Mastering Burnout and Building Resilience in Therapy with Katie Vernoy of Therapy Reimagined Ep.70

Episode Overview

• Episode Topic:
  In this episode of Mastering Counseling, host Becky Coplensits down with Katie Vernoy, a licensed marriage and family therapist and co-founder of Therapy Reimagined. Katie shares her journey from working in public mental health to founding Therapy Reimagined and hosting the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Podcast. Katie discusses the realities of burnout in the counseling profession, reflecting on her own experiences and the turning points that led her to shift her career focus. Listeners will gain valuable insights into how Katie has managed to create a sustainable career that balances her private practice, podcasting, and entrepreneurship, all while prioritizing self-care and resilience.
• Lessons You’ll Learn:
  In this episode, you’ll learn practical strategies for preventing and managing burnout, particularly in the counseling and therapy fields. Katie Vernoy provides actionable advice on how to align your career with your personal values and goals, emphasizing the importance of self-care and sustainable work practices. She discusses the challenges therapists face in managing their workload and maintaining a work-life balance, and offers tips on how to create systems and structures that support long-term career success. Whether you’re a therapist, counselor, or helping professional, you’ll find Katie’s insights invaluable for building a fulfilling and resilient career
  
• About Our Guest:
  Katie Vernoy is a licensed marriage and family therapist and the co-founder of Therapy Reimagined, an organization dedicated to modernizing the therapy profession. With over a decade of experience, Katie has transitioned from working in public mental health to becoming an entrepreneur, podcaster, and speaker. She co-hosts the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Podcast, where she and her business partner, Curt Widhalm, explore innovative topics in therapy, including the use of technology, diversity, and inclusion, and the business side of running a private practice. Katie is passionate about helping therapists prevent burnout and build sustainable, fulfilling careers
• Topics Covered:
  
• In this episode, Katie Vernoy and Becky Coplen cover a range of topics crucial for therapists and counselors. They discuss the evolution of Katie’s career, the founding of Therapy Reimagined, and the importance of staying ahead in the ever-changing field of therapy. The conversation delves into practical tips for managing burnout, including aligning your career with your personal values, setting up effective systems, and the benefits of seeking help when needed. Katie also shares insights into the challenges of running a private practice, the importance of diversity and inclusion in therapy, and how modern therapists can thrive by embracing innovation and continuous learning.

Episode Transcript

Becky Coplen: Thanks so much for returning to listen to Mastering Counseling. So glad for our audience today and we are thrilled to have Katie Vernoy with us today. Welcome to the show, Katie.

Katie Vernoy: Thank you so much for having me. I’m glad to be here.

Becky Coplen: We are thrilled to talk to you, as you are an expert, a licensed marriage and family therapist, who has served in therapy in the past but has shifted in the last two years, to be the co-founder of Therapy Reimagined and also is a co-host of the podcast Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Podcast. So I’m excited to hear about all the things that you are doing. We know you help a lot of people who experience burnout. And I know in the past you yourself experienced that and kind of shifted your career focus. Can you tell us about that turning point for you?

Katie Vernoy: Absolutely. I think the biggest thing, though, is that it’s kind of several turning points.

And so I’ll tell a little bit of a story and we can talk about how that is an ongoing process. Everybody’s a work in progress with that. But I started my career in public mental health and community mental health, and I washed out. I was burned out, but didn’t realize it, but I was asked to resign at a certain point. When I was a director and at the director level, I realized that I wasn’t the leader I wanted to be. I wasn’t I wasn’t the coworker or supervisor I wanted to be, and I was trying to find my way out. And we kind of mutually agreed this wasn’t a fit anymore. And so I recognized my burnout when I was looking for another job. I was even reading like supervisor jobs, which would have been, you know, kind of two steps down, so to speak. And I was exhausted by finishing reading the job description, just imagining the job. I was like, oh, I can’t do this. Yeah. And so I took a little bit of time and I was able to get to a place where I was working for myself. I had started a little bit of a side private practice that now is my primary source of income is my private practice. But I, I wasn’t sure what to do, and I’d always worked for someone else, like the little tiny side practice was, you know, like a lark. It was a hobby, you know. And so as I moved into the realm of entrepreneurship, I treated myself as a, as an employee, as I had been treated within kind of public mental health.

Katie Vernoy: And I was networking and doing tons and tons of work. And I was, you know, probably working 15 hour days and just trying to build my business. I learned a lot. But then I burned out again because I was excited about this new venture. But it was something where I just wasn’t taking care of myself because I had no idea how to design my job. Because, you know, you just go, go, go when somebody’s telling you you have way too many tasks to complete. And so I just I started doing that to myself. And so over the years, because this has been probably like ten years at this point, I have continued to iterate and try to sort through how do I make a job that fits for me? And I found for myself that having a small private practice, you know, doing something on the side, like the podcast. And for several years we had a conference that worked for me. But any time I get too deep into it and I get so consumed with what I want to do, or even fearful that I’m going to fail and I’m not going to do as much as I have set out to do, I find that I start burning out again. And I did that again with the conference we were doing, an annual conference.

Katie Vernoy: It was growing. It was great. The pandemic hit, and then it just became, you know, untenable. We just could not continue it. And so that was that kind of the side hustle burnout of, I’ve done all of this stuff and, you know, and it was just really hard. And so to me, you know, I definitely, you know, specialize in supporting folks in burnout. I want to help folks seek resilience and be able to make sure that they’re doing what they need to do to have sustainable careers. But I recognize that it’s always a work in progress because we’re human and we have different parts of our lives that, you know, I didn’t even talk about the times when, you know, kind of outside forces, personal crises or whatever, you know, also created a level of burnout, both in my work and in my personal life. So I feel like it’s it’s more of a process than an endpoint. But to me, it’s it’s it’s so important for especially therapists, counselors, clinicians of all sorts to be able to sustain this work because especially given everything that’s that’s happened and going on in the world at this point, people need us and so many folks, if they’re burning out or washing out like I did, they just we’re losing that capacity to support people in the ways that they need. And so to me, continuing to learn how to do this thing has been kind of my, my new life goal and so to speak.

Becky Coplen: No, I like that. It makes me think of the phrase ebbs and flows of your life because, you know, everything is learning and there are certain times where we can put in the 15 hours a day, and then there’s other points where we’re like, what are we doing? I could barely wake up in the morning. So yeah, thank you, for sharing that perspective. Let’s talk about, Therapy Reimagined exactly like what that organization does and your connection with it still.

Katie Vernoy: Sure. So Therapy Reimagined is a I guess a organization feels very formal, but it’s something that my friend, business partner Curt Widhalm and I put together. And really we were both on our state board. We were going to lots of different conferences and doing, you know, representing our profession in a lot of different places. And we recognized especially at the time, this was about seven years ago, that the conversations that were being had felt very stilted. It felt like it was very much in the past, and we knew that the real work of therapy was not necessarily being represented in what we were seeing. And so we started talking about how can we put together education. And at the time we were thinking about a conference and we did that for four years, like I said. But how can we put together the education to be able to shift the conversation, to bring more innovative topics to to bring it into the future? And so we got started with that and recognized that if we were going to put on a conference, we needed to have an audience.

Katie Vernoy: And so then we started our podcast, the Modern Therapist Survival Guide. And that was really Curt and I having conversations that we didn’t think people were having. We knew it was stuff that most likely wasn’t being taught in grad school, and so we were looking for innovative topics, definitely wanting to bring in different cultural perspectives, wanting to make sure that we were paying attention to technology, and really providing modern therapists with the knowledge they needed to be able to sustain their careers, to do good work, and to support our communities.

Becky Coplen: Okay. Thank you for that overview. And I love, you know, so much of the world has changed and business practices of all careers have shifted. And so it’s so interesting to see how this world has shifted as well. And it seems like, you and Curt have definitely been ahead of that. So, why don’t you share some of the specifics, whether in the podcast or in Therapy Reimagined of really specific like titles or topics that you feel like, you kind of mentioned maybe not taught in grad school that you would want future counselors or counselors early in their career that you would want them to know.

Katie Vernoy: Well, the first one, and I think kind of the most obvious one are business topics, right? We were especially early in our development, we had a lot of, therapist, business to business, so to speak. come companies come in or coaches or different things to talk about. How do you build a private practice? How do you make it sustainable? How do you do it in a way that makes sense? I’m going to take a drink of water right this second.

Becky Coplen: Sure. Go ahead.

Katie Vernoy: And so with the business topics, we found that it was giving folks enough information at least to know what they don’t know, but also to empower them to create the career they wanted. Because I think sometimes when we have folks who are coming out of grad school and they really don’t want to work in an agency or a school or some sort of organization. I think that there’s that element of I don’t know what to do, and everything feels very daunting. And so that was the first type of topic we also recognized. And this was 2018, 2019, that we weren’t seeing the diversity of perspectives. And oftentimes grad school didn’t look it had a cultural awareness class and there wasn’t a lot there. And so what we’ve really done throughout the course of our career, whether it was, you know, conference speakers or folks that we bring onto the podcast, we wanted to make sure that we were bringing in folks with either lived experience or high levels of expertise to talk about special populations. And so that could be folks of different race and ethnicity. We’ve have a lot of LGBTQ folks come on and talk about the things that are specific to folks in those communities and and even stuff that kind of pushes back against the status quo, folks who may need different types of therapy to be able to access it.

Katie Vernoy: You know, it could be, you know, walk and talk therapy, or it could be, you know, I think you before we hit record, you said something that you had somebody on that was doing, you know, Dungeons and Dragons with their folks during the pandemic. And so being able to look at some of these more innovative practices that made things more effective, but also definitely more accessible to all types of folks. And so that’s where we’ve started. We also have talked about a number of other topics, you know, whether it’s burnout, that’s my area of specialty or laws and ethics, which is her area of expertise and really having more nuanced conversations on what that looks like because, you know, all of those conversations can become very reductive. You know, self-care for burnout and just do the right thing for laws and ethics. And so we’ve gotten really deep into the gray areas of what therapists are actually facing versus what you would do on the best day under the best circumstances.

Becky Coplen: Well, no, that sounds awesome. And yeah, I’m definitely going to want to listen because it is the most interesting when you get into the real specifics, right, of questions that people have. And so thank you for doing that work. I really like that. Let’s, you said you do still keep a small private practice.

Katie Vernoy: I do.

Becky Coplen: Okay. And specifically for people preventing burnout, or are they more coming to you when they are burned out and you, talk about some of those strategies and the clients you’re seeing in that role in your life?

Katie Vernoy: Well, over time, my specialties have shifted from adult survivors of childhood trauma or complex trauma to folks more what I’m calling executive therapy. And so this is folks of all different professions who are in a space of stepping into leadership or they’re fully into leadership, but they’re finding that whether it’s past trauma or kind of the systems at play are becoming burnt out, or they’re not being able to fully function as a leader in the way that they would want to. And that can sometimes be from past trauma. It can sometimes be from systems. Right. And so as far as strategies, I mean, there’s a million of them. Do you have a specific area that you’re looking for?

Becky Coplen: Well, let’s, let’s just say a therapist or counselor who comes to you who’s burned out. maybe just lead us through the goal of some of the early on sessions, which I know they might be making, but, I’m sure it’s always interesting when you’re, coaching up a therapist themselves. But as you mentioned before, we all get to the point of, I think you said being washed out. so maybe just kind of what that would look like. Timelines and, what do you feel most comfortable helping them with?

Katie Vernoy: Sure. That sounds like a good idea. So when I have someone come in and usually a helping professional counselor, therapist, clinician, the first thing we do is really look at what is happening. Right? We it’s the assessment. Right. And so the assessment includes looking at how has this person set up their life, their career, what are their priorities, their values, mission and vision. If they have that, if they’re working for themselves or even if they’ve joined into a particular type of organization or work because of of mission and vision and purpose and getting a really good context, a really clarifying what is it that you’re doing and what is it that you actually had set out to do. And oftentimes there’s a misalignment there, right? So somebody wants to have a balanced life where they’re able to, you know, go to family events and do all these things that are very amazing personally, but they’re working 50 hours a week and then like doing their notes on the weekend and can’t get to like the kids soccer game or something. Right. And so it’s looking at where are the misalignments with what you are doing and what you set out to do. And so it’s philosophical at first. It’s more kind of the values based piece of it first, and then it starts drilling down into the practicalities. What actually is the schedule you’ve set up? Does that schedule make sense? Sometimes people say, well, I was told because I like to work with kids, I have to work evenings and weekends. Okay, that’s probably true, but can you test that? Can you actually shift things around and see what’s going on there, or can you expand your practice and work with parents during the day and kids in the afternoon and open up some time for your own family? Right. And so it starts getting into the practicalities of, of what us have about how you’re working. You froze. Did that work?

Becky Coplen: Just for a second. It froze. You did as well. But I think we’re good.

Katie Vernoy: So I’ll just step back one second. So it’s what assumptions do you have about how you’re supposed to work and how you’ve set things up that we can throw away. And sometimes that even goes to let’s create a blank schedule. You have nothing in it and I like Stephen Covey’s Big Rocks, and it’s like, okay, what are the most important things? Put those into your schedule. Now put the next most important things, and then you fill in the other stuff. And oftentimes people have very different schedules than what they kind of fell into when they first started out. And so schedule is a very practical way to do that. There’s also kind of throwing away some assumptions or or reworking some assumptions about, you know, what type of job to have or what type of reimbursement that you can seek out, or how you can set your practice up. There’s a lot of different, very unique things, but I find that the most challenging part of this can be overcoming the mindset that I am the last on my priority list, and I’m serving everyone but myself.

Katie Vernoy: And so then it becomes this. How do we make sure that you’re taking care of yourself, that you’re not burning out, that you’re not seeing more clients than works for you, that you’re not misaligning your schedule so that you’re also shortchanging yourself as far as who you are as a family member and who you are to the people you most care about. And so then that then it becomes kind of the mindset or the processing work, so to speak, of how do you get your head around having a schedule that actually doesn’t feel hard? Because I think so many counselors, therapists have had kind of an indoctrination into this idea that we must sacrifice for this work, and we must work hard. We must work a lot. And if I feel like I’m not burning myself out and a client needs me, you know, whether it’s an extra crisis call or a new client that comes in that wants a time that you just really don’t have. we often times will sacrifice for those clients, and so it’s working against that.

Becky Coplen: Yes. Preach it for sure. Right. It’s like until we feel that we’re so we’ve sacrificed so many things and then, we wake up and think, oh, maybe I should give a little time to myself. Whereas you’re helping people see that from the beginning. So, yeah. Can you tell us about maybe some really good success stories or, something you’re really proud of? Or maybe there’s a podcast episode that you feel like really got you a lot of people, and you just feel so good about it that you’d want everyone to know about it here.

Katie Vernoy: So there’s a couple of different success stories with some of the folks that I’ve worked with, clinicians, and this was in my in the coaching that I do with therapists. systems oftentimes are not therapists first go to. And so I had a couple of clinicians where they were doing a lot of things themselves. And so what that ended up looking like is that they were working a lot of extra hours that they didn’t need to. And so there was one clinician who was doing field based work, and she was doing amazing work, but she was spending so much time doing her own scheduling, doing all this stuff. And so she was actually able to afford to get an assistant. She paid an assistant, I think, half time, and was able to see more clients and actually increased her income that year, even though she brought on an employee. And so that was great. Another one of the success stories that I have is a group practice owner who also had another business, was able to set up her practice so that she could take time off for her kids and homeschooling, medical concerns and traveling. And so she’s actually gotten to the place where both businesses can almost run themselves, so that she’s able to take care of the crises and the joys that have come up in her personal life and not really lose either substantial income or not, or be able to take care of herself. And I think a lot of folks feel scared about moving back to either prioritizing, doing the things that they that only they can do, and also taking time to do amazing things when you can enjoy them.

Katie Vernoy: And so those are a couple of success stories. And a lot of that comes into systems and mindset. You know, what are the systems that you can streamline and automate. How do you make sure that you’re not spending extra time, you know, creating forms over and over again or, or scheduling in a way that doesn’t make sense, or, you know, in the case of the second person delegating to people effectively so that you’re not just, having folks just doing tasks for you, but actually taking on responsibility. And so, Curt and I on our podcast actually talked about some of the systems, and I, I think it’s we call it systems of self-care. So I’m not sure I can send you a link if you want to put that in the show notes. But it talks through kind of optimal performance for therapists. And we’ve, we’ve done some talks on it as well. And it really goes through how you can use optimal performance structures within a therapy practice. And this is for both therapists who are working for themselves and people who are working for others. Depending on how much flexibility you have with how you design your schedule and how you work. But it’s it’s I think both of us are very proud of that episode. We even actually did a follow on with, you know, when we did a replay of that episode over the holidays this past year? Because I think it just really talks through, how do you take care of yourself properly and set yourself up for success versus getting reactive?

Becky Coplen: Mhm. When you talk about these things I just keep thinking of the word risk. Right. It’s like whenever you’re going to add on someone you want to hire or you’re going to use a new system and it often involves money. Right. But you’re helping them get over that bridge to do that. And then it ends up being something that multiplies or multiplies time or whatever it is that you’re trying to get more out. So yeah, that sounds really cool. Can you share, you and Curt, your business partner, you have the Therapy Reimagined and the podcast. Can you talk a little bit on here about the business side of that, and how many systems you guys are using or not using between the two of you?

Katie Vernoy: Sure. So Curt and I, I think, are very much like most therapists and even how we’re doing our podcast. So Curt does the editing, I do the show notes and episode artwork. So we’re still doing a lot of those things. We’ve created systems within those things. And so we have, you know, Dropbox. So he can get it over to me. And I have my assistant helping me to complete the show notes and, and get things to our social media. We have a virtual assistant that does our social media, so we have some hiring there, but I’ve created systems within how I do the show notes and episode artwork, that kind of stuff. We also have a learning platform because we do pod courses, you know, continue education pod courses. And so there’s there’s automations there that help people walk through courses as well as get continuing education certificates. And so we’ve tried to get as much as possible in place for my assistant. We’ve also put in place, you know, templates for, you know, what we’re sending out to folks for interviews or for sponsors and that kind of stuff. We have a lot of a lot of things where if we have to do something more than once and maybe more than like five times, we’ll we’ll write out a process and make sure that there’s templates in place that can be easily adjusted to whoever we’re trying to reach out to to make sure that it makes sense.

Katie Vernoy: And so a lot of those things I’ve completely delegated to my assistant so that she can make sure that she’s keeping up with our, our sponsors to get the information from them for like, their ads or whatever or their, you know, their we’re getting their logo and we’re getting the, the guests, you know, heads headshot and and by biography or you know, what is it bio in in like the way they sign up. We get they they attach their headshot, they attach their bio, they attach the questions they want us to ask, that kind of stuff. So we’ve tried to make everything as automated as possible so that it still remains fun because we’ve been doing this since 2017. So we’re getting towards seven years on this podcast.

Becky Coplen: Wow. That’s easy.

Katie Vernoy: So, so we’ve wanted to make it as smooth as possible. That’s not always possible, but we’ve made it as smooth as possible, so it remains fun, right?

Becky Coplen: Right. yeah. Seven years. That’s amazing. And, I love that you mentioned over the holidays you replayed one, right? Because you don’t know where people are in the process or what got to some people and not others. So. Sure. Great. yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about the pod courses, which I assume are, at everyone’s own time frame. You just it’s not live, right? Well, what would they have done?

Katie Vernoy: People can listen to the podcast anytime, right? It’s like any podcast. And so if you listen to the podcast, you can go to our learning platform, find that pod, that pod course, and then take a quiz and then a survey at the end, like the feedback survey, and then that’ll get you the credit for the episode. We have camped approval right now, which is the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. We’re working on WNBC. That’s coming soon. But yeah, we have one hour long pod courses. So for folks, people just listen to them because they’re just episodes. We try to do it about once a month. We haven’t hit every month, but about once a month we try to do lawn ethics, you know, every couple of months, if not every other month, so that people can get their lab requirements done through our our courses. But we try to do interesting topics, I think we have one. Should therapists admit their mistakes? We have dual relationships, pros and cons. I mean, that’s actually a different episode, but that’s kind of what the dual relationships and kind of ethical decision making. How to work with leaders and executives. That was one that I put together, how to work with elite athletes. That was one that Curt put together. So we’re trying to make very interesting kinds of different topics that folks can listen to, and it’s interesting, but then get credit afterwards.

Becky Coplen: Okay. So let’s talk about that because we don’t have as much on this show. How you went from having the podcast to, having it be agreeable with the state that this can be continuing education hours for people that are marriage and family therapists or possibly other licensures. How did you get from one to the other?

Katie Vernoy: Well, it was a natural progression because we had a conference. And so we’ve been a provider for a long time. Basically, you just have to follow the rules. Right. And so if there’s, there’s different rules for asynchronous learning or home study. And so those are the types of approvals that we’ve gotten or are working on. And we are working on for other folks. And some people can take the can’t see because it is pretty rigorous and get credit through their own body. But they have to check that out. And so that’s why we’re trying to get in BC, because it will help a lot of folks across the country.

Becky Coplen: Yeah. So right now you’re more set for California and you’re trying to broaden nationwide.

Katie Vernoy: Yeah. Yeah. And we’ve and we’ve done nationwide learning before. We got KNBC for our last conference. It’s just that KNBC gets backed up. And so you know we’re working, we’re working on it. We’re working on it.

Becky Coplen: Yeah. So that’s those are not as fast as others right. No. No.

Katie Vernoy: Exactly.

Becky Coplen: Yeah. Well that’s really cool. And some, I hope for our audience, people who may want certain certifications. it’s good to just know another place. I personally just find it so fascinating being a school counselor. And, you know, even though I’m elementary, we, we still go to things about getting kids into colleges and trades. And it’s just funny how so much learning happens. Not in an actual college setting. Other and how the world has just shifted so much in that. So, good to know of another avenue, that people can look at. You mentioned a little bit about how, diversity, equity and inclusion is a huge part of you modernizing therapy. I just wanted to ask you to expound upon that a little bit. I’m sure there’s certain episodes you could talk about or what you and Curt have done, to make everyone feel welcome and comfortable.

Katie Vernoy: Well, I think the first thing was in our conference, we made sure that that was a big focus of the conference. And the way that we worked with it was identifying who are the voices that are typically on the conference stages. And we were talking about this for our first conference, I think, in 2018 or 2019. So this was, you know, a pretty normal time. It wasn’t, you know, 2020 when everything kind of went crazy. This was this was just kind of part of our business. And we recognized that, that a lot of conferences, especially big conferences at that time, would have kind of the same folks coming through. And honestly, I hate to say it, we’re old white guys. And so when we were putting out our call for speakers, when we were choosing speakers for like keynotes and that kind of stuff, we wanted to make sure that we were really looking to different communities to bring forward lived experience and or just to come speak. Right. You know, you don’t always want somebody that’s from a different community to only be talking about the Dei topics, right? You want everybody to be able to talk about everything. And so what we did is we were just very selective in who we put on our stage and looked at the content and the possibility, not the polish, because I think a lot of folks who aren’t typically on stages may not be as polished as someone that’s done it 47,000 times.

Katie Vernoy: And so and so that’s where we started. And then we interviewed a lot of our folks on our podcast because we wanted to promote our podcast, our conference, but also because they had something really interesting to say. And so even since the conference, we’ve tried to make sure that we’re thinking, thinking and learning about new populations that maybe other other folks aren’t talking about, folks aren’t necessarily getting the education in grad school. And it’s a work in progress. We don’t have all the topics covered. We have a whole, I don’t know if it’s die or how we talked about it. but we also have, like, a special population, you know, kind of, you know, kind of, you know, kind of topic that you can push. And then we have probably, probably a couple hundred episodes or 100 and something episodes. and so I think as far as, like particular episodes, I don’t even know. There’s so many of them.

Becky Coplen: So many.

Katie Vernoy: Yeah. So. But, but I think that there’s just, you know, will be being willing to talk through things because all folks should be able to have therapy and, and making that accessible by teaching folks and also trying to encourage, folks of all identities to enter the field and do advocacy to try to make the field more open and available. One of our good friends, Doctor Ben Caldwell, is a big advocate in California trying to shift laws that are, prohibitive for folks who are, not wealthy or typically white getting into the profession. And so, Curt and Ben do a lot of advocacy across the state. And we also try to help folks who are doing advocacy work across the country to to try to help limit or to to remove barriers to entry for the profession.

Becky Coplen: Yeah. What I feel like I’m hearing from you is that a lot of times there was the status quo of the conference or the speakers, and you guys just love to take the time and go deeper and or and maybe taking a risk on people that weren’t, as usual, to be presenting and maybe didn’t. The one you know, you know how there’s headliner people and everybody runs. But you were willing to go outside the box. And so I think that’s really, awesome that you guys did that. And I’m sure a testament to how successful all of it has been. And how many episodes did you say you’re at, like three.

Katie Vernoy: 356 or 357 I think are loaded into our podcast platform at this point.

Becky Coplen: Yeah. My brain at this age, I’ll be like, wait, what did I talk about a few weeks ago? It’s like Americans and the moment you’re so into it, the show notes like this is this person and I love this and this website because things just don’t stick as much as they used to.

Katie Vernoy: Sure. Yeah.

Becky Coplen: Um, anyway, well, thank you, for so much information and insight. Is there anything you feel like our listeners should also hear from you today?

Katie Vernoy: That’s a good question. I think, truthfully, I think if anybody is feeling alone in their practice, whether they’re in a, in an agency setting, a school setting, some sort of some sort of a corporation or whatever, if they’re feeling alone in their practice. We had somebody say, I was feeling alone, and I was like, let me check to see if Modern Therapist has a podcast on this. And she’s like, and they did. You know, it was I think she had a client die, unfortunately. And so she found an episode where we talked about, what do you do when clients die. And so and we have a lot of clients, a lot of episodes that are pretty maudlin about, you know, suicide and suicidality, both with clients and with clinicians. But if you’re feeling alone, like you don’t have the resources that you need, that you don’t know what to do next or you’re feeling stuck, come check out the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast, because we’ve probably talked about it. It’s been almost seven years, and we’ve talked with a lot of our colleagues.

Katie Vernoy: We’ve talked with a lot of folks that are in the field that have potentially gone through what you’re going through. And so we have a Facebook group, the Modern Therapist group, where we try to provide support there. But the podcast episodes, I think probably for 95% of them, I feel like they’re excellent episodes because they’re up and down. Right. But I think there’s usually something that’s going to that’s going to help you get through the situation that you’re in, and if not, reach out to us and let us know, hey, what would you do in this situation? And if we have ideas, we’ll do a podcast episode almost immediately. But if we don’t, we’ll figure out who we can ask and bring them on and interview them. Because I feel like it’s what we want. It’s we’re really calling it a survival guide because we want folks to not only survive, but also really thrive in this profession and really do what they can to continue forward doing this really critical work.

Becky Coplen: I love your heart on that and really wanting to reach people and make sure they’re successful. And, I also kind of love the, diversity of your whole role. Like you dabble in a few different things, right? Still working with people one on one, training leaders and then reaching a whole lot of people through the podcast, and being able to say, oh, we could pull this up or, hey, you could take this as a credit. So thank you for that. And we really appreciate your time today and sharing with us, Katie.

Katie Vernoy: It’s been fun. Thanks for having me again.

Becky Coplen: Yeah. To our listeners, we hope you learned a lot today on Mastering Counseling. As Katie has worked with the government and been a representative of the state of California in this area. Area of marriage and family therapy. And now, getting her message out to the whole country. We hope that you’ve learned a lot. Please leave us questions as well. Reviews and continue to tune in to Mastering Counseling. Have a wonderful day