsafe and/or unpredictable environment, weren’t able to get that experience of coregulation to internalize, so they had to regulate themselves, and these solutions may have become maladaptive.  This also creates difficulty for the client because their experience is that people are dangerous, so it is dangerous to be in the presence of another, making coregulation very difficult.  Part of the therapist's work with trauma survivors is to be able to help coregulate them in a ventral state, while they also access those other states while revisiting the trauma, experiencing the coregulation in the present while engaging with the experience of the past.  She discussed techniques she uses with clients such as breathing techniques, connecting to memories of times in ventral state, using objects that cue a time when in a ventral state, and a discernment question where the person is able to reflect on whether the current activation is needed for the current situation, and notice, name, and then turn towards the nervous system experience.  
Deb Dana, LCSW is a clinician, consultant and author specializing in complex trauma.  Her work is focused on using the lens of Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma, and creating ways of working that honor the role of the autonomic nervous system.  She is a founding member of the Polyvagal Institute, consultant to Khiron Clinics, and advisor to Unyte.  Deb is the developer of the signature Rhythm of Regulation Clinical Training Series and is well known for translating Polyvagal Theory into a language and application that is both understandable and accessible for clinicians and curious people alike. Deb’s clinical work published with W.W. Norton includes The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection: 50 Client Centered Practices, the Polyvagal Flip Chart, and the Polyvagal Card Deck.  She partners with Sounds True to bring her polyvagal perspective to a general audience through the audio program Befriending Your Nervous System: Looking Through the Lens of Polyvagal Theory and her print book Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory.  Deb can be contacted via her website www.rhythmofregulation.com

Episode 45

Healing the Entire Traumatized Family with Effective, Evidence Based Micro Steps, Using the Family Systems Trauma Model (FST) and Parenting with Love and Limits (PLL)

with Scott Sells, PhD, MSW, LCSW, LMFT
Recorded October 27, 2022
In this episode, Scott discusses his beginnings as a family therapist and his struggles with helping families, which lead him to working with Charles Fishman, MD, an expert in Structural Family Therapy, and later Jay Haley.  He discussed reviewing videotapes of their work and began to see the patterns in family therapy and got interested in process analysis research.  He noticed that there were "key moments of change”, which lead him to create micro steps to help therapists develop their family therapy skills quickly, to be effective in treatment.  We discussed his early work with families and teens and all the great, creative, strategic ways of helping parents to manage behavioral issues, and strengthen their relationships.  He explained that he was able to do research on the approach about its efficacy and evidence basis, and also included the measures to help organizations to support their staff to utilize the model, and use technology to track progress and intervene when a therapist might be struggling in certain areas.  Some years later, as he was reviewing cases where there were treatment “failures”, he described that he found how, when there is trauma involved, the family began to stabilize and become closer, but then not achieve the second order change because the trauma’s effect on the family system would become more apparent.  He realized he did not have a model to address trauma, so he did the research trying to find an existing approach, but found there were no family therapy models with the micro steps to address trauma.  He went on to write his most recent book, Treating the Traumatized Child, and teach it to clinicians and research its effectiveness,  Scott discussed online trainings that he created to help make it available for therapists to gain the skills and utilize the methods in their practice.  He shared that his work now is to help make family therapy accessible to organizations and clinics, so their clinicians can learn and use family therapy, without it needing to be a massive financial and time commitment as some of the other evidence based models.  His hope is that this will reduce secondary trauma, and help with “the great resignation” of mental health workers that are burnt out, through increasing confidence and competency.  ​
Scott P. Sells, PhD, MSW, LCSW, LMFT, is former tenured Professor of Social Work, Savannah State University, Savannah, GA and Associate Professor at UNLV in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of three best-selling books, Treating the Tough Adolescent: A Family-Based, Step-by-Step Guide (1998), Parenting Your Out-of-Control Teenager: 7 Steps to Reestablish Authority and Reclaim Love (2001), and Treating the Traumatized Child: A Step-by-Step Family Systems Approach (Springer, 2017). Scott is currently the founder and model developer of an evidence based model known as the Parenting with Love and Logic and the Family Systems Trauma Model that are being used by both juvenile justice and child welfare in over 14 states and in Europe.  He provides training and resources through the Family Trauma Institute, which can be found at familytrauma.com

Episode 44

​Healing Trauma Individually and Through Couples Therapy Using Attachment In Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) and Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT)

with T Leanne Campbell, Ph.D.
Recorded October 20, 2022
In this episode, Leanne talks about her experience working with Sue Johnson on the Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) efficacy research, and her involvement with EFT and Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT).  We discuss the EFT and EFIT approaches, and Leanne explains how in both EFT and EFIT, the therapist uses the attachment frame and EFT Tango (macro set of interventions) to help clients tune into and deepen their emotional experience in the context of the ‘safe haven’ alliance created by the therapist.  We discuss the use of imaginary conversations between the client and their younger selves or others in their life (Move 3 of the Tango), as well as other moves of the Tango such as processing the encounter (Move 4) – what the client felt, what the reaction is from the other in the imagined encounter, what blocks might emerge and how they are managed.  We discuss trauma and how we work with trauma within the couple context, and Leanne shared her work with clients.  She talked about a couple in one session where the husband was deferring to his wife, and how trauma, especially longstanding developmental trauma, impacts an evolving sense of self.  She reflected the process, deepened the client’s experience, and helped the partner access and share previously disavowed aspects of self and associated vulnerability.  We discuss the EFT approach to working with present process, not necessarily focusing on the past relationships of childhood, but at times connecting with the past experiences that are triggered in the couple relationship.  She shared a story about a couple where the one partner felt anxious when his wife became dissociated, and through processing this with the couple, his wife was able to share her experience, leading him to realize he was not being rejected, and that she would like him to be with her and help ground her by putting his hand on her leg.  Leanne also shares an EFIT example of a client working through trauma and processing unprocessed emotions associated with the imaginal scene of a traumatic event.  
T. Leanne Campbell, Ph.D., is an international speaker, writer, trainer, and co-developer of EFT-related educational programs and materials. Most recently, she co-authored the first basic EFIT (Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy) text with Dr. Sue Johnson, A Primer for Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT): Cultivating Fitness and Growth in Every Client (Routledge, 2021), as well as a workbook for therapists training in EFT (see Furrow et al., Routledge, 2022). Known for her expertise in the areas of loss and trauma, Leanne has provided hundreds of psychological assessment reports for forensic/legal and personal injury matters being considered before various levels of Court, as well as insurance companies and bodies involved in adjudicating personal injury and other loss- and trauma-based claims. In addition to maintaining a full-time private practice, providing individual, couple and family therapy and assessment services, Leanne currently co-manages a multi-site practice comprised of twenty-five clinicians and is a site co-ordinator for an Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) outcome study. You can learn more about Leanne’s work at www.eftvancouverisland.com.

Episode 43

Beyond Reinforcing Social Behaviors to Develop Social Thinking

with Michelle Garcia Winner, MA, CCC-SLP
Recorded June 15, 2022
In this episode, I speak with Michelle about her Social Thinking work, and we discussed her career working in an autism spectrum clinic, working with adults with brain injury,  working in a high school, and later starting her own clinic.  She talked about her enjoyment in working with those on the autism spectrum who have an established expressive and receptive language,  as well as others with social learning challenges. She discussed how people tend to have different expectations for those they perceive has having learning differences verses those they perceive to be “bright” or “more able”. This later group tends to be judged far more critically resulting in the public having far less forgiveness for their “social errors”, which further perpetuates social anxiety. She sought to develop a system for helping these brighter individuals learn about the social world, rather on providing behavioral reinforcement.  She begins her work with individuals by fostering awareness of social interactions, encouraging them to explore their own and other’s possible social thinking, and how this process involves interpreting each other’s social intentions in context. She discusses how this work is done both one on one, as well as within groups, and how the group participants tend to provide invaluable feedback to each other.   She talks about the various factors she considers when working with clients, including social self-awareness, social attention, and ability to interpret (how literal or how abstract).  We also discussed the interplay between social interactions, social anxiety and behavioral issues in children and adolescents, and how working on social problem solving helps to decrease anxiety, and fostering use of pro-social behavioral responses.  
Michelle Garcia Winner, MA, CCC-SLP, is the founder and CEO of Social Thinking and a globally recognized thought leader, author, speaker, and social-cognitive therapist. She is dedicated to helping people of all ages develop social emotional learning, including those with social learning differences. Across her 35-year career she has created numerous evidence-based strategies, treatment frameworks, and curricula to help interventionists develop social competencies in those they support. Michelle's work also teaches how social competencies impact people's broader lives, including their ability to foster relationships and their academic and career performance. She and her team continually update the Social Thinking® Methodology based on the latest research and insights they learn from their clients.   She is a prolific writer and has written and/or co-authored more than 40 books and over 100 articles about the Social Thinking Methodology.  Michelle maintains a private practice, The Center for Social Thinking, in Santa Clara, California, where she works with clients who continue to teach and inspire her. Social Thinking also offers a portal for free tools to support students, clients, and children in their social emotional and organizational learning: https://www.socialthinking.com/free-stuff. 

Episode 42

​A Career in Trauma Treatment and the Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) for PTSD and Complex PTSD

with Janina Fisher, Ph.D.
Recorded May 4, 2022
In this episode, Janina discusses her career in learning, treating, and teaching about PTSD and Complex PTSD.  She discusses being inspired when hearing Judith Herman talk about how that the events in one’s life shape our experiences, as opposed to just being driven by childhood sexual fantasies as was the main viewpoint based on Freud’s work.  She explained how the prevailing thought in treating trauma for decades has been that the client needed to tell the story of the trauma, but we have no research that proves that view.  Instead, she proposes that the way to treat trauma is to change one’s relationship to the symptoms, rather than re-live the event.  She discussed her experience working with Bessel Van Der Kolk, and how he encouraged her to teach about working with PTSD.  Additionally, he encouraged all of his clinicians to be trained in a Somatic approach, which lead her to Sensorimotor Psychotherapy training and to EMDR.  She discussed her work and how she helps clients to engage their frontal lobes, the thinking brain, and works with clients as fragmented, incorporating Internal Family Systems and working from a Structural Dissociation perspective.  We discussed how she treats suicidality in trauma clients as a part trying to protect the client from being overwhelmed by vulnerability.  She discussed how her model, Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) is an integrative approach, incorporating parts work, EMDR, somatic, and Structural Dissociation, and she is training others in her model throughout the world.  Finally, we discussed the clients’ experience in therapy and working with them where they are, as the client who has experienced trauma may not be able to “trust” the therapist enough to try something new.
Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and a former instructor at the Harvard Medical School and former instructor at The Trauma Center, a research and treatment center founded by Bessel van der Kolk. She is known as an expert on the treatment of trauma, and has also been treating individuals, couples and families since 1980.  She is past president of the New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation, an EMDR International Association Credit Provider, and Assistant Educational Director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute. Janina lectures and teaches nationally and internationally on topics related to the integration of the neurobiological research and newer trauma treatment paradigms into traditional therapeutic modalities.  Janina is the author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Self-Alienation (2017), Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: a Workbook for Survivors and Therapists (2021), and The Living Legacy Instructional Flip Chart (2022).  She is best known for her work on integrating somatic interventions into trauma treatment, and the development of her approach Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST), which one can be trained in by going to https://therapywisdom.com/healing-the-fragmented-selves/.  You can learn more about Janina at her website, www.janinafisher.com.   

Episode 41

​Using Play, the Language of Children, and Filial Therapy to Help Youth and Families

with Karen Pernet, LCSW, RPT-S, SEP
Recorded March 21, 2022
In this episode, I speak with Karen about her past as a Child Protective Services caseworker and how she was confused by the therapists who did play therapy, not understanding it fully until she herself got her LCSW and began training in play therapy in Philadelphia. She discussed her experience working with the developers of Filial Therapy, which uses child centered play therapy developed by Virgina Axline and based on Rogerian humanistic theory. In Filial, which in this context means parent-child, parents are taught to hold nondirective, dyadic play sessions with their children, so that the parent becomes the agent of change. Karen discusses learning from numerous experts in play therapy, being trained in Gestalt, and in sand tray therapy. She also discusses how she uses these modalities to help children express their inner experiences, and to help parents learn how to create this space for children and to see the world from their child’s perspective. We discuss areas where parents and therapists get frustrated in their efforts to use play therapeutically, and how the work creates a shift not only in the children, but also in the parents. In addition, we discuss the differences between a Rogerian non-directive play therapy, and a psychodynamic play therapy; in the Rogerian approach, the clinician is reflecting what they see as the child plays, as opposed to interpreting what they see. We also discuss right brain approaches such as play, art therapy, and sand tray, and their application to adults as well as children.  

Karen Pernet, LCSW, RPT-S, SEP is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Registered Play Therapist Supervisor & Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. Karen returned to school to obtain her MSW at Bryn Mawr College of Social Work and Social Research in mid-life after a career in child welfare. She is known for her encouraging and down to earth approach and has been described as knowledgeable, supportive, and playful. Karen’s postgraduate education includes certificates in Gestalt Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, and Filial Therapy. In addition, she has had intensive training in Child Centered Play Therapy, sand tray therapy, Gestalt Play Therapy, trauma treatment, interpersonal neurobiology, and Internal Family Systems. Karen is in private practice in Oakland, CA and provides professional trainings, consultation, and supervision. From 2006 to 2021 she was a certified Filial Therapy trainer with the Family Enhancement and Play Therapy Center and currently a Filial Therapy supervisor with the National Institute for Relationship Enhancement (NIRE). 

Episode 40

Helping Adolescents Unlock Their Potential Using the DNA-V Frame for Applying Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) in Treatment

with Louise Hayes, Ph.D.
Recorded March 15, 2022
In this episode, I speak with Louise about her journey from switching careers as a retail buyer, to going to university and getting a degree in psychology, and working as a behavioral therapist.  She discussed being introduced to Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) and really liking the model, and applying it in her work with adolescents. She explained that the developmental differences between adolescents and adults lead her to think about many aspects, such as evolutionary science, attachment, and how these natural processes can be tapped into when a teen is stuck by using ACT, to help them enhance their development and thrive.  She explained that DNA-V was a framework for ACT that helped with growth and development. The Discoverer is the ablility of us that learns through trial and error and taking risks, the Noticer part is the ability where we are mindful andaware of our embodied self, being present with ourselves and the world around us, the Advisor our ability for self-talk, another way to consider thoughts, and the Values aspect are split between the vitality and values, where the therapist learns about what the teen is passionate about, and derives their values from that.  She explained that she will additionally bring in parents and discuss the work and will often access their Advisor, which has lead to her and her colleagues extending this approach to working with adults. The DNA-V model has been helpful in conveying the ACT principals to adolescents, as well as providing a frame for clinicians learning the model.  

Louise Hayes, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, author, and international speaker.  She is a Fellow and Past President of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. She is a peer-reviewed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/Training (ACT) trainer, engaged in training professionals all across the world. Together with Joseph Ciarrochi, she developed DNA-v, which is a leading model of acceptance and commitment therapy that has sparked international studies and school curricula. She is the co-author of the best-selling books for young people, Get Out of Your Mind and into your Life for Teenagers; and Your Life Your Way released in 2020. She is the author of the practitioner book, The Thriving Adolescent. In 2022, she will release a new book using DNA-V with adults, What Makes You Stronger. Louise is also an active clinician, working with adults and adolescents. She is a former Senior Fellow with The University of Melbourne and Orygen Youth Mental Health. Louise leads a community of mindfulness practitioners, is a certified Buddhist meditation teacher and takes professionals into the Himalaya to develop their mindfulness skills, raise funds for poor children in remote Nepal and has built a school in remote Nepal. To learn more about Louise, go to www.louisdehayes.com or https://dnav.international

Episode 39

Using Deliberate Practice in Training to Increase Therapist Effectiveness in a Field That Has Little To No Opportunity to Practice and Only Performs Behind Closed Doors

with Tony Rousmaniere, Psy.D.
Recorded March 4, 2022
In this episode, Tony discusses being inspired as an early career clinician to track his outcomes with clients, and upon doing so, saw that 50% of his clients were not progressing. He was concerned about this, and reviewed the research, he found that is within the average range of progress that clinicians were having. He explained that psychotherapy is one of the only fields where students and interns don’t practice before they start treating clients. He talked about how he could write a paper on theory and technique, write treatment plans, but when it came out of the abstract and into the real world, there were many nuances to therapy that he was learning. He gave the metaphor of being as if someone said, “I want to play baseball and make it to the major leagues, but I’ll only play in the games and not come to any of the practices”. He discussed his work on Deliberate Practice, and how he and the clinicians he has worked with have created resources for those in training to practice through role play. He explained that they reached out to a number of leading therapy approaches and had them identify the 10 core skills that one would need to practice the particular approach, and came up with role plays to practice these skills and published this through the American Psychological Association. He also explained that he and colleagues have started Sentio University, which will train masters level clinicians using the Deliberate Practice approach, and 50% of each class, and the entire program will consist of practice through role plays. Tony discussed how continuing to practice, and recording sessions and reviewing is so important in developing the skills of the practitioner, since psychotherapy is one of the only fields where what the clinician does is not transparent, with know one seeing exactly what the therapist is doing. He also explained the anxiety that this causes in therapists and training therapists as they may be demonstrating their abilities through role play, video, or one way mirror, and their fear that their performance will not be as good as their ability to talk to others about their performance.
Tony Rousmaniere, Psy.D. is President of Sentio University, a new Marriage and Family Therapist graduate school. He provides workshops, webinars, and advanced clinical training and supervision to clinicians around the world. Dr. Rousmaniere is the author/co-editor of over a dozen books on deliberate practice and psychotherapy training and two series of clinical training books: “The Essentials of Deliberate Practice” (APA Press) and “Advanced Therapeutics, Clinical and Interpersonal Skills” (Elsevier).  In 2017, he published the widely-cited article in The Atlantic Monthly, “What your therapist doesn’t know”. Dr. Rousmaniere supports the open-data movement and publishes his aggregated clinical outcome data, in de-identified form, on his website at www.drtonyr.com. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Rousmaniere was awarded the Early Career Award by the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (APA Division 29). Dr. Rousmaniere’s research focuses on clinical training and supervision, including using Deliberate Practice to improve the effectiveness of clinical training and supervision, the use of technology in supervision, and empirical methods to assess the effectiveness of supervision. 

Episode 38

Helping Children and Teens to Develop the Concepts of Consent, Respect, Pleasure, and Safety in Relationships, Creating a Foundation for a Healthy Relationship with Sexuality

with Shafia Zaloom
Recorded February 1, 2022
In this episode, I speak with Shafia about her path to becoming a health and sex educator.  She discussed how she had worked in case management and social work with kids who were experiencing dual and triple diagnosis, and a common theme was having a history of being harmed.  She decided she wanted to try to help increase the prevention of such harm, and was fortunate enough to work at a great school, Marin Academy, where they allowed her the resources to create an in depth class where she could help the kids process the foundational concepts related to relationships, being respect, dignity, safety and pleasure.  After 25 years of teaching in many schools, Shafia wrote a book: ​Sex, Teens, and Everything in Between.  We discussed her book, which is written to help parents and teens have conversations about consent, sex, their rights, and many other topics.  We discussed her use of Emily Nagoski’s metaphor of the garden and deciding what to leave, what to take out, and who we’re going to let in to our sexual guardian, and the beliefs and feelings we have about sexuality and how we connect with others.  She also shared a conversation she has with the students about how they would feel if the sat down with some French fries and everyone started grabbing them.  This leads into conversations about consent, power, respect, and a whole host of other concepts.  She also shared that it is very important for parents, as well as therapists, to think of their own relationship to sexuality, body image, relationships, gender, sexual orientation because these will influence how we respond in guiding teens.  
Shafia Zaloom is a health educator, parent, consultant and author whose work centers on human development, community building, ethics, and social justice. Her approach involves creating opportunities for students and teachers to discuss the complexities of teen culture and decision-making with straight-forward, open and honest dialogue. Shafia has worked with thousands of children and their families in her role as teacher, coach, administrator, board member, and outdoor educator. She has contributed articles to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and numerous parenting blogs. Shafia’s book, Sex, Teens and Everything in Between has been reviewed as “the ultimate relationship guide for teens of all orientations and identities.” It is one that “every teen, and every parent and educator - and every other adult who interacts with teens - should read.” Shafia is currently the health teacher at the Urban School in San Francisco, and develops curricula and trainings for schools across the country. She was honored by the San Francisco Giants Foundation in 2018 for her work with Aim High, a program that expands opportunities for students and their teachers through tuition-free summer learning enrichment, and was recently granted CAHPERD’s Health Teacher of the Year Award for 2021. Her work has been featured by many media outlets including, The New York Times, USA Today, NPR, KQED, and PBS.

Episode 37

Clients Aren’t Sick, They’re Stuck: Using Strength Based Culturally Informed Integrated Model to Understand the Client’s World and Create Change

with Terry Soo-Hoo, Ph.D.
Recorded January 30, 2022
In this episode, Terry discusses his experience initially being trained psychodynamically and psychoanalytically, but finding that it did not seem to be a good fit for the population whom he was working with, which were families in Chinatown in San Francisco, many of which were immigrants.  He discussed how a training at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) had a profound impact on him when he heard the person teaching saying that people are not sick, they are stuck.  The therapist's job is to help them get unstuck.  Terry discusses the four elements that he feels are important to working with clients and families, which are related to the relationship, being humanistic in approach, understanding the client’s cultural context, activating the clients’ strengths, and the placebo effect, which is the client’s belief that positive change is possible.  We discussed the differences between the Brief Strategic MRI model and Jay Haley’s Strategic Family Therapy model, and the 180 degree shift in solution.  This is based on the idea that the attempted solution has become the problem.  We discussed one example of a session Terry had written about, and how both the cultural competency and the MRI model came into play.  The case involved a Vietnamese woman who was encouraged by her previous therapists to stop taking care of her sick father and instead individuate and take care of herself.  She flatly rejected this idea.  Terry understood the importance of certain roles in collectivists cultures.  Instead of encouraging her to take care of herself more, he helped her to become more effective in caring for the father.  He used different metaphors to step into the clients’ worldview and shifted the system, which worked within the client’s cultural context.  The intervention was a success and the father and the client experienced great improvement.  Terry discussed his approach called, Strength Based Culturally Informed Integrated Model, and how the two most important parts are adaptability and flexibility, and collaborating with your clients on creative interventions to disrupt the stuck cycle and generate new more effective solutions. 
Terry Soo-Hoo, PhD is currently professor at the California State University East Bay in the Marriage and Family Therapy Program, and was the Clinical Director of MRI in Palo Alto.  He completed his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and is Board Certified in Family and Couples Psychology (ABPP).  Prior to university teaching he devoted over twenty years as a psychologist in Community Mental Health Services in San Francisco working with a diverse range of people with many different psychological problems.  Terry's publications include topics on multi-cultural issues in psychotherapy and consultation, brief therapy and couples therapy.  He has special interests in the area of innovative culturally relevant approaches to psychotherapy.  He has also provided extensive presentations, training, supervision and consultation on these topics to agencies and other professionals in many countries around the world. 

Episode 36

Helping Families with Violence, Incest, Gang Involvement and Many Other Issues Using the Collaborative Change Model

with Mary Jo Barrett, MSW
Recorded on December 16, 2021
In this episode, Mary Jo discussed her background in community psychology, which lead her to start her career working with child abuse, leading to a lifelong career working with interpersonal violence, family therapy, and community interventions.  Mary Jo discusses her Collaborative Change Model (CCM), which is a meta-model, being concept driven , as opposed to intervention based.  The two main concepts are how to collaborate and integrate the therapist, clients resources and timing.  In timing, she discusses both the timing of what you’re doing session to session, but also the timing in the session, based on whether we need to expand or contract following a rhythm to stay attuned and connected to our clients.  She discussed how transparent she is with her clients, discussing the model and direction, and teaching the neuroscience they’re using in the session.  She discussed working with clients with domestic violence and incest in a family therapy model, given that most would not do sessions with the offender(s).  She discussed how the first phase is creating context, and assessing and establishing safety, then the second phase is challenging patterns and expanding realities, and finally the third phase is consolidation. Mary Jo shared the awareness of the 5 Essential Ingredients for Successful Treatment.   We discussed her work with cut-offs between adults and their family members and her specific work with those dynamics, and finally discussed her current project working with gang involved individuals and families on the South Side of Chicago.  
Mary Jo Barrett, MSW is the author of Incest: A Multiple Systems Perspective and Treating Complex Trauma: A Relational Blueprint for Collaboration and Change (Psychosocial Stress Series).  She is also the Executive Director and co-founder of The Center for Contextual Change, Ltd. and in the past has been on the faculties of University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration, The Chicago Center For Family Health, and the Family Institute of Northwestern University. Mary Jo was the Director of Midwest Family Resource and has been working in the field of family violence since 1974. She focuses on the teaching of the Collaborative Change Model, systemic and feminist treatment of women, adult survivors of sexual abuse and trauma, eating disorders, couples therapy, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and compassion fatigue.

Episode 35

Internal Family Therapy's Development And a Different Concept of Parts:  Not a Sign of Pathology, but a Natural Part of the Human Psyche

with Dick Schwartz, Ph.D.
Recorded January 3rd, 2022
In this interview, Dick discusses how his work with families lead to him learning from clients about their parts.  He discusses how his clients talked about their parts, and at first he and his client tried to argue against that part and try to get rid of it or for it to not be doing what it was doing.  When this wasn’t working, he and his clients began to have compassion for those parts, and learn about what they needed, and how they were trying to protect the client.  He explained he conceptualizes parts as natural and universal, rather than something only born out of trauma and being indicative of pathology.  He explained how he conceptualizes a Self, which is the part that is the leader, essential, wise part, and how other parts exist from the beginning of our lives, but sometimes, just like in families, they take on roles to protect the system.  He talked about how these parts reminded him of children in the families who he worked with that were trying to help the family system by taking on roles.  Using this conceptualization, he worked with the parts as children in the family who were trying to stabilize the system, and instead helping the Self to connect with these parts, and relieve them of their need to try to protect.  He explained that the goal of IFS is not to integrate, as that would suggest that the goal is to not have the parts, but more for the parts to feel safe, and coexist in a healthy system, just like a healthy family.  During the interview, Dick demonstrates the technique of unblending with Keith, the interviewer, and uses this demonstration to further explain the aspects of IFS including the Protectors, the FireFighters, and the Exiled Parts.  He discusses working with complex trauma with IFS, using IFS with couples and families, and his next chapter in his career, making IFS more accessible to the public through books or apps or other ways that people in the public can use it, not just only in therapy.  
Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D., is the founder of The IFS Institute, originally named The Center for Self Leadership.  He began his career as a systemic family therapist and an academic. Grounded in systems thinking, Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) in response to clients’ descriptions of various parts within themselves. He focused on the relationships among these parts and noticed that there were systemic patterns to the way they were organized across clients. He also found that when the clients’ parts felt safe and were allowed to relax, the clients would experience spontaneously the qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion that Dr. Schwartz came to call the Self. He found that when in that state of Self, clients would know how to heal their parts.  A featured speaker for national professional organizations, Dr. Schwartz has published many books and over fifty articles about IFS.

Episode 34

Understanding Bipolar Disorder, Mitigating the Downsides, and Enhancing the Upsides for Success and Working with Entrepreneurs with Bipolar Disorder

with Michael Freeman, M.D.
Recorded November 19, 2021
In this interview, Michael discusses his work with patients with bipolar disorder, and his own background as an entrepreneur, and how this has lead him into research and treatment of entrepreneurs with bipolar disorder.  Michael explains what bipolar disorder is, and how to accurately diagnose Bipolar Disorder I, Bipolar Disorder II, hypomania, and mania and how they are different than Major Depression, ADHD, and/or complex trauma.  He discusses the importance of assessing for a genetic history, as bipolar disorder his highly hereditable.  He talks about how individuals raised by a bipolar parent may have some of the qualities of bipolar disorder (e.g., creativity, drive, high energy), but not bipolar disorder itself and some of the theories on the benefits of heredity of part of the genetics for bipolar disorder.  He explains how important medication is to the treatment of bipolar disorder, and how any treatment should build upon that, rather than focusing on therapy first, then adding medication.  Michael discusses the evidence based therapies for bipolar disorder including Interpersonal Therapy (IPT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Psychoeducation, Family Focus Therapy (FFT), and Social Rhythm Therapy (SRT).  He discusses the elements being related to self care (e.g., light therapy, time anchors) and a plan for addressing prodromal signs that an episode is coming, as well as examine the effect bipolar disorder has on relationship with partners and family members in order to strengthen those relationships.  He explains that many folks with bipolar disorder go into the fields of art, science, and entrepreneurship, and how the symptoms can be harnessed to aid in success, while simultaneously managing the symptoms to prevent the deleterious effects of the disorder.  

Michael Freeman, M.D. is a psychiatrist, psychologist, consultant and former CEO who serves on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. His clinical practice is focused on the treatment of people with mood, anxiety and attention disorders, and his consulting practice is focused on entrepreneurship and performance enhancement coaching. Michael’s research addresses the strengths, vulnerabilities, and mental health issues faced by entrepreneurs. He has held CEO and C-level leadership positions in several public and private sector health care organizations.  Michael brings medical, psychological, prevention/self-care and executive competencies to his clinical and consulting practice.

Episode 33

To Hospitalize or Not to Hospitalize, the Question Most Therapists Struggle with in Helping Clients with Suicidality

with David Jobes, Ph.D. 
Recorded November 16, 2021
In this interview, Dave discusses his career in researching suicide and how Marsha Lineman encouraged him to go beyond his assessment work to create an intervention for therapists working with clients who are suicidal. He discusses how many therapists struggle to know how to effectively assess suicide risk and intervene in a manner that can build the therapeutic relationship as well as keep clients safe. He explains that due to lack of training, knowledge of evidence-based interventions, and fear, therapists often jump to hospitalizing their clients, when it may not be necessary, and he challenges the overall utility and effectiveness of hospitalization altogether. Dave discusses his clinical tool and intervention, the Suicide Status Form (SSF-4) and his Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS), which have been found to decrease suicidal risk in patients through randomized controlled trials. He explains that therapists can effectively treat suicidality through collaboration, being clear and transparent on the limits of confidentiality and what may lead to a hospitalization. His intervention helps reduce access to lethal means as well as the value of identifying and treating patient-defined "drivers" for suicide, which research shows leads to decreasing hopelessness while increasing hope. The topics of suicidal ideation vs. suicidal intent are discussed and how ideation in itself is sometimes a form of coping.  He speaks to the most feared situations where the therapist is not sure if the client can be sufficiently stable for outpatient care, and he addresses cases in which clients who take their life despite all clinical best efforts. Dave encourages therapists to become more competent in suicide assessment and treatment, because even though clinicians may screen for suicide when accepting patients, it is inevitable that they will have clients who are suicidal. He argues that suicide risk being "not something I work with,” is a problematic stance as it reflects an unwillingness to work with the one fatality of mental health. 

David A. Jobes, Ph.D., ABPP, is a Professor of Psychology, Director of the Suicide Prevention Laboratory, and Associate Director of Clinical Training at The Catholic University of America. Dave is also an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, at Uniformed Services University. He has published six books and numerous peer-reviewed journal articles. Dave is a past President of the American Association of Suicidology (AAS) and he is the recipient of various awards for his scientific work including the 1995 AAS “Shneidman Award” (early career contribution to suicidology), the 2012 AAS “Dublin Award” (for career contributions in suicidology), and the 2016 AAS “Linehan Award” (for suicide treatment research). He has been a consultant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and he now serves as a “Highly Qualified Expert” to the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Security Command. Dave is a Board Member of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) and serves on AFSP’s Scientific Council and the Public Policy Council. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and is Board certified in clinical psychology (American Board of Professional Psychology). Dave maintains a private clinical and consulting practice in Washington DC; clinicians can get trained in the CAMS evidence-based treatment at https://cams-care.com/ 

 Episode 32

Understanding the Schizophrenia Prodrome and Early Intervention for Psychosis

with Rachel Loewy, Ph.D. 
Recorded October 21st, 2021
In this episode, Rachel discusses her career in treatment and research of schizophrenia, and particularly, her research at the University of California, San Francisco, studying the prodromal phase of schizophrenia, which refers to early signs and symptoms, in an effort to detect and prevent the development of a full blown disorder.  She explains the differences between prodromal symptoms and the Clinical High Risk Syndrome (CHR), and how there are three main aspects: the presence of delusions and hallucinations, the level of the individual's conviction that the delusions or hallucinations are real, and the level of distress or impairment.  She points out that only 25% of people develop psychotic disorders within 2.5 years after diagnosis of the CHR syndrome.  She discusses the Coordinated Specialty Care Model that involves medication, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis, family support and psychoeducation, case management, and supports to keep the individual on track with school or work. She talks about the advancements in psychiatric medication and discussed elements of CBT for psychosis.  She talks about the role of the family and supporting the family through this process, and how the concept of Expressed Emotion and past theories about families with schizophrenia (e.g., refrigerator mother), have done damage in the conceptualization of working with families.  She discussed the need for psychoeducation, as well as understanding the interactional patterns that happen between family members as there is a great deal of fear, helplessness, and shame.  She discussed how clinicians in practice who are unfamiliar with psychosis should manage their own reactions of fear or overwhelm, as expressing these reactions may lead their client to shut down or avoid seeking support for their symptoms.  She reassured that working with psychotic symptoms is very similar to working with other issues in therapy.  We discussed validating the client, being curious about their experience, and getting consultation, as many clinicians are unfamiliar with psychosis, or only received training in intensive situations like hospital settings, so have a fatalistic view of these diagnoses.  What the clinicians don’t see is that generally, 1/3 of clients recover on their own, for 1/3 medication works, and its only 1/3 that struggle with severe, chronic psychosis. Many people may live with symptoms their whole life, but be happy, healthy and functioning, so the reduction of symptoms may not be the main goal of treatment. 
Rachel Loewy, PhD, is a clinical psychologist currently working as a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. Along with teaching, Rachel has developed clinical programs to diagnose and treat early psychosis, and has led many research studies, primarily focused on early identification and intervention in schizophrenia. Currently, she is a co-investigator on a research project dedicated to building a California early psychosis network that would input thousands of patients' data into one network hoping to create a better system that allows for improved intervention effort. Alongside her research, Rachel has many publications regarding her work that have all been compiled at https://profiles.ucsf.edu/rachel.loewy. These publications focus on various studies regarding schizophrenia and psychosis, such as evidence-based practices for early intervention in psychosis particularly in community settings.  

Episode 31

​Helping Veterans Navigate the Dual Systems Paradigm of Returning Home to Families Through Being with Their Experience and Letting the Connection Determine the Treatment Modality, Rather Than a Protocol

Keith Bonnes, Psy.D.
Recorded September 30th, 2021
In this episode, Keith talks about his unique experience of being deployed in Iraq with his wife, and after a roadside bomb (IED) attack, she struggled with PTSD.  He discussed how after she received treatment through the military mental health system, which was retraumatizing, he started taking classes in Psychology and learned all he could about trauma, and together they worked through her PTSD. This lead him to go on to obtain a doctorate in psychology, and work with veterans and their families specializing in combat trauma and military sexual trauma. He explained that soldiers are trained to turn all of their vulnerable emotions into aggression, because that is what is needed to survive in battle, and this makes it difficult for soldiers to transition back into their family system and larger society.  Additionally, in the military, they form strong bonds with their fellow soldiers, and between conditioning, the group think, and the experiences that the soldiers go through together, it makes some feel that no one else understands their struggle which leads to suffering alone. This creates a dual family systems paradigm, the differences between the military system’s culture and the family’s system’s culture, leaving veteran's feeling disconnected from both families.  He discussed the importance of connecting with the individual, being with their experience, and how this can be very hard for clinicians as working with veterans with trauma session after session can lead to vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue.  He discussed his work with The Hume Center, with the chronically homeless population and working with severe mental illness, and how there is a great deal of intersectionality between homelessness and veterans. He discussed the importance of meeting the client where they are, and then finding what approaches might fit best for them, rather than using a top down approach such as trying to fit them into an evidence based scripted protocol.  We discussed a rather successful program for Veterans in Oakland at the Oakland Vet Center, where staff had been working there for many years, as opposed to other programs where there is high turnover both in clients and in clinicians. One of the aspects that seemed to make it successful was the connections built through the community of clients.  He discussed how clients who had been doing group work there would come to his PTSD 101 workshops just to see their friends. We discussed how engagement, whether with the clinician, or the community of clients was so significant in engagement for mental health services. 

​Keith Bonnes, Psy.D. is a clinical psychologist and an Air Force (deployed Army) blue to green veteran of the Iraq war. Keith has worked extensively with veterans, as well as civilian individuals impacted by trauma and their families and now works at Growing Together Preventative Psychological Services in the San Francisco Bay Area East Bay https://growingtogetherpps.com, which provides a range of community based treatments including work with individuals, children, families, couples, and groups. He is also working to establish a training program and curriculum, and to take on more teaching and public speaking opportunities to help develop the clinical skills of early career clinical doctorate and master level trainees and provide an exceptional training experience as a training center. He works from a humanistic, client centered, trauma informed phenomenological approach, meeting the client where they are, and connecting with their experience, and then integrating modalities of treatment and interventions to fit for the clients perspective of the world. Keith uses insights from humanistic practitioners and the concept of hierarchy of needs, self actualization, and empathic attunement as a building principal along with cultural humility in his work with clients to ensure a holistic approach to the clients experience is considered.

Episode 30

Increasing Your Effectiveness with Clients Using The Experts Themselves, Your Clients!

Scott D. Miller, Ph.D.
Recorded September 27th, 2021
In this interview, Scott discusses how he came to his work focusing on Feedback Informed Treatment and deliberate practice.  He discussed how when working with the Solution Focused Therapy founders, independent research found that the approach was effective, but not so significantly more effective than other approaches.  He explained how this was surprising to him, and when he looked into it more, he found this finding was true when applied to all theories and techniques.  He discussed his drive to improve as a clinician himself and his work with Michael Lambert and Lynn Johnson in looking at the common factors related to outcome and using client feedback to improve alliance and thus outcome.  We discussed how continuing education is often focus on theory and technique, and how if a clinician would like to improve their effectiveness with clients, they need to focus on improving their relationships with clients.  He discussed learning about Anders Ericsson's research related to deliberate practice, and how clinicians can use this to improve their work with clients.  We discussed how research is often focused on symptoms, but it is actually the individual's functioning that is more important as functioning is often what brings clients into treatment, rather than symptoms.  He explained that when working in drug and alcohol treatment, he often wondered why the clients had not sought treatment earlier, and it was often an effect on their functioning (e.g., losing their partner, losing their job) that propelled them into treatment.  Scott discusses how often when people consult with him, he always returns to why the client is in therapy and what they want out of it, which many therapists forget about as they turn their attention towards the symptoms.
 
Scott D. Miller, Ph.D. is the founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence, an international consortium of clinicians, researchers, and educators dedicated to promoting excellence in behavioral health services.  Scott conducts workshops and training in the United States and abroad, helping hundreds of agencies and organizations, both public and private, to achieve superior results.  He is one of a handful of "invited faculty" whose work, thinking, and research is featured at the prestigious "Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference."  His humorous and engaging presentation style and command of the research literature consistently inspires practitioners, administrators, and policy makers to make effective changes in service delivery.  He is the author of numerous articles and co-author of ​Better Results: Using Deliberate Practice to Improve Therapeutic Effectiveness, The Heroic Client: A Revolutionary Way to Improve Effectiveness through Client-Directed, Outcome-Informed Therapy, and ​Feedback Informed Treatment in Clinical Practice: Reaching for Excellence.

Episode 29

​Integrating Questions of Privilege, Oppression and Power in the Therapeutic Encounter

Jane Ariel, PhD, LMFT
Recorded September 1st, 2021
In this episode, Jane discusses her own experience of growing up in a privileged white community and the subsequent development of her career in social justice. That was the beginning of her journey working with different organizations concerning the effects of wide-spread oppression particularly in education in the United States and in Israel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. When she became a psychotherapist years later, she realized  that her training did not specifically cover the effect of the “isms,” and their relationship to the life experience of clients and their mental health, even though family therapists were trained in systemic thinking and the importance of context. After becoming a Visions consultant, she became more aware of her own privilege and the historic and present oppression others continually experienced. Intersectionality became very important as well because each person usually has some places where they have privilege and some where they are oppressed. How each of us behaves in those different places becomes an important area of exploration, both for therapist and client.  Briefly, she discussed three important characteristics that therapists hopefully bring to their work. One is cultural humility, another is authenticity, and the third is a constant awareness of context and privilege and how it intersects with individual and relational mental health.  She discussed how the role of therapist itself brings power into the room, and even if there is intersectionality, where there is shared race, gender, sexual orientation or a number of other characteristics, the therapist continues to hold power.  She shared her experience in Kosovo dealing with grieving and traumatized families just after 9/11 occurred. She used the term “open listening”, which is a valuable way to be completely present, stay with the person’s experience empathically, while at the same time not losing oneself.  
 
Jane Ariel, PhD, LMFT is a psychologist in Oakland, California, and works with individuals, couples, and families. She has been an adjunct professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley and has worked also with the Women’s Therapy Center and other institutions in the Bay Area. She is an active member of the American Family Therapy Academy, and works with Visions, a national organization dealing with issues of equity, inclusion, and multiculturalism.

Episode 28

Bridging the Divide Between Couples Therapy and Sex Therapy Using Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy’s Process Orientation and Attachment Focus

with Lisa Blum, PsyD & Silvina Irwin, PhD
Recorded August 23, 2021
In this interview, Lisa and Silvina discuss their path to sex therapy, both being couples therapists trained in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy.  At their weekend Hold Me Tight Workshops for couples, there was never enough time after all the relational work to delve deeply enough into the couple’s sexual relationship; so they dove into deep study over several years and developed an integrative approach, blending the best of sex therapy techniques and the process orientation and attachment focus of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT).  In the interview, they discuss the relationship between attachment and sex in a couple’s relationship, and how physical connection is so essential to attachment, citing Harlow’s research with the “cloth mother” monkeys as but one example.  I invite them to share more about several of the key concepts they cover in their workshop for clinicians, Integrating Sex and Sexuality in EFT Couples’ Work.  We discuss the groundbreaking work of Emily Nagosky, who has made accessible to everyone such key concepts as the Dual Control Model of Sexual Response, responsive desire and newer versions of the Sexual Response Cycle model that allow so many more options for couples.   They discuss how for many therapists, couples therapy and sex therapy are disconnected, but how powerful the integration of the two can be.  We discuss how they use sex therapy behavioral interventions, such as a variety of touch exercises, and process these experiences with the couples through the EFT lens to understand the blocks that get in the way.  This integration of an experiential, process-oriented therapy, and behavioral interventions from sex therapy, through an attachment lens helps bridge the divide between couples therapy and sex therapy.    

Silvina Irwin, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, and ICEEFT Certified Trainer and Supervisor in Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples. Under the mentorship of Dr. Sue Johnson, founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy, Silvina offers trainings in LA and other select US and International areas.  She is co-founder of the EFT Resource Center in Pasadena, CA, which provides EFT psychotherapy services to the community and offers training and supervision to therapists in Emotionally Focused Therapy.   In her psychotherapy practice, Dr. Irwin specializes in working with survivors of trauma and relationship distress.  In addition, Dr. Irwin has developed and facilitated workshops for couples who want to deepen and enrich their sexual connection.  Dr. Irwin also leads consultation groups with her close colleague Dr. Lisa Blum for mental health professionals all over the country who are refining their skills in integrating sexuality into their couples’ therapy work.  Dr. Irwin also offers master classes on working with trauma in couples therapy, and workshops on Vicarious Trauma of therapists, first responders, and the legal and medical community.  To learn more about Dr. Irwin, please visit www.drsilvinairwin.com or www.EFTResourceCenter.com.

Lisa Blum, Psy.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in promoting healthy couple and family relationships through an attachment lens.  Dr. Blum is an ICEEFT-Certified  Supervisor and Therapist in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), one of the few research-validated therapies for helping couples and families strengthen relationships and build stronger connections.  Dr. Blum is a Co-Founder of the EFT Resource Center in Pasadena, a group private practice, where her work includes individual, couples, and family therapy, and supervision, training, and public speaking on family, marital, and parenting issues.  Dr. Blum works with both gay, lesbian, queer and straight individuals and couples, and with adults forming families in novel and creative ways. Since the beginning of her career, Dr. Blum has been involved in teaching, research, and practice in the field of sexuality, and currently co-facilitates weekend workshops for couples who want to deepen and enrich their sexual connection.  In addition, Dr. Blum and her close colleague Dr. Silvina Irwin lead seminars and consultation groups for mental health professionals who are refining their skills in integrating sexuality into their couples’ therapy work.  To learn more about Dr. Blum, please visit www.drlisablum.com, and www.EFTResourceCenter.com. 

Episode 27

Working with African American Couples and Utilizing Cultural Humility to Go Beyond a Eurocentric Understanding of Attachment

with Paul Guillory, PhD
Recorded August 19, 2021
In this episode, Paul discusses how his seeking connection with other African-American clinicians in the Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) community, in order to translate the EFT approach into his and his colleagues experiences with their African-American clients, lead him to write his book, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy with African American Couples: Love Heals.  He discussed how attachment in African cultures and other collectivist cultures are different from our traditional sense of child attaches to mother, and in recent years, child also attaches to father.  Instead, he discussed how in a more collectivist culture, child attaches to community, and other villages may be the responsive attachment figure while the mother is working on the farm, or the grandparent, and how this was extended as African Americans were brought to the United States in slavery, families were broken up, and others took in children who were not there and children attached with the adults they were enslaved with.  Paul discusses working with couples, within an attachment framework, and how cultural humility is a significant aspect of the work with others, whether of a similar race or culture, or different, as his cultural experience and racial identity can be a different experience than one or both partners of a couple he might be working with who are also Black.  He discussed the three levels of cultural humanity, which is knowing about general issues that affect the group that one is working with, the diversity of experiences within that group, and ultimately, the self as therapist, and the therapists’ cultural experiences and how that impacts their thinking.  His goal in writing his book was to promote clinicians needing more information and understanding of culture, and adjusting clinically to the realities of unique stresses and threats to African American love.     

Paul Guillory, PhD is a psychologist, and Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the Clinical Science Program, Psychology Department. He is a certified Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy therapist and certified EFT supervisor, and an EFT Trainer-in-Training.  Paul is the author of the book, Emotionally Focused Therapy with African American Couples: Love Heals, and is the former chairperson of the Northern California Community of Emotionally Focused Therapy.  Paul was the psychological consultant to the Oakland Raiders professional football team and the National Football League for 14 years, has been a consultant to the Sacramento Kings professional basketball team, and is a selected provider for the National Basketball Players Association. He has also served as Director of the Center for Family Counseling in Oakland California for 10 years, and has been in private practice in Oakland, California for over 30 years. 

Episode 26

Beyond Cultural Competency: Understanding Multiple Levels of Culture, Immigration, Social Justice, and a Process Analysis of Collaboration ​

with Celia Falicov, Ph.D.
Recorded August 16, 2021
In this episode, Celia discusses how her experiences of growing up as a child of immigrant parents who fled Eastern Europe to Argentina, and then her own experience of immigration to the United States has lead her into a career in working with systems, both at the family level, as well as the community and large cultural level of systems.  Celia discusses how her interest in the family system grew out of her own experience of moving from a couple to a family, and experience in a psychodynamic program that was very pathologizing of the parent and a focus on the attachment and transference with the therapist.  She discussed training with some of the most influential family therapists.  We discussed a training she had done some years ago, called One Size Doesn’t Fit All, and how important it is to not just transpose a U.S. model of therapy, based as a two parent nuclear family, to all clients.  She discussed the tools (1 & 2) she developed using her MECA model, and looking at multigenerational households, siblings raising children, community raising children, and discussed there is great variation within cultures, and needing cultural humility, as well as understanding that social justice is separate from cultural competency in diversity.  We also talked about the importance of therapists learning about the impact of immigration.  She discussed her article on Centering the Voice of the Client, which came out of her work at Harvard Medical School, where she did process research on the elements related to collaboration using a Shared Decision Making model.  We discussed the elements of collaboration: sharing the agenda setting, balance of talking time, tentativeness rather than absoluteness, collaborative meaning making rather than diagnostic expert labeling, and co-constructing behavioral tasks.    

Celia Falicov, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and family therapist in San Diego, California.  Celia is the Director of Mental Health Services at the Student-Run Free Clinic Project of the Department of Family Medicine at University of California, San Diego. She was also the previous president of the American Family Therapy Academy (AFTA) and has published numerous books and articles, including: Family Transitions: Continuity and Change Over the Life Cycle, Cultural Perspectives in Family Therapy and Latino Families in Therapy, and Multiculturalism and Diversity in Clinical Supervision with Falender and Shafranske. 

Episode 25

Beyond Psychotropic Medication with Interventional Psychiatry: Enabling Neuroplasticity Though Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), Psilocybin, Ketamine, and MDMA

with Ryan Vidrine, M.D.
Recorded July 13, 2021
In this episode, Ryan discusses his career as an Interventional Psychiatrist, using neuromodulation treatments for clients who are not responding to medications and therapy.  He discusses the use of TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) which is FDA approved for both depression & OCD and often turned to after multiple antidepressants have not been effective.  He discusses how TMS stimulates brain circuits through magnetic pulses, manipulating activity in areas of the brain and stimulating neuroplasticity in specific pathways.  He describes how clients often report feeling less reactive, as the process may help balance the connections between the limbic system and the  prefrontal cortex, increasing cognitive control and emotional regulation.  We also discuss ECT and Ketamine which are other treatments provided through his organization, Mindful Health Solutions, as well as his training in Psilocybin and MDMA assisted therapy, which are not currently approved outside of research settings in California.  He discusses how each of these interventions can promote brain changes like neuroplasticity, and how it may be beneficial to pair these interventions with therapy concurrently.  He discusses the applications mainly for depression and OCD, but we also touch on and speculate about how brain stimulation & psychedelic treatments could be used to treat a variety of disorders, such as PTSD, borderline personality, ADHD, Social Anxiety, and substance abuse/dependence.

Ryan Vidrine, MD is a Board-Certified Psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of OCD and related anxiety Disorders.  He started his career in neuroscience and moved into psychiatry with a particular interest in the field of Interventional Psychiatry and Neuromodulation for treatment resistant conditions, which includes the use of ECT, TMS, ketamine/esketamine, and deep brain stimulation.  During his residency training, Ryan worked in the UCSF OCD & Anxiety Specialty Clinic, developing expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of the full range of anxiety disorders, approaching patients from an Acceptance-Commitment Therapy (ACT) framework, which focuses on patient values as the anchor and impetus for behavioral changes.  He is currently Director of OCD and Anxiety Services at Mindful Health Solutions and an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF School of Medicine. Additionally, he completed training through the CIIS Psychedelic Therapy and Research Program in San Francisco, CA.

Episode 24

​Treating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Effectively Using Exposure with Response Prevention and Reaching Clinicians and Clients Through the Medium of Reality Television

with Shana Doronn, LCSW, PsyD
Recorded July 17, 2021
In this episode, I speak with Shana about her work with adults with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder at UCLA’s intensive treatment program.  We discuss Exposure with Response Prevention, the effective, evidence based treatment for OCD, as well as Shana’s experience with the Obsessed tv series on A&E.  We discuss how I use clips of her work with one of the clients and how impactful that reality tv show has been in helping clinicians understand ERP as well as helping clients see what effective OCD treatment looks like.  Shana discusses the changes in content of OCD and particularly the “harm to others” obsession that has attached itself to the social justice movements of the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and other social issues where OCD patients obsess about saying the wrong thing or bumping into someone, and thus causing a micro or macro aggressions.  We discuss how clients with OCD are the least likely to harm someone, which is why in the second episode of Obsessed, she has her client  whose fear is that she will kill someone against her will, and has that client hold a knife to her throat in session and sit with the distress of the ability to kill someone, and the new learning taking place that interrupts the thought-action fusion of OCD.

Shana Doronn, LCSW, PsyD is a licensed Clinical Social Worker and Doctor of Psychology in the UCLA OCD Intensive Treatment Program.  She received her MSW at USC and her Psy.D. at University of San Francisco. Dr. Doronn frequently presents on OCD and related disorders in workshops and symposiums throughout the country. She was also a featured therapist on A&E’s reality documentary “Obsessed” from 2008-2010. In addition to her current work in the OCD Intensive Treatment Program, Dr. Doronn also treats patients with OCD and other anxiety disorders in her private practice in Los Angeles and Orange County.

Episode 23

Using Trauma-Informed Psychotherapy, An Integration of Attachment, Structural Dissociation, Parts, and EMDR, to Heal Complex Trauma

with Rachel Walker, LMFT
Recorded July 6, 2021
In this interview, Rachel Walker explains how trauma-informed psychotherapies like EMDR, Parts Work, Attachment Theory, and Structural Dissociation work better in collaboration than they do alone. She discusses her journey to this realization, and the integrative treatment model which she developed and now practices as a result. This model, which Rachel teaches throughout the United States, moves beyond any one treatment modality to focus on the ways in which ALL trauma-informed therapies overlap. Her work illuminates the bigger picture, helping clinicians and trauma survivors alike to be more oriented within the treatment, and clearer about every aspect of the healing journey - from assessment, to goal setting, to pacing, to the application of interventions. The roadmap which she has developed provides a trauma-informed treatment progression that keeps the healing moving forward, regardless of the level of trauma and dissociation. The end result is a process that can be consistently relied on to work, leaving both therapist and client feeling more hopeful, collaborative, and empowered in the treatment and healing of complex trauma and dissociation. 

Rachel Walker, LMFT is a trauma-informed psychotherapist and EMDR Approved Consultant practicing in Oakland, CA. She is the winner of CAMFT’s Mary Reimersma Distinguished Clinician Award for 2021 for her innovative contribution to the field of trauma treatment. She has created an in-depth trauma training for mental health professionals called, 'At the Crossroads of Trauma Therapy', which integrates theories and interventions from many of today’s most effective trauma models. Rachel is also the founder and creator of the online platform, TraumaRecoveryStore.com which provides simple tools for improving trauma treatment and promoting the self-healing process. She has written and designed numerous treatment tools for therapists and clients, including the Trauma Recovery Guidebook for Therapists and the Trauma Recovery Handbook for Survivors (in English, Spanish, and Icelandic). Rachel’s therapeutic training began in the arts where she learned to apply play, metaphor, creativity and spontaneity to the work. Her deepest and most heartfelt desire is to inspire trauma survivors, and the therapists who treat them, to hope! With perseverance, patience, curiosity, and human to human contact—recovery is absolutely possible!

Episode 22

How EMDR Works: Research on the Neuroscience of EMDR

with Marco Pagani, MD
Recorded July 2, 2021
In this interview, Marco discusses how he was invited to do a study on EMDR, to understand the neurological mechanisms behind the processing of the trauma.  He discussed his career being a MD and a neuroscientist interested in memory.  He discussed using EEG to measure what was happening in the brain during bilateral stimulation during EMDR.  He explained that they were able to determine that the delta waves that were being evoked during EMDR were similar to the delta waves exhibited during sleep, and he discussed how sleep is so significantly connected to processing of memory.  He discussed the processes of trauma and the mechanisms of action for EMDR.  

Marco Pagani, MD, PhD is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council (ISTC-CNR), and Associate Researcher at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm and at University Medical Centre in Groningen. His work focuses on the physiopathology of brain perfusion, metabolism, electrical activity and anatomy, applied to neurodegenerative, neurological and psychiatric disorders. He has published over 150 papers in peer reviewed journals, of which about 40 are related to PTSD and EMDR.  Marco has presented more than 130 communications at international Conferences, has given more than 100 Keynotes, Plenary Lectures at International Conferences, CME, Workshops and Courses and has been awarded three International Prizes in the field of Neuroimaging.

Episode 21

Looking Inwards and Through the Temperament Lens to Have More Ease and Harmony at Home

with Rona Renner, RN
Recorded June 18, 2021
In this episode, Rona discusses how her work as a nurse conducting parenting classes led to her hosting a radio show to reach a wider audience of parents about safe and effective parenting methods, and how to better understand your child. She emphasizes how knowing the temperaments of both the child and the parent are key for successful parenting and better understanding of the child. She discusses how to resist pathologizing everything your child does, and explores the concept of a wide range of normal in childrens’ behavior. Rona explains the idea of how better parenting is really about identifying your own triggers as a parent, and how you must work on yourself in order to be the best parent you can be.

Rona Renner, RN, author of Is That Me Yelling?: A Parent's Guide To Getting Your Kids to Cooperate Without Losing Your Cool, had a wide range of experiences in health care before being trained by Kaiser Permanente to be a temperament counselor, which she has continued to use as a foundation for her work facilitating parenting groups and classes for over 30 years. She has also spoken at numerous national conferences on children’s temperament, ADHD, and other parenting concerns, as well as provided consultation for medical professionals and teachers on learning differences in India and Africa. Rona is a current host of About Health on 94.1FM KPFA, and has been a guest expert on national television segments on CNN and 20/20. She founded both Childhood Matters and Nuestros Niños, and was the radio host of Childhood Matters for ten years.

Episode 20

After Growing Up in the Shadow of Mental Health Stigma, A Career of Research in ADHD is Born

with Stephen Hinshaw, Ph.D.
Recorded June 7, 2021
In this interview, Steve discusses his path to working in the field of mental health after growing up in a family where his father suffered from misdiagnosed bipolar disorder, but it was never discussed due to doctor's orders.  He discusses his book about growing up in silence and stigma, "Another Kind of Madness: A Journey Through the Stigma and Hope of Mental Illness", and his interest in working to overcome mental stigma.  We discuss his research on ADHD, and how the MTA study was one of the largest studies looking at medication and treatment.  We discuss the behavioral interventions that are helpful to children and families where ADHD is present.  Additionally we also explored his work in the book, the "ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medications, Money, and Today's Push for Performance", and the issues of under and over-diagnosis of ADHD.   This also leads into the conversation about ADHD and gender, and Steve discusses his research in the BGALS study, looking at how ADHD appears in girls and women, and the longitudinal research.  Finally, Steve talks about his work with programs to run stigma reduction groups in high school, when beliefs are being developed, and having speakers series and other method to address stigma in a real world way, and his work with Bring Change to Mind.
Stephen Hinshaw, Ph.D. is known for his work in developmental psychopathology, clinical interventions with children and adolescents, and mental illness stigma. He is currently a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkley and the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Hinshaw has authored over 370 articles and chapters as well as 12 books, including, Another Kind of Madness: A Journey through the Stigma and Hope of Mental Illness , The Triple Bind: Saving our Teenage Girls from Today’s Pressures with R. Scheffler, and The ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medications, Money, and Today’s Push for Performance.  Dr. Hinshaw’s research efforts have been recognized by many awards including the James McKeen Cattell Award from the Association for Psychological Science (2016) which is the highest award to honor a lifetime of outstanding contributions to applied psychological research.

Episode 19

Navigating the Complexity of Working with Families In a “High Conflict” Divorce ​

with Steven Friedlander, Ph.D
Recorded June 7, 2021
In this episode, I speak with Steven Friedlander, Ph.D. about working with families involved with “high conflict” divorce, as well as parental alienation/parental rejection situations.  Steven discusses his career and how his work led him to researching and writing about parental rejection/parental refusal, and his approach for this work.  He described the different roles that clinicians can play in helping a family where there is a great deal of conflict and discussed the Special Master/Parenting Coordinator role, the co-parenting role, child custody evaluation, and the therapist role.  He explained the complexity of researching the effectiveness of treatment for families dealing with rejection/refusal, as well as differentiating between a parent who may be acting in a way to alienate their child, and a case where there is no clear evidence for alienation, but seemingly brought about as a by-product of the enmeshed parent.
Steven Friedlander, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a special expertise working with families when a child is refusing or resisting contact with a parent. His most recent publications have focused on post-divorce disruption of family relationships, and interventions designed to resolve those problems. Dr. Friedlander facilitates consultation groups for other professionals which focus on interventions with families when a child resists/refuses contact with a parent, and parent coordination in high conflict families. He previously served on the Board of Directors of the California chapter of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC-CA) from 2005-2014. Dr. Friedlander is Clinical Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Francisco

Episode 18 

Helping Clients Navigate Stepfamily Relationships, and How "Blended Families” Are Very Different from First-time Families

with Patricia Papernow, EdD
Recorded May 28, 2021
In this podcast, Patricia Papernow discusses her experience as both a stepparent and a parent in a stepfamily, and how this led to first a dissertation on stages of development in becoming a stepfamily, and then a life-long interest in studying and working with stepfamilies. She discusses how stepfamilies are different from first time families, particularly regarding the time and space for the couple to develop their attachment and build some common ground and the challenges children face in stepfamilies. She describes the 5 major challenges for stepfamilies: 1) insider/outsider positions, 2) children’s needs, 3) stepparents and biological parents polarizing around parenting tasks, 4) the other biological parents/ex-partner being part of the family system, and 5) navigating creating new shared rituals. She offers concrete, evidence-based guidance about what works (and what doesn’t) to meet these challenges.​ 
Patricia Papernow, EdD is well known for her books Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships, Becoming a Stepfamily, and, with Karen Bonnell, The Stepfamily Handbook From Dating, to Getting Serious to Forming a “Blended Family,” ​as well as the author of dozens of articles and book chapters about “blended families.” Dr. Papernow is a systems and trauma-trained clinician with a special focus on working with families through the divorce and recoupling process. She is a renowned educator teaching about stepfamilies all over the U.S. and the world. She is also the recipient of the 2017 award for Distinguished Contribution to Family Psychology from APA (American Psychological Association).

Episode 17

The Rapid Effectiveness of the New EMDR Flash Technique

with Phil Manfield, Ph.D.
Recorded May 21, 2021
In this episode, Phil discusses his career and his early experience with EMDR and how this became a focus of his work as he went on to become an EMDR trainer.  He discusses the controversy around EMDR, and its mechanisms of action, and issues related to research and funding.  He discusses his theory on how EMDR works, and talks about the technique he has developed called the Flash Technique.  He discusses how he has found this technique to be extremely effective in helping clients to effectively process trauma, even faster than traditional EMDR. 
Phil Manfield, Ph.D has been licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist since 1975. He has authored or edited five books about psychotherapy and the use of EMDR, including: EMDR Up Close: Subtleties of Trauma Processing, EMDR Casebook, and Extending EMDR: A Casebook of Innovative Applications. He has taught in the US, Canada, Australia, South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Currently, he is the Northern California Regional Coordinator for the EMDR International Association. 

Episode 16

​#MenToo - The Unseen Epidemic of Child Sexual Abuse of Boys and Why Boys and Men Don’t Share

with Kelli Palfy, Ph.D.
Recorded May 14, 2021
In this episode, Dr. Palfy discusses how her work in law enforcement, specifically investigating and arresting child sexual abusers, led her into a career of psychology.  She discusses how when we think of childhood sexual trauma, we often think of women, although 1 in 6 men were sexually abused prior to age 16.  She explains that of those that were abused, only 5 in 1,000 go on to disclose their abuse, thus giving a sense that this doesn’t happen to boys and may be missed when working with men.  She discusses some of the differences between abuse of boys and women including societal norms of men being protectors (the man of the family) so not telling, fear of being seen as gay or as someone who will inevitably be a child abuser, worrying that they somehow wanted the abuse as males anatomy responses physiologically different during abuse, and ultimately society not making a place for males to be vulnerable, and instead dismissing or shaming them for being too sensitive.  We discuss her work in helping others to understand male experiences of abuse, so that clinicians can be more aware of seeing that this may be part of the reason men are struggling and help them to address their trauma. 
Kelli Palfy, Ph.D. is a psychologist and author, who first started her career as an RCMP officer that specialized in sex crimes. Today, Dr. Palfy works with first responders, male survivors of sexual abuse, and people who are bullied in the workplace. Dr. Palfy authored the book Men Too: Unspoken Truths About Male Sexual Abuse which is based off of her own research and experience in the field. 

Episode 15

​Helping Prevent and Treat Trauma in First Responders and Police Officer’s Experience Post George Floyd

with Joel Fay, Ph.D.
Recorded May 2, 2021
In this episode, Joel discusses his work as a police officer, and his decision to become trained as a psychologist, in hopes of making an even greater impact on the people he arrested. Joel discussed his work in Crisis Intervention, working with homeless populations and the training of police officers to work more effectively with mentally ill citizens. He discusses his work with the West Coast Post-trauma Retreat where he works with first responders in an effort to prevent suicide.  Suicide is the leading cause of death for first responders and more officers die from suicide than all other factors combined.  He explains the reticence of first responders to engage in mental health treatment, and the challenges police officers have in finding a supportive clinician.  He and I discussed the murder of George Floyd, the effect on the relationship between police officers and the community, and the subsequent impact on police officers.  He discusses the psychological impact of the riots that followed Floyd’s death.  We also discussed the dynamics that may have played into the lack of action of the other officers at the Floyd incident. We discuss the research of The Milgram Shock Experiment and the Stanford Prison Study where “normal” individuals acted in ways that most would have said they would not have acted but did so in relation to context and authority.  Joel discussed his most recent focus on building resiliency in police officers, and training them as part of the Police Academy, as well as training seasoned officers in connecting to their meaning, influenced by Victor Frankel’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning.  He explained that they also teach the difference between compartmentalization, which is necessary and adaptable on the job, as opposed to suppression, which could lead to bottling up and later spilling over of emotions which could affect a responder’s personal and professional life.
Joel Fay, Ph.D. is a retired police officer who proudly served the force for over 30 years and made a career change, obtaining his Doctorate in Psychology. He now has his own private practice, is the lead clinician for West Coast Post-Trauma Retreat (WCPR), and is the co-founder of the First Responder Support Network, where he is currently the Clinical Director. He also teaches Crisis Intervention Training across California, is the co-author of Counseling Cops, and the author of many articles about emergency service stress. In his private practice, he specializes in working with emergency responders from many different organizations. Dr. Fay has received many awards for his amazing work, including the California Psychological Association 2007 Humanitarian Award and the American Psychological Association 2012 award for Outstanding Contributions to the Practice of Policy and Public Safety Psychology. 

Episode 14

​Effectively Treating Childhood Anxiety Without The Child In the Therapy

with Eli Lebowitz, Ph.D.
Recorded April 26, 2021
In this episode, Eli discusses how his background in working in one clinic treating children with anxiety, and another clinic treating significant childhood behavioral problems, lead him to develop his program SPACE.  Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) has been found to reduce childhood anxiety at the same levels as a course of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for children by working directly with the parents.  He discusses how the previous thinking was that children who are not willing to do CBT were not going to be able to benefit from therapy, and yet for behavioral problems there were treatments that were effective by working only with the parents.  He found that treatment for childhood anxiety was based on methods for adults, but was leaving out the important distinction that children look to their parents for help in coping with anxiety provoking situations.  This lead him to develop a treatment that focused on parents changing behaviors in order to not accommodate anxiety, using support as well as communication, and disengaging from the anxiety process in a loving way.  ​
Eli Lebowitz, Ph.D. is the Director of the Program for Anxiety Disorders at the Yale Child Study Center, creator of SPACE (a parent-based treatment program for child and adolescent anxiety and related disorders), as well the author of Treating Childhood and Adolescent Anxiety: A Guide for Caregivers with Haim Omer and Breaking Free of Child Anxiety and OCD: A Scientifically Proven Program for Parents, his most recent published work. Dr. Lebowitz's research focuses on the development, neurobiology, and treatment of anxiety with a focus on cross-generational and family influences. ​

Episode 13

Helping the Helpers: Helping the Witnesses of Trauma Move Into Empowered Awareness Through the Witness to Witness (W2W) Program

with Kaethe Weingarten, Ph.D.
Recorded April 23, 2021
In this episode, Kaethe discusses the history of developing her conceptualization of four witness positions, and how witnessing effects people differently depending on their sense of empowerment/disempowerment and awareness.  She discusses how she submitted her book, Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day, two days before 9-11 and editors had difficulty understanding the ideas.  By September 13, they deeply understood the experience of witnessing.  She discusses the development of her Witness-To-Witness (W2W) Program, and how it has supported professionals working with adults and children in various stages of the immigration process who suffered as a result of many policies.  Her social justice and larger systemic work helps lawyers, clinicians, childcare workers, and a multitude of other service providers working with people made vulnerable by national, state and local policies.  Her work creates Reasonable Hope.
 
Kaethe Weingarten, Ph.D., is the director of the Witness to Witness (W2W) Program for Migrant Clinicians Network. Dr. Weingarten’s work focuses on the development and dissemination of a witnessing model. One prong of the work is about the effects of witnessing violence and trauma in the context of domestic, inter-ethnic, racial, political and other forms of conflict.  She has published numerous articles, chapters, essays, and books, including her book, Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day, and serves on the editorial boards of five professional journals.  She has taught and spoken in numerous contexts in the United States and internationally, as well as founded and directed the Program in Families, Trauma and Resilience at the Family Institute of Cambridge. 

Episode 12

Inattentive ADHD Is A Whole Different Disorder & the Task Force To Address It

with Russell Barkley, Ph.D.
Recorded April 19, 2021
In this episode, Russell talks about his career in the field of ADHD, and his involvement in a task force seeking to address ADHD, Inattentive Subtype, a separate disorder other than ADHD itself. He discusses Sluggish Cognitive Tempo, and the hypoactive nature, which is very different from the hyperactive and impairment in impulsivity. Russell explains that rather than being overly engaged with the environment, children, adolescents, and adults with SCT are disengaged from the environment, and often find themselves preoccupied with internal thought and experience. He discusses his experience helping families and children with ADHD, and his new book, 12 Principals for Raising a Child with ADHD.  
Russell Barkley, Ph.D. is the author of 12 Principals for Raising a Child with ADHD among several other works about ADHD and defiance in children and adolescents, and ADHD adults. Dr. Barkley retired as a Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology from the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and subsequently worked as a Professor of Psychiatry and Health Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina. He is currently a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center. Dr. Barkley continues to lecture widely and develop continuing education courses for professionals on ADHD and related disorders, as well as consult on research projects, edit The ADHD Report, and write books, reviews, and research articles.

Episode 11

The DBT Workbook for Alcohol and Drug Addiction: Skills and Strategies for Emotional Regulation, Recovery and Relapse Prevention

with Laura Petracek, Ph.D.
Recorded April 17, 2021
In this episode, Laura discusses her career path and her own struggles with bipolar disorder and addiction, and her integration of the 12 Steps and evidence-based therapy such as CBT & DBT.  She explains how the Big Book of AA was written many years ago, and that Bill W.'s original intent was that individuals would be getting therapy alongside doing the twelve steps.  She explained how she is currently writing a book that goes through each step of the 12 steps, and DBT skills to enhance the step work to help those in recovery gain the benefits of evidence-based tools.
Laura Petracek, Ph.D. is a clinician psychologist, speaker, and the author of the Anger Workbook for Women: How to Keep Your Anger from Undermining Your Self-Esteem, Your Emotional Balance, and Your Relationships. Dr. Petracek has over 30 years of experience, specializing in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and other evidence-based therapies for alcohol/substance use, mood disorders, and anger dyscontrol issues. Her other areas of expertise are working with children and adolescents with ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and other learning disabilities. She is also a past clinician at San Quentin Federal Prison, and currently in the process of writing the book Pain is Inevitable; Suffering is Optional: Dialectical Behavioral Skills for Alcoholics & Addicts.   ​

Episode 10

Supporting the Transition of Formerly Incarcerated Parents Into Their Family and Kin Networks

with Veronique Thompson, Ph.D.
Recorded April 17, 2021
In this episode, Veronique discusses her career path and her experiences as an African-American woman and how it has influenced her career as a clinical psychologist. She discusses the innovative work being done at the Carl B. Metoyer Center for Family Counseling to help previously incarcerated parents transition through the re-entry process, and to rebuild relationships within the faily system.  She highlights the importance of working with the whole family unity through this process, including the parents, children, and caregivers.  Veronique and I also discuss training issues such as multicultural awareness, and the importance of validation, non-defensiveness, and being open to feedback.  
Veronique Thompson, Ph.D. is a tenured faculty at the Wright Institute in Berkeley and the Clinical Director at the Carl B. Metoyer Center for Family Counseling, East Oakland. There she and her colleagues are piloting a program, the Umoja Reentry Family Unity Project, to support families with formerly incarcerated parents.  She has experience working with adults and families, as well as adolescent status offenders, and her theoretical orientation combines developmental, systems, social justice therapy, and narrative therapy perspectives. Dr. Thompson is a past teaching associate for the University of California, Berkeley in general psychology and minority mental health, as well as a fellow in the Berkeley Teacher Training Program.  In addition to her work mentioned above, she also maintains a private practice.

Episode 9

Helping Transgender Children and Families Navigate Gender

with Shawn Giammatei, Ph.D.
Recorded April 12, 2021
In this episode, Shawn discusses his work with families with transgender/non-binary/gender diverse youth.  In discussing his career, he talks about the process of coming out as a transgender man, and his personal experience in the professional community of clinicians.  He explains how the bulk of his work in training clinicians and assisting families is helping them examine how they think about their own gender, and becoming aware of how one knows what his, her or their gender is.  He also discusses his work with families and transgender youth, and the issues that lead him to create the Gender Health Institute in order to provide training to clinicians who were seeking more competency in working with trans clients.  
Shawn Giammattei, PhD is the founder and director of the Gender Health Training Institute and the TransFamily Alliance, and contributor to the edited book, The Gender Affirmative Model: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Supporting Transgender and Gender Expansive Children. Shawn also has a clinical practice specializing in trans young people and their families, and couples therapy. Shawn teaches at Alliant International University in California, School of Professional Psychology and helped develop the Rockway Institute's LGBTQ Human Services Certificate, as well as being the first to teach a semester long Transgender Mental Health course for Psychology graduate students. Shawn does ongoing research in collaboration with Kaiser Permanente and Emery University, doing consultation on issues in trans health.

Episode 8

Consent, Attachment, & Healing Sexual Trauma with Victims & Offenders

with Dossie Easton, LMFT
Recorded April 12, 2021
In this episode, Dossie describes her latest endeavor where she and her colleague have been leading six-week group workshops for survivors of sexual abuse, as well as six-week groups for sexual violence offenders.  Among many topics, she discusses the need for broader open communication about sex, consent, and the nuances of working with sexual violence transgressors.  Dossie also discusses her work with individuals in open, polyamorous, and BDSM relationships, and the concepts of attachment, consent, communication, and healing aspects of BDSM. ​
Dossie Easton, LMFT is the author of The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures, as well as four other books on various aspects of BDSM, sex, and relationships, all co-authored by Janet W. Hardy. Dossie is also a licensed marriage and family therapist in the San Francisco Bay Area, specializing in working with trauma survivors.  She works iwth alternative sexualities and open relationships, and serves the polyamorous, gender-diverse, and LGBTQ communities. She is also a speaker on the topic of cultural competency with couples and individuals in the BDSM community.  Recently, she has been running separate six-week groups for survivors, and transgressors of sexual abuse called Navigating Consent: Helping Build a More Consensual Future.  

Episode 7

Treating Childhood Anxiety Using CBT, Family Systems, and Hypnosis to Change Process, Rather Than Focus on Content

with Lynn Lyons, LCSW
Recorded March 23, 2021
In this episode, Lynn discusses her work with children and families, and how she developed her approach that integrates family systems, hypnosis, and cognitive behavioral therapy.  She discusses working with children and adolescents with anxiety, and how she focuses on the pattern, and helping the clients to see how they are "doing the disorder", and interrupt that pattern, as opposed to focusing on the content of the anxiety.  She identifies what skills the family is needing, and helps them develop those to not let worry and anxiety run the family.  
Lynn Lyons, LICSW is a psychotherapist, author, and speaker with a special interest in interrupting the generational patterns of anxiety in families.  Lynn is the co-author with Reid Wilson of Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents and the companion book for kids Playing with Anxiety: Casey's Guide for Teens and Kids. She is the author of Using Hypnosis with Children: Creating and Delivering Effective Interventions and has two DVD programs for parents and children.  Lynn also hosts her own podcast, FlusterClux, where she helps parents and families with anxiety.  She is in private practice in Concord, New Hampshire where she sees families, and she speaks regularly to parent groups, schools, and clinicians.  

Episode 6

Treating Trauma and Moral Injury with Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT)

with Robyn Walser, Ph.D.
Recorded March 12, 2021
In this episode, Dr. Walser talks about her career and how it lead her to becoming interested in, and becoming a researcher and author in the Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) Approach.  Robyn discusses how ACT resonated with her, and how she has gone on to develop the approach in working with clients with PTSD.  She discusses the concepts of ACT, gives an example of the "chessboard metaphor", and talks about her current work in the area of moral injury, and discusses her recent publications.  Robyn also talks about her application of ACT to couples therapy.  
Robyn Walser, Ph.D. is Director of TL Consultation Services and co-director of the Bay Area Trauma Recovery Center and staff at the National Center for PTSD, Dissemination and Training Division. As a licensed psychologist, she maintains an international training, consulting and therapy practice. She is an expert in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and has co-authored 6 books on ACT including The Heart of ACT: Developing a Flexible, Process-Based, Client Centered Practice Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and The ACT Workbook for Anger. She also has expertise in traumatic stress and substance abuse and has authored a number of articles, chapters and books on these topics. 

Episode 5

Conducting Research in Private Practice

with Jaqueline Persons, Ph.D.
Recorded March 1, 2021
In this episode, Jaqueline Persons, Ph.D. discusses conducting research in private practice and contributing to the scientific literature. One important way clinicians can contribute to research is by   She explains the importance studying of using data from practice settings to examine the role of cultural and other diversity in the treatment process, as many research studies have a lack of cultural diversity in the populations being studied.  Dr. Persons values evidence based treatment and as the director of the Oakland Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center, works with her team to collect data, study the process and research outcome of treatment, and publish their findings in scientific journals.  She discusses her career in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and her work around individualizing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for clients.  Dr. Persons talks about the importance of studying whether the evidence -based practices are fitting for clients of nondominant cultures, and really understanding and connecting with clients to find a treatment that works for them.
Jacqueline B. Persons, Ph.D. is the director of the Oakland Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center and works with clients using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  Dr. Persons is author of the book, The Case Formulation Approach to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and has published numerous articles and two other books.   Additionally, she is the past president of the Association for Behavioral and of Cognitive Behavioral Therapists, is a clinical professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and has published a video series through the American Psychological Association in which she and her co-authors teach the basic skills of of clinicians to learn Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.  

Episode 4

Helping Parents to Use Evidence-Based Principles to Increase Resilience in Children and Teens

with Muniya Khanna, Ph.D.
Recorded February 24, 2021
Muniya Khanna, Ph.D., discusses the next step in her career, which is helping get the tools of effective treatment into the hands of parents who want to help their children.  She discusses her career in treatment and research, working with Martin Seligman, Ph.D. researching Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and her work with Philip Kendall, PhD. researching his CBT treatment for children,  Coping Cat.  Muniya tells about her interest in technology, and her work with Phil to make a computer program, and now an online program for kids to learn CBT, which is evidence based and used widely in schools and is now available for parents.  She also discusses her work with University of Pennsylvania where she was on faculty, and participated in the research related to children and OCD, as well as young children and OCD.  She explains that her new passion is in getting the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tools for kids into the hands of parents through writing a book for consumers.  She discusses her Worry Workbook, and her upcoming book, The Resilience Recipe: A Parent's Guide to Raising Fearless Kids in the Age of Anxiety, which discusses five evidence based principals of resiliency that are effective transdiagnostically.  
Muniya Khanna, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist specializing in CBT for anxiety disorders and OCD.  Dr. Khanna is a pioneer in web-based mental health research for anxiety disorders. In partnership with her mentor, Dr. Philip Kendall, she developed and tested Camp Cope-A-Lot. She is currently conducting 2 large-scale clinical trials, funded by NIH and NICHD, focused on the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based treatments for anxiety in urban public schools.  Dr. Khanna has authored numerous books and research publications, has been on faculty, is on the review board of journals, and boards of the American Psychological Association.  She is Founder and Director of the OCD & Anxiety Institute in Pennsylvania and Research Scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 

Episode 3

Using Parent-Child Attachment to Create a Secure Base and Overcome Adolescent Depression and Suicide - Attachment-Based Family Therapy, an Empirically Supported Treatment

with Guy Diamond, Ph.D
Recorded January 19th, 2021
In this interview, Guy Diamond discusses his personal journal in developing Attachment Based Family Therapy, a proven, effective treatment, that helps adolescents with depression, trauma, suicide, and anxiety, as well as LGBTQ adolescent young adults and their families.  Dr. Diamond discusses how, through clinical practice and research, he and his collogues learned to make those profound, heartfelt moments in family therapy happen more often in a more purposeful, and predictable manner, event in a brief treatment model.  These healing sessions activate the parents’ natural caregiving instinct, matched with the adolescents’ attachment need, to rebond the parent-child, creates a family safety net.  This builds the foundation of trust and connection needed for adolescents to effectively solve problems and overcome life's adversity.  Dr. Diamond discusses how this process oriented, emotionally focused, has been manualized and evaluated in several clinical trials.  Additionally, Dr. Diamond talks about cutting edge treatment development and research with ABFT and adolescents diagnosed with eating disorders.    
Guy S. Diamond Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and Associate Professor at Drexel University in the College of Nursing and Health Professions. At Drexel, he is the Director of the Center for Family Intervention Science (CFIS) and the Director of the Ph.D. program in the Department of Couple and Family Therapy. He has received several federal, state and foundation grants to develop and test this model. Dr. Diamond is the author, with his co-authors, Drs. Gary Diamond and Suzanne Levy, of the book, Attachment-Based Family Therapy for Depressed Adolescents, and continues to develop and implement the ABFT model. 

Episode 2

Rethinking the Gender Paradigm in Domestic Violence Treatment

with John Hamel, Ph.D., LCSW
Recorded January 17th, 2021
Domestic violence often leads a therapist to determine that couples therapy is "contra-indicated", which may lead to treatment that could be helpful not being utilized.  In this interview, John Hamel, PhD, LCSW discusses what the research tells us, and how his entry into the field of working with men who were domestically violent began with a model that was focused on men enforcing a patriarchy on women, but has evolved to consider the many ways that abuse manifests itself, from escalating conflicts fueled by poor impulse control and communication skills, to a pattern of domineering behaviors intended to control the partner, typically involving a personality disorder.  John discussed how often men are vilified, and women are identified as helpless "victims", although the problem is much more complex.  John explains how working with the couple together, the men individually, or in a group should be assessed, and that actually, working the couple may be a very effective means of repairing the couples' relationship and overcoming violence and anger problems.  
John Hamel, PhD, LCSW has authored several books on domestic violence, including Gender Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse, Family Interventions in Domestic Violence, Intimate Partner and Family Abuse: A Casebook of Gender-Inclusive Therapy, and is currently editing the upcoming book, Beyond the Gender Paradigm: A Legal Primer on Evidence-Based Criminal Justice Approaches to Intimate Partner Violence.  John provides therapy, oversees an anger management program, is an expert witness, teacher, and author.  He has published numerous books, chapters, and peer reviewed research on the topic of domestic violence. 

Episode 1

The New/Old Breakthrough Treatment of Psilocybin Used in Therapy

with James Keim, LCSW
Recorded September 28, 2020
Psilocybin (or magic mushrooms as it is commonly called) was researched and used in the treatment of mental health disorder extensively in the 50s and 60s, but stopped as the substance became illegal.  Today, psilocybin has been named a "breakthrough treatment" by the FDA for the treatment of depression and other mental health disorders and is on track to be legalized for medical use.  James Keim, LCSW discussed how psilocybin assisted therapy creates neuroplasticity, and helps clients change their brain. 
James Keim, LCSW is the founder of Mimosa Therapeutics, Inc., which uses bioreactors to grow research grade, natural psilocybin, rather than the synthetic psilocybin which is most widespread.  He was the clinical director for Jay Haley and Cloe Madanes, the developers of Strategic Family Therapy, has published his work on Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and heads the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy's Oppositional and Conduct Disorder Clinic.  James Keim in addition to teaching at the IAP, also teaches family therapy in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.  ​

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