The Modern Therapist's Survival Guide with Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy - Détails, épisodes et analyse

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

Curt Widhalm, LMFT and Katie Vernoy, LMFT

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Fréquence : 1 épisode/6j. Total Éps: 520

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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Finding Possibility Within Harmful Systems: Hope, Solidarity, and Systemic Thinking in Therapy - An Interview with Travis Heath, PhD

lundi 9 novembre 2026 • Durée 59:41

Finding Possibility Within Harmful Systems: Hope, Solidarity, and Systemic Thinking in Therapy - An Interview with Travis Heath, PhD Most of us were trained to look for the problem inside the client. Curt and Katie welcome Travis Heath, PhD, back for a long-awaited second conversation about widening that lens: seeing clients in the systems they inhabit, recognizing that therapists live inside those same systems, and continuing to show up for clients anyway. Drawing on narrative therapy and Black abolitionist thought, Travis explores how to name harm you can't fix in a single session without leaving clients hopeless. Few of us can opt out of late capitalism, so he looks for the in-between space: small, particular ways clients (and therapists) can relate differently to harmful systems and find possibility where it looked like there was none. He also makes the case for solidarity alongside empathy, uncertainty as a gateway to hope, and slowing down in a profession that keeps asking us to be more productive. This conversation is for therapists thinking about DEI, social justice, and stewardship of the profession, and for anyone trying to practice with integrity inside systems they didn't design. In this episode, we discuss: - Why many presenting problems are shaped by the systems clients live in, not only by what's inside them - How asking where a client's values came from helps clarify what they actually want - Finding micro-alternatives within late capitalism instead of all-or-nothing thinking - Why certainty, whether optimistic or catastrophic, gets in the way of hope - How Black abolitionist thought reframes change as presencing and small experiments - Why solidarity asks for collective action in a way empathy alone does not - Rethinking productive therapy and choosing which battles to fight Timestamps: - 02:05 - Who Travis is and what he's putting into the world - 04:23 - Seeing problems in context, not only inside the client - 09:54 - Questioning inherited stories and values - 14:48 - Living in the in-between within late capitalism - 19:53 - Uncertainty, hope, and Rebecca Solnit - 25:20 - How Travis sustains himself in this work - 30:01 - Black abolitionist thought and solidarity - 38:32 - Individual and collective responsibility for therapists - 46:36 - Productivity, diagnosis, and choosing your battles - 51:32 - Questioning with purpose, not nihilism Guest Bio: Travis Heath, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and Associate Professor at San Diego State University, where he chairs the Department of Counseling & School Psychology. His work explores how culture, power, and dominant stories shape people's lives, including cultural democracy, Black abolitionist scholarship, and the use of rap music in narrative therapy. He is co-author, with David Epston and Tom Carlson, of Reimagining Narrative Therapy Through Practice Stories and Autoethnography (Routledge, 2022), creator of the Psychotherapy.net video series Reimagining Multiculturalism: A Contemporary Narrative Approach, and host of the Therapist Confidential podcast. 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/

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Advocate From Where You Are: How Therapists Can Support Inclusion as DEI Gets Rolled Back

lundi 2 novembre 2026 • Durée 37:28

Advocate From Where You Are: How Therapists Can Support Inclusion as DEI Gets Rolled Back Therapist advocacy as DEI gets rolled back: Curt and Katie on supporting inclusion from where you are. Federal mental health funding is being cut, and universities and agencies are pulling DEI language off their websites. If you have been waiting for your licensing board, your agency, or the government to protect representation and access in this profession, Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT, think you could be waiting a very long time. Curt and Katie open a new sprint built around two principles that have guided the podcast for nine years: representation and inclusion strengthen the field, and therapists are stewards of the profession. They skip the case for why representation matters and take on the harder questions. When does expanding access prop up a broken system? Why do call-outs of other therapists so often come from privilege? How do cultural modes of healing fit alongside evidence-based requirements? And what kind of advocacy actually changes anything? They realize that everyone has their own particular situations, and they're honest that there is no single right answer. Your context, your capacity, and the way your practice is built all shape what's possible, and doing something small still counts. In this episode, we discuss: - Why waiting for institutions to protect inclusion leaves therapists stuck - How access can reach beyond insurance through sliding scale, pro bono spots, and support for local agencies - Why the same decision looks completely different depending on where and how you practice - How privilege shapes both call-out culture and who has time for advocacy - What separates advocacy that reaches policy makers from posting for likes - How cultural context can be weighed alongside consumer protection in ethics work - Why disability, neurodivergence, consumers of services, and prelicensed therapists get left out of DEI conversations - Small, accessible ways to support inclusion in your own practice Timestamps: - 00:16 - Why institutions won't fix the profession for us - 02:21 - The representation and inclusion principle - 03:10 - Therapists as stewards of the profession - 05:25 - Access versus propping up a broken system - 07:57 - Liability, civil disobedience, and protecting yourself - 09:53 - Why there is no one-size-fits-all choice - 13:07 - Privilege, call-outs, and cultural modes of healing - 16:08 - Advocacy that actually moves the needle - 21:16 - Consumer protection versus gatekeeping - 25:26 - Who gets left out of DEI conversations - 28:50 - Small steps any therapist can take 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/

Is Your Client Data Safe with AI? What Therapists Need to Know About HIPAA, BAAs, and Session Transcripts - An Interview with Ali Hartley, JD

lundi 26 octobre 2026 • Durée 01:15:05

Is Your Client Data Safe with AI? What Therapists Need to Know About HIPAA, BAAs, and Session Transcripts - An Interview with Ali Hartley, JD Ali Hartley, JD, SimplePractice's Chief Legal Officer, on HIPAA, AI scribes, BAAs, and data privacy for therapists. Most therapists are feeling uneasy about data privacy in the age of AI, and some are terrified that their session transcripts are being used to build their replacements. In this continuing education podcourse, Curt and Katie take both concerns to Ali Hartley, JD, Chief Legal Officer at SimplePractice. Ali explains how the HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules apply to AI scribes and other AI tools, why a business associate agreement (BAA) is necessary but never sufficient, and how HIPAA's Safe Harbor and Expert Determination methods of de-identification work. She also clears up the difference between training an AI model and refining the prompts that guide a product, including what SimplePractice does with de-identified session transcripts. This episode is part of our partnership with SimplePractice. Whether you use an AI note taker built into your EHR, a browser extension, or a separate tool you copy and paste into, this conversation will help you protect client data and ask better questions about the software in your practice. In this episode, we discuss: - Why HIPAA applies to AI tools the same way it applies to every other technology - What a BAA covers, and what stays your responsibility as the covered entity - The four points where client data is most vulnerable in an AI scribe workflow - How Safe Harbor, Expert Determination, and data decoupling protect session transcripts - Why refining prompts with de-identified data is different from training an AI model - The data privacy risks of browser extensions and copy-and-paste workflows - What to ask before adopting any AI tool that handles client data Timestamps: - 07:08 - HIPAA basics for therapists - 10:34 - How HIPAA applies to AI and where client data is vulnerable - 15:38 - What a BAA does and doesn't guarantee - 24:16 - De-identification: Safe Harbor vs. Expert Determination - 29:43 - Training an AI model vs. refining prompts - 36:55 - How SimplePractice handles session transcripts - 42:38 - Native EHR tools, browser extensions, and copy and paste - 51:41 - A checklist for vetting AI tools - 56:09 - Emerging risks and liability for AI-generated notes Guest Bio: Ali Hartley, JD, is Chief Legal Officer at SimplePractice and a general counsel and healthcare attorney with nearly two decades of experience in corporate law, regulatory compliance, and people leadership. She helps SimplePractice remove administrative burdens for clinicians while enabling responsible innovation and protecting sensitive healthcare data. Earn 1 CE credit for this podcourse at the Modern Therapist Learning Community: https://learn.moderntherapistcommunity.com/ Full show notes and transcript: https://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 Therapist as Expert Witness: Standard of Care, Objectivity, and Staying in Your Role - An Interview with Nicol Stolar-Peterson, PsyD, LCSW, BCD

jeudi 22 octobre 2026 • Durée 44:47

The Therapist as Expert Witness: Standard of Care, Objectivity, and Staying in Your Role - An Interview with Nicol Stolar-Peterson, PsyD, LCSW, BCD Nicol Stolar-Peterson, PsyD, LCSW, BCD on expert witness work for therapists, standard of care, and court roles. Curt and Katie talk with Nicol, a national expert witness in child abuse, child protective services, and clinical social work, about what it takes for therapists to do this kind of work. The conversation grew out of Curt's first experience as a defense expert in a licensing board complaint, when he turned to Nicol to help him prepare. Nicol explains how fact witness and expert roles differ, why treating therapists should be cautious when invited to testify as experts, and why standard of care means what a reasonable therapist would do rather than best practice. She also describes staying objective with attorneys trained to persuade, and what records review, reports, and depositions look like in real cases. A useful listen for therapists curious about expert witness work, clinicians who may be called to testify, and anyone who wants to understand how standard of care gets evaluated in licensing board and civil cases. In this episode, we discuss: - What makes a therapist a strong expert witness, including the ability to explain expertise in plain language - Where therapists find expert work, from child custody evaluations to records review - How fact witness and expert roles differ, and why treating therapists should stay in their lane - Why standard of care means reasonable, basic practice rather than best practice - How experts stay objective when attorneys push for a particular opinion - What records review, reports, and depositions look like in a typical case Timestamps: 05:30 - What makes a good expert witness 09:11 - Where therapists find expert work 13:49 - Fact witness, expert witness, and testifying expert roles 22:06 - Standard of care: bronze versus gold 24:30 - Staying objective with attorneys 33:39 - Scheduling and what a typical case involves 37:23 - Depositions, settlements, and trials Guest Bio: Nicol Stolar-Peterson, PsyD, LCSW, BCD is a national expert witness in child abuse, child protective services, and clinical social work. She co-founded and runs Kids Court & Counseling Center, a nonprofit that helps children who are victims of crimes and abuse prepare for court testimony. She also provides therapy, trains new social workers, and offers mandated reporting trainings. Learn more at www.nicolstolar.com. Full show notes and transcript: https://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 Is It So Hard for Therapists to Delegate? Letting Go of Control Over Scheduling, Billing, and Bookkeeping - An Interview with Bibi Goldstein

lundi 19 octobre 2026 • Durée 41:25

Why Is It So Hard for Therapists to Delegate? Letting Go of Control Over Scheduling, Billing, and Bookkeeping - An Interview with Bibi Goldstein Bibi Goldstein of Buying Time on why therapists struggle to delegate, and how automation and online scheduling help. Curt and Katie talk with Bibi Goldstein, founder of Buying Time, LLC, about why so many therapists keep doing their own scheduling, billing, bookkeeping, and social media long after it stops making sense. Bibi has spent nearly 20 years helping business owners delegate and automate, and in her experience, the resistance usually comes down to control. Bibi shares how to choose practice systems and software you can grow into, why delegating to software counts as delegating, and how online scheduling and automation can bring in new and returning clients while still protecting your calendar. She also walks through her simple happy face/sad face exercise for deciding what to delegate first. This is a useful conversation for private practice therapists, group practice owners, and anyone who knows they should hand off admin work but hasn't yet. In this episode, we discuss: - Why therapists get emotionally attached to scheduling, billing, bookkeeping, and social media - How to choose practice systems your private practice can grow into - Why automation and software count as delegation, even if you can't hire staff - How the happy face/sad face exercise shows you what to delegate first - How online scheduling brings in new and returning therapy clients - How booking limits and buffers keep automation within your boundaries - How delegating frees up time for income like paid speaking Timestamps: - 02:57 - What therapists get wrong when setting up practice systems - 06:20 - Decision paralysis and getting guidance before you choose software - 09:48 - How AI and automation have changed delegation - 13:47 - Technology-shy therapists and the superbill story - 18:27 - The admin tasks therapists are most emotionally attached to - 22:24 - The happy face/sad face exercise: what to delegate first - 25:33 - Delegation that helps therapists make more money - 28:00 - How online scheduling brings in clients - 30:55 - Keeping control of your calendar with limits and buffers Guest Bio: Bibi Goldstein is the founder of Buying Time, LLC, a virtual support company that helps therapists, entrepreneurs, and small businesses streamline operations through systems, automation, and time management strategies. A systems expert and productivity consultant with multiple software certifications, she is co-author of Get Organized Today, Navigating Entrepreneurship, and Business Success with Ease, and serves as Chair of the Board of the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce. Learn more at buyingtimellc.com. Full show notes and transcript: https://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/

Private Practice Has Changed. Now What? How Therapists Can Find Clients and Stay Profitable - An Interview with Dr. Ajita Robinson, LCPC

lundi 12 octobre 2026 • Durée 47:21

Private Practice Has Changed. Now What? How Therapists Can Find Clients and Stay Profitable - An Interview with Dr. Ajita Robinson, LCPC Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT talk with Dr. Ajita Robinson, LCPC, on how private practice has changed and how therapists can find clients and stay profitable. Caseloads are thinning, insurance panels and directories send fewer referrals, and venture-backed platforms can book a new client by tomorrow. Yet demand for mental health care is as high as it has ever been. Curt and Katie welcome back Dr. Ajita Robinson, LCPC, grief and trauma therapist and CEO of Legacy Wellness Group, to talk about what has changed in private practice and what therapists can do now. Dr. Robinson explains why the private practice model most therapists started with no longer works the same way, and why a wait-and-see approach leaves therapists behind. She shares how to find the referral and revenue data already sitting in your intake process, how to build referral partnerships with primary care and other trusted providers, and how therapists can diversify income through government, employer, and EAP contracts. If you have been wondering whether it's just you, this conversation offers a clear picture of the market and practical next steps for staying profitable in private practice. In this episode, we discuss: - Why fast scheduling and intake automation help you compete with therapy platforms - How your intake forms and call logs reveal where your practice is losing clients - How referral partnerships with pediatricians and primary care helped one practice grow from 1 location to 18 - Why diversifying income through state, federal, and employer contracts protects your practice - How therapists can use psychoeducation, consulting, and local media to reach more people - Why therapist training teaches us to serve to depletion, and what that costs the profession Timestamps: 02:40 - How the private practice model has changed 04:40 - How clients seek help and find therapists now 10:08 - Using your intake data to find referral sources 17:47 - Finding the gaps in your client pipeline 22:57 - Diversifying income with contracts and EAP carve-outs 26:44 - Why therapists are taught to serve to depletion 35:20 - Trusting your expertise and speaking up Guest Bio: Dr. Ajita Robinson, LCPC, is a grief and trauma specialist and international bestselling author of The Gift of Grief: A Practical Guide on Navigating Loss, The Gift of Grief: Supporting Grieving Children, and The Purposeful & Profitable Therapist's Guide to Diversifying Income. She founded Friends in Transition Counseling Services in Bethesda, MD, and is CEO of Legacy Wellness Group, where she helps therapists build diversified income and sustainable private practices. Learn more at www.ajitarobinson.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/

Skill Issue or Systemic Reality? Systems, Platforms, and What Therapists Are Still Responsible For

lundi 5 octobre 2026 • Durée 40:28

Skill Issue or Systemic Reality? Systems, Platforms, and What Therapists Are Still Responsible For Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT on how systems shape private practice, therapy platforms, insurance reimbursement, burnout, and what therapists are still responsible for. A payer cuts reimbursement by 12 percent and adds a six page renewal form. A platform runs your credentialing, your marketing, and your client matching, and keeps the client relationship if you leave. Which parts of that belong to the system, and which parts are still yours to carry? Curt and Katie open a new sprint with two of the principles that hold up this show: systems shape practice, and the profession has to evolve with the world around it. Either one on its own turns into a trap. They test the pair against scenarios most therapists will recognize, including midnight crisis texts, a payer cutting rates, and an early career therapist working 32 clinical hours a week on a gig platform to cover rent. The answer keeps coming back both. From there they run a corporate translator on the marketing language aimed at clinicians, follow the fee into the treatment room, and look at the business preparation gap the profession creates and then hands back to each clinician to cover alone. Nobody wins this argument, and that is most of the point. In this episode, we discuss: - Why systemic pressure and personal responsibility are both live at once in private practice - What a therapy platform actually owns when it owns your credentialing, marketing, and referrals - How to read the marketing language behind phrases like working at the top of your license - Why business decisions, from your fee to your paperwork, are clinical decisions - What absorbing the system's failures costs you, and where the limit sits - Why the business preparation gap in this profession is structural Timestamps: - 02:00 - Systems shape practice, the first principle - 03:26 - The profession must evolve with the world - 08:43 - Skill issue or systemic reality, working the scenarios - 13:13 - Thirty two clinical hours a week to cover rent - 16:51 - Systems are real and you are still fully responsible - 19:06 - What you own when the platform owns your referrals - 25:29 - Translating corporate speak for therapists - 29:56 - Business decisions are clinical decisions - 31:50 - The business gap grad school does not fill 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/

Knowing When They're Ready: Navigating the Shift from Stabilization to Deeper Work in Psychotherapy

lundi 28 septembre 2026 • Durée 01:12:09

Knowing When They're Ready: Navigating the Shift from Stabilization to Deeper Work in Psychotherapy Trauma readiness in DBT and EMDR: how to tell when a client is ready to move from stabilization into deeper work. Curt Widhalm, LMFT, and Katie Vernoy, LMFT walk through the judgment call at the center of trauma treatment, which is knowing when a client has the behavioral and autonomic stability to move past stabilization. Drawing on DBT stages of treatment, EMDR phase two and phase three, and recent research on trauma readiness, they cover what readiness looks like in session and in the week between sessions. Deeper work covers a lot of ground, from small titrated experiential moments through to full trauma reprocessing. Move too early and you get dysregulation, post-session distress spikes, and dropout. Stay in stabilization indefinitely and clients stall out, sometimes feeling managed rather than treated. Curt brings the structured version of this assessment from EMDR and comprehensive DBT. Katie brings the less protocol-bound version, where the shift happens session to session and sometimes mid-session. They also get practical about dual awareness, micro-markers of dissociation, window of tolerance tracking, the four-part pacing agreement that prevents most of these mistakes, and the therapist countertransference that pushes clinicians toward premature processing. 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 trauma readiness is a fluctuating state rather than a milestone a client reaches once - How to tell intellectual eagerness apart from behavioral and autonomic capacity - Why stabilization shortens trauma treatment instead of delaying it - What dual awareness requires before EMDR reprocessing or DBT stage two work - How to build a pacing agreement, including a code word and a dissociation preference set at intake - What to do when your own impatience is driving the timeline Timestamps: - 07:02 - What readiness actually means, and why it prevents dropout - 13:38 - Readiness as a state, and the three pillars - 23:29 - What clients report when they are pushed too deeply, too soon - 31:19 - Dual awareness explained - 32:49 - Why stabilization shortens treatment - 38:02 - The false green light, and consistency under stress - 53:26 - Micro-dissociation at target activation - 59:50 - Building the pacing agreement Full show notes and transcript: mtsgpodcast.com CE credit: moderntherapistcommunity.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

lundi 21 septembre 2026 • Durée 49:21

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/

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

jeudi 17 septembre 2026 • Durée 44:14

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/

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