Technology + Spirituality = Better Counseling with Matthew Morgan at Misfit Refuge. Ep.53

Episode Overview

• Episode Topic: Welcome to Mastering Counseling,  we engage in the innovative realm of Virtual Neurodivergent Counseling, with Matthew Morgan, from Misfit Refuge, as it is a burgeoning field that promises to revolutionize therapy for neurodivergent individuals. With technology bridging gaps more than ever before, Virtual Neurodivergent Counseling emerges as a pivotal service, offering accessibility, convenience, and tailored therapeutic experiences. Our discussion navigates the nuances of conducting counseling sessions online, the specific needs of neurodivergent clients, and how virtual platforms can facilitate unique connections between counselors and those seeking support.
  
• Lessons You’ll Learn: This episode is packed with valuable insights into Virtual Neurodivergent Counseling, providing listeners with an in-depth understanding of its importance and implementation. You’ll learn about the challenges and rewards of offering therapy in a virtual setting, strategies for engaging neurodivergent clients effectively, and the essential tools and techniques that enhance the virtual counseling experience. The lessons gleaned here are indispensable for any mental health professional looking to expand into or optimize their virtual counseling services, especially those focused on the neurodivergent community.
  
• About Our Guest: Matthew Morgan, the esteemed guest of this episode, is the founder of Misfit Refuge, a pioneering entity in the field of Virtual Neurodivergent Counseling. With a profound commitment to supporting individuals with neurodivergent needs, Matthew brings a wealth of knowledge and personal experience to the table. His journey into the realm of Virtual Neurodivergent Counseling is not just professional but deeply personal, driven by his passion for making counseling accessible and relatable to those who may not fit the conventional molds. His insights and experiences shed light on the nuanced approaches required to support the neurodivergent community effectively.
  
• Topics Covered: Throughout this episode, we cover a wide array of topics related to Virtual Neurodivergent Counseling, including the foundational principles of neurodivergence, the unique challenges and advantages of virtual counseling, and the future of therapy for neurodivergent individuals in an increasingly digital world. Matthew Morgan from Misfit Refuge shares his expert perspectives on creating a therapeutic space that respects and embraces neurodiversity, the importance of technology in expanding access to mental health services, and the ways in which virtual platforms can be optimized to serve neurodivergent clients better.

Episode Transcript

Matthew Morgan: We’re not alone, and even the person in the healing seat often has had to do a lot of healing of their own. I’ve listened to a lot of your guests and just a lot of people in the profession in general. I think we all have the inner monsters that we’ve had to work with or inner struggles, and that informs us as clinicians.

Becky Coplen: Welcome to Mastering Counseling, the weekly business show for counselors. I’m your host, Becky Coplen. I’ve spent 20 years working in education in the role of both teacher and school counselor. Each episode, we’ll explore what it takes to thrive as a counseling business owner. From interviews with successful entrepreneurial counselors to conversations with industry leaders on trends and the next generation of counseling services, to discussions with tech executives whose innovations are reshaping counseling services, if it impacts counseling, we cover it on mastering counseling. Thank you for tuning in again to Mastering Counseling. So glad to have our listeners back. Today we are super excited to have Matthew Morgan, who is the owner of Misfit Refuge, such a cool name, on the show with us. He is a licensed counselor who has his hands in many different areas with writing and working, specifically with people who have neurodivergent needs. So welcome to the show today, Matthew.

Matthew Morgan: Thank you, Becky. It’s great to be here. I’ve been enjoying listening to all the great stuff that you bring to just the counseling world with this podcast. I love your range of topics. It just ticks my little nerd divergent brain too.

Becky Coplen: Well, that’s good to hear. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed them. It’s so funny how one area of counseling is catching so many different conversations. It never feels like the same one, so that’s good. I thought maybe we’d set the stage for neurodivergent brains because it is becoming more of a common term. But I do think there are a lot of people who maybe don’t fully understand the term. So how about you tell us about what that means, and then we’ll get into talking about your practice?

Matthew Morgan: Absolutely. I appreciate that too. I think that one of the biggest challenges of this area is that it is an evolving definition. It never really seems the same way twice. As the years progress. The concept has changed with it. As of right now. Nancy Doyle came up with just a nice infographic that encompasses what neurodiversity is because it’s a wide range of things. Typically, we’ve referred to it as maybe like somebody who’s on the autism spectrum. But as time has progressed and as we started to understand brains better, that term has accompanied individuals with ADHD, dyscalculia, and even Tourette syndrome has worked its way in there as well. Basically, the concept right now is just anybody whose brain, if we remember back to our wonderful stats class, that was probably not my favorite class that I took, but the brains that are outside of that standard mean everybody else thinks differently. Typically it encompasses the thought processes. Sensory issues can be really big with neurodivergent people. So people who have sensory processing either too much or too little social interactions are encompassed in this. There are people who are learning language, they’re learning behaviors, scripts on how to interact with people, and the feeling capacity of things. So a lot of times you’re neurodiverse. People can be either too much or too little on the empathy side. So highly sensitive people feel everything. Then there’s also the spectrum of people who are like, oh yeah, your dog died, sorry, and no emotion to it. Because it’s all calculated. I’m working around the definition. But I think, as practitioners, I think that’s where we’re at right now with this term.

Becky Coplen: That was great because so many different people associated with certain diagnoses. And I work in a school, and we’re starting to use the phrase more and the more we know about it, the better, because a lot of kids, the way school’s set up, it is not conducive for the neurodivergent path. So anyway, I’m glad that you’re focusing on it. Let’s talk about your practice and the name Misfit Refuge. I love the combination of those two words, and I have a lot of ideas as to why you named it that, but we would rather hear from you as to how it came about, where it started, and how you chose those words.

Matthew Morgan: Definitely. The Misfit Refuge was something that evolved as I started to understand myself more and as I started to practice, particularly in private practice. So the actual full switch over to Misfit Refuge has just happened for the counseling side of things. I’ve run a coaching business with that, and I love it because there’s this concept, I would say the defining moment for me, for those of us of a certain age, was the Rudolph Christmas special that we watched with the great Stop animation, where they have this island of misfit toys, and there’s all these toys that just don’t belong, they don’t work the right way, or they do different things, or the elf wants to be a dentist. And I gravitated to that misfit concept and was like, I’m okay as I am, I just don’t fit and I need to find my fit. And the refuge became that place for everybody who struggles with this. We’re all going to look different, we act differently, we talk differently, we have different needs. But the idea of this was just to provide a place where people can come process through their hurts, find healing, and hopefully in the process, connect with other people of like mind who appreciate those differences in them.

Becky Coplen: All right, I like that. I know one of your practices is focused, as you said, on counseling, and then I know you’re doing some other work in writing and coaching, so why don’t you just share the difference between the two and how much you’re working in each?

Matthew Morgan: My bread and butter is in the counseling practice. That is the established business. I have a new associate now who is also in the neurodivergent band. We just connected well. So we joined forces and are working together. I enjoy that, but part of my inner goal, who I am, is that I need to be creative. I need to make things work with things. So the writing has come into that the speaking. I’m currently working on a book on perfectionism and neurodivergence, particularly as it’s framed within spirituality because that’s another big band that I have. So there’s a Venn diagram just finding where those things all overlap because that is a cause near and dear to my heart. And there may not be a whole lot that struggles with it, but I think there’s enough. We can find our people. In that term, I provide coaching for individuals that maybe they don’t need the full therapeutic treatment of things. They don’t need to go back and talk about the injuries that parents gave them, or sometimes, no offense to schools when we’re trying to fit in, as you mentioned, we don’t fit in well. So a lot of times we’ve gotten past that, but we just need some skills for life, that’s where I provide the coaching services of like, hey, let’s work on ways that we can structure your work environment to fit you.

Becky Coplen: There’ll be plenty of people who want to read about perfectionism, and it can do a lot of great things, but it can weigh people down and give them so much anxiety and pressure that is unneeded. So that’ll be exciting. When do you think that will come out?

Matthew Morgan: My goal is by really within the next probably by summertime. Be able to have that out there.

Becky Coplen: Awesome, congrats. I believe, looking at your website and everything, you have a couple of other books that are already published. Do you want to talk about those?

Matthew Morgan: I’m happy to. They’re a little bit older works. I, once, a speculative fiction novel that I wrote just because I love the concept of let’s twist reality a little bit. I also really like the good versus evil, the melodrama of like, let’s work through this. It also incorporates individuals with disabilities. So my main protagonist is hard of hearing because that’s a struggle that I have. And I thought it would be nice to have the deaf and hard of hearing community represented well in this. So did that, and then also did a documentary with a gentleman who bicycled across the country, starting in Ohio and working to San Francisco. However, he went via Connecticut, Florida, and Utah. It was a wonderful up-down journey. But Mike and I got to sit down and I virtually took the journey with him because I do not want to do that one literally. But it was fun to work through his steps with him.

Becky Coplen: You mentioned being a little bit hard of hearing yourself, and that a lot of the work in helping other people is from your own experience. Did you want to share a little bit more on the personal end of things, of what brought you here? Or if we’ve already delved into it, that’s fine, but I didn’t know if you had more to share of your past.

Matthew Morgan: I can, and I share it with people just again, that refuge concept of we’re not alone, and even the person in the healing seat often has had to do a lot of healing of their own. I’ve listened to a lot of your guests and just a lot of people in the profession in general. I think we all have the inner monsters that we’ve had to work with or inner struggles, and that informs us as clinicians. The biggest one that I always go back to is that I started life in pastoral ministry. I went to Bible college, went to a school up in North Dakota, and fought through my four years of school. I had a near-fatal illness my senior year. That was a huge struggle to get through. Got through it, and went to get my ministry licensure. I passed my exam with flying colors, but I failed the Myers-Briggs test, which I didn’t know you could do. I got there and the individual in charge of things looked at me and said, look, I don’t think you have the right personality to be a pastor. You should find something else. My 20-something self, that was just a door slamming in the face, and he didn’t know what to do with that.

Matthew Morgan: So I had to go and just do a lot of searching. I ended up in education. I went from education to counseling and found my place there. But it was that rejection that fueled things as well as I also was working on a master’s in divinity later to try to get back in. I found that theological people aren’t always the kindest of people, unfortunately. So all of that fed into this story that like, I’m broken, I’m no good, I’m worthless, I can’t do this thing that I wanted to do. Along the way, somewhere that transformed into recognizing that I am a neurodivergent soul. I don’t fit in with people. I don’t always react the same. I don’t understand the same. But that doesn’t make me less than. Not everybody in the profession has to be a lion. I can work with my strengths, but that took me 20 years of a journey. I look back and I’m like, oh heck no. I don’t want people to have to think that. You’re not broken, you’re just you. We need to find a way to make the world fit us.

Becky Coplen: Thank you for sharing your story. As we’ve heard many times on here, a lot of times people have felt failure or had some trouble early on, and then it shifted them into a different role. Then here they are. So it’s amazing where it brings them. Let’s talk a little bit about how that works virtually as well. I believe you work only online, correct? Well, let’s talk about that angle of it.

Matthew Morgan: I started off, as most of us did, with community-based care, and I did home-based care. And I found that there was a joy in being in people’s environments because it lets them be who they are. They’re not having to fit into an office environment. But I also found that was taxing work. So in 2018, I opened up the practice as a virtual-only business. I was told that it was unethical and that insurance aren’t going to cover this. Then in 2020, in January of 2020, specifically, I opened my office in March of 2020, there was a minor event going on and the world, so my office for the glorious two months that I had, I didn’t even have my diploma on the wall. I moved home, I’m here in my basement, and that’s where I’ve been working since. But working with neurodiverse people, the virtual environment can be a familiar place. A lot of people in the neurodivergent community, they’re gamers, they’re online, they like social media, and they feed off of these things. So my work gets to take me directly to them, and it can be a very familiar place. And it’s also safe so they can control their environment and still talk to me.

Matthew Morgan: So from there, we get to work on there. Literally, I would like to sit down and work on their goals of what do you think your obstacles are? What do you see the problems being? I’m very much a storyteller, obviously, so I put that into my therapy. I do a lot of narrative therapy of, hey, you’re the hero of this story, what’s your objective? Then how are we going to use our strengths to do this? You’re not going to solve the problem the same way as everybody else. To that same extent, I do, I run a therapeutic Dungeons and Dragons group online. So we meet everything online, and it gives us that opportunity to almost take it out of the realm of reality and put it into this fantasy world. But then I get to look at somebody and say, hey, remember when your character did this really tough thing? How did you do it or do you remember when you had this great idea and you rolled a natural one and you didn’t do it, right? How did that feel? What other ways did we work through this so it all wraps up together with this?

Becky Coplen: I think it’s just always good to hear when new ideas are making their way. Let’s talk about, you mentioned this briefly, a focus on spirituality and technology, connecting in your work. So let’s explore that angle of your practice.

Matthew Morgan: Absolutely. They’re almost two different arms of things. But they do come together. So obviously the tech allows us to connect. It allows us to meet face-to-face with people and work through there. I can see people all across. In my case, it’s Ohio and Florida as well. So it lets us connect with people who maybe would not normally be in large concentration in the area. So it allows me to be in the rural areas and things like that. The spirituality side is a whole different wing. I tell people if they want to address this in therapy, I’m more than happy to. I’ll always open up the question because I want to know more about their spirituality, and what has brought them to certain places. Obviously, from my story, Christian ministry was a big thing, but also there was a lot of rejection and a lot of hurt. It highlighted where I didn’t fit in, and I’ve often referred to myself as the misfit sheep because it’s like I don’t fit in there and it creates a sense of trauma or hurt or brokenness. When I can open that up in a therapy session and say, hey, tell me about the people that hurt you and how this felt, I want to hold on to this story, and we want to work on how can we reframe this. How can we show that you are this wonderful person and that I believe God loves? but sometimes they’re not at that point. They just want to say, hey, like, I don’t want to deal with any of this stuff right now. They want to know that’s a safe spot and that’s a safe spot with me as well.

Becky Coplen: This episode is brought to you by mastersincounseling.org. If you’re considering enrolling in a master’s level counseling program to further your career, visit mastersincounseling.org to compare school options via our search tool that allows you to sort by specific degree types, tuition, our costs, online flexibility, and more. You mentioned that you practice in Ohio and Florida, so both of those often decide elections. But besides that, how is it those two states, and maybe if there’s anyone listening from those, any particulars you’d want them to share ethically or by law or licensing anything like that? Then why is it Ohio and Florida for you?

Matthew Morgan: Well, Ohio is my home for me. Born, and raised, I had four years in North Dakota for college, then moved back, we moved to Florida for six months to be with family down there, and we ended up moving back. Everybody asked, why. I don’t know, but we’re here, especially this time of year we’re recording. But Ohio for me, is home, and it’s where I’ve established, and there’s a lot of variation here. And of course, when you look at election results is a great way to tell because our big three cities are always one way, everybody else is another way because we’re this combination of urban and rural all on top of each other, and even my cities, there’s this huge dichotomy of things. So you can find a lot of very diverse needs in there and meet those. I picked up Florida because it was the telehealth that made it easier. Because I have a base down there, I have family down there. It was nice to be able to provide services for people who wanted to reach out that way. Again, because I’m in a very niche area, it’s nice to have that as an option.

Becky Coplen: For sure. Do you see yourself maybe expanding to other states with this very specific niche or no?

Matthew Morgan: That’s a great question. And I don’t know. Every once in a while I’ll get somebody from a neighboring state who will connect and say, hey, dude, can you work with me? Unfortunately, because of the state licensure, I have to turn them down until we get this figured out. The counseling compact, I think, has great potential to unify these things. But leaving things up to bureaucracy isn’t always my favorite thing to do. So I’m on the fence, I’m not opposed to it, but there is a lot of time and effort and a lot of these boards, unfortunately, they don’t play nicely with each other. I don’t know, we’re working on transitioning into this century of recognizing that we can see people anywhere, and we can do it safely and we can do it ethically. Just need, I think, some time to catch up.

Becky Coplen: It is a good reminder to our listeners because we always want to be ethical. With online, I think a lot of laws or what have you are broken easily because you just don’t think about it with being online. I can’t even prove that you’re actually in Ohio right now, it just as well you don’t know if I’m in Michigan. Well, let’s think about some of our listeners who are maybe going into this work in thinking of programs of study, and specifically, if they were interested in helping neurodivergent clients. Do you have any advice for them, or do you have any schools in mind that you feel may be more apt to train them in a good way, or is it something that just develops over time in their practice?

Matthew Morgan: I am not always the most positive cheerleader when it comes to some of our master schools out there. They do well for themselves. I will, tongue in cheek, often tell people that in three-plus years of master’s work, I learned not to sleep with my clients and how to take notes. Ironically, the former has not been nearly as much of a problem as I think they thought that it would be. So it gives you a fantastic foundation for everything. But this field is constantly changing, the information is moving quicker now, and we’re seeing a lot of more continuing Add opportunities. I’ve looked even at getting a doctorate at this point, just because I have enough people who accidentally call me Doctor Morgan and I’m like, oh, that sounds good. But in our field, the terminal degree doesn’t pay out as much or doesn’t benefit as much, I think, as our individual studies. I think that’s for people that want to go into this, that would be my recommendation is you have your core classes, that you do but niche into something that you are passionate about. There’s room for it in this. So they’re starting to be a lot of really good training, informational trainings.

Matthew Morgan: But listening to people, the thing with Neurodivergence, I tell people and it’s an old expression, but when they used it for autism, but once one kid with autism, one kid with autism, because all of us are flavored differently and you can’t prepare for everything. So a lot of times just saying, hey, this is the big framework that I’m working around and learning how to ask those questions and learning how to listen and be a student. I think one of the biggest keys that I tell people is just to be vulnerable. I grew up on the cusp of therapy, if you don’t share anything, you’re the blank slate. I think back to the videos of Fritz Perls, who’s sitting back in his reclining chair smoking a cigarette, and just listening to people completely blank. My neurodivergent people are like, no, that would not work for me. They want that back and forth, they need to model, and they need that vulnerability. They need to know that we’re human. So that’s the other thing that you don’t learn in a class, you learn it through talking to people and more importantly, listening to people.

Becky Coplen: When you were talking about a therapist sitting there smoking and just staring blankly, and we mentioned before how many neurodivergent people are very sensory. Do you find that even though you’re online, do you have them bring tools not like building tools, but Legos, or if they were younger, do you bring sensory items or have them purchase as part of your work while you are talking with them?

Matthew Morgan: If it’s appropriate, absolutely. If they need to fidget, I think it’s so important. You said Lego if they’re younger, but quite frankly, I have quite a few Lego sets here in my background. I think neurodivergent people do it in general, but neurotypical people do too. Where we want to be, we have this maturity peak, we want to appear a certain way. Then as we get older, we realize that some of these systems don’t work. So we start to let go of it. I have fun, and I embrace my next childhood here, but fidgets, I think, are almost a must for most people. I’ve got my lacrosse ball that I have here. I always have different items on my desk that I use myself, like a spinning hammer. All those things are important. More importantly is again listening to our bodies. So not everybody’s a fidgeter. But what I find is after sitting, talking to people for 20 minutes, 25 minutes, I’ll start to see them and they’re moving and they’re adjusting and I’m like, gotcha. Do you need to get up and move? Can I do that? You can pick it up if you want to pick up the camera and go for a walk, we can. If you just need to move around the room for a minute, take a lap. Because I think so many times, especially with neurodivergent, we tend to get tightened in our own body and turned into our own body. I’m a big fan of somatic work, if we want to change our disposition, we need to change our position. Get up, take that stretch, even doing this interview, I’m at my standing desk.

Becky Coplen: I was thinking that you are standing.

Matthew Morgan: The energy is so much different for me than when I’m sitting back in a chair and I don’t do every client that way. But with neurodivergent people in particular, it’s important to be tuned into the individual and their needs for sure.

Becky Coplen: It’s funny on here listening, and I always sit, but my husband uses a standing desk and it’s funny, like once in a while, if I’m really tired, I’ll be like, I have to have something nearby to keep me engaged. Not that anyone’s ever boring, but it’s like when you’re just sitting still. That’s about the only time I do it because I’m usually on the go so much. It’s funny how it will make your body go into like a sedentary mode, so I hear that for sure. Well, we’ve covered a lot of great things today. Is there anything else that you feel like you’d want our listeners to know? I did want to ask a little bit on the business end. Do you manage all of your accounts and calendars, or do you have assistance for that? How is that working for you at this point in your career?

Matthew Morgan: It depends on the minute. I have tried different things. Neurodivergent, try different things. Always be, always try that. I have had a builder that I’ve worked with and they’ve done a fantastic job. But as I’ve gotten my hands on more things, I’ve actually with the new year, just brought all of that back in-house. So I do have an associate right now who’s she’s newly licensed, so she’s working on filling up her caseload. So one of the things I’ve done is I’ll have her do a lot of the administrative work because I think it helps to learn the process. It also helps her keep financially a little bit fit, and get a little more money her way. So she does a lot of my callbacks of things. Just full disclosure, one of the things I hate most in the world is the phone. It’s talking on the phone, I have scripts, I have ways that I can do this, but I just don’t like to. So it’s much easier for me to turn it over to Anna and say, hey, would you call to set these appointments or would you follow up with this? It also minimizes the shifting to which I have found that even as I can do these things if I don’t spend the energy doing those now, I can spend it being creative. I can spend it writing, I can spend it working on notes, or if I get radical, even taking a bathroom break in the middle of the day instead of rushing from appointment to appointment.

Becky Coplen: Oh no, that’s good to know. It’s interesting that you brought it back. But now you have someone who helps you. There’s a lot of things we all can do. But really, is it the best use of our time because there are only so many minutes in the day? I do have to ask about, behind You. Because there’s a lot of fun, just talk to us about, are those only on display? Are they the items you use a lot? And I feel like I’m seeing lighting right behind you as part of it.

Matthew Morgan: There is. There’s the lighting because I want to keep the ambiance where it needs to be. Otherwise, things get dark. I am in my basement and I found the first part of the pandemic, everything was dark and dingy and I found my mood was just tanking. So one of the things I worked on carving this space out so that clients could see it. There’s a variety of things. And what I love is, again, especially working with neurodiverse people, is often they have geeky interests or things they enjoy. So all of this behind me, a lot of it’s strategic to notice, like, oh, like you have this fandom, I have this fandom, let’s connect about it. Or they’ll tell me they’re like, hey, did you see this anime is typically the one where I fall short on. Did you see this anime? I’m like, no, I didn’t, tell me about it though, I want to know more about it. So behind me and most of this wing is Star Wars because I am a huge Star Wars nut. All of the expanded stuff, my son and I share that as an interest. It’s fun and there are good therapeutic themes within it. Mostly display, but I will like when somebody sees it, I might roll back there and say, hey, tell me about this or talk about this and show me what you got too.

Becky Coplen: All right. Well, thank you, Matthew, for being on the show with us. You can be looking ahead to his new book, hopefully coming out in the summer. And thank you just for this special niche and how it’s been part of your personal story and now how you are sharing it with your clients. So thank you for giving us your time today.

Matthew Morgan: You are welcome, Becky. Thank you so much for all that you’re doing for this. Keep up the good work.

Becky Coplen: Thank you. To our listeners, thank you for tuning in today. I hope you are enjoying all the various types of therapists and counselors that we’re talking to you. They each bring a special part of the program and please continue to share on social media. Tell us what you like to know more about and have a wonderful day. You’ve been listening to the Mastering Counseling podcast by mastersincounseling.org. Join us again next episode as we explore what it takes to be a business success in the counseling industry.