Transcript for Edge of the couch
Episode Title: When you have lived experience
Alison:
This Podcast is not training or supervision. This is an invitation to delve into these really big topics. When we are talking about clients, please know it is not you. It is a weaving together of stories that come up over and over again.
Jordan:
With Edge of the couch, we are here to create a space to delve into the topics that were either shied away from or dismissed because they were too big, too nuanced, too risky, or too uncomfortable to discuss in school or even supervision. We are two passionate therapists sharing our personal opinions about the therapeutic process.
Jordan:
Hi everybody. I'm Jordan Pickell,
Alison:
and I'm Alison McCleary.
Jordan:
This is Edge of the couch, and today we have an interview with a therapist in training, Mimi Cole.
Alison:
I love how she talks about becoming a therapist because we've had personal experiences with mental health; the idea of the recovered clinician is a brand new phrase for me.
Jordan:
I hope that one of the things you take away from the interview is that as student therapists or new therapists, even though you're learning so much, you also have insight and wisdom to offer the world. Even life experiences prepare you to be a therapist. It is very vulnerable to show up in that way. She has a podcast and a big following on Instagram. It's the.lovelybecoming if you want to follow her right now.
Alison:
It's so good, and before we show it to you, we did want to let you know, in the coming weeks, we are going to be throwing out a poll for you and let you decide what type of episode you want to hear as the last episode of the season. So here are the options. Option one - when the client owes you money ; option two - when you are attracted to the client, and option three - when therapists are harmful. We're going to be putting out an Instagram poll at some point, please make sure that you let us know which one you would be most interested in hearing. You can also send us an email and let us know which one you like, or you can send us a DM on Instagram.
Jordan:
Yes. Our email address is connect@edgeofthecouch.com, and here's the interview.
Jordan:
Today we have an interview with a powerhouse. She is a prolific writer on Instagram, under the handle, the.lovelybecoming, where she teaches about OCD, eating disorders, boundaries, and relationships. She has a podcast by the same name, The Lovely Becoming, where she interviews therapists, dieticians, and body liberation advocates. I highly recommend it, and she's a therapy student. This is Mimi Cole. Hi Mimi.
Mimi:
Hi. I'm so glad to be on here.
Jordan:
So you're in graduate school right now. Tell us a bit about where you are in your program.
Mimi:
Yes. I am in my first year, although it feels like it's been longer than that, and right now, we're doing skills lab, which is the step before we start seeing real clients; we practice on each other, which is fun. We're learning about theories of counseling and how to conduct in-practice in session.
Jordan:
How has that been for you?
Mimi:
It has been hard to be honest, because we record them and then watch them back every other week. Seeing yourself on camera and watching your mistakes can be a little bit difficult. We practice the specific skills for the week, so we're not practicing overall general counseling skills yet. We're doing more specific ones. For example, paraphrasing, reflecting is important right now. Sometimes I'm just not sure what to say. This practice is new to me, and I think I have to remember that.
Jordan:
I remember what that was like, where they seem like regular human relationships or communication skills, but then having somebody evaluate you or think is this accurate? Am I capturing it knowing that you're being recorded? I found it really awkward and hard in the beginning.
Mimi:
Awkward is a really good word to describe it because you were seeing yourself too online with teletherapy. In a session in real life, you're not going to be able to see your face, but you're always watching your expressions. In some ways, that's helpful because you can look at your body language, and you can look at what's going on in the room, but in other ways, you miss a lot of cues that you wouldn't see in real life.
Jordan:
Yes. How do they do that in your program, considering it's online? How do they account for the differences, or do they?
Mimi:
It feels a little bit different. We do it over Zoom. Sometimes we make the screen next to each other, which makes eye contact a little bit hard, so there's a lot more grace for different instances. For example, maybe you look like you're looking down, but you're actually looking up, or maybe there's just a little bit of a shift in how the conversation flows. So I think there's some compassion for the differences that come over the internet, but it's also really new to everyone, so there haven't been huge understandings of what that difference looks like. Sometimes we just have to go with how it looks.
Jordan:
Yes. In my experience, being online for the last year, obviously, it's a different energy sitting with somebody versus being online, but the summarization, like you said, the paraphrasing that's all the same. What kind of work are you hoping to do when you graduate?
Mimi:
I'm really excited to hopefully work for a group private practice with other independent contractors, but also have that supervision element. However, more immediately, I'd like to write a book - a memoir I've been working on for a little bit. I'm excited for when it is completed, and I can share more with the world.
Jordan:
What's your memoir about?
Mimi:
It's about my own experiences with therapy, especially with the healing that I've been able to experience there. The last couple of years have been so transformative and informative of the person I am, so I'm eager to share them in a book format.
Jordan:
Future readers get ready. I think so many of us therapists become therapists because of our experiences. We sort of become therapy nerds and then we want to do it with and for other people. Tell me about how you think that lived experience is going to feed into how you're going to do therapy.
Mimi:
I think self-disclosure has been such a powerful tool in my own therapeutic experiences. While I understand the history of counseling has been a lot less focused on locating yourself in the work, in terms of the therapists being themselves and presenting their own selves in the work. For me, it's important to show others that people are humans first and then therapists.
Jordan:
I think I said this in the beginning, but you have a community of people that you are working with, that you were educating people about OCD and eating disorders. What led you to create that platform?
Mimi:
I saw some dieticians doing this work, and they were talking about their eating disorders, and this concept of recovered clinicians has been coming up in the past, maybe two decades or so. I've been really interested in what it looks like to be someone who's vulnerable and shares things, but also, balancing that professionalism coming into the field. I think it's shifting a little bit where people aren't so worried about saying the exact right thing or keeping all parts of themselves hidden. That's a really beautiful thing. Yes, it's been really good to be able to share things that I've worked through. It's just a lot of things that I found to be true in my own life in experiences I've had and that I feel like have caused a lot of shame for me. I want to help de-stigmatize, break it down and bring more awareness.
Jordan:
To me, self-disclosure is so huge. That can be such an important intervention for so many people. I have never heard of that term recovered clinician.
Mimi:
Yes, I think it's big in the eating disorder field from Carolyn Costin. She was one of the first people who shared recovery is possible from an eating disorder. She talked about it as a clinician. That wave has been really big in terms of disordered eating and eating disorders clinicians, generally, I think, are more willing to share about their own experiences and find that lived experience is such a powerful tool. There are clinicians in recovery and recovered Clinicians are some nuance to the terms because of some disorders you can recover from some live with you forever, but it's really interesting to think about.
Jordan:
It brings connection, which is so important in the therapeutic relationship, is the most important piece, determining the success of therapy, the idea that my therapist also de-stigmatizes what they might be going through. It offers a future vision that maybe I could feel better, which for some people, it doesn't feel like that's in the realm of possibility sometimes.
Mimi:
It's interesting. I was thinking about this. It's almost unfortunate that we have to see what we can be before we can feel like we can be it but I think in the world that we live in, it's so important that we have models. That's why representation matters and why it's important to have people who are in the same boat as us, and shame reduction comes from knowing we're not alone in what we're experiencing.
Jordan:
When you talk about self-disclosure, and you're in school, how is that talked about in class? Is there a space to talk about that?
Mimi:
It's been really good in my program in terms of being able to disclose with my peers. We're about to get to the unit on self-disclosure in therapy. So I'm curious how that will go. It doesn't have to be this big, I recovered from an eating disorder, so you can too, it can be, I feel anxious sometimes too, and that's a really hard place to be. I worked in a treatment center for a little while and self-disclosure, wasn't encouraged as much. So it was a great opportunity for me to be able to practice matching emotions and talking about more general things that I've experienced because I think at the core of it is not necessarily have you had the same experience as me, but have you experienced these human emotions and are these normal to experience? The answer is always yes.
Jordan:
Yes. To me, self-disclosure is such a huge part of our work. It's unfortunate when people box themselves in that way and say that they won't do self-disclosure, or it feels too vulnerable for some people.
Mimi:
Even when I say to myself, maybe I should broaden or try to find another specialty, I keep becoming passionate about this work because people resonate with it. There's not a lot of voices who are talking about these co-morbidities. There's a couple of really great ones, of course, but there's not enough conversation around these topics. I think when I understand that, then I'm able to say, maybe this is the work that I'm supposed to do because who else is going to do it. It's also really important to come back to the things that I know. I think it's almost like when people say to write what you know; it reminds me of therapy in terms of the things that I understand because I've experienced it will be so helpful for other people because I understand the nuances. I understand what it's like to be in their shoes.
Jordan:
You are already offering to the world, right? I have learned so much from you in your writing. You're doing the psychoeducation work, doing these detailed, nuanced pieces of psychoeducation that you're putting out on your Podcast and on Instagram. How has that been for you creating that platform and being able to offer that to the world?
Mimi:
It's scary, honestly. It's hard. It's scary because I'm not yet an established clinician, so sometimes I worry, am I oversharing? I start to compare myself to other people, so it can be a hard space to be, especially because social media, I feel like, is such a new realm for therapists and therapists in training. There's not a lot of guidance. Even some older generation therapists that I talked to might not know how to guide me because they didn't have that social media therapist of Instagram type of training or experience. Sometimes it can be scary, and then put yourself out there; there's always the negative feedback or the disagreements or the rude comments. Sometimes it can be hard and even just staying engaged in that space while also doing life and the Podcast and school and relationships.
Jordan:
Yes, you're doing a lot and in a pandemic.
Mimi:
Yes.
Jordan:
On top of all of that.
Mimi:
That too.
Jordan:
It's vulnerable. I completely hear you on that. It's sort of the Wild West- what is, okay, what's not okay. Where's the line for therapists-in-training, but also therapists, people who are in the field. It's an interesting place to be, but something that I like about your tenacity is that you are a therapist-in-training and you have this knowledge base that you are offering to the public, but also other therapists like me specifically because we might have some listeners that have something to share with the world and may not recognize that they have that.
Mimi:
I often doubt myself because of anxiety, and I'm worried about what other people think in the field, but I also carefully consider what I share, and I also am thoughtful and intentional about how much I share. I think part of it is anxiety that keeps me safe and keeps me sharing what's valuable versus a tell all type of thing. I also think some of it is anxiety that's just excessive from the world and from the possibilities and the what-ifs and the not knowing and the uncertainty. I think figuring out what is helpful is, is this sharing for the client or is it for yourself?
Jordan:
That's a good question. That intentionality is so important in thinking about the client and I find too writing on Instagram because I also write on Instagram, just like your writing has so much nuance, I try to bring that to my work too, but it's hard. It's a square, and you have a certain character limit. You need to edit it down and have this kernel of knowledge and education to give someone; it's hard. Sometimes I worry that I'm oversimplifying or that I've had people give me feedback that, Oh, this is the opposite of my experience. Then I think, well, then maybe it's not for you. This is to speak to this other population. It's hard to figure out who my audience is. What am I trying to do? Like you said, that question of, is it for me, or is it for the client and who is the client?
Mimi:
Think about the people who maybe haven't been to therapy before and are just finding spaces where they can have a name for their experiences and they can see that they're not alone in it. I care a lot about the captions being like we talked about nuanced, but the hard part about it is that I do want to write this book. Therefore, gaining a wider audience is an important part of writing a book. That can be a hard balance because Instagram seems to want me to engage all the time and post all the time, and sometimes I'm just trying to go outside and be in nature or work on myself. Sometimes I don't have anything to say on that day. I think one of the great things about having a job with other people or seeing clients is having more inspiration, I think, whereas on a daily basis, I don't see people or talk to that many people every day, with the pandemic and everything and so inspiration sometimes doesn't strike or flow for me.
Jordan:
Yes, writing on Instagram, I worry that clients will think that my posts are about them. One when it's not, or two, when it is some inspiration that I got from them, but often it's an ongoing theme for my work. When I post something, I've usually thought about it for weeks, but then the timing of it is sometimes I will post something and then that day I'll be working with somebody and it'll be almost the same theme from my post. Then I worry, will clients think that it's about them when it's not about them? I've had friends, multiple friends, multiple times it's probably happened four or five times. I've written something in a way that made friends reach out to me, like, are we okay? I'm worried that maybe what you posted was about our friendship. This is so new. That being a therapist on social media is so new, that what are the ethics, what are the impacts of sharing something when it isn't about a client, but that they think it's about them.
Mimi:
I've had similar experiences where, for example, a friendship instance has inspired a post and then I worry, are they it's about them when it might be somewhat about them, but it's also a larger perspective that I think is helpful for people about friendship in general, or about being a human in general. What I think about that is bringing it up. I think it's always important to bring things up in session. I found my therapist Instagram, and I just hid it from them for a long time and I wish I had just brought it up and said, I found this, and this is how I'm feeling about it. I like what you said too. I also do the same thing where if someone inspires it, I usually wait a while, and so I'm not saying, Oh, I had a friend fight today. Let me post about friends.
Jordan:
Yes, that feels very vulnerable for both of you, I imagine. How do you imagine you'll feel as a licensed clinician and a client tells you that they found you on Instagram or that they've read a lot of your posts? Because for me, I don't know if it's different for you or if it's evolving, but for me, I still feel vulnerable when somebody said, I've read so many of your posts and I've been following you for a long time and now I'm so excited to have you as my therapist. I feel vulnerable when people say that.
Mimi:
I hope they haven't because my page has evolved from a little more personal sharing of the day-to-day to a little bit more vague and a little bit more, just useful for other people and less about my own healing coming from writing. I imagine I would feel nervous about how they would interpret what I wrote and what they would think about how our sessions would go. I imagine they would put me on a bit of a pedestal like I do other people and if you put someone on a pedestal, they have a lot further to fall. I think that will be something that I struggle with.
Jordan:
Right and as if there's not enough of a power difference, being a therapist and a client. I think it's important to be able to work with it and talk about it because that can bring aliveness to the work, but yes, it does bring vulnerability when they say to you, Mimi, I've been following you for years because at that point, you'll have posted for years. I read your book and now, I know so much about you and we don't get to choose as much what we get to reveal because some of it they've already revealed, but I guess on the other end, they like something that they read and that's why they are reaching out to you.
Mimi:
It's so hard with the book, too, because there are not many therapists who write memoirs that I know. So we'll see how that goes.
Jordan:
It's so cool how you have that vision. I want to say for listeners, if you have something in you, if you want to start a podcast, or if you want to start an Instagram account or a YouTube page or write a book, that you don't have to wait until you are full-fledged experienced clinician to share your experiences, because there is so much knowledge that people already have that you already have. I have a couple of questions as we are wrapping up, what topics feel toughest or most uncomfortable to talk about in class?
Mimi:
I think in class, sometimes self-disclosure is uncomfortable for me because I worry that I might've already been doing it wrong when I didn't have any guidance. I also worry about how people will react to what I share. I know my classmates, but there's something different about never having met them in person for the most part and so sharing with them feels different from maybe people that I got to know in undergrad. I'd also say it feels hard to push back still on things that maybe I wish were a little bit different. I think that's just part of my people-pleasing nature of having a hard time disagreeing. I think I'm a lot better at it than I used to be, but it is still hard because of the authority dynamics. You want to respect the people who are teaching you, but you also want to say that this is working for me or this isn't working for me. I wish that we would cover this topic, et cetera.
Jordan:
What have you felt like you want to push back on?
Mimi:
I think some of the theories and some of the readings that we've done, while historic and important in the past, don't necessarily see why it's so important to learn all these older theories necessarily and not focus on the ones that clinicians are using. So, for example, I know everybody really loves to talk about Freud, but rarely do you see a strictly Freudian therapist, and so I wonder what about DBT? We never cover that in school or all these things that we don't cover that you're supposed to figure out for yourself when a lot of time is devoted to these older theories.
Jordan:
Even the theories that we covered, at least at my school were so surface level, but a lot of the things that I use now, like ADP or IFS, all these acronyms, we didn't learn in school at all. I guess this goes with that, but what do you feel is most missing from graduate education for therapists?
Mimi:
I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is definitely DBT. I'm a big fan of it. Still, this ability to learn modalities that you're interested in for the populations that you want to work with, it would be great if there was a little bit more opportunity to be able to explore the different treatment models and approaches that you specifically want, which is hard because you want to make sure you know the tests that you have to take. You want to make sure that you're aware of the different options. There are just so many different types of therapy that I wish I knew more about and populations that I wish I was taught to treat beyond my own therapy. I think it would be great to learn some more practical skills of what a modern counselor's approach to therapy looks like, for example.
Jordan:
That's one thing that's nice about social media is being able to figure out how other clinicians are working; being able to be in a community with other modern therapists is a whole new world because that was not a thing when I graduated. So I feel more connected now, and I wonder how that will change for folks who are just coming into the field and have that broader network of what it means and what it looks like to be a new modern therapist.
Mimi:
I'm really lucky to have some really great professors and classmates and just a lot of training that therapists are starting to offer, which is really great for outsourcing knowledge and understanding different concepts a little bit better.
Jordan:
Yes. Maybe something in your future to offer because there are therapists like me, who would take that. Last but not least, what message do you have for other students?
Mimi:
To keep learning everything you can from different sources, books, and people, especially from podcasts, just be open to challenging your own internal biases and belief systems. It's okay if you're not doing a great job with tapes in the beginning; it's something that we're not used to. It's not the way that we normally relate to other people. So it's okay if in the beginning, things feel awkward or uncomfortable and you're questioning, am I even going to be a good therapist because there's time to learn, and it's a skill that you get used to.
Jordan:
Thank you for that. Yes. Is there anything else you want to say or plug before we wrap up?
Mimi:
Instagram is where you can find me the most, and then I did just start a course for clinicians on learning how to do exposure and response prevention and learn about orthorexia. So if you're interested in that, it's on the link in my bio.
Jordan:
Amazing. So Mimi's handle is the.lovelybecoming; make sure that we get that right. Then the Podcast is of the same name. Yes, so check out Mimi's work. It's so good. You can learn so much from her. I know I have. Thank you so much Mimi for your time and for your wisdom. This has been Edge of the couch. See you next time.
Alison
Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear from you. Send us an email at connectatedgeofthecouch.com to tell us what you think, ask the question or let us know what type of episode you'd love to hear. You can even send us a voice note for us to play in a future episode. You can support us by giving us a review on Apple podcasts, sharing the show with a friend or supporting us on Patreon. Join us next time at the Edge of the couch.