The Modern Therapist's Survival Guide with Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy

Curt Widhalm, LMFT and Katie Vernoy, LMFT
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The Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide: Where Therapists Live, Breathe, and Practice as Human Beings It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. We are human beings who can now present ourselves as whole people, with authenticity, purpose, and connection. Especially now, when clinicians must develop a personal brand to market their private practices, and are connecting over social media, engaging in social activism, pushing back against mental health stigma, and facing a whole new style of entrepreneurship. To support you as a whole person, a business owner, and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

  1. 1d ago

    When Clients Bring AI to Therapy: Working with ChatGPT, Sycophancy, and the New Third Wheel in the Room

    When Clients Bring AI to Therapy: Working with ChatGPT, Sycophancy, and the New Third Wheel in the Room Clients are bringing AI into therapy, from ChatGPT chat logs handed over as homework to AI companions that never disagree, and therapists need a clinical response. Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT dig into what happens when clients bring their own AI into the therapy room. The profession built ethics guidance for when therapists send clients toward AI, but it largely sidestepped the reality already showing up in sessions: clients processing the same issues with ChatGPT between appointments, using chatbots to interpret and respond to relationships, and increasingly offloading their social and dating lives onto AI companions. Drawing on emerging research about chatbot use, loneliness, emotional dependence, and sycophancy, Curt and Katie make the case that concern is more useful than alarm. Clients are already using these tools, so the clinical task is to assess how and why they are using them, provide psychoeducation on sycophancy, confidentiality, and safety, and separate the healthy, adaptive uses from the problematic ones. They also share concrete in-session moves: entering the opposite position to expose how a chatbot validates any side, reframing how clients use AI for medical and diagnostic questions, and recognizing when AI has become a client's primary support system, along with how to begin weaning a client back toward real-world connection. In this episode, we discuss: - The three main ways clients are bringing AI into the therapy room - Why a client's AI use can be a clinical opportunity, not only a risk - How to assess the function and pattern of a client's AI use - What the research suggests about chatbot use, loneliness, and sycophancy - How to teach critical thinking and protect client confidentiality - What to do when a client has become dependent on AI Timestamps: 00:15 - AI as the new "third wheel" in the therapy room 04:15 - Three ways AI is showing up in clients' lives 05:55 - What the research suggests: loneliness, dependence, and sycophancy 10:24 - Why client AI use can be a clinical opportunity 13:24 - Assessing use and treating chatbots as public spaces 18:17 - Explaining AI's mechanics: it is not an objective third party 20:14 - A critical-thinking exercise: enter the opposite position 24:47 - Using AI for medical and diagnostic questions 30:53 - When a client is already dependent on AI Full show notes and resources: mtsgpodcast.com Join the Modern Therapist Community Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/mtsgpodcast Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/therapyreimagined Modern Therapist's Survival Guide Creative Credits Voice Over by DW McCann: https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/ Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano: https://groomsymusic.com/

    When Clients Bring AI to Therapy: Working with ChatGPT, Sycophancy, and the New Third Wheel in the Room

  2. Jul 13

    Why AI Mental Health Chatbots Fail When It Matters Most: The Hidden Vulnerabilities Stress-Testing Reveals – An Interview with Shirali and Arul Nigam of Circuit Breaker Labs

    Why AI Mental Health Chatbots Fail When It Matters Most: The Hidden Vulnerabilities Stress-Testing Reveals - An Interview with Shirali and Arul Nigam of Circuit Breaker Labs Shirali and Arul Nigam of Circuit Breaker Labs on why AI mental health chatbots fail, how stress-testing exposes their hidden vulnerabilities, and what therapists need to know. Curt and Katie talk with Shirali and Arul Nigam, the sibling co-founders of Circuit Breaker Labs, about what therapists tend to get wrong about AI, why the safety infrastructure behind many mental health chatbots is weaker than it looks, and how their team stress-tests these tools to find dangerous failures before real users ever encounter them. Generative AI is probabilistic, so the same prompt can return a safe answer one moment and a harmful one the next. Shirali and Arul explain how guardrails get bypassed by a misspelled word, a teenager's slang, or the hundredth message in a long conversation, why mental health chatbots tend to fail in the moments that matter most, and what stress-testing hundreds of thousands of simulated conversations actually reveals about model safety. The conversation closes on what clinicians can do now, why clinical insight is the missing ingredient in AI safety, and why third-party validation is becoming the standard regulators and developers expect. Used well, AI can be a supplement to care or a gateway to a human therapist, but it is not a replacement, and getting there safely starts with building clinical insight in from the foundation. In this episode, we discuss: - Why people usually turn to AI in place of no care, not in place of a therapist - Why generative AI's unpredictability, not a single bad answer, is the real safety problem - How a misspelling, slang, or a long conversation can slip past chatbot guardrails - Why AI mental health chatbots tend to fail in the highest-risk moments - What stress-testing hundreds of thousands of conversations reveals about model safety - Why clinical insight is the missing ingredient, and what clinicians can do now Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 1:38 - Meet Shirali and Arul Nigam and Circuit Breaker Labs 3:37 - What therapists get wrong about AI 5:28 - Deterministic versus generative AI, and why the risk scales 8:26 - The safety problem in AI mental health: trust, training data, and agreeableness 11:29 - Guardrails, lifeguard models, and the 988 problem 17:30 - Deploying clinical insight at scale and building safety in from the start 21:09 - How stress-testing works: context pollution and adversarial simulation 27:11 - What the stress tests reveal: variance, typos, and bypassed guardrails 30:59 - Regulation, credential hallucination, and third-party validation 36:58 - What clinicians can do, and the missing clinical insight 40:20 - Where to find Circuit Breaker Labs Guest Bios: Shirali and Arul Nigam are siblings and the co-founders of Circuit Breaker Labs, which autonomously pressure-tests the AI systems that interact with people to find hidden mental health vulnerabilities before they reach real users. Shirali brings expertise in neuroscience, translational research, and clinical work, with experience at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus, NIH NINDS, Harvard's Wyss Institute, Johns Hopkins, and Children's National. She holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering from The George Washington University and an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Arul has conducted technical and policy research on ethical AI, with a focus on bias and fairness, at Georgetown University and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, and holds a BSBA in Operations and Analytics from Georgetown University. Learn more at circuitbreakerlabs.ai. Full show notes and transcript: mtsgpodcast.com Join the Modern Therapist Community Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/mtsgpodcast Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/therapyreimagined Modern Therapist's Survival Guide Creative Credits Voice Over by DW McCann: https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/ Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano: https://groomsymusic.com/

    Why AI Mental Health Chatbots Fail When It Matters Most: The Hidden Vulnerabilities Stress-Testing Reveals – An Interview with Shirali and Arul Nigam of Circuit Breaker Labs

  3. Jul 6

    AI Ethics Codes for Therapists: What CAMFT, APA, NASW, and AAMFT Now Require

    AI Ethics Codes for Therapists: What CAMFT, APA, NASW, and AAMFT Now Require How the CAMFT, APA, NASW, and AAMFT ethics codes now regulate AI in therapy: a CE podcourse on competence, informed consent, data privacy, bias, and human accountability. Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT, walk through the recent artificial intelligence updates to the major mental health ethics codes. Centering on the new CAMFT updates and cross-referencing the APA, NASW, ACA, and AAMFT codes, they turn the new language into a practical roadmap for everyday clinical work. The conversation covers what competence with AI actually requires (closer to safely driving a car than building one), the three CAMFT obligations that travel together (disclosure, informed consent, and informed decision making), and a client's right to opt out. They get specific on data privacy, including business associate agreements and why "HIPAA compliant" is a marketing claim rather than a certification, on spotting demographic and medical-model bias in AI output, and on why the human in the loop still owns and is accountable for anything signed under their name. This continuing education podcourse is for therapists, supervisors, and clinical educators who want to use AI tools ethically and stay accountable in an automated world. In this episode, we discuss: - Why the codes aim for broad, durable AI principles instead of tool-specific rules - What competence with AI actually requires of a clinician - The three CAMFT obligations: disclosure, informed consent, and informed decision making - How to vet data privacy, including BAAs and why "HIPAA compliant" is only marketing - How to catch demographic and medical-model bias in AI output - Why the clinician remains responsible for anything produced under their name Timestamps: - 0:55 - Why the ethics codes are updating for AI - 3:30 - Defining artificial intelligence (California AB 2885) - 9:49 - The four Beauchamp and Childress principles - 12:28 - Timeline: CAMFT, APA, NASW, and AAMFT updates - 16:11 - Competence and the "driving a car" metaphor - 21:09 - Disclosure, informed consent, and the right to opt out - 33:18 - Data privacy, BAAs, and "HIPAA compliant" as marketing - 41:20 - Bias, social justice, and reading the output - 44:52 - The human in the loop and accountability - 53:12 - Is AI right for this client? - 1:00:59 - Supervision, education, and the AI vetting guide 1 CE unit is available through the Modern Therapist Learning Community: moderntherapistcommunity.com Full show notes and transcript: mtsgpodcast.com Join the Modern Therapist Community Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/mtsgpodcast Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/therapyreimagined Modern Therapist's Survival Guide Creative Credits Voice Over by DW McCann: https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/ Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano: https://groomsymusic.com/

    AI Ethics Codes for Therapists: What CAMFT, APA, NASW, and AAMFT Now Require

  4. Jun 29

    Supporting Conversion Therapy Survivors After Chiles v. Salazar: SOGIECE, Clinical Care, and Community Response – An Interview with Samuel Nieves

    Supporting Conversion Therapy Survivors After Chiles v. Salazar: SOGIECE, Clinical Care, and Community Response - An Interview with Samuel Nieves Samuel Nieves of the Conversion Therapy Survivor Network on supporting conversion therapy survivors, recognizing SOGIECE, and clinical care after Chiles v. Salazar. Curt and Katie welcome back Samuel Nieves, a conversion therapy survivor and board member of the Conversion Therapy Survivor Network, for a follow-up to their earlier conversation and to the host-led discussion of the Chiles v. Salazar decision. Rather than re-litigating the legal details, they focus on the clinical and human aftermath for survivors. Sam shares what he saw the day the ruling came down, how to recognize a conversion therapy survivor on your caseload (including memory loss and shifting narratives), why validation has to come before strengths work, and how to lead with curiosity instead of challenge. He explains SOGIECE, sexual orientation and gender identity or expression change efforts, and why naming it can be the validation that lets a survivor finally call their experience what it was. The conversation also sits with why reducing these practices to "speech" misses the harm, what licensing boards and clinicians owe survivors, and how survivors and the advocates who serve them stay in the work through firm boundaries and intentional queer joy. This is a grounded, affirming episode for any clinician working with LGBTQ+ clients. In this episode, we discuss: - How to recognize a conversion therapy survivor on your caseload - Why validation has to come before strengths-based work - How to lead with curiosity instead of challenge with traumatized clients - What SOGIECE is and why naming it can be profoundly validating - Why framing conversion therapy as "speech" misses the real harm - What licensing boards and the profession owe survivors - How survivors and advocates sustain themselves through boundaries and queer joy Timestamps: - 02:00 - Who Sam is and the Conversion Therapy Survivor Network - 03:14 - The day the Chiles v. Salazar decision came down - 06:26 - Validation before strengths with survivors - 09:04 - What well-meaning therapists can miss - 11:10 - The public "permission" and its harm to survivors - 18:40 - Why "it's just speech" misses the harm - 22:10 - SOGIECE, allies, and survivor organizations - 27:45 - What the profession owes survivors - 32:21 - Solution-focused therapy, ACT, and queer joy - 35:01 - How Sam sustains himself in the work Guest Bio: Samuel Nieves (he/they) is a board member of the Conversion Therapy Survivor Network, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supporting survivors of conversion therapy and SOGIECE worldwide. Trained as a marriage and family therapist, Sam advocates online as "CantPrayMeAway" and helps facilitate the organization's weekly survivor support group. Full show notes and transcript: mtsgpodcast.com Join the Modern Therapist Community Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/mtsgpodcast Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/therapyreimagined Modern Therapist's Survival Guide Creative Credits Voice Over by DW McCann: https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/ Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano: https://groomsymusic.com/

    Supporting Conversion Therapy Survivors After Chiles v. Salazar: SOGIECE, Clinical Care, and Community Response – An Interview with Samuel Nieves

  5. Jun 22

    Should Conversion Therapy Be Protected Speech? What Chiles v. Salazar Means for Conversion Therapy Bans and the Future of the Profession

    Should Conversion Therapy Be Protected Speech? What Chiles v. Salazar Means for Conversion Therapy Bans and the Future of the Profession In Chiles v. Salazar, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 that a therapist's talk therapy is protected speech, putting state conversion therapy bans at risk. Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT break down what the March 31, 2026 decision actually says, what it does not say, and what it means for therapists who work with LGBTQ+ clients. The Court did not call conversion therapy safe, effective, or ethical, and it did not make the practice mandatory. It treated talk therapy as speech rather than regulable conduct, and sent Colorado's ban back to the lower courts for stricter First Amendment review. Curt and Katie walk through the strict scrutiny test at the center of the case, the Kagan and Sotomayor concurrence, and Justice Jackson's dissent, then sit with the harder question: what happens to the profession when the state can no longer set a guardrail on harmful practice before harm has occurred. Released during Pride Month, this is a candid, values-forward conversation about protecting LGBTQ+ clients and practicing affirming, anti-conversion-therapy care out loud. In this episode, we discuss: - What the Chiles v. Salazar ruling does, and does not, change about conversion therapy bans - Why the Court treated talk therapy as protected speech instead of medical treatment - How the strict scrutiny test decided the case - Where the concurrence and the dissent point the profession next - Concrete ways to signal affirming, anti-conversion-therapy care in your practice Full show notes and resources: mtsgpodcast.com Join the Modern Therapist Community Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/mtsgpodcast Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/therapyreimagined Modern Therapist's Survival Guide Creative Credits Voice Over by DW McCann: https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/ Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano: https://groomsymusic.com/

    Should Conversion Therapy Be Protected Speech? What Chiles v. Salazar Means for Conversion Therapy Bans and the Future of the Profession

  6. Jun 15

    Good Enough, Safe Enough: Affirming LGBTQ+ Clients When You're Not a Specialist

    Good Enough, Safe Enough: Affirming LGBTQ+ Clients When You're Not a Specialist Affirming LGBTQ+ clients when you are not a specialist: Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT on being a good enough, safe enough therapist when you cannot refer out. Curt and Katie take on a question therapists often avoid: what do you do when an LGBTQ+ client needs care, you are not a specialist, and referring out is not possible, not safe, or not honest? In this Pride Month episode, they make the case that you can be a good enough, safe enough therapist for LGBTQ+ clients even when affirming care is not your declared specialty. Mental health deserts, narrow insurance panels, long specialist wait lists, and unsafe home environments mean referral is not always available, and sometimes referring out is closer to abandonment than care. Curt and Katie argue that scope of competence is too often used as polite cover for therapist discomfort, and that most clinical work with LGBTQ+ clients is the same work you already do well. Affirming care is the container, not a separate specialty. They also get practical about being a safe enough stopgap therapist: building a just in time consultation kit, doing the cultural humility work, and reckoning with the invisible labor and consultation tax of allyship, including why you should never bill a client to research their own identity. And they name the specific moments when referring an LGBTQ+ client out is still the right and ethical call. This is a useful conversation for generalist therapists, rural and solo clinicians, insurance-based practices, and anyone doing the ongoing work of affirming, culturally humble care. In this episode, we discuss: - Why "refer out" can be avoidance dressed as ethics, and when it is genuinely the right call - How to tell a true scope of competence limit from your own discomfort - What it means to be a good enough, safe enough therapist for LGBTQ+ clients - How to build a just in time kit so an LGBTQ+ client never lands on you cold - Why the invisible labor and consultation tax of allyship is yours to carry, not your client's to fund - The specific signs that mean you should refer out anyway Timestamps: 00:15 - Why a Pride Month episode on being good enough, not a specialist 02:56 - "Just refer out": sound advice or avoidance? 05:05 - Scope of competence versus therapist discomfort 13:08 - The good enough therapist, and when referral becomes abandonment 16:55 - Meeting clients where they are until specialist care opens up 19:03 - Building a just in time kit for your practice 24:44 - The invisible labor and consultation tax of allyship 32:10 - When you should refer out anyway Full show notes and transcript: mtsgpodcast.com Join the Modern Therapist Community Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/mtsgpodcast Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/therapyreimagined Modern Therapist's Survival Guide Creative Credits Voice Over by DW McCann: https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/ Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano: https://groomsymusic.com/

    Good Enough, Safe Enough: Affirming LGBTQ+ Clients When You're Not a Specialist

  7. Jun 8

    Allyship Is Awkward: How Therapists Can Keep Showing Up Anyway

    Allyship Is Awkward: How Therapists Can Keep Showing Up Anyway What if the awkwardness of ally work is not a sign you are doing it wrong, but the actual work? Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT explore what it looks like to do ally work as a therapist when you hold majority identities the people around you do not share. They move across three zones where this shows up: with clients in the therapy room, with colleagues and consultants in professional spaces, and in broader community and advocacy work. Drawing on their own missteps and on the work of creators like Ashani Mfuko of Anti-Racism School Is In Session and Dr. Raquel Martin of Mind Ya Mental, Curt and Katie make a direct case to white, cis, straight, and other majority-identity therapists: cultural humility is not a credential, fragility shifts the labor onto the people around you, and the strong feelings that come with ally work belong with other allies, not with clients or colleagues of color. This is an episode about staying in the room, decentering yourself, and learning to fail better. In this episode, we discuss: Why ally work is inherently awkward, and why that is not a problem to be solved How fragility, over-apologizing, and gold-star seeking shift the emotional labor onto clients and colleagues of color What repair actually looks like when a cross-cultural rupture happens in session Why being called out by a client can be a sign the relationship is alive enough to repair How to process defensiveness and hurt with other allies instead of with clients or colleagues of color Why cultural humility is not a free pass, and what therapists owe their own continuing education How consultation with diverse colleagues protects clients from being conscripted as your teacher Ally work is ongoing. The goal is not to stop making mistakes. The goal is to keep failing better. Full show notes and resources: mtsgpodcast.com Join the Modern Therapist Community: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/mtsgpodcast Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/therapyreimagined Modern Therapist's Survival Guide Creative Credits: Voice Over by DW McCann: https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/ Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano: https://groomsymusic.com/

    Allyship Is Awkward: How Therapists Can Keep Showing Up Anyway

  8. Jun 1

    The Seven Stages of Queer Love: Therapy with Queer Couples, Queer Sex, and the Developmental Model - An Interview with Tom Bruett, LMFT

    The Seven Stages of Queer Love: Therapy with Queer Couples, Queer Sex, and the Developmental Model - An Interview with Tom Bruett, LMFT Tom Bruett, LMFT on the seven stages of queer relationship development, the Developmental Model, queer couples therapy, and queer sex. Curt and Katie talk with Tom Bruett, LMFT, founder of the Queer Relationship Institute, about what therapists most often get wrong when working with queer couples, why queer sex is still treated as an asterisk in most sex therapy training, and how the Developmental Model of Relationship Therapy can be expanded to better reflect queer experience. Trained under Drs. Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson, Tom adds two stages to the five-stage Developmental Model: Second Queer Adolescence and Agreement. The expanded seven-stage model gives therapists a clearer way to track differentiation, autonomy, and connection in queer relationships that do not fit the standard "relationship escalator." Tom is the author of The Go-To Relationship Guide for Gay Men: From Honeymoon to Lasting Commitment (Jessica Kingsley Publishers). This is a useful conversation for therapists working with queer couples, sex therapists, couples therapists trained in heteronormative models, and queer therapists looking for better tools and community for this work. In this episode, we discuss: - What therapists most often get wrong with queer couples and queer sex - The Seven Stages of Queer Relationship Development, including Tom's two additions - Why a "second queer adolescence" matters clinically - Mutual interdependence versus codependence in gay male relationships - Minority stress, the relationship escalator, and queer identity formation - How the current political moment is showing up in queer couples therapy - Trauma activation, nervous-system regulation, and slowing the work down - Support for queer therapists working through a difficult cultural moment Timestamps: 02:28 - What therapists get wrong with queer couples and queer sex 04:43 - Sex therapy training and the asterisk problem 08:20 - The Seven Stages of Queer Relationship Development 13:00 - Mutual interdependence versus codependence 17:39 - The relationship escalator and minority stress 21:14 - The current political moment in queer couples therapy 25:18 - Trauma, regulation, and slowing down the work 27:08 - Writing The Go-To Relationship Guide for Gay Men 33:21 - Doing the work on the back end, not asking clients to educate you 34:13 - Where to find Tom and the Queer Relationship Institute Guest Bio: Tom Bruett, LMFT is a therapist, trainer, consultant, and author who works extensively with the queer community. He is the founder of the Queer Relationship Institute, which provides therapy for queer folx and training for therapists who work with queer relationships. Tom has trained under Drs. Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson in the Developmental Model of Relationship Therapy, which he now trains other therapists in. His book The Go-To Relationship Guide for Gay Men: From Honeymoon to Lasting Commitment is published by JKP. Tom has spoken at national conferences including AASECT. Learn more at www.QueerRelationshipInstitute.com. Full show notes and transcript: mtsgpodcast.com Join the Modern Therapist Community Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/mtsgpodcast Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/therapyreimagined Modern Therapist's Survival Guide Creative Credits Voice Over by DW McCann: https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/ Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano: https://groomsymusic.com/

    The Seven Stages of Queer Love: Therapy with Queer Couples, Queer Sex, and the Developmental Model - An Interview with Tom Bruett, LMFT
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The Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide: Where Therapists Live, Breathe, and Practice as Human Beings It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. We are human beings who can now present ourselves as whole people, with authenticity, purpose, and connection. Especially now, when clinicians must develop a personal brand to market their private practices, and are connecting over social media, engaging in social activism, pushing back against mental health stigma, and facing a whole new style of entrepreneurship. To support you as a whole person, a business owner, and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

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