Merging Mental Health and Financial Therapy with Khara Croswaite Ep.63

Episode Overview

• Episode Topic:
  In this episode of Mastering Counseling, host Becky Copelan sits down with Khara Croswaite Brindle, a renowned clinician and financial therapist at Croswaite Counseling, PLLC. The discussion revolves around Khara’s extensive experience in the mental health field, her journey from working in community mental health to establishing her private practice, and her focus on addressing therapist burnout. Khara shares insights from her multifaceted career, including her TEDx talks and authorship. This episode aims to provide listeners with valuable knowledge on managing a successful practice while maintaining personal well-being, especially in the demanding field of mental health.
  
• Lessons You’ll Learn:
  Listeners of this episode will gain a deep understanding of the challenges and rewards of a career in mental health. Khara Croswaite Brindle discusses the importance of recognizing and addressing burnout among therapists, offering practical strategies to manage it effectively. She emphasizes the significance of self-care and professional boundaries in sustaining a long-term career. Additionally, Khara provides insights into transitioning from community mental health work to private practice, highlighting the skills and mindset required for such a shift. Her experiences with at-risk youth, families, and medical students offer valuable lessons on handling diverse client needs and complex cases.
• About Our Guest:
  Khara Croswaite Brindle is a distinguished clinician and the owner of Croswaite Counseling. She is also a financial therapist who has delivered impactful TEDx talks and authored several books available on Amazon. With a career rooted in community mental health, Khara has climbed the ranks from a clinician to a clinical supervisor, eventually establishing her own private practice. Her professional journey is marked by a dedication to addressing therapist burnout and supporting mental health professionals in their careers. Khara’s diverse experience includes working with at-risk youth, families, and medical students, making her a well-rounded expert in the mental health field.
  
• Topics Covered:
  This episode covers a wide range of topics essential for mental health professionals. Khara Croswaite Brindle shares her career progression, from her initial roles in community mental health to running her private practice. She discusses the high demands of working with abuse and neglect cases, which contributed to her own experiences with burnout. The conversation delves into the strategies Khara employs to manage burnout and maintain a healthy work-life balance. Additionally, she talks about her work with different populations, including at-risk youth, families, and medical students, providing listeners with insights into handling varied and challenging cases in their practices.

Episode Transcript

Becky Copelan: So glad to have our listeners back on mastering counseling. Today we are thrilled to have Khara Croswaite Brindle with us. She is the clinician and owner of Croswaite Counseling, as well as a financial therapist. has also done a lot of work on TEDx talks. She is an author on Amazon. She has her hands on a lot of things and a really good way. Thank you for giving us your time today, Khara.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Yeah. Thanks, Becky, for having me. Last, we can talk about it.

Becky Copelan: Yeah. I’m so excited to talk about all the different things you’re doing, and, especially and then how you’re managing all that because a big part of your practice is, therapy, therapist burnout, and that sort of thing. Yeah. Why don’t you, maybe first talk about how you were working, I think, in the agencies and everything, and then you went out on your own.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Yeah. So typical of a lot of great therapists. Started my career in community mental health because that’s where we’re hired and get supervision and whatnot.  I did that for four years. In those four years, I was promoted to a clinical supervisor after getting licensed and then had a team of my own 15 green therapists underneath me. I probably missed the start of my first burnout round, if I’m being honest, having that many clinicians working under me and having lots of questions. Part of that was our population. We were working with a lot of abuse and neglect cases, really, with families and DHS. there was always a lot going on. I always said never to be boring.

Becky Copelan: That is what I say at my job. Never worry.  a common phrase, but such hard issues for sure.

Khara Croswaite Brindle:  yeah. Like a lot going on there. I went off into private practice, started with at-risk youth and families on my own, and then moved into grad students. Now I have a small caseload of mental health. Excuse me? Medical students who have mental health challenges are already in burnout before they’re even in the field. I love working with them in addition to my major population, which is other therapists right now.

Becky Copelan: Yeah. All right. I love that you have such a wide realm of experience. That’s amazing. Thank you.  let’s, we kind of talked about the counseling, and let’s get a little bit overview of you as a certified financial therapist. And what does that career angle look like? And in the day-to-day, that’s something we haven’t talked about as much on this. We’d love to hear about it.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Yeah. we get that a lot where people are like what is financial therapy? It’s a pretty young discipline compared to some of the other mental health work that’s out there. It’s only been around since 2008 by name and trademark and all the things. So really young discipline compared to what we’ve all been trained in as mental health professionals. But it’s booming and it’s for a good reason, which is that money is emotional. For a lot of us who are specializing in financial therapy, there are two home disciplines to see there, mental health folks or certified financial planners coming into that designation with this idea that we’re helping people work on their relationship with money. Thoughts, feelings, behaviors. Of course, the mental health folks are like, we do this in our sleep now we’re just doing it with money. I discovered financial therapy in the pandemic I was searching for. I have to edit that. I was speaking, I was seeking a change because I’d worked with Heavy Trauma for quite a few years. I was feeling another round of burnout and knew what it looked like and felt like it was like, probably shouldn’t ignore at this time because I did the first time. I was interviewing colleagues for a project, and one of them was a financial therapist, and I was really intrigued. I had never heard of that before in the mental health world. So, within 20 minutes of interviewing her, I had this vision of becoming a financial therapist. I was really excited to see how it integrated with the stuff I was doing with therapists.  pitched to be her mentee and work under her and learn all the craft and then pursued certification not just a year later. It’s been a fast-paced journey, but I really love financial therapy, and I love working with therapists in that way.

Becky Copelan: Yeah. Some people would be a financial therapist for anyone in the population. And then yours is even honed down to often therapists who need financial therapy. Is that correct?

Khara Croswaite Brindle:  We’ve got people who are working with families, couples. We have people who are working with people going through divorce. Right. So, any specialty population, financial therapy could apply. My population just tends to be therapists. I do a lot of different things for them. As you kind of saw in my bio. Right?

Becky Copelan: Right. For sure.  All right. That’s so interesting, I love that. How, could you have mentioned like, financial planners and everything, and then you’re dealing more with the emotional end? How much? Do you get into, like the nitty gritty of people’s actual budgets and numbers, or do you stay completely away? And it’s all about how they’re processing it and living their life, dealing with the financial stresses. Do you know what I’m saying?

Khara Croswaite Brindle: I get that question a lot actually. Like, what does it really look like in the room?  so obviously it’s customized to each client of what they want to work on. I have been known to have them log in to a bank account to get the emotional transactions of it and like, show me, tell me what’s going on for you as you see all these purchases. Or if you see Amazon or you see eating out or DoorDash, like we have such an emotional response to food and social activities that those are the first things we try to cut when we’re trying to fit a budget. there’s like this natural exposure therapy that happens where I’m not looking at, like their account information per se. I’m having them in real time. Tell me what’s showing up as they’re looking at these things emotionally from a place of shame, from a place of like, what’s your inner critic telling you right now?  so sometimes it’s that kind of exercise. A lot of times it’s just the noticing of the somatic experience of, hey, we’re talking about debt. What showed up for you? Hey, we’re talking about credit cards. What showed up for you? What belief do you have about wealth, about poverty, about savings? There’s a lot of work around those aspects where we’re not necessarily jumping into all the numbers, but you can come into it in some kind of way.

Becky Copelan: Okay. Great explanation.  That’s so interesting. I’m sure a lot of these ideas are what are happening in your books that you’ve written. why don’t you talk about those a little bit and their main topics and where we can find those?

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Yeah. I actually have eight books out right now. At the time of our recording, the first book I ever wrote was a clinical supervision book with the supervisor that promoted me back in community mental health. that came full circle.  We decided to show a different model of supervision, which is the empowerment model, and actually created some training and things around that. So that’s my second business even now as we speak. Okay.  so that was my first book in 2019. I’ve written pretty much a book a year since then. I think I’m a little addicted to writing when I’m not doing all the other projects.  but I’ve written books on workaholism because that’s a population I love to serve. I mean, medical students, or I’ve written on, thyroid conditions and professional helpers with like, hey, I’m noticing a population of women being diagnosed, and here are some of the things to think about burnout, vicarious trauma, chronic stress. And then more recently, I put out some books on mother daughter estrangement. I put out a clinical book for clinicians who are working with those adult daughters. And then just a couple months ago, launched a children’s book of how to have families talk about family estrangement with kids. That was a really fun project and a different kind of writing. Obviously writing a children’s book, right? Yes.

Becky Copelan: I’m going ahead. I was going to say that was the one that stood out to me on your website. The mother daughter.  It’s so special and I have two daughters of my own. it was. Yeah. It’s really because everyone thinks it’s going to be always great and fine, but then more and more people I meet, there are many issues.  but in that relationship, which is so important, but can then therefore be so difficult. So. Yeah.  yeah.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: And I say 1 in 12 people is a stranger from a family member right now. So, when I was doing the research for that book, I was kind of shocked that it was more common than I even realized. I had seen lots of clients come in, mostly women doing this work.  and of course, it didn’t escape me that I wrote that book when my daughter was four months old. As mothers, I’m also like, hmm, what’s this about? Right? But found it to be a really rewarding book and for a lot of adult daughters to feel seen because there’s a lot of books out there for parents, but not as many for the adult daughter saying, I had to make this difficult choice. that book showed up. Then I have another book coming out in a couple more months. So just keep going.

Becky Copelan: That is amazing. Are you, this is kind of off track? Do you just wake up in the middle of the night with these huge ideas, or are they built over time or? Because that is a good thing that’s a lot of writing, especially since it’s not your sole form of income.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: I would say it’s probably a smaller sliver of income really, when you think about book sales trickling in.  and so a lot of these books had I had an idea and then it was a couple of years before I had space to write them. And then getting a couple book deals with publishers really helped, because then there was a natural deadline of like, we need you for 40,000 words by this date. Yeah.  and I liked working with the publisher. This next book is the same one. But the mother and daughter one. I did a lot more writing for fun in the pandemic because a lot of us had more space than we expected, and it was something I felt like I could control. I actually had a little bit more workaholism show up then, too, if I’m being honest. Okay.  just trying to find something to fill the void of what’s happening. And so that book, I started with a blog and I said, hey colleagues, are you seeing this pattern with mothers and daughters as clinicians? And they said, yep, we are. At that point, I knew it was going to be a future book. I just needed a space. And for some reason, I decided to write on my maternity leave with a four-month-old.

Becky Copelan: Wow.

Becky Copelan: Unreal. You know, I feel that I could see some people, the workaholism, you had more time, but you never had the separation. If you were used to going to work and coming home, you could never break it off. And it was like the constant checking of emails, the constant communication relay 24 over seven. well, congratulations on all your books and future books. And then, you also have done several Ted talks. Are they usually related to the books or more of topics in general, or tell us about how those came about?

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Yeah. So right now, I’ve only done one Ted talk, but I would like to do more. So that’s fun to say. On this recording with you, the Ted talk I did was in 2021, and it was on the burden of busyness so very much around this workaholism. My Amazon bestseller is my book, Perfectionism from Workaholic to Well-balanced. And so those strategies for this like, driven person who has no time is what I talked about in that Ted talk. Okay? My most proud moment of that, Ted, is that I did it seven months pregnant with my daughter. I tell people she’s already a public speaker, which luckily she didn’t kick me in the diaphragm as I was trying to talk at the time. but most people have a fear of public speaking. And then here I was doing it seven months pregnant. So that’s kind of a fun part of my story.

Becky Copelan: Very inspiring for sure, because, you know, we’re always worried about something like that. I can imagine YouTube, it’s out there forever. People can find it.  so that’s amazing. I love that you did that at seven months pregnant. For sure. Let’s talk a little bit about financial therapy and moving that in. And if you encountered some difficulties with that being a newer discipline, did you, did you give the space for the clients and it took longer for them to come, or were you overwhelmed with too many? Do you find it may be hard to collaborate because it’s such a new discipline? Talk to us about the challenges of that.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Yeah. So, because it is such a young discipline, there’s still a lot of work being done around parameters of how it shows up in the room. We have some folks that are taking financial therapy skills back to their home discipline. Whether that’s mental health like you and I or certified financial planners taking those skills into their own home discipline, that’s one way it’s looking. Another subset of people are saying, I’m making financial therapy, my true practice, like that’s all I do. they’re embodying whatever it means to be a financial therapist, saying, this is what I do. For me, when I first was mentoring underneath this person who’d been doing it for eight years, there was a lot of just learning the skills. I was a sponge. I was like, soaking it all in. How can I use this with the people I’m serving? They’ll go start doing some of that work with my mental health clients if it fits the goals that they had, if they fit their treatment plan. And then I was like, you know what? I’m moving towards working with more colleagues. All of the people I want to work with are therapists.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Then it became its own thing of like, stand alone. Here’s my therapeutic consultation. Financial therapy is part of that. Here’s other consultation services I offer. therapists were able to pick and choose, this is what I want from you. As listeners are realizing, I have my hands in lots of cookie jars. they wanted to know what it was like to do a Ted, or to write a book or to do financial therapy. This is their way of being able to tap into all of that through consultation. It hasn’t been hard. It’s been a journey of just the last couple of years getting clearer of who I want to work with this skill. And so going from I want to work with entrepreneurs and small business owners to saying, I want to narrow this down to therapists has been really helpful for people to say, who should I send to Khara versus the other 90 plus certified financial therapists? So even that pool isn’t that large. When I say there’s like 90 of us in the US.

Becky Copelan: That’s really. Yeah. Well, I’m glad we’re talking about it here. more people, can maybe delve into that, or get the help if they need it. Very cool.  one thing I’m thinking with your hand in all the cookie jars, I think, is how you said it. Not all. Sorry that’s so bad, but it’s a lot. While I’m a person of variety, I totally hear that. I do not like to have the same structure of my day at all, so. But let’s just talk about your scheduling planning of your routines.  Do you focus on the day? Do you think this is the day I see clients? This is the day I work on writing. Is it all very? Fluid, but how do you manage your schedule alongside your work home life balance?

Khara Croswaite Brindle:   I think that’s the thing is, people assume I don’t sleep with all the things that I accomplish, and I can assure you, I get my 8 to 9 hours because I do have some structure that you’re looking into with me as we’re talking. part of that is having a two-year-old at home right now at the time of this recording. a lot of my schedule has to be limited because when she’s around, I’m not going to not be present for her. Even I do a lot of things like get up super early so that I get work done before she wakes up, or I do a couple hours of work after she goes to bed. And by work, I mean I really live for creativity and the projects. I might be building something. I’m not seeing clients late at night or early morning. Those are daylight hours. But for a lot of people, just hearing that I have like two hours in the morning by myself and an hour at night that I’m accomplishing these things, it really speaks to where I’m fitting it all in. Is it?  I don’t tend to restrict what kind of days I have things going on. I do recognize a lot of us need some time to transition of like, I’m in professor mode, or I’m going into consultant mode, or now I’m seeing a client that does take mental energy, but I tend to like the variety in a day where I might have like two consultations, one financial therapy session and one meeting, for example. But I do like a six-hour work day technically.

Becky Copelan: Okay.  

Khara Croswaite Brindle: For people who want to know.

Becky Copelan: Right? No, that’s.  I like that. I think I would be the same, you know, do some meetings, do some writing, space it out a little bit. And it’s good to hear. I know there’s a lot of talk. I don’t know if it’s this year or other years, but you know that 5 a.m.,  the people they like, lost or not, the lost hour, the special hour. I don’t know what the word is, but I’m not there yet. But occasionally, when I am, it is very special. You feel so accomplished by 7 a.m.,

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Yeah. Yeah.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: It’s not for everyone, though. I was just having that conversation yesterday with my students because they were like, you know, you’re here a professor, I’m a professor one day a week. It’s not like a big part of my life right now. But, you know, I was saying, I do get up at 5 a.m. and that works for me, but that doesn’t work for everyone, right? Like, what is your true schedule? Are you a night owl? Do you like to be awake early in the morning? For me, I want uninterrupted time. it’s like, where could I fit that? Okay, 5 to 7 before my daughter’s awake. like, for those of us that, like, fixate and are like, I want to drop in and really do hard work, we get more irritated and frustrated if it’s disrupted. It’s like, where can we find two hours to write, one hour to write, 20 minutes to write? A lot of my writing was done early in the morning or late at night because no one was bothering me. There were no text messages pinging and stuff. Right. That helped a lot.

Becky Copelan: Very true.   and I agree, some people, it’s funny when you just know people, they are so dedicated to their early routine and then others. I feel like the early routine gets all the credit, but I have some friends who will say, you know, what about the people who stay up till 1 a.m. and we get our whole house cleaned from 11 to 1? Like, how about that credit just because we sleep till nine? I did want to mention as well that you are also a professor. So what course are you teaching at? What college or university? What is that about?

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Yeah.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: I am proud to be teaching as an alum of my program, which is at the University of Denver here in Denver, Colorado. And it’s the counseling master’s program. All of those folks are future therapists and training future licensed professional counselors. The designation here in Colorado. I typically teach the basic and intermediate techniques, which is the, you know, foundational stuff of becoming a therapist, active listening, immediacy, challenging, all good and fine. I love to tell stories and get them wide awake because it’s an 8:30 a.m. class every quarter, which is brutal.

Becky Copelan: Yeah.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: But then more, more recently, actually pitched to teach private practice class. Now we have an elective where students are learning in their master’s program what it looks like to do private practice, which has been missing for decades in this program. And so other programs are kind of looking at me and looking at Du and saying, do we need this? Do we have this? Do we have someone else teach it? like, I’m just really excited to see that there’s interest because the students have been asking for this for years. Yeah.  even if it’s we’re not hopping into private practice right after master’s program, like, I’m not here to champion that. I thought I learned a lot in community mental health, but, like, do they know the pros and cons? Do they know how to run a business? Do they know how to market a niche down all the things that I’m sure other guests have talked to you about? I’m really proud to be able to do that a couple times a year now, hopefully for many years from now.  it’s my plan, but just about to do that again this spring with students. hey, let’s have 15 of you come in, learn what private practice is about the business side, because we’re not business. Trained people usually.  and then I also got the green light to do a financial therapy class for those students. they’re going to learn financial therapy skills, which is pretty awesome.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: I’m excited.

Becky Copelan: That is amazing. I feel like good ideas come from you and then people follow up. no, that’s awesome and great to hear about the business end of things being taught in. To have that knowledge in a private practice is good because often we have people on here who are totally in the business side teaching the therapists and counselors so they have no idea.

Khara Croswaite Brindle:  exactly.

Becky Copelan: And then some like you that have experienced it and then are now passing it along. So, and are these classes online or in person?

Khara Croswaite Brindle: In person so far. they haven’t done a hybrid model or we’re not scaling it out to community members just yet. But I imagine some of your listeners might be like, how do I get my hands on that class? Or like, how do I get that content?

Becky Copelan: That’s so awesome.  that you’re doing that for sure.  All right. Let’s go another route. Because it was also mentioned that you have developed, some suicide assessment tools, and continuing education about that. When did you develop it and where is it being presented? You know, is it just in your practice or in other spaces?

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Yeah. So as listeners are taking in all the things I do, this is like one of my passion points that’s been around since 2017. I’ve been I’ve been training clinicians on suicide assessment since 2017. That started with those 15 green clinicians. They’re coming out of school. I was their supervisor, and they’re like, I have no idea how to assess for suicide. It was one hour, if any, and their program, which I thought was baffling and really scary actually, to say on this. Right. Like an hour of trading on suicide assessment. Cool. Yeah. At that point I saw this pain point that we had, which is we’re not talking about it. We don’t feel prepared. And yet the community is being told, go tell a therapist.

Speaker3: What are you hearing?

Khara Croswaite Brindle: At that point, I created the training. Then in 2018, I created an app for school professionals and mental health professionals to use with their clients to say, hey, I’m sitting alongside you. We’re asking some questions about suicide and we’re safety planning all of that. And then in late 2018, I created a nonprofit to house some of it.  Unfortunately, that nonprofit didn’t survive the pandemic with a lot of nonprofits not surviving it. But at the time, it was there in Colorado to support the trainings, getting out there at a broader scale and to reduce youth suicide, because that was our population, we’re focused on was 10 to 24-year old’s, and Colorado is always in the top ten states for high suicide rates. it was very relevant here and everywhere, really. Long story short, I’ve been doing training every year since then for clinicians both nationally and internationally as they’ve said, hey, I need more training, give me something useful, make it engaging, which I do not think your listeners can see, but I talk with my hands a lot.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: The app is still available for mental health professionals of any state, but the resources section would be specific to Colorado clinicians. It’s an assessment, a screener, resources and a safety plan that people log into and have access to for their client work. And then this latest book I’m writing, or it has actually been written, that’s publishing is on how to heal from client suicide. I’m really looking at the whole clinician saying, what is your experience with the stress of assessing, and what is your experience with the grief and loss of a client dying? And so that’s where I’m really headed is true passion. How do we help clinicians feel prepared for the worst thing that could happen? Or one of the worst things that could happen in their career, right?

Becky Copelan: Yeah. I work in an elementary school, and a lot of times people think, you know, you don’t need to deal with that. But amazingly, we had some really good training much longer than an hour. And I’m glad to hand you over the years. Yeah. One was just last year. It was actually like two full, two full days, very intense. It’s a lot. But you know, you just and honestly, I mean who really learns it. And one training right. It’s like yeah unfortunately almost going through it. And then when you’re in a school they have their own protocols.  but there’s always, you know, the personal side of it. How does this look, especially for minors?

Becky Copelan: Hopefully it is improving.  at least on people being prepared.  since we are being called upon to on my end, it’s more evaluating and then getting them to the therapist.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Right. So yeah.

Becky Copelan: Well, thank you for doing that work.  you mentioned kind of all throughout, the ways that you are writing and working with therapists a lot about burnout.  and. I think you said in your first phase of burnout after working in community health, you maybe said you have. You didn’t even deal with it. But then the second time around, you learned and wanted to like, do something about it. if you want to share some about your personal side or just share maybe how you’re helping you’re the therapists you work with.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s important to share that I have lived experience because I think that helps therapists feel seen. I mean, it’s like zero judgment. I’ve been there. Right. Obviously, the warning signs are going to look unique to each person, but I think knowing that I’ve lived it and kind of clawed my way back out of it is important for people to know. And that’s where the book workaholic from well-balanced came in, because I was like, I need strategies. I don’t have a lot of time. It’s not about quitting a job or taking a six-week vacation. Like that’s not realistic to the population that I identify with, which is like type A driven perfectionists, folks. my burnout journey started probably in 2017, if I had to pinpoint when it started, and then I didn’t actually start getting better until 2019. It took about two years for me to realize that something was not going to change without some drastic measure. I kind of ignored it, which is embarrassing, right? To say as a therapist of like, I’m telling people how to do self-care and be healthy. And then I was like, falling apart behind the scenes. I actually put myself into a medical crisis because I just ignored it for so long.  and then my spouse looked at me one day and said, I see you seven hours a week. And I was like, what? That was part of my Ted of, like, burden of busyness. Like I was just giving my all to clients. I was an empty shell of a person when I got home. My home life looks rocky, but my clients didn’t notice anything was amiss. They’re like, you’re great. I asked them, even the ones I had for years after, because I had a couple that were long clients, long lasting clients. I said, was there anything you remember about that time period? And like, nothing, it was great you were here. You were present. I was like, how interesting that I was falling apart. But they couldn’t see it.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Because it was.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: All at home. it took about probably a year, year and a half to claw out of that starting in 2019. And then I started to feel the itch of burnout again in the pandemic, because 2020, we all white knuckled it all the way through. And then in 2021, it’s when I really started to feel those warning signs again, like, I did a year of this. I had some workaholic tendencies show back up. I was trying to control my environment because we all wanted something to control and the unknown. And then 20, 21, I was like, I’ve got to make a change. At that point, I found financial therapy. And that was kind of my pivot to allow me to have less trauma work still, financial trauma, of course, but less long-lasting client work, which I think made a huge difference for all the projects I want to do. Yeah.

Becky Copelan:  No.  it’s it is all trauma is huge, right, for people. But when you’re hearing the stories of, I would say, you know, the worst of the worst kind of devastation, it does, you know, in the school I work in, some kids’ stories are just you’re like, I can’t believe you’re eight and this is what you’ve lived. It does. It really does affect you. And you feel you feel it in your sleep and in your thoughts and all of that. I think it’s good. I feel like we can only take on so much of it. Right. Because we’re human as well. Yeah. Well, thank you, for sharing the personal side of that and how you. I like the word crawl out of it. It’s probably.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Imagery.

Becky Copelan: It’s messy. And it’s not always perfect and not always a steady incline, but.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Yeah.

Khara Croswaite Brindle:  Well, and I’ve spoken to other people about this, and it’s like we have to make behavioral changes, which takes time, right? That’s part of this burnout recovery. It’s not overnight. It’s not with the change of job. And it’s probably not a weekend or a vacation away that’s going to make this different. It’s like maybe a year for a lot of folks to, like, crawl their way out, change behaviors. But are they in control of their work environment? I work for myself, like the only person in my way was myself to be like, I’m going to change my schedule. I need to not work at 8 p.m. I need to do XYZ. Yeah. For listeners who work for someone else, what are the boundaries like? Am I doing overtime? Am I working extra hours I shouldn’t? Am I coming in early and staying late? Like what can change to help them on their burnout recovery journey? And where can they advocate for themselves? I recognize for folks who work for themselves, it’s a different journey than when you work for somebody else to come out of burnout, right?

Becky Copelan:  yeah. It’s hard. It’s almost like a difference. You need assertiveness for sure. If you’re working for someone else of what you can handle and that, you know, looks different for everyone.  Well, we talked about many, many things. And you are working with a lot of the newer counselors, out there in Colorado. What would you, what would be some of the main tips or? Key points that you share with them that you would want all of our listeners to hear if they are new into this journey, or perhaps in the middle of their own master’s in counseling.

Khara Croswaite Brindle:  so many things. Let’s see if I can narrow it down.  The first one is obviously getting clear on who they want to work with and how they want to work. I think for a lot of people on the burnout recovery side of this, it’s like, what’s the ideal schedule we’re moving towards? Maybe this is a year out, but do I want to? Do I not want to work Fridays? Do I want to see 18 clients a week instead of 40? Like what is the goal? We know what we’re moving towards. And that kind of anchors people in the work of recovery and advocacy in that workplace.  for master’s level folks, it’s, you know, knowing that they don’t have to know what they don’t know. Do they have a mentor? Do they have a supervisor? Do they have a consultant to help them on the journey so that they don’t find themselves in a sticky situation, like if they’re not going to go into community mental health and learn by fire, as I like to say, like throw you into the fire and you learn, then who do you have as your support network? Who’s going to help you grow? Whether it’s I need to ask a question about mandated reporting or suicide assessment or, hey, I’m feeling like I’m burnt out, what should I do? Having a support person, I think is really important for green clinicians just starting the journey. We don’t want them to burn out and the average is seven years, which is what we know right now. Like most clinicians, they last seven years in the field. They want to change that. That seems like a really short stint, right?

Becky Copelan: Right. Probably finally getting well established and knowing a lot of the things you were asking about. But then it’s too much and you want to do something that maybe doesn’t blow your mind every day.  yeah.  Those are good things for sure. Is there anything else that we didn’t get to talk about today that you would want to share or any other, you know, books in the future or material that you would want us to know about?

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Yeah. I mean, all this live on my website, which I’m sure you’ll have in your show notes, because people are like, wow, just like trying to figure out all the things. Suicide assessment, consultation on burnout.  all the books are listed there, including the one that’s launching later this spring, which is that healing from client suicide book. So really heavy. Heaviest topic I’ve ever written, but most heartfelt for clinicians to feel supported.  so really excited to put that out there because we’re not talking about it and we’re about to and but I’m on the financial therapy side. If your listeners are mostly therapists, which I believe they are, you know, if you have some work that you want to do around your own money story, I’m here for it. I’m available for consultation on that.  It’s really powerful to do some of this work as it then translates to our client work. So happy to be a resource for listeners. If they are fit. Yeah.

Becky Copelan: No thank you. And, her website is Croswaite. That’s one s and then weight has an E at the end. Croswaite Counseling PLLC. Com so yeah there I’ve been there. There are lots of really great things, where you could find links to her books and all of that. Thank you so much, Khara, for giving us your time today. And I feel like we got to hear about so many things in a very short time.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Thank you Becky, and hopefully it’s helped. It’s helpful to people. And obviously if they have questions, they know how to reach me. Thank you for having me.

Becky Copelan: Yes, yes. No. We appreciate it. To our listeners, feel free to check out our website, and all the episodes on Mastering Counseling where we explore the world of counseling and therapy.  Please leave us comments and continue to join us on social media for mastering counseling. This is Becky signing off on. Have a wonderful day.

Khara Croswaite Brindle: Bye bye.