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. 4d ago

    Your Client Is Not a Category: Binary Thinking, Gender Trauma, and Presence as a Clinical Skill - An Interview with Alex Iantaffi

    Your Client Is Not a Category: Binary Thinking, Gender Trauma, and Presence as a Clinical Skill - An Interview with Alex Iantaffi Alex Iantaffi, Ph.D., LMFT, author of Gender Trauma, on binary thinking, gender trauma, and presence as a clinical skill. Curt and Katie talk with Alex Iantaffi about why binary thinking is a clinical problem before it is a political one. Therapists are trained to sort: into diagnoses, into special populations, into victim and perpetrator. Alex argues that the sorting habit costs us the person sitting in front of us, and that gender is where it shows up most visibly. Alex traces the rigid gender binary to colonial and Christian supremacist thinking rather than to biology, then shows how it surfaces in everyday couples and family work: in parenting expectations, in who is allowed to earn more, in who gets to have an appetite. Everyone is shaped by gender trauma, including cisgender clients whose gendered pain has never once been asked about, and Alex states plainly that Black and Brown trans feminine people and Indigenous people bear the heaviest cost of it. The conversation also covers two systemic models Alex uses to read what is happening in the room, why they choose the language of gender liberation, and what it means to be an accomplice rather than an ally. Alex's practical starting point is smaller than most listeners will expect: presence. This is a useful conversation for all therapists, especially family and couples therapists, clinical supervisors, and any therapist working with gender, sexuality, and relationship diversity. In this episode, we discuss: - Why "special population" framing quietly installs cisgender, heterosexual, and monogamous as the default - How colonial constructions of gender show up in everyday couples and family work - What therapists miss when they cast clients as victim or perpetrator - Why the manosphere reads as a symptom of collective gender trauma - How to track relational patterns instead of sorting clients into categories - What gender liberation asks of therapists that gender abolition does not - Why presence may be the most underrated clinical skill in the room Timestamps: - 03:38 - The blind spot in how therapists are trained on gender and sexuality - 11:44 - The colonial roots of the rigid gender binary - 15:54 - The gendered pain cisgender clients carry unexamined - 20:21 - The manosphere as collective gender trauma - 24:57 - Social GRRAACCEESS and positionality in the room - 29:33 - Non-binary thinking as an ongoing practice - 36:30 - Gender liberation, and being an accomplice rather than an ally - 40:45 - Presence as an underrated clinical skill Guest Bio: Alex Iantaffi, Ph.D., MS, SEP, CST, CST-S, LMFT (they/them) is a systemic psychotherapist, WPATH certified gender specialist, AASECT certified sex therapist and supervisor, Somatic Experiencing(R) practitioner, and AAMFT Approved Supervisor and Supervisor Mentor. They are the author of the award-winning Gender Trauma, co-author of How to Understand Your Gender, Life Isn't Binary, and Hell Yeah Self-Care, and editor of the Trans and Disabled anthology. Alex hosts the podcast Gender Stories. Learn more at alexiantaffi.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/

    Your Client Is Not a Category: Binary Thinking, Gender Trauma, and Presence as a Clinical Skill - An Interview with Alex Iantaffi

  2. Sep 17

    Just a Hypothesis: Case Formulation and Treatment Planning for Real-World Therapy - An Interview with Nikki Rubin, PsyD

    Just a Hypothesis: Case Formulation and Treatment Planning for Real-World Therapy - An Interview with Nikki Rubin, PsyD Nikki Rubin, PsyD on behavioral case formulation, treatment planning, and clinical decision-making for therapists. Curt and Katie talk with Nikki Rubin, PsyD, licensed clinical psychologist and co-founder and COO of MindScience Collective, about what case formulation looks like when it is built for real-world therapy instead of for a graduate school assignment. Most of us learned case conceptualization as an exhaustive academic exercise and then quietly stopped doing it. Nikki describes behavioral case formulation as one large working hypothesis: a holistic read on seven areas of a client's functioning that tells you what you are targeting, why, and what to do when treatment stalls. Formulation and treatment planning are inseparable, and neither one requires you to be a CBT therapist. Nikki walks through the seven components (drawn from the work of Jacqueline Persons, PhD), the traps clinicians fall into, how to operationalize target behaviors, why structure creates flexibility rather than rigidity, and what a scaled-down formulation looks like under session limits or in crisis work. A useful conversation for therapists across orientations, for supervisors and educators, and for anyone who has felt unsure where a treatment is going. In this episode, we discuss: - The three traps therapists fall into with case formulation - The seven areas of a behavioral case formulation, and why they work across orientations - Why a formulation is a set of hypotheses to test, not conclusions to defend - How to operationalize target behaviors so you can track them in session - Why covert behaviors (worry, rumination, suppression) belong in your formulation - How to scale a formulation down when you are short on time or sessions Timestamps: - 04:16 - The traps therapists fall into with case formulation - 08:56 - The seven areas of a behavioral case formulation - 15:05 - What case formulation looks like in real time - 17:59 - From formulation to treatment planning and target behaviors - 21:04 - Does structure make case formulation rigid? - 29:35 - Case formulation under time pressure and session limits - 36:17 - Where to start if you have not done this since graduate school Guest Bio: Nikki Rubin, Psy.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and other 3rd wave cognitive behavioral therapies. She is an Associate Clinical Professor at UCLA, where she trains doctoral students in ACT, and co-founder and COO of MindScience Collective, a continuing education company for clinicians. Learn more at mindsciencecollective.com and drnikkirubin.com. Special offer for Modern Therapist listeners: use code MTSG10 for 10% off at mindsciencecollective.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/

    Just a Hypothesis: Case Formulation and Treatment Planning for Real-World Therapy - An Interview with Nikki Rubin, PsyD

  3. Sep 14

    What This Work Asks of Therapists: Integration, Not Knowing, and the Capacity to Stay - An Interview with Juliane Taylor Shore, LMFT, LPC, SEP

    What This Work Asks of Therapists: Integration, Not Knowing, and the Capacity to Stay - An Interview with Juliane Taylor Shore, LMFT, LPC, SEP Juliane Taylor Shore, LMFT, LPC, SEP, on therapist integration, not knowing, and the capacity to stay in the room. Curt and Katie talk with Juliane Taylor Shore, LMFT, LPC, SEP, about what determines how much a therapist can do in session. Her answer is not which model you reach for, but how integrated you are while you reach for it. Jules wrote Setting Boundaries That Stick and created the STAIR Method. Jules separates eclectic practice, pulling from whichever training fits the moment, from integrative practice, where one theory of mind and theory of change organizes which tool gets used when. Hers is neurobiological: the brain as an open, dynamic, complex system, most stable and most flexible when its parts stay differentiated and cross-share information. She also names what she thinks training got wrong. Many therapists learned to read client comfort as the measure of their therapeutic presence, a poor gauge when most clients arrive in a threat state. Her alternative is the therapist's own integration, because that is what creates capacity for connection, bonding, and creativity when a session gets hard. In this episode, we discuss: - What separates integrative from eclectic practice - Why client comfort is an unreliable measure of therapeutic presence - How adding compassion to empathy keeps a clinician from fatiguing - What humility and self-kindness predict about client outcomes - How power with differs from power over and power under - Why presence and skill have to be trained in the same state - What grief this job asks therapists to hold Timestamps: - 02:32 - Integrative therapy versus eclectic practice - 05:07 - Theory of mind, theory of change, and integration - 09:10 - What therapists get wrong about presence - 16:27 - Why empathy fatigues and compassion does not - 19:36 - Color shifting and finding felt compassion - 28:11 - PONS: power, of-courseness, not knowing, and self - 35:23 - The salience network, presence, and skill - 38:41 - The grief this work asks you to hold Guest Bio: Juliane Taylor Shore, LMFT, LPC, SEP, is a therapist, author, and teacher who translates neurobiology into practices that support brain change. She wrote Setting Boundaries That Stick, created the STAIR Method, and is an associate Instructor with the Coherence Institute and core faculty with Therapy Wisdom. Learn more at julianetaylorshore.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/

    What This Work Asks of Therapists: Integration, Not Knowing, and the Capacity to Stay - An Interview with Juliane Taylor Shore, LMFT, LPC, SEP

  4. Sep 7

    The Clinical Depth Principle: Why Therapy Cannot Be Reduced to Tools, Hacks, and Sound Bites

    The Clinical Depth Principle: Why Therapy Cannot Be Reduced to Tools, Hacks, and Sound Bites Curt and Katie on the clinical depth principle: case conceptualization, pacing, and the limits of coping skills. Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT take on this month's modern therapist principle, clinical depth over simplification, and the two extremes the profession keeps swinging between. On one side is a therapy culture shaped by medicalization, medical necessity documentation, productivity pressure, and pop psychology trends that flatten complicated people into one size fits all narratives. On the other is the overcorrection, where clinical ambition outpaces the client and depth work turns into chasing catharsis before the relationship can hold it. Curt and Katie talk about why reaching for a worksheet is usually a reaction to real systemic pressure rather than a lack of care, how tools can quietly become the therapist's own defense mechanism, and why premature depth without pacing or consent can push a client outside their window of tolerance. They also describe what clinical depth looks like in their own sessions, from process versus content and case conceptualization to helping clients track their capacity, not just their story. A useful conversation for therapists, supervisors, and clinicians in community mental health or private practice who want deeper clinical reasoning without flooding their clients. In this episode, we discuss: - Why the pull toward tools, hacks, and protocols is a response to systemic pressure - How medicalization and medical necessity documentation shape what happens in session - Why social media has become the cheapest available substitute for clinical consultation - The difference between content and process in ongoing clinical work - Why premature depth, without pacing or consent, is not clinical depth - How to track a client's capacity rather than only their story - What it takes to build your own capacity for deep clinical work Timestamps: 01:53 - The principle: clinical depth over simplification 04:19 - Medicalization and the trade therapists made for legitimacy 09:47 - Content versus process in ongoing clinical work 11:46 - Tools as the therapist's defense mechanism 14:51 - Social media as the cheapest available consultation 19:03 - Premature depth, consent, and common factors 22:47 - What the research says about symptom control versus depth 24:44 - Everything is process, everything is pattern 27:12 - Tracking capacity, not just story 30:23 - Building the capacity to do deep work 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 Clinical Depth Principle: Why Therapy Cannot Be Reduced to Tools, Hacks, and Sound Bites

  5. Aug 31

    Burnout Before Licensure: Why Prelicensed Therapist Exhaustion Is a Supervision Problem, Not a Time Management Problem

    Burnout Before Licensure: Why Prelicensed Therapist Exhaustion Is a Supervision Problem, Not a Time Management Problem A continuing education episode on prelicensed therapist burnout, clinical supervision, and why early career exhaustion is a systemic problem rather than a time management one. Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT examine why prelicensed clinicians are entering the mental health workforce already depleted. Client acuity climbed during the pandemic and has not come back down, the least experienced clinicians are frequently assigned the most complex cases, and roughly a third of the work week goes to compliance, tracking, and billing. Add student loan debt, low paid and unpaid associate and practicum roles, and severe evaluation anxiety, and burnout arrives long before licensure. This is not a self-care episode, and Curt and Katie say so at the top: no toxic positivity, no bubble bath prescriptions. They treat prelicensee burnout as a systemic and relational problem, then look at clinical supervision as the place it can realistically be buffered. That includes the supervisor seat, where new supervisors often receive no training in how to supervise, absorb vicarious trauma from every caseload they oversee, and watch as much as 90 percent of the supervision hour get swallowed by administrative work. The back half of the episode is practical. Supervisees get transition rituals, boundary architecture, and a realistic look at managing up. Supervisors get better check-in questions, guidance on modeling vulnerability, and structural adjustments they can make in the next supervision hour. This is a continuing education podcourse. One unit of CE is available through the Modern Therapist Learning Community at moderntherapistcommunity.com. In this episode, we discuss: * Why prelicensed clinicians burn out at higher rates than their licensed colleagues * How burnout presents differently before licensure, as exhaustion, brain fog, and vicarious trauma rather than cynicism * Why treating early career exhaustion as a rite of passage is a supervisory failure * What supervisors are carrying that supervisees rarely see * Concrete strategies supervisees can use without waiting for a supervisor to change * How supervisors can build restorative space into the structure of supervision * Why note lag is a signal of clinical capacity rather than poor organization Timestamps: 00:54 - Why prelicensees arrive already exhausted 02:41 - CE objectives and the systemic frame 09:40 - The data on prelicensed burnout rates 14:26 - The competency trap 17:36 - How burnout looks different before licensure 22:32 - The supervision paradox and the 90 percent problem 29:06 - Strategies for supervisees 37:37 - Strategies for supervisors 50:31 - Case vignette: note lag as a capacity signal 1:04:58 - Key takeaways and call to action Full show notes, references, and CE information: 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/

    Burnout Before Licensure: Why Prelicensed Therapist Exhaustion Is a Supervision Problem, Not a Time Management Problem

  6. Aug 27

    You Can't Pizza Party Your Way Out of Burnout: Moral Injury, Compassion Fatigue, and Treating Healthcare Workers - An Interview with Kimberly Johnson, PhD, LMHCD, and Lucy Li, MD

    You Can't Pizza Party Your Way Out of Burnout: Moral Injury, Compassion Fatigue, and Treating Healthcare Workers - An Interview with Kimberly Johnson, PhD, LMHCD, and Lucy Li, MD Kimberly Johnson, PhD, and Lucy Li, MD, of the Emotional PPE Project on healthcare worker mental health and moral injury. Curt and Katie talk with Kimberly Johnson, PhD, LMHCD, a counselor educator at Touro University with more than thirty years of clinical experience in trauma, crisis, and disaster mental health, and Lucy Li, MD, a pediatric anesthesiologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Both serve on the board of the Emotional PPE Project, a volunteer-run nonprofit reducing the barriers that keep healthcare workers from accessing mental health care. Healthcare workers rarely arrive in therapy looking the way the distress would suggest. They mask, they overcompensate, and they spend session time explaining the job before they get to what the job has done to them. Kimberly describes the trifecta therapists often flatten into ordinary workplace burnout: burnout, compassion fatigue and complex trauma, and moral injury braided together, frequently presenting subclinically. Lucy describes the same terrain from inside medicine, including what shifted for her after her friend and co-resident died by suicide during residency. They also walk through the Emotional PPE Project's directory of volunteer therapists and its ePPE 101 training for mental health professionals who want to work with healthcare workers well. In this episode, we discuss: - Why healthcare workers are a heterogeneous population, not a single clinical profile - How burnout, complex trauma, and moral injury show up together and subclinically - The intake questions that surface occupational risk factors early - Why moral injury sits where occupational, vocational, and personal identity stop aligning - What stigma costs healthcare workers, their patients, and the workforce - How the Emotional PPE Project connects healthcare workers to free, confidential care - Why the same barriers show up for therapists as healthcare providers Timestamps: - 02:38 - What therapists get wrong with healthcare workers - 07:11 - Professional humility and the questions worth asking early - 09:24 - Burnout, trauma, and moral injury as a trifecta - 15:30 - Where moral injury actually lives - 17:43 - Stigma and the fear of seeking care - 22:00 - The second victim effect and being sent home - 25:10 - Beyond pizza parties: what structural support looks like - 33:27 - Inside the Emotional PPE Project and ePPE 101 Guest Bios: Kimberly Johnson, PhD, LMHCD is Director of Special Projects and Assistant Professor in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Touro University, a licensed therapist in New York, a certified Compassion Fatigue Therapist and Educator and Field Traumatologist, and a Diplomate with the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress. Lucy Li, MD is an attending anesthesiologist in Pediatric Anesthesiology at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a board member of the Emotional PPE Project. She completed her anesthesiology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was chief resident, and focuses on physician mental health and wellness. Learn more at emotionalppe.org 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/

    You Can't Pizza Party Your Way Out of Burnout: Moral Injury, Compassion Fatigue, and Treating Healthcare Workers - An Interview with Kimberly Johnson, PhD, LMHCD, and Lucy Li, MD

  7. Aug 24

    Rest By Force or By Choice: Burnout, Self-Care, and Sustainable Practice for Therapists - An Interview with Cecily Moore, PhD

    Rest, By Force or By Choice: Burnout, Self-Care, and Sustainable Practice for Therapists - An Interview with Cecily Moore, PhD Dr. Cecily Moore on burnout, rest as a clinical intervention, and unlearning the Strong Black Woman Narrative. Curt and Katie talk with Dr. Cecily Moore, a licensed therapist, counselor educator, and clinical supervisor, about why the expectation of endless strength and infinite patience is an unsustainable ask for therapists and other helping professionals. As clinicians carry collective grief and moral exhaustion alongside their clients, Dr. Moore reframes what burnout is actually asking of us. At the center of the conversation is a simple, uncomfortable idea: your body is designed to protect you, so you will stop either by force or by choice. Dr. Moore makes the case for rest as a clinical intervention rather than a reward, unpacks how self-care has been co-opted into something you buy instead of something that restores you, and explains why advocacy that runs on depletion is a ticking time bomb. Real self-care, she argues, is honest about limits, boundaries, and capacity. From there the discussion turns practical. Dr. Moore shares how deeper values work (asking where a value came from and how it was modeled) opens the door to change, how her "BS Job" checklist gives clinicians a concrete mirror for what is draining them, and why systems will not shift until the people inside them do. She also connects this to her research on unlearning the Strong Black Woman Narrative and the survival-based beliefs about strength, productivity, and worth that keep so many helpers over-functioning. This is a grounded, hopeful conversation for any therapist trying to build a sustainable career without abandoning the work they care about. In this episode, we discuss: - Why endless strength and infinite patience are an unsustainable ask for helping professionals - How to tell rest as a clinical intervention apart from self-care that has been co-opted - Why your body will make you stop, by force or by choice - How to size your advocacy to your actual capacity so it does not deplete you - What deeper values work looks like, and why it drives real change - Why unlearning survival-based beliefs about strength and worth makes practice more sustainable Timestamps: - 01:20 - Who Dr. Moore is and what she puts into the world - 02:49 - What therapists get wrong about endless strength and infinite patience - 04:17 - Collective trauma and watching the world change in real time - 06:37 - Moral injury, privilege, and truth-telling across lived experience - 10:29 - How self-care got co-opted, and why advocacy runs on your well-being - 13:07 - Why rest feels so scary - 15:00 - Reframing self-care as self-maintenance - 18:58 - Over-functioning students and learning to be human - 22:49 - Insight versus implementation, and the systemic barriers - 24:15 - Why systems can't shift until the people do - 28:13 - Sustainable choices, by force or by choice - 29:16 - Values work and the "BS Job" checklist - 31:24 - The Strong Black Woman Narrative and questioning conditioning - 35:28 - Where to find Dr. Moore Guest Bio: Dr. Cecily Moore is a licensed therapist, counselor educator, researcher, and clinical supervisor with a PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision. She is the founder of Dr. Cecily Moore & Associates and the creator of the Reappropriate, Redefine, Recover framework, which helps Black women unlearn the Strong Black Woman Narrative and the survival-based beliefs around strength, productivity, and worth that fuel burnout. Her work blends trauma-informed care, nervous system regulation, and culturally responsive practice, and reframes rest as a clinical intervention, not a reward. Learn more at drcecilymoore.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/

    Rest By Force or By Choice: Burnout, Self-Care, and Sustainable Practice for Therapists - An Interview with Cecily Moore, PhD

  8. Aug 17

    Suffering Is Collective, and So Is Healing: Belonging, Ritual, and Meaning in Uncertain Times - An Interview with Suzan Song, MD

    Suffering Is Collective, and So Is Healing: Belonging, Ritual, and Meaning in Uncertain Times - An Interview with Suzan Song, MD Suzan Song, MD, psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, on why suffering is collective and healing comes through belonging, ritual, and meaning. Curt and Katie talk with Suzan Song, MD about why the exhaustion so many therapists and clients are carrying right now is not only personal. Drawing on more than two decades of global mental health work with survivors of war, trafficking, and mass violence, Suzan makes the case that distress is often collective, shaped by culture and unstable systems, and that healing happens through belonging, narrative, ritual, meaning, and agency, not symptom elimination alone. She names what American mental health training often misses when it treats suffering as something bounded inside a single person, and offers concrete, low-cost rituals therapists can use to stay grounded. The conversation moves from collective grief and moral exhaustion to the difference between functioning and healing, and to grounding in relationship: who you matter to, and who matters to you. This is a grounding conversation for therapists feeling stretched by the current moment, and for anyone drawn to a global mental health lens on collective trauma, ritual, and sustainable healing. In this episode, we discuss: - Why the distress therapists and clients carry right now is collective, not only individual - What American mental health training misses when it locates suffering inside a bounded self - How belonging, narrative, ritual, and meaning function as healing - Why functioning is not the same as healing - Grounding in relationship as an alternative to purely individual nervous-system regulation - How small acts of agency protect against demoralization - Low-cost rituals therapists can use to keep moral exhaustion from following them home Timestamps: 01:44 - Who Suzan Song is and what she puts into the world 02:58 - How a medical anthropology lens changes clinical work 05:34 - When the self is collective, not bounded 09:18 - Collective suffering and the loss of agency 12:18 - Moral injury and disengagement in therapists 17:23 - Finding your own rituals as a therapist 24:07 - Grounding in relationship 28:13 - Why functioning is not healing Guest Bio: Suzan Song, MD, MPH, PhD is a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, and a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. She has spent more than two decades advising on mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in humanitarian and conflict-affected settings, and is the author of Why We Suffer and How We Heal (Harmony / Penguin Random House, 2026). Learn more at suzansong.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/

    Suffering Is Collective, and So Is Healing: Belonging, Ritual, and Meaning in Uncertain Times - An Interview with Suzan Song, MD
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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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