Episode Overview

• Episode Topic:
  In this captivating episode of Mastering Counseling, this episode engages in a captivating conversation with Faith Carlson, the founder, and owner of Victus Counseling & Nutrition Services. The focus is on Victus Counseling & Nutrition Services, a pioneering multi-state licensed private practice dedicated to comprehensive and specialized treatment for eating disorders. She shares insights into the practice’s mission, vision, and commitment to advocating for the best treatment modalities. The episode delves into the practice’s empathetic culture, fostering understanding and support for clients navigating the complexities of eating disorders.
• Lessons You’ll Learn:
  Listeners can expect to glean valuable lessons on the holistic approach to eating disorder treatment. Faith Carlson discusses how Victus integrates specialized counselors and dietitians, fostering collaboration and open communication. The episode sheds light on the significance of client involvement in their treatment plans, empowering them to voice their needs. It offers insights into the multidisciplinary approach that emphasizes the interconnected nature of mental and nutritional well-being, contributing to sustainable recovery and emotional resilience.
• About Our Guest:
  Faith Carlson is the esteemed founder and owner of Victus Counseling & Nutrition Services. With a passion for providing comprehensive treatment for eating disorders, she combines entrepreneurial expertise with a commitment to client well-being. Her dedication to creating a supportive and inclusive practice environment is reflected in Victus’s success in the field of eating disorder treatment and mental health support.
• Topics Covered:
  The episode covers a range of crucial topics, from the advocacy for comprehensive eating disorder treatment to the practice’s collaborative and inclusive approach. Faith shares real-life case studies, emphasizing the practice’s role in significant contributions to individuals’ recovery. The discussion extends to the challenges and considerations in managing a multi-state licensed practice, integrating entrepreneurial insights, and future initiatives for expanding Victus’s impact in the community.

Episode Transcript

Faith Carlson: Your medical needs should equal your mental health needs. So if you have to see a dietitian for diabetes, you should be able to get a dietitian for eating disorders. They should both be covered. If you need to go see a doctor for a sore throat, you should be able to go see a counselor for counseling, which is true. We get reimbursed for that. But now if you put in a dietitian, dietitians are not getting reimbursed. So that’s a parity violation. The Kennedy Forum is a great resource on the website that you can actually track your individual state and see the violations there. You can report them.

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 will be exploring 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. Hello! I am so excited to be on the show today with Faith Carlson out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota because she is an expert and the owner of Victus Counseling and Nutrition Services, which specializes in the comprehensive treatment of people struggling with eating disorders. Thank you for being on the show today, Faith.

Faith Carlson: Thanks, Becky, so much for having me. And, mastering counseling, it’s an honor and just totally humbled to be here.

Becky Coplen: I know you have a lot to share, so why don’t you go ahead and start off with how you got into this specific area of help in the therapy and mental health world?

Faith Carlson: Yeah. Great question. It’s ironic entering into the field. This is a second career for me coming into the counseling field and in my training in college, one class that I had to take was our diagnostic class. And people who know me know I’m dyslexic. And so I got so excited when I got the shortest chapter in this diagnostic class. It was feeding an eating disorder and it was the shortest chapter. And I thought, oh, this is perfect. And I got to present for the class and it’s only three pages, so this will be easy. I believe it’s a second paragraph. Second line. Somewhere around there, it says eating disorders are the number one cause of death out of all mental health illnesses. And when I read that, I thought, wait a minute, it’s not depression, schizophrenia. My curiosity wheels started turning and from there, I neurotically became obsessed with where do people get help, what do they do? How do they get help? Why is it the number one? Cause how long has it been the number one cause? And fast forward to where we are now. And we have developed the first standalone private clinic in Sioux Falls that specializes in eating disorders and providing expanded care and education anywhere that we can.

Becky Coplen: You never know where people start. And I love that you were reading your textbook for a course, and something that you read jumped out so strongly to you for you to focus on it in such an intense way. And yeah, there are so many struggles that people have, and this is one that I think is pretty hard to talk about. Some things are way more out in the open now, but this I feel is often hidden because it often can lead to death. It’s just a huge thing. So can you talk to us a little bit about the diverse range of eating disorders that people are struggling with? I mentioned to you before, that I had gone to a little breakout training for school counselors last year, and I had learned some of that. A lot of people know bulimia and just plain anorexia, but I know there’s a lot of other things that people are struggling with. So educate us on that a bit.

Faith Carlson: Absolutely. In such a great question, because you want to think of it like a spectrum, right? And so when you think of a spectrum culturally in society, we think of eating disorders and we think of a very underweight individual. And we have this image of someone who’s very gaunt and in reality is over 50% of individuals that go into higher-level care treatment facilities are what we call atypical anorexia nervosa. So with the issuance of the DSM five, they modified some of the criteria for an eating disorder diagnosis. It used to be where you wouldn’t have your menstrual cycle. Then you would have an eating disorder. Well, that eliminated every male. So okay it doesn’t discriminate against gender race, or finances. It’s across the board. So when you think about the spectrum, think of it in the sense that we have the traditional anorexia nervosa. That is truly a certain criteria of weight, which I think our field is leaning to just removing that criteria completely. And then we have atypical, which is a majority of the population that can hear of average size but really be starving. I say starvation is starvation. And then you’ll have bulimia nervosa, which is going to be kind of that binge-purge type behavior. And then we’re going to lean over the DSM five in this most recent release including binge eating disorder, which it’s a real thing when you think about this binge eating, it’s so validating for the clients that I get to work with that this really is true. Like you really are struggling. It isn’t a lack of will. It isn’t because you’re not following a diet. It isn’t because you’re all these things that society says there’s a genetic. We have research that shows there are genetic pieces that are involved with this, and this is a mental health diagnosis. First, you want to keep in mind that we’re working on mental health aspects. And then one that I feel is maybe coming out a little bit more in awareness is Arfid, which is avoidant food-restricted intake, which is more like a sensory.

Faith Carlson: You think of it in sensory, not so much on the autism spectrum side, but it is just really very rigid, and restrictive in sensory pieces. So not so much body thought focus, but fears like anxieties around sensory processing with foods. And then they have like the other specified feeding which is that all catch you know lane in there. So when you mentioned that it’s like a hidden diagnosis or undereducated doctors get less than three hours of training in their programming. In my program, it was less than 15 minutes. And that 15 minutes is probably the 15 minutes I presented in that class. And then I just want to mention, too, that clinicians, undertrained doctors, under trained dietitians don’t get training in their nutritional programming. But just note that we just came out of a pandemic. And the research shows emergency rooms doubled for adolescents seeking. Supports for eating disorders. So just there’s a pandemic in this right now that’s happening. And just to be aware of the diagnosis. But remember we’re treating the person. And that’s something just to be mindful of.

Becky Coplen: For sure, so much of this work is holistic mind body, spirit, all of it. But I feel like especially in this realm, you must work so closely with doctors because they’re evaluating their weight and all of those things.

Faith Carlson: So I’m sure a lot of the issues are crossing over since it is such a difficult topic, how would you say that you guys are able to provide your clients, just like a very empathic place of warmth and a place to be open and to be able to collaborate together to get them a treatment plan and get them the help to keep them out of the ER and beyond that. That’s a great question because I think we’re finding in our field one question I thought was how is this the number one cause for the years and years and years that it has been? And again, I’ll go back to being dyslexic. I like to flip through books and stuff and gather information. But if our evidence-based research information was working the way that we would think it would be working, we should see something else in that number one slot. We should see some things moving around. So the approach I’ve always utilized, and we’re starting to see the American Psychological Association match up with this is a holistic treatment team. So it is a doctor, a dietitian, a therapist. So that’s what they recommend. I always keep in mind and I share this that not everybody has access to these resources. Not everybody can afford it. Think of uninsured and underinsured. So while that’s an ideal team, just keep in mind that financial. This is a very expensive when I say expensive diagnosis. Clients are seeing individuals like a lot of my cases, two, three, four appointments a week on outpatient. So just keeping in mind that the cost of this when a client comes into my clinic, I see the person, I see the client, and I’m treating that person. I say this every time I take a new intake is I know eating disorders. I know those symptoms. I know that diagnosis. But I don’t know you, the patient I want to know about you. I want to know what’s going on. How can I help you? I want you to be an expert at how your mind works and be able to embrace that. And I think that’s something that is risky in our field, in the sense that we have to think of treating eating recovery in a different perspective, that we treat the person and not the diagnosis. We’re aware of the diagnosis, but that diagnosis isn’t that person. That person is a person. And that’s the approach I have with every client. And I never lose hope. I say I have an abundance of hope that they can have some of mine. It’s a very person-centered approach.

Becky Coplen: Yeah, it’s a really huge commitment on the person themselves, and it always is when people go for help. But this is a lot of things to keep track of, and it makes me think about after they’ve seen you. A lot of times there’s homework, for lack of a better term after a therapy session. But what would some of those things look like for a client of yours? Let’s say they saw you on a Monday. What does the rest of the week look for them in preparing for that next session, if they were your ideal client?

Faith Carlson: Yeah, that’s a great question. So my academic training of course, was through the schooling system like the colleges. But I also went into additional training. So I went into the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals. The Academy of Eating Disorders also offers a certification. But both of those facilities, those nationally known and internationally known programs, offer training. And that was an additional two years of training and an additional 2000 hours in supervision. So this is post-grad. So this is after getting my degree and it really helped with the case conceptualization. So when I think of like a classic before I went into specializing maybe just a general anxiety client. Yeah, I might give them like cognitive behavioral therapy or coping skills and mechanisms. We’re really looking at a specialty because when we’re looking at eating recovery, my priority number one is medical stability. That’s the very first thing I’m checking how is that heart rate? So, I’m immediately collaborating. Like my first goal is the connection with the treatment team and medical stability screening and medical monitoring. So for the first few weeks, it’s setting up the team, giving the Psycho education. A lot of clients come in very acute, especially post-pandemic. They’re coming in very acute, and by the time they get to my office, they’re in most clinicians. I imagine that they have a client walk in the door and they’re asking for help. That is a very scary spot for them because this is a very isolating diagnosis. It’s it’s very uncommon for a client to come in and ask for help and to get a specialized clinician and get the support that they deserve and need at the level that they deserve. So you get a client that comes in, it’s really connecting to the team. When I think of homework, it’s really building that rapport, that trust. I said this, I used to work at a hospital. I said when our clients go through treatment programs, intensive outpatients, and they do dialectic behavioral and cognitive behavioral if the brain’s not fed, they’re not going to remember anything. So you have to remember we put all these modalities in or these things. The first goal we really have to do is nutrition. So that way the brain is fed. So that way they can cognitively think through and reframe and challenge thoughts and get grounded if we don’t have that. Nutritional aspects that were really missing a lot of the pieces, because they’re going to forget the minute they walk out the door, you know what they’re working on. So that’s that frame is medical stability connecting to the team and then immediate regulation of meals and then maybe even assessing for higher-level care,

Becky Coplen: Especially for many people listening who this isn’t their specialty, but they know maybe how to refer out, or they know how much of a commitment the client would have to make to tackle this in their life. But it’s so serious and so very important. Let’s talk a little bit about your practice. Victus Counseling and I think I saw on your website at least one other person who’s part of the team. Can you talk about the setup of your practice and even outlying, if you have HR support or any other little systems that are part of it?

Faith Carlson: Yeah. So we opened up Victor’s and I say we it’s my business partner who’s the dietitian, the registered dietitian Lauren Kearney. And when we started up, it was a very bold, brave leap of faith. Honestly, no pun intended with the name, but we were both working at a hospital, and we knew we needed a treatment team that consisted of the dietitian and the therapist. So in this field with specialty, you recognize that for every one hour of work we do, we really do two hours worth of work. And that second hour isn’t billable. So when you think about connecting to the treatment team, I can’t bill out for calling the doctor and calling the dietitian and collaborating. It’s a very collaborative approach. Like I think of it as a team, we get to work together. So when we set up the clinic, we went into a clinic that I was I’m so excited about. Here at our clinic, there are eight offices in here. We have a full kitchen with a stove, sink, fridge, and all that good stuff for the exposure group. We have our billing coding person because there are a lot of parity violations which has clinicians we never learned about in college. We didn’t learn about marketing. We didn’t learn about all of these fun things. So we hired on a billing coding individual that supports our clients. But also I’m a huge advocate of change, national change, and access to care and services. So we are actively monitoring parity violations and connecting with the Department of Labor in DC.

Becky Coplen: Let me interrupt that for a minute. Just clarify for us parity violations, we haven’t talked about that too much on the show. Can you just clarify that?

Faith Carlson: Oh, absolutely. So parity violations is you want to think of it in this way as when health insurance when individuals use health insurance, your medical needs should equal your mental health needs. So if you have to see a dietitian for diabetes, you should be able to get a dietitian for eating disorders. They should both be covered. So we should not have a discrepancy. If you need to go see a doctor for a sore throat, you should be able to go see a counselor for counseling, which is true. We get reimbursed right for that. But now if you put in a dietitian, dietitians are not getting reimbursed. And that’s why there are not very many dietitians who are specialized and trained. So that’s a parity violation. And that’s a law. That’s a federal law that is for commercial insurance, where the Kennedy Forum is a great resource on the website where you can actually track your individual state and see the violations there. You can report them. When I was in school, I didn’t learn about health insurance or deductibles or anything like that. So clients don’t know what they don’t know. And as clinicians, we get to support them to be able to give them that care and support. So parity violations is when an insurance company puts on limits access to care. Think of it that way. So if they have a number of sessions they only allow or limit to those things. That’s a violation. And the Department of Labor oversees that in DC. And they audited the insurance companies. And I’m an anagram. So I like to poke the bear to say that they failed every audit the Department of Labor did. So they failed everyone. So that tells you that they are getting declined. And they’re trying to advocate because there’s no arm to actually file fines. And that’s what the government’s working on is like now, how do we actually hold these insurance companies accountable? So that’s the parity violation. And that’s something that I’m advocating on a national level. But also in every state, we see this. So something I think clinicians should be aware of is there’s insurance barriers. Be curious about it, because it’s already hard for us to get reimbursed and we’re under-reimbursed already. So it’s it’s important to be able to advocate. Yeah.

Becky Coplen: Thank you for your bravery on that and for taking it up with DC. That’s a big thing to tackle along with all the parts of running a practice. I know I stopped you on that, but if you want to add anything else go ahead.

Faith Carlson: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, our expansion we’re working on outpatient right now, and we’re building out to an intensive outpatient and partial hospitalization and bringing on interns the highest level of education we’re really advocating for. Anyone we bring on is going through the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals Training. So we have two more clinicians we’re hoping to bring on in the next 3 to 6 months. It is the only standalone clinic in our entire state. So prior to this clinic opening, every client had to go out of state for higher level care or any specialized training, which is not okay. That’s not okay. And we’re in rural South Dakota. This is very common in rural states. There’s a lack of coverage and support across the nation. We were the one state that didn’t have anything, and we have at least something in our state.

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. What do you see for the future here? Do you feel like you’re going to go more national in reaching more people? Do you feel like it’ll mainly stay in your state? What would be the long-term 5 to 10-year plan for victus Counseling?

Faith Carlson: It’s a great question, and in my eagerness of all things, I am already collaborating with a provider in the state of Indiana who has built clinics and sits on the National Board Red Sea, which is great because it’s the highest standard of care for treating eating disorders. So since I’ve entered into this field, I’ve always said in such a humble way it is really about collaborating and my supervisor said this once when I was in school is it’s about growing out, not up. And I agree with that. It is. It’s about collaborating. It’s about growing, expanding. So the goal is honestly to have something in our state that is going to be here long term. Well, beyond when I’m here and collaborating with providers and in other states and expanding. And that’s a goal you’ll find if you come into this field and specialize. It’s a very collaborative group of individuals across the nation, higher level care facilities and clinics. We’re very connected because we know how much work this is to help support.

Becky Coplen: Are there four states that you’re licensing? Yeah, yeah. Can you talk about it? Yeah, I feel like I looked and I was like, these are all very different states. I want to know the story of how this all came together in Sioux Falls.

Faith Carlson: Yes. So we are located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And if you look at a map, we’re right in the corner. So we border Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. So think of it in that we’re maybe less than an hour’s drive across the state lines. When I started, of course, I got my South Dakota license. And then because of the specialty, people would come across the state line to be able to get treatment. But they’re driving. When you think of rural South Dakota, they’re driving 45 minutes. I still have clients who drive 45 minutes to come see me once a week, twice a week. So I did pick up a license in Minnesota, and then I picked one up in Iowa just to get that area where I can support clients. And the support, being that I can help them if they want to do telehealth, that they can stay in their area without having to drive. During our cold winters and our weather, the other license I have is out in Florida, and that’s because of a lot of our clients that are snowbirds, We call it where they go down south and then come back up. And Florida offers a telehealth license. South Dakota is not a part of the compact yet. I believe there are 17 states that are a part of the compact right now. So it is all individual licenses, individual use. But the purpose was to be able to help our region and be able to write on that border is that the purpose of getting those licenses.

Becky Coplen: Okay. And so let’s think about that. Just help me process with someone who is a snowbird. When they’re living ten minutes away, they come to your office, you’re licensed, no big deal. So ethically, then when they go down in December to Florida, you have to have the licensure in Florida to be able to work with them online.

Faith Carlson: Wherever my client’s feet are. Think of that wherever our patients are, wherever their feet are, that’s where you need to be licensed out of. I also say this too, is to recognize whether it’s a specialty or not. If there is an emergency, there are courses out there that are great. I don’t think a lot of training courses are on multi-state licenses in the sense that if there’s an emergency and you pick up the phone and you call 911, you’re calling 911 in your state, in your county that’s not going out to Florida. So it’s so important and imperative you get their address. Where are they at? Where are they doing their sessions? I get when I start working with clients in different states, I ask what county they’re in because really, I got to call that county, talk to that sheriff, and figure out how do I get someone to that house for safety, right? Like if it’s an emergency. So when you think about just these multi-state licenses and you think about ethics and you want to think of the footedness, right? We lose a little bit of assessment when we go telehealth. There are things we can’t assess. We lose. So you just want to think of like just I always just say like the ethics of it and ultimately harm reduction for the client. Right? You want to keep them safe. You want to make sure that we can provide them with that care. And that’s one thing that wherever those feet are, that’s where we need to be licensed. And all my states I’m licensed in, they all know that of the other states that I’m licensed in. So all they do, they audit, they check in, they have a send-stuff in. So it’s important to just stay on top of it. Liability insurance. The insurance I have, it does cover the states that I practice out of. As long as I’m following the laws and regulations of my field and those states. So I don’t have to get individual policies for each of these states. My liability insurance covers all of them. Florida has certain limits. So you just want to check like what the state limits are for liability insurance. It’s expensive to get into multi-states because you’re paying for licenses and such. But you have insurance-paying clients. You it covers it. It’s like Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Dakota will also cover Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota and Florida. So it’s that’s the other nice thing is that those panels go across each of the states as well. It just depends if you’re considered in-network or out-of-network.

Becky Coplen: Yeah, that’s really big important thing to think about. One thing I was thinking about when you mentioned the telehealth, maybe you lose a little bit of it, which still is helpful, but in this line of helping those with food addictions and that type of thing, do you actually bring the real food into the therapy sessions just for visualizations? Talk to us about that.

Faith Carlson: That’s a great curious question. It makes me smile because I think when I started specializing, I was like, what the heck? Weighing clients in therapy, bringing food in, it’s like, it’s like weight. And so when I thought about it, I was like, there’s no way I’m bringing in a scale to weigh clients and all these things, right? I was like, that’s not gonna happen. That’s like, it feels like your boundary crossing and stuff. When you get into this field and you and you get a little bit more confident. And again, this is so humiliating. I’m always learning and growing, but it depends on the client, really. My goal is to have a trained dietitian working with this client. So they get to talk about the food, they get to focus on the calories. They get to talk about those pieces because it is very rigid. It’s authoritative like you can’t negotiate food, right? And as a therapist, I’m always like, I did have a bad day. It is stressful. It’s okay. We’ll just keep trying, right? My dietitians are trained and they’re all over the United States, they get licensed in our state. So some of them are virtual, like Lauren is here on the ground. But I have licensed dietitians in different states here. They have meal support. There was an evidence-based research article that shows having meal support with the client actually shows improvements for stabilization. Right. So that’s on that dietitian side. But has a therapist I do there are some clients that I’m like, okay, I can’t get this client into higher level care. That’s just not an option right now. They can’t afford this type of service. A dietitian, it’s very case-by-case specific. And then you also have to think of like your comfortability too, right? Like if I had to have breakfast, lunch and snacks with every client every day, then that would be exhausting. I think for me as a clinician as well. Is that awareness, right? And then when am I getting my downtime to be able to do self-care? And some clients I do, I have breakfast, like we bring in fruit and I’ll have it here with them because the reality is they’re not going to eat unless somebody’s sitting there and encouraging that. But I would say 80% of the time I really lean into my dietitians. They specialize. That’s their lane. I go into it a little bit, but I’m always collaborating. I’m always collaborating. I myself still have a supervisor. I staff every other week with my supervisor. Just because you have to. You really have to hear perspectives and connections. I never say this when I present with doctors and schools and such is you’re never on an island in this field treating. Never think you’re on an island. Collaborate. Connect. Don’t do it on your own because the walls can cave in. And so it’s just helpful to have a team approach. And we have weights in the kitchen here because the dietitian is here in the office. And so we lean a little bit more into the food exposures. But when I talk about like rural areas or places that they don’t have those food exposures, I try to lean into family support because those are going to be the people that are with them all the time. And doctors, I always collaborate with the doctors because if they stop therapy, they’re going to see their doctor, if they have an ear infection or a sore throat. If that doctor knows that they have an eating disorder, they’re also going to be monitoring and regulating and just tracking it. At least keep an eye on the client.

Becky Coplen: Right. So interesting. So many parts of counseling need tools. Myself as an elementary school counselor often this year, so many snacks needed for people because of their homes don’t have enough money for snacks. And then they have the fidgets and the calm-down toys. But that’s what made me think about you in your clients. They have to be okay with it. I’m sure. There are so many parts they see food, who knows what it does to their brain, or even commercials and things like that. So very interesting. Can you talk to us about some success you’ve seen with just maybe in general, or a specific client that you’ve had some use, some interventions or they’ve I don’t know if anyone overcomes it completely in this life, but talk to us about some success.

Faith Carlson: That’s interesting. The average year of recovery is seven years earlier. Interventions predict better outcomes, and this generation is the first generation that is getting genetic testing done. And so it’s really I can be neurotically optimistic, but it’s really exciting to see that there are genetics. As I said at the beginning, there are genetic components that are involved here. Right. So when you think about traits, think of this as there are traits, there are obsessive-compulsive traits, and there are perfectionism traits. There’s you know, there’s these traits that really get hijacked by the eating disorder. So when I think of successes, I’m always assessing quality of life. And I’m thinking functioning right, personal, social, academic functioning. I think that the best successes that I’ve been able to see are, oh my gosh, just connection. I think that’s huge because it’s such an isolating diagnosis. It doesn’t want to be around others, it doesn’t want to reach out, it is isolated. It takes them away from community and connection. So I think just connection is a big piece that I’ve been able to see. And it’s validating because individuals really do think that they’re the only ones that struggle with this because they aren’t connecting and they don’t know other people and they don’t hear about it. And so when my clients can have a space to be heard and feel understood, there was a book that was read that said I was reading that said a minor said, I don’t need my parents to understand, I just need them to believe me. And so when you think of that, it’s like the successes are seeing the client, believing in the client, helping them through, giving them hope that when we think of success, we don’t really. About it in the food and calories pieces of it, because it’s not really about food. I wish they had changed the diagnosis name. Someone said it should be like a psychiatric metabolic diagnosis. I’m like, yes, that’s what it should be because if you separate it and move the food over, there’s really an underlying function for this, right? Like what is the function of the behavior? So successes are being able to connect in and socialize and building up that self-esteem. A lot of my clients are in college or high school students. That’s a lot of the population right now that I’m seeing, and it is being able to go to college. It’s being able to graduate, it’s being able to oh my gosh, just have the confidence. It just lights my world up when it’s like, you can go have a meal with someone or have more flexibility. There isn’t so, so much rigidity. So I say success is our clients coming into therapy. That’s a success because it’s like climbing a sand hill in this field. And so it’s like success is them coming in and trusting that there’s a safe space for them to be able to talk about it.

Becky Coplen: For sure. You talked a little bit about the age range. Are you seeing all ages, all genders at this point or have you had to narrow that down?

Faith Carlson: No, I think because of just that, truly the need, there’s a national shortage of providers and there’s, like I said, almost a pandemic of this right now. And so I do see all ages. My youngest ones have been in elementary school and you’re going to see more of those traits, like those OCD traits or the restriction type traits and those really younger ones, and then all the way into senior age individuals that 60 plus. And that’s like the severe and enduring diagnosis where it’s okay, again, quality of life. We’re looking at quality of life and everything in between. So it’s all ages, all genders, all nationalities. I really try to hold space, especially because of the need for uninsured, underinsured, and underrepresented populations, especially in our region with a Native American population. There’s such a need. The research is largely been we know this in colleges like they typically do research on college students to get results. So a lot of the research has been on Caucasians going off to college. These are the results of these studies. You’re not recognizing Native American populations’ different cultures in the aspects of it. And they’re really the forgotten clients that were not treated. And it’s something that I think it’s the duty of all of us as clinicians to help open doors and provide equity for access to care. I really believe that.

Becky Coplen: No, I sense that with you so strongly, with you have such a burden for all people struggling in this area, even to look at changing of laws and what’s happening around the nation. So if there was anything else you felt like we didn’t touch on, you wanted to add or and it could be both. But what would you say to people who maybe would go into this field, whether specifically with eating disorders or mental health as a whole, what advice would you give?

Faith Carlson: I think whether it’s specifying into the niche of it, I think always being a student, being humble, we collaborate with other professionals. And sometimes I think that we get licenses and it’s this entitlement. And I think in our field it’s like, no, we got to stay humble and just be sure to collaborate. We work together as a team, be bold and supporting, and be bold in challenging our own rigidity and our own beliefs. And I think of ethics and I think of client choice. They get to choose. At the end of the day, they get to choose and not project our needs and wants and our egos onto what clients are working on. And I think the last thing I would say is whether it’s clinicians, families, or clients, I always say never lose hope because this is a very long process. And it’s if a parent once said, if love could cure this, it would be cured. And so when you think of this just never lose hope. And I think that the big key piece is hope keeping hope.

Becky Coplen: All right. Well, Faith, thank you so much for a lot of insight into a need. That is huge, as you called it, another pandemic. We’ve been through one, but this one is just continually such a big point of suffering in many people all across the nation. So thank you for giving us those statistics for all the work that you’re doing and for the time that you gave us today, and helping us understand this issue and how your practice works. To our listeners and mastering counseling, we’re so thankful that you’re here today. We hope that you will comment and tell us what you’re thinking. Tell us what you’re going into, ask your questions and continue to enjoy the episodes on mastering counseling. Hope everyone has a wonderful day. Thank you. 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.