You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 168. Lisa Mustard.mp3
Lisa Mustard:
A family estrangement, that's something that we're seeing a lot, where young adults are cutting off their parents. And these parents don't understand. They gave these kids everything. They gave them great upbringings, and yet what's going on that these young adults are now cutting off their parents? We don't talk about that, but we're seeing it. We're seeing it in the therapy room. You know, another thing that we're seeing is political stress and anxiety tearing families apart. When you have people on the spectrum of the political scene, on the left and on the right, and they're in families together, they're losing their minds. People aren't able to have conversations with each other about their difference of opinions without somebody getting really hurt or offended or heated and they storm out and then, you know, like I said, the family estrangement kicks in. You must be some kind of therapist.

Stephanie Winn: Today, my guest is Lisa Mustard. She's a licensed marriage and family therapist and life coach in South Carolina. She's also the host of The Therapy Show with Lisa Mustard and the creator of Continuing Education for Therapists. So today, we're going to chat briefly about her Continuing Education pod courses, which I'm going to start recommending on this podcast. We're also going to talk about marriage and family therapy, how the field has evolved, how we feel about our profession, maybe some of her backstory. So Lisa, it's great to see you again. Welcome.

Lisa Mustard: Thank you so much. It's great to see you too, Stephanie.

Stephanie Winn: I really appreciate what you're doing with your show. And you know, you've had me on the therapy show with Lisa Mustard. It was not a pod course. But I want to start off and just pitch your pod courses shamelessly here because I believe in what you're doing. And this message is really for the therapists in the audience. Anyone who's listening who's not a therapist, please feel free to skip past this part if you don't need continuing education because we are still going to have an interesting conversation about her backstory and the practice of marriage and family therapy if you're interested in that. But I want the therapists in the audience, first and foremost, to be aware of what you're doing with the podcourses because it's a really great and affordable, accessible way of getting continuing education.

Lisa Mustard: Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited to talk about my podcourses. So podcourses are podcasts plus self-study content. And you can listen to the content for free through my podcast, The Therapy Show with Lisa Mustard, because all the podcourses are released as just an episode that anybody can listen to. And anybody, therapist or not, can maybe get some value from it. If you are a therapist, and you do like the podcourse, and you want to get the continuing education contact hour, because each podcourse is one one hour and I am approved by MBCC. That's important for therapists out there to know it is approved by MBCC. Then you will just click the link in the show notes. It'll take you straight to the sales page where you will just input your information, purchase the pod course or the self-study. course and then you'll be given access to my learning management system where you can listen again if you want, take a self-study quiz about five to eight to ten questions depending on the pod course, review the course, give me some feedback, and then you can download your certificate of completion. pretty simple and easy if you ask me. But of course, always happy to answer any questions. And you can get it, all the pod courses, all 27 of them, as a bundle. I will be adding some more in the future. But I add new pod courses a couple of times a year. But you can get all of them in a bundle right now. So it's pretty cool. It's really, I think, a budget-friendly way to get your continuing education contact hours, which we all need, of course.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, and I mean, I've even told you, I think it's underpriced. It's really a bargain. So for therapists, if you enjoy listening to podcasts, this is just such an easy way to get your continuing education. And you gave me a promo code, so that's some therapist will take $5 off of the already low price, in my opinion, of $49 for that 27-podcourse bundle. Of course, you reserve the right to raise the rate in the future as you keep adding more content. But that is all. You have that one bundle. You also have people can individually purchase these for five dollars. And then you also have some longer courses as well.

Lisa Mustard: Yeah, so I have some other courses on my site. One that I'm really excited about is one with Pam Garfield-Yeager. Maybe your audience knows a little bit about her. She has a three-hour continuing education course, a self-study course on my website, all about an introduction to gender dysphoria, where she, oh my gosh, it's such a great course. It's a great introduction, but then it also gives you talking points when you're working with clients who might be experiencing this, things that you can talk about with the parents, loads of resources and references in that course. It's really good. She's actually considering coming back and doing a second course that'll kind of go a little bit more into the clinical thing. So it's really great. That's a great course. There's also another one on there about working with high-achieving, high-functioning entrepreneurs, or I guess you would call them that, people of the almost forgotten niche of working with people who might need support that are CEOs or executives. influencers, that type of thing. That's a great course. And what else is on there? Oh, holistic trainings for a therapist who want to incorporate maybe some holistic practices into their private practices. And I'm always looking to add more. So if people have an idea for a continuing education course and they have an idea but they don't know how to get certified to provide continuing education, you know, definitely reach out to me because I'm always open to having conversations with people about, well, maybe your course could, you know, we could do something with it.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, and that's what's so great about you being established as an NBCC certified provider is that if you work with a therapist on the course and the therapist doesn't necessarily have to jump through those hoops themselves, they can just partner with you and you take care of that side of things.

Lisa Mustard: Yeah, that's the benefit or the bonus of somebody who already has the credential because it's a lot to learn and it's a lot to, the application process can be tedious. All of my credentialing though is under like self-study courses. I don't have the credential to do the live course. or a live event that, that direction. I don't have that one. But I have thought about getting the other, you know, continuing education providers like the, the one for social work. Some folks have asked me if I would consider getting that because they want to be able to use the pod courses, but they're social workers. So I have thought about adding that credential, you know, down the road, if it makes sense.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, I know that NASW has their own thing separate from NBCC, but I didn't realize that live versus online trainings required different pathways.

Lisa Mustard: Yes. So the live training is another application. It's a different application. It's another fee. Yeah, there's a whole thing with continuing education we could probably have. you know, our own conversation about that. But yeah, yeah. And I think social work does the same thing. If you want to do live, it's one pathway. If you want to do self-study, it's this pathway.

Stephanie Winn: And do you have any concerns about sort of finding the balance between your values as a, let's say, a therapist who's skeptical of the woke capture of our field, you know, being sort of heretical on the one hand in that regard, but also working with these established organizations.

Lisa Mustard: I'm confused because they'll, you know, they'll approve pretty much anything. So you have to be very careful and mindful of what you're getting for your continuing education. I've seen all kinds of, you know, courses out there. So it's, it's interesting that really, I don't understand how you can have such opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of theory and value systems. But they do it. They, you know, I guess they leave it up to the therapist to discern if they feel like the content jives or fits with the way that they practice. But yeah, it is, it's, I've often wondered, is there You have to show your resources and your references. But some of the resources and references out there are being debunked and saying that's not actually helpful for people. It's actually harming people. Or the research has been adjusted or it's been withheld. And how honest are people being in what they're putting out there? It's really interesting. It's a really interesting time.

Stephanie Winn: Well, let's talk about the practice of marriage and family therapy in general, because I feel like there's actually a segue here. I've noticed on the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, it's either of marriage and family therapists or for marriage. I always get it confused. Yeah, I get it confused. Anyway, the AAMFT, Transgender Resources, is one of the featured tabs on their drop-down menu. And noticeably absent are things actually more relevant to marriage and families. Like, there's no blended family resources. tab, even though something like a third of Americans are in blended families, like I am. I'm in a blended family. I'm a stepmom, right? And that provides huge challenges and growth opportunities when it comes to everything we know about attachment and relationships and child rearing. And we know that childhood is developmentally such an important time for creating your psychological foundation. You know, so the issues actually affecting American marriages and families are not front and center for an organization like the AAMFT because there's been this huge capture where this thing that's supposedly such a small percent of the population and arguably a so-called identity that dramatically reduces one's likelihood of getting married and having a family you know, is now front and center for something like the AAMFT. So I'm thinking about that and how that affects a situation like yours as someone who's trying to create continuing education that reflects what issues we actually need to be talking about in therapy. Because similarly, if you look on most CE directories, most directories listing continuing education for marriage and family therapists, as well as licensed professional counselors, You know, it's like every third training is about something related to trans or queer or something like that. And it's like, why is there such this big push? I mean, setting aside the fact that once you start looking under the hood of that issue, you discover all of these major ethical issues. But even if it weren't for the ethical issues, Still, why is this issue so front and center? What's happening to marriage and family therapy? And one thing that I discovered as I started looking into this is that the AMFT was founded in the 60s, and I started looking at rates of marriage and divorce in the 60s. People were getting married younger. They were staying married longer, and they were having more children. So literally, marriage and family were a bigger part of American life than they are today. And I'm thinking, wow, the AAMFT was founded in that environment. And now LMFT is still one of the biggest types of therapy licenses in the United States. Partly depends on what state you're in. Like in California, it's one of the biggest, for instance. But our values have shifted so much as a society. So what are your thoughts on that?

Lisa Mustard: I've had similar thoughts over the years, too, about where's our field going? I chose to be an LMFT over an LPC. In my program, I had the choice. Do I go LPC or LMFT? And I knew I wanted to help marriages. I wanted to help families. Because I told you earlier, that's what I needed help with growing up. And when I went to therapy for the first time in my life, mid 20s, I learned about family dynamics, and I learned about attachment, and I learned about all of those things that that's, that's what we're, we're schooled in, or what we're, you know, systems theory, systems therapy. And I was fascinated by it. I was like, I because I'd never heard this before. My family didn't model healthy, healthy relationships growing up. So this was a first for me, because I was having my own relationship issues. And I couldn't understand what was going on. Why was I, why couldn't I do better in my relationship? What was wrong with me? Why did I repeat these patterns? So aside from that, yeah, I do think that it has changed. And you bring up something that we talked about this before. Why don't we have step family trainings? Because you're right. There's so many step families out there that come to therapy that need help. And you go and you start looking around for trainings and resources, and it's hard to find. Another couple issues I see nowadays family estrangement. I had Dr. Joshua Coleman on my podcast, who, by the way, would be a great person for you to have on. I connect you guys. But he is a family estrangement. You know, that's his specialty. And he has some trainings. But that's something that we're seeing a lot where families are you know, young adults are cutting off their parents. And these parents don't understand. They gave these kids, you know, everything. They gave them great upbringings. And yet what's going on that these young adults are now cutting off their parents. So he goes into that. We don't talk about that, but we're seeing it. We're seeing it in the therapy room. you know, another thing that we're seeing, or that I'm seeing is political stress and anxiety, tearing families apart. When you have a, you know, people on the spectrum of the of the political scene, you know, on the left and on the right, and they're in families together, they can't They they they're losing their minds. People aren't able to have conversations with each other about their difference of opinions without somebody getting really hurt or offended or heated. And they storm out. And then next thing you know, it's like I said, the family estrangement kicks in. And, you know, when I was growing up, we didn't talk about politics. We didn't talk about politics or religion when you were. That's just how it was. You were just that's you didn't need to. You just wanted to be, you know, Polite and kind and it didn't it mattered but it didn't matter, you know And nowadays it seems like everybody wants you to pick a side and to present your side and even you know, I see out there therapists You know having having people call in or you know, reach out to them and say I need to know what where you stand Politically before I book an appointment with you because if you voted for Trump, I can't work with you, right? Or if you're a therapist who didn't vote for Harris, then I don't want to work with you. It blows my mind. So much has changed in our culture. I mean, not just marriages, families, but the things that the AMFT decides to focus on, it just doesn't make sense to me. Like you said, they have—why? How many people are actually experiencing gender dysphoria that we have to, you know, shove these trainings down everybody's throat? Like, is it is it just the hip thing for therapists to want to talk about? I mean, I guess so. I'm wondering if these therapists who have these trainings are even selling them. Are people taking these courses? I have no idea. I'm seeing a lot of stuff now online like donations accepted. We've lowered the price. So I don't honestly, I don't know if people are even taking these courses anymore. So I'd be curious to know if people actually take them. Personally. I feel like I just kind of went off on a tangent there, but just covered a bunch of things.

Stephanie Winn: Well, you named the issues facing modern families. Estrangement. Did Joshua Coleman write a book? Yes. Because I think… I think two books. I think some of my coaching clients recommended him to me recently. I'll have to look into his work. I'll listen to that interview. But these are the issues, right? The estrangement, the political stress. And when it comes to, you know, the AAMFT's priorities, Again, even if there weren't any ethical issues, even if patients weren't being permanently harmed by these so-called gender transition procedures and drugs, there's still a major question as to what should the role of, you know, if an organization is there to support marriage and family. what should their role be with regard to this gender issue? And does telling people that they need to get on board with this, does that address things from a holistic systemic lens? Does that include the perspectives of all members of the family? No, it says that the perspectives of some members of the family are more important than the perspectives of other members of the family, which is not how we think as marriage and family therapists.

Lisa Mustard: Right, right, exactly. Yeah, I mean, I think back to my training and we never talked about that stuff. It rarely came up. It wasn't something that was even in case consultation, even in my internship. I mean, sure, you had clients who came in and maybe they were gay or lesbian as a couple. Okay, you're still a system. There's still an identified issue within this system that you bring into this therapy room. And what is the goal for this system? How do you want to move through this? And we didn't get into, well, tell me your political beliefs or any of that. It just didn't come into the room. And it's changed. I wish I could say it was like, Oh, it was because of this issue in society.

Stephanie Winn: Well, when it comes to estrangement, I remember learning to do genograms, which, you know, for those non-therapists in the audience, a genogram is basically a sort of a decision tree looking map of your family relationships with symbols that reflect how people are connected. So if a relationship is close and enmeshed, there would be a different symbol to denote that connection than one that is estranged or cut off. So this concept of a cutoff is something that we would include in a genogram and we would look at that as evidence of something broken in the family system. If this one chain is broken, if there's an estrangement between these two or more people, then that might be indicative of something that needs to be healed in the larger family system. We don't do that by forcing two people to talk, we don't even have that power, but we look at it as an indicator of something being wrong that might point us to some other things to look at. So the general kind of consensus was that, you know, cutoff is not healthy. And we understand that certain people feel that that might be their only recourse. And there are situations where an ethical therapist could rightly agree that that was the right move for someone to protect themselves, such as in cases of abuse. But it wasn't the norm, right? And I feel like now, I mean, I can understand that part of us that wants to look for what our loved ones are doing wrong because they're not perfect. And many of us do have various mother wounds and father wounds and parts of us that feel victimized. But I think for the vast majority of people, certainly not everyone, but for the vast majority of people, you will find more healing and harmony in learning to forgive and understand and figure out how to kind of fix that broken part of you and be in right relation with that person, which doesn't necessarily mean being super close with them or tolerating bad behavior. But the more we can kind of figure out how to be in some kind of relationship with most important people in our world, the more resilience we have, the more whole we become. And so I feel like there's been a huge shift in the ethos of therapy because now the cutoff, the estrangement, is so normal, it's considered healthy by a lot of people, and what gets classified as abuse or neglect or mistreatment has become so magnified that now I'm hearing stories in my parent coaching role, for instance, of there's a family, for instance, where because the parents did not affirm the declared gender identity of one sibling, The other sibling didn't invite them to their wedding. And not only that, but also sort of proudly declared, this is what all our friends are doing. None of our friends are inviting their friends. None of our friends are inviting their parents to their weddings. This is just normal for our generation. So I think there's something happening on a much broader scale there.

Lisa Mustard: It's very, so immature to me. Like, I just can't help but think, like, how immature. But it also, it also makes me think about how do they value their relationship with their parents? You know, what do they think their parents are there for? You know, I mean, my parents are, I have different opinions. Sometimes, you know, I think different values than them, but as they're still my parents and I still like respect the fact that they're human beings, you know, maybe that's just it. Maybe it's hard for, I don't know. I guess I have so many questions. I guess I want to be your co-therapist in that, or your co-coach in that situation. But I guess my brain just goes to all these different curiosities of how Did it all start with the genders, with the pronouns? Or what was the history prior to this? What type of parenting was going on in the household?

Stephanie Winn: Those are exactly the same questions that come up for me. And I think I give this as an example not to share too many personal details about one family. But when I do that digging, do my due diligence in my role as family communication coach, I can't find anything. I'm like, so what went wrong? What did you do? And they're with me in this question of, yeah, we're trying to figure out what we did. And in many cases, you're right that these are fairly affluent, stable, families without much history of abuse, neglect or other things and that it's like one wrong move and you're out. And I think when you describe the immaturity where I start to go with it, I start seeing into the future for these, you know, young adults and imagining what lies ahead for them. And it looks really sad from my perspective because I start thinking about what it's going to be like when they become parents and how humbling of, like, painfully humbling of a journey that might be for them. Right.

Lisa Mustard: I also wonder, too, about resilience. You brought up resilience earlier in our conversation about something, but something that my husband, and he's not a therapist at all. Like, my husband is not a therapist, but he's so wise. He'll say, you know, nowadays kids don't have any struggle. There's no struggle. It's easy. If your kids grow up in a stable environment, you have food on the table, your mother is planning all of these things for you. And I'm guilty of this, you know, helicopter momming myself. And I had to learn that I wasn't helping my daughters by doing all these things for them, but they didn't have the struggle. And when I say struggle, I mean like, I need you to go into the grocery store, here's $10 and buy these three things and come back out. Well, I never just simple things like that. It just didn't dawn on me that I should be teaching my kids how to, how to do that. So when down the road, when, okay, now it's time for you to get a job, what do you mean? I got to get a job. It's so it's, it's almost like. what I'm just trying to be a good mom. But yet at the same time, there's no struggle. She's she's got a car to drive. Okay, now you got to put gas in it. Well, I gotta get a job. I mean, I'm just I'm just kind of like thinking about there's no struggle there. You know, there's no struggle.

Stephanie Winn: And I think that there's probably a lot of ways that what you're saying connects with this phenomenon that we're observing, because when it is affluent families who raise their children in a safe, nurturing environment, who educated them well, who loved them well, who were not perfect, nobody is, but by and large, gave their children the type of childhood that people from other parts of the world and other generations could only dream of giving their children. And when you look at children who are raised under those seemingly optimal circumstances in a lot of ways, where there's not that element of struggle, one thing I fear is that there is some part of us that intrinsically needs struggle and we will create it. And I worry that people are creating struggle out of the wrong things. I think the real lesson here should be that, you know, the message parents impart to their children about, you know, the value of finding meaningful struggle, whether that's having an outlet that you're passionate about, like a sport where you're continuously challenging yourself to get better or taking on something that frightens you, but that you'll learn a lot from, ideally, parents can instill those values in their children, but it is children's natural response to push back and be like, why should I have to do that thing? I don't want to do that thing. And most parents aren't going to push too hard about things that are optional. So then you end up without this kind of experience that we all need in life, some more than others, but experience of conquering challenges and overcoming obstacles. And so then, yeah, these little things become problematized. And then you end up with these coddled young adults who make their parents every flaw out to be evidence of abuse and neglect, partly so that they can have that story of, you know, what they've overcome as a substitute for the real kind of ego strength that comes out of, you know, going and doing a three-day rite of passage in the woods alone when you're 17, for example.

Lisa Mustard: Right, no, you're exactly right. It's like the struggle becomes, I'm going to rebel against what my parents want, but I'm going to go in this direction. And if you don't have a clear set of values, I think, as parents, to guide you, and you don't share those values with your kids, and you don't raise them with values, then It's easy to just go off and, you know, your parents become the struggle. They become the problem. And I think that's a lot of it.

Stephanie Winn: Well, if I can jump in, to be fair, I think, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. And similarly, as a parent, you can try to instill certain values in their children. But I think, I mean, I'm definitely the sort of stubborn person that has to learn things myself. And some people are more that way than others. Some people can kind of learn by watching others make mistakes and they can, they have a certain trust in the people who are teaching them things that they're like, okay, yeah, I believe that that's true. I don't need to live it myself. Or I believe that that value my parents are trying to instill in me is probably a good idea. But some of us, just our disposition and or our life experience, and I count myself in this category, we have to discover things for ourselves. And so as a parent, do you instill the value? How do you even instill the value? Or do you just try to create the circumstances that are going to help your kid learn those things for themselves? And then how do you balance that with not subjecting your kid to things they don't want to do?

Lisa Mustard: Right. I'm with you. I'm the same way. And that's the balance is, you know, they don't, of course they don't go along with what we say. No, they want to push back and fight. But I think the purpose is you just keep saying, you know, you keep saying, you just keep showing examples and you stand strong in alignment in your values. And, you know, I say things all the time to my kids and I'm hoping one day they're going to turn around and say, yeah, when you said that, or I've kept that in the back of my mind, or, you know, there's no waffling, I guess. And I think that's important, is to have a unified front as parents that you're on the same page. And I also think that if parents aren't on the same page, and the kids sense that, ooh, they're going to get in there, and they're going to get what they want that way, too. And I don't have the answers by any means. And I wish it was as simple as you share these amazing values with your children and they just follow along. But that's not it. I think you have to model the values. I think you have to put, you know, offer experiences where they're able to, you know, make a choice or have decisions that they have to make that will point them in the direction of where they are and you get a sense for your kids. I mean, parenting is a, gosh, you know, it's wonderful, but it is so hard. And, you know, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And it's great work, but I'm tired, man. I'm tired. Yeah, I didn't think this conversation was going to go that direction. So I'm trying to think of how else I might see that or what else I would want to know about these families that are, you know, this is showing up.

Stephanie Winn: I'm going to let that percolate in the back of your mind, if that's all right, because, you know, before we started recording, we started talking about your backstory. And at first you were being humble and saying that you didn't have an interesting backstory. And then we discovered that you actually do. And, you know, the story of what motivated you to become a therapist, I think, is actually very relevant. And I'm so curious, once we start hearing it, I'm sort of selfishly wanting to compare and contrast your life experiences with my own. Because, I mean, here we are talking about marriage and family therapy and the value of working to preserve healthy marriage and family relationships. And for you, that came from being the child of divorce, right? Yeah.

Lisa Mustard: Yeah, child of divorce. So my parents divorced when I was 11. Up until that point, I had a great childhood. I would describe it as upper middle class, didn't have to want for anything. It was just my dad did really well in his business and I thought things were great. But when I was about 10 years old is when things started to kind of go south for my for my parents. And my dad was having an affair. And so my parents separated. And he, he was really caught up in being with this woman. He didn't really care too much to be a dad, a father figure for us. And so When my parents divorced at 11, I was just beside myself. I was confused. I didn't know what healthy… I thought my parents had a nice marriage, a good marriage, and then it all just kind of blew up one day. But I was young. I didn't understand. I didn't know. what was really going on and I kind of withdrew into myself. I got pretty quiet. I probably went through some type of depression, you know, an adjustment to the situation. Nothing at the time that would probably have my teachers or anybody concerned. So my parents divorced, and then eventually got used to it, you know, would spend some time with my dad and his girlfriend, and then I would be around my mom. And it was pretty contentious. There wasn't a lot of positive things being said by either parent about the other. So I had that, you know, percolating all the time. Well, my dad said this about my mom, and then my mom said this about my dad, and who's, what's the truth, and what's really going on? And the parent, my parents were, kind of arguing through us, you know, like my sister and I would take it back to my dad and then we'd take it back to my mom. Fast forward to high school, my dad was doing some illegal things. I don't want to get into this too much because it's just, it's relevant, but the details aren't really relevant. So my dad was convicted in 1992, I think, of fraud, bank fraud and mail fraud through his business, and he was sentenced to federal prison. So my dad went to federal prison when I was 19, and he did about nine years total. But ever since then, we haven't really had much of a relationship. Of course, looking back on my life, I see the patterns of my relationships with as a young, young adult. And not until I met my future husband when I was 26, 27, that I realized that I had some issues in how I related romantically and my own stuff. And I decided to go to counseling for the first time, I think it was 27. And realizing that the common denominator was me, I was the one that needed the work. It wasn't all these guys that I was dating or getting involved with. I realized it's like I needed to work on me and I needed to figure me out and I needed to do some changing. And, you know, you asked me earlier, like, what happened in therapy that made the difference? And honestly, Stephanie, it was just, she listened, and she reflected back. And she asked me if this is how I wanted to live my life. And, I mean, I can boil it down to that. I don't, I don't really know if she said that, thinking back to it, but that's what I took away from it. And I realized in that, in those session sets, this isn't how I want to live my life. So what do I do to be different? And how do I change? How do I, not only how do I change, but how do I make it stick? Because I don't want to go back to old patterns and old behaviors because that's not the person I wanted to become. So I always had this vision of who I wanted to be kind of leading me. So I defined her. I made a visual, a visualization of who she was and what she was about. And I just was like, well, what would, In this moment, in this situation, what would that healthy person do? What skill set would that healthy person have? And that's really how I worked on myself. Now, don't get me wrong. I can definitely backslide into old unhealthy Lisa ways, but I'm quick. I'm quick to know it, and I'm quick to have my husband. We've been married 19 years now. It's like I know the person that I want to be, and I strive to be her. So I'm always thinking about her. And yeah, through that process, I was like, you know, I think I want to be a therapist. I really like these conversations. I like this process. It's intriguing. And I want to help young women become healthy for themselves so they can find their mates and they can be healthy wives and healthy moms and show up as best as they can. Not perfect, but, you know, the best that they can be. So that's how I decided to go back to school, because I started my program in 2006 and finished in 2008. So I was a little bit older than the rest of my peers in the program. I did have one good friend. She was about the same age, and we really connected because we had some similarities. And she and I had a lot of classes together. I had a good peer or colleague to share in early 30s versus a 24-year-old young adult student was different. And I picked LMFT because I was really, really wanting to help marriages and families be the best, do better for them, for their relationships and for their families. And it's the hardest work I've ever done. family therapy, marital therapy is not easy. It's tough. And every, you know, you get all kinds of different types of marriages and different types of families. But I love it. I think it's, it's wonderful work. It's fulfilling work. And yeah, so that's my story. That's how I got here.

Stephanie Winn: I'm so glad you share that story. And the way you described your therapy, it was succinct and simple, but at the same time, it was profound. And it was exactly what I was hoping you would say. I know that might sound strange, but I had a suspicion and I don't think I could have put it into words. But then when I heard you say it, I was like, that's it. That's the essence of it. Is this how I want to live my life? She helped you ask yourself that question and I think that's what makes the difference. Yeah. So I was comparing my story with yours and You know, I also had issues based on the conflict between my parents and my father's bad behavior. Different, you know, in my case, my parents were never married. In fact, it took me a while to figure out I was a child of an affair. That was never explained to me until I put two and two together. And then I was like, oh, that's what happened.

Lisa Mustard: Oh wow.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And my father, his excuse is that he has Asperger's and he's sort of the classic image of your guy who is like narcissistically Asperger's-ish. You know, and that wasn't even a term that we had growing up. He was just kind of that way, you know, until as a young adult, he's like, so there's this thing called Asperger's syndrome, and it describes me to a T. It really does. But it's it's no excuse for his behavior. It explains some of his behavior. It doesn't excuse some of the worst parts of it. But, you know, so I grew up with this huge father wound. I had mother issues as well. And I've done a lot of therapy, but not a lot of it has been helpful. And I think part of the difference is cultural. Now, I do take responsibility for the fact that I chose the therapists I saw, and maybe I was choosing ones who were the wrong fit, or I was choosing them based on values that have since changed. Or maybe I was looking for what I wanted to hear and it wasn't what I needed to hear. I also think intelligence is a factor and that I have a very quirky intellect and need someone who can dominate my quirky intellect and not just let me run ramshod over the therapeutic process. But I'm thinking about the therapy that I had in my 20s, and I tried a variety of therapies and approaches. I was in grad school, so I felt like I should have a good sampling. And I don't think anyone ever asked me that question. At least I don't have a recollection. And I know you said that wasn't necessarily a question she explicitly asked you, but the takeaway that you got from the therapy was that there was, within a safe, supportive container, There was a gentle challenge, a reflection of this is how you're living, but is it how you want to be living? Right. Is there a higher self-calling to do you have values that you want to live your life by that maybe your behavior is not currently reflecting? And if so, can I help you identify those? And that is what I want to, you know, I don't want to make everything so political, but I feel like that's what a bit more of a conservative or traditional approach to therapy allows for because implicit in that is an understanding that maybe we do know some universal truths about human beings and what makes for our flourishing. And if you're off on some path, it's not necessarily just do you, right? And I feel like that's so much the ethos now of just do you and anything goes that if we can't identify what's normative, then we can't necessarily even trust our instincts as therapists to know when it feels like maybe someone's not congruent with their values because maybe there are certain values that tend to be fairly universal. Another way that I'm kind of thinking about this and pardon me for branching out and saying so many things at once But I've been thinking about this a lot lately is that there's this kind of error that we make in our thinking That when we think about what we will want in the future We think about it in a way that's so limited by who we are in the present We don't tend to anticipate that our future wants and needs are probably going to be much more normative for people of that age.

Lisa Mustard: Right.

Stephanie Winn: So in other words, when a 16-year-old angrily declares to mom and dad, I am 99.99% certain that I am a trans boy and that I'm never going to change my mind. When a 16-year-old says that, when she says, I'm never going to change my mind, I mean, not only is that an immature thing to say, but it's also presuming that your future self will think the way you do today rather than thinking that your future self will think like closer to the average that a 30, 40, 50-year-old wants, right? In other words, when you're 50, you're probably going to want a really comfortable bed to sleep in because the average 50-year-old has back pain and likes a comfortable bed and likes a good eight hours of sleep. That's how it is to be 50, right? And whatever you, you know, the you that you are today at 17 or 22 or whatever, whatever your values are, you have to filter them through the lens of what does the average person of that age tend to want and need in life at that stage in life. I'm probably going to be like that. So we it's like we have to understand that there are some things that tend to be true about people in general and that tend to be true about people at different ages and stages in life. And then kind of factor that in. And so I feel like all of this is to say where my therapists failed me in the past was by not looking at me through the filter of There are things that are generally true about people, you know, such as women in their 20s, let's say, and that, you know, also decisions that women make in their 20s that will affect how they feel about their lives in their 30s, 40s and 50s. And if this young woman in her 20s is behaving in a way that is not on a trajectory to bring her the things that most women want in their 30s, 40s, or 50s, is that because she really knows who she is and she's really chosen consciously the values that she's living her life by and she's far outside the norm? Maybe, but can we investigate that? Can we not take that for granted as an assumption? And our values change over time, right? Sometimes we're behaving in a way that's congruent with who we thought we were, what we thought we valued five years ago. But we haven't reassessed, do I still even want the same things? So I feel like where your therapist went right is where my therapist went wrong and not challenging me in those same ways. And I get it, I'm a difficult patient. But, you know, but it took me until 35 to find my man. And I kissed a lot of really slimy frogs to get there and like burned my lips on those poisonous frogs, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Lisa Mustard: And I mean, I just remember thinking, I know in my heart, I want to get married. I don't know if I want kids yet, but I know I want to get married. And so what is, what a normal women who want to get married? Like, how do they make it work? How do they figure this out? Like I wanted to figure that part out. Um, and so I had to say, okay, this, if I know I want, if I know I want this, what do I have to do to get there? And not just like, fake it, get there, but like really get there because this is my life. I'm not, I mean, I don't want to mess around with this. I don't want to pick somebody just to pick somebody. And I also had the, you know, my, the family that I grew up in was so wacky to me that I knew that wasn't healthy. I didn't want that, but I didn't know how to get the healthy stuff. So yeah, and I mean, when I was in my early 20s, my mom probably told me these things like, or we probably had these conversations, but I didn't listen. I wasn't ready. I didn't have enough life experiences under my belt. Still like, you know, kissing the wrong guys, the wrong, the frogs, trying to make the frogs into a prince when it was not going to happen. Like these guys were not going to be that prince, you know? Yeah, and I mean, you know, nowadays, in the work that I do, I love solution-focused therapy. That's just, that's my jam. I love it. Sure, we can talk about things in your past that might have hurt, and you want to process them a little bit, but how do you want to be moving forward? You know, you can't keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results. So what do you want? And let's talk about how you're going to get there.

Stephanie Winn: That's where the healing and the freedom comes from, right? Giving yourself the freedom to make different choices. And it's called exercising your capacity for neuroplasticity. And there's this really unhelpful way of thinking that I've encountered in countless patients, I'm sure you have too, that I have to feel a certain way before I can act or think any differently. And then just waiting for that magical state to appear out of thin air, rather than just, like you said, acting in accordance with the kind of person you want to be. Imagining your ideal self. I mean, I asked myself really similar questions, and this was work I did on my own. I wish I could credit a therapist, but I remember doing this work on my own in the year leading up to finding my man, finding my person. It's very similar to how you describe your thought process. Okay. If that person who is actually well-equipped to love me were to walk into my life tomorrow Would I be ready? Would my life be ready? And if not, like, what do I need to do to clean this mess up, to align my whole world so that, you know, it's just the perfect – it just – that person can walk right in and feel at home.

Lisa Mustard: Right. And not like a fake. you know, not like a, Oh, I'm just doing this for show or I'm doing this to catch somebody or to, to, to, what are the, what do they call it? Catfish. I don't even know if that's the right way to use that word. Um, but you're right. Yeah. How do I be real? How do I, how, how do I know I'm ready and what will that look like? What will she be doing? What will, what will be important?

Stephanie Winn: you know, makes me think of the superego and how the superego kind of gets a bad rap sometimes, right? As if I think there's this common way of misinterpreting that, you know, coming from a place of controlling or directing your life is like inauthentic somehow, right? That having some self-discipline, choosing the values you want to live your life by, that, you know, I think sometimes… There's freedom in those things. Oh, yeah.

Lisa Mustard: If you don't have those things – I'm sorry. I totally interrupted you. I just had to say that.

Stephanie Winn: No, no. I mean – and I mean I'm guilty of this myself. In some ways, I'm arguing with my past ways of thinking about some of these things. But I think it's – and whether we call it the superego or not, but you're talking about that higher self, that idealized version of yourself that's in harmony with your values, but that's also deeply connected to your wants. Right. And I think that, you know, part of what we're talking about, we're talking about our process as women of getting emotionally healthy enough to find a good man to love us properly. And it's like understanding that being well loved will help everything else in your life flourish so beautifully. That's like, yeah, you got to treat that like a priority.

Lisa Mustard: Absolutely. And you have to every day nurture that and work on it and not take it for granted because it's it's precious. Absolutely.

Stephanie Winn: Many of you listening to this show are concerned about an adolescent or young adult you care about who's caught up in the gender insanity and therefore at risk of medical self-destruction. I developed ROGD Repair as a resource for parents just like you. It's a self-paced online course and community that will teach you the psychology concept and communication tools the families I've consulted with have found most helpful in understanding and getting through to their children, even when they're adults. Visit ROGDRepair.com to learn more about the program and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST2025 at checkout to take 50% off your first month. That's ROGDRepair.com. So let's talk about what it means to be a licensed marriage and family therapist. Because you're saying that marriage and family therapy is hard work, but it's rewarding. At the same time, I'm not sure that the lay people in the audience necessarily understand that as LMFTs, a lot of us do spend a lot of time working with individuals. And we do that, ideally, through a family systems lens, hopefully one that does not think that cutting people off at the first faux pas is a healthy coping mechanism. But we are systemic thinkers, but increasingly working with the individuals. And I'm curious, because you went to grad school a little bit earlier than I did. When I went to grad school, I had really great instruction in marriage and family therapy. I really enjoyed my couples, family, and child classes probably more than most of my other classes. And I enjoyed learning to think systemically. And yet, so much of the work that I've ended up doing is individual. And I'm wondering how much the practice of therapy has changed. Again, since like, for example, the 60s and the inception of the AAMFT, How many people are actually going to family therapy, going to couples therapy, or let's say bringing their child to therapy because the child has a behavioral issue, but involving the parents a lot in the child's therapy? How much is this even happening? Because I think you were saying you mostly work with individuals as well, and most LMFTs I know end up working with mostly individuals.

Lisa Mustard: Yeah, so in the role I have now, I work mostly with a military population, and it's mostly individuals. Every now and then, I'll get a couple, but it's mainly individuals. If I were in private practice, I would branch into family therapy, couples therapy. I know that I have plenty of colleagues around me that do family work. Well, I should say they do marriage work. I'm not sure how many actually are doing family work these days, but a lot of couples work. I know that they're doing a lot of couples work. So yeah, I mean, I definitely think about things from a systemic perspective. I'm asking a lot of questions about how this person was raised, what they saw, the relationships they have. How do they interpret those things now? You know, we're definitely poking around in those areas. And if the issue is around, I want to be different in my relationship, then we'll work on that. It's hard when you don't have the other person in the room to give feedback, of course, to that person. But yeah, I mean, where I am and with what I do, it's a lot of individual work.

Stephanie Winn: Do you think, in general, and I apologize for asking you this question, because sometimes people ask me these really big picture questions as if I have God's perspective on what's happening on life and Earth, and I'm like, I'm a blind man feeling the leg of the elephant. All I can tell you is what this leg of the elephant feels like. Please take it with a huge grain of salt. So I'm sorry for putting you in that position, but I'm gonna do it to you anyway. Do you think that fewer couples and families are seeking therapy in that family context? Do you think that fewer therapists are willing to provide it? Do you think there are cultural norms changing? What do you think is happening here?

Lisa Mustard: I, you know, like you, I don't, I don't exactly know because all I know is where I am and what I do. I mean, I could, I could tell you stories or things I read on social media, but I don't even know how much those are true. I think there's a vocal minority on social media that is just saying whatever and then I think most therapists, if they're busy and doing their work, they don't have time to be out there, you know, posting on Instagram and Twitter about what they're seeing. So I, you know, I don't know. I really don't know what's going on out there for most therapists. It would be great, I think, if more therapists included family. When there's a child that has an issue, I think that's very important. If the presenting client or the presenting issue is a child issue, then I think the parents need to be in there. I think the family needs to be involved. I wouldn't send my kid to a therapist without the family being involved nowadays.

Stephanie Winn: I'm still curious for your perspective because you also have your podcast and you interview a lot of, I mean, exclusively therapists, right?

Lisa Mustard: On your podcast? Yeah, mainly, like 90% are therapists. Okay.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah. And that's a lot higher. I mean, I interview therapists here, but I also interview people from different disciplines and with different background stories and things like that. So you talk to therapists in that context and I guess I'm just wondering if you've gotten any insight into sort of what's the general feeling about our our willingness and our skill level and things like that in working with families because it just feels like it's on the decline. It feels like family therapy used to be something people I don't know. I can't really tell. I mean, I'm talking about things that happened before I was born. You know, when I talk about the 60s, I wasn't around for that. But I just, I'm wondering if therapists are feeling less equipped, if therapists maybe, you know, even the therapists who were trained to work with families just choose to work with individuals because it's easier and they can, and what it's gonna take to kind of move things in the different directions so that family therapy, like make family therapy great again, I guess is what I'm saying. That's a good one.

Lisa Mustard: I like that. Yeah. I'll have to start asking that question to my guests, you know, ask them about their comfort level, I know the LMFTs I usually talk to do couples work. I don't hear a lot about family work anymore, but I do hear a lot about couples work. So I'll ask that question about what they, what they see and what they think, especially the ones that are supervisors. And I'm not a supervisor. I know you had asked me that, but I'm not.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, it would be great to know what you learned from that. Maybe if you want to let me know in a follow up conversation. I mean, what do you think? Because you said that one reason that you're working primarily with military right now is because you're not in private practice. True.

Lisa Mustard: Yes, I've been working with the military population for the past, how many years, 14 years. So I do a lot of assessing and referring for the military. I don't do a whole lot of long-term therapy anymore, like when I first was out and working. I worked at a college counseling center, and then I worked in addiction recovery, and then I went straight into working with the military. So it's always been, with the military, it's always been like solution-focused brief therapy. Some couple work, but it's been a while since I've done that.

Stephanie Winn: Do you think that military men, because, I mean, it's mostly men, right? There are women, too. But that they have any particular fears or misgivings about therapy, individual or couples?

Lisa Mustard: I think the concern that they have is they're worried that something will come back to their service record. You know, if they talk to a therapist, there's always that concern. How will this affect their promotions or their accolades? Will this go on their record? You know, that kind of thing. So they're more worried, I think, about confidentiality than they are about anything.

Stephanie Winn: That's a good point. I actually remember early in my therapy career, a patient expressing a lot of concern about what diagnosis was on their record because of life insurance purposes. And I remember thinking, how bizarre. Now that I have had the life experience of being denied health insurance because of something that was in my medical record, I completely understand. You want to trust that when you're getting medical or mental health services that it's just 100% about what you need as the patient, but it does have these other ramifications that can complicate things where, you know, I don't know what exactly in my medical history made the life insurance company decide that I was not worth insuring, but if there was one particular thing in my record, and I could go back to that moment with my doctor, you know, would I too have said, oh, please don't, you know, oh, don't prescribe me that drug if that drug is the one thing that's going to mean that I can't, you know, it's just complicated. So, so I do understand that.

Lisa Mustard: Yeah. And I think that's important to share because if I was in private practice, I wouldn't work with health insurance at all because of that. I just, I'm so, I've, I've had a similar situation myself where I had to prove and fill out a questionnaire and show that you know, that it wasn't a pre-existing condition that they weren't they were going to deny me. They were. And I thought, man, just because I went through a rough patch in my life and I'm OK now, you're going to tell me that you're not going to give me health insurance? So I'm always up front with people. And, you know, honestly, like if I were to go into private practice, I'd probably go in as a coach. So you don't have to deal with any of that because. I think it's it's I don't know.

Stephanie Winn: Let me actually ask you about that, because you do offer life coaching services. And I've had a lot of questions, both from in private and public conversations. I've been on podcasts where people have asked me about this, but I also have people approach me privately about this shift from therapy to coaching. And so for me, I was doing both. The reason I opened up coaching and consulting was because I became known as this person who had a voice on the gender issue and so people from around the world started wanting to talk to me about that and I realized that they weren't asking me to be their therapist. They were looking for my understanding on this issue more than anything. So I was like, okay, I'll do coaching and consulting alongside therapy. I was doing both and then got too sick to manage all the different irons I had in the fire and decided to just narrow it down to that one thing. And now that's all I'm doing. And I find, as someone who is a public figure and has been canceled and all of that kind of stuff, that I will find it challenging whenever I do return to therapy to navigate having a public presence and a voice on controversial issues while also being in the role of therapist for some people. And what is my duty to disclose my stance to patients who don't know? I don't want my patient to feel like, Oh, your therapist has a podcast. Now you have to go and listen to their podcast. It brings up all kinds of ethical issues. But your podcast is much more just focused on therapy. So you kind of stay within the lanes a little bit more. And you do coaching. So how do you differentiate your therapy practice from your coaching practice? And how do you sort of differentiate that with your clients as well?

Lisa Mustard: So when I do therapy, I'm an employee of somebody, of an entity. When I do life coaching, it's my own LLC, my own thing. So they're very separate, completely separate. That's how I keep it going. And I really, the reason I decided to do life coaching was because I could open up to more people, because I'm only licensed to do therapy in South Carolina. So if I wanted to work, somebody wanted to work with me in, you know, Virginia, where I'm from, I couldn't work with them as a therapist, but we could do, could do coaching. I also feel more comfortable in the coaching because it's not medical model. It's very future-focused. It's very goal-oriented. Sure, we might touch on something that has caused you, you know, whatever symptom you might be experiencing, but we don't stay there. We're very future-focused and we're very, like I said, goal-oriented. Um, it's more structured for me to be a life coach. And I feel like I have more freedom and yeah, I don't know. I just, I can always. I was able to open up to more people, and I wanted to be able to reach more people. But I would do it individually. I don't do family coaching, or parent coaching, or couples coaching, just individual.

Stephanie Winn: There's that clear delineation because therapy is your job, and you have an employer. And so presumably, your employer has standard operating procedures, intake processes, criteria that you have to meet, and all that kind of stuff. Life coaching is a separate business and you say it's also solution focused. I know for me, one thing that I try to be clear with people about is I am not diagnosing or treating a mental illness, which is so much of what therapy boils down to. And a lot of people don't know that. When you are using your insurance, especially, as you pointed out, right? If you're using your health insurance and you're seeing a therapist and they're billing your insurance, You are being diagnosed and treated by that professional for a mental health condition. Now, it could be something really kind of vague and minor in the DSM, or it could be something major that they haven't chosen to discuss with you, like your therapist could have decided you have a personality disorder and that they shouldn't tell you. They might've decided that about you. You know, I don't know your therapist or who you are, but, um, you know, in any case, there's, there's a billing code for that. That's like you say, the medical model. So I think that's one of those things we, we have to do when we are both therapists and coaches is just be clear about that line. Like I'm not diagnosing or treating a mental health condition and you might have one. Right. And I'm not the person to contact in case of an emergency. Yeah, and it's been interesting, though.

Lisa Mustard: I've had some therapists in private practice who said, okay, this person's done with therapy, but I think they would be a good fit for you because of where they want to go moving forward as a life coach. So working with you as a life coach might be a good fit for them now. there, I'm always here, they need therapy. But I know how you work. And I like your style. And I think that this person could benefit from what you do. So that's been kind of a neat segue for me also into life coaching. That's, that's been something I wasn't expecting, where colleagues or peers would like, Hey, you just talked to Lisa, she might be able to, you know, be more future focused and goal oriented with you, because we've come this far with therapy, I'm here if you need me. But Give her a try. How do you work? What is your style? Like I said, it's solution focused. It's what do you want to do? Who do you want to become? What are your goals? A lot of times people aren't very clear. They just know they want to be different. So I will help them identify their values. And we'll do an assessment around their values. Which of these values is important? Do you prioritize, but you're not able to live them congruently? You might want to be over here in this value, but you don't know how to get there. So we explore all of that, and then we make a plan, and we figure out what that goal is, what that looks like, and we just go for it. Just a lot of conversations. Yeah, I mean, I enjoy it. It's really rewarding.

Stephanie Winn: What is one piece of advice that you would offer to therapists who are thinking about coaching?

Lisa Mustard: Oh, gosh. That's a good question. I think, you know, why would you want to move to coaching? What is it that, if you're thinking about it, why? And get really clear on why you want to do it. Because when you know your why, that's going to guide you. That's going to help you get to where you want to be. I know what your values are. You know, are you congruently living them out? Are you able to do that in the therapy world? Is it still fit for who you are and what you desire for your career? There's so much freedom in coaching, because it's not regulated, of course, like our licenses are. But I wouldn't get into it just because you're stuck as a therapist. I would get really clear on, you know, why. Because I'll be honest, like, I'm not taking on new clients right now because it's still talking to people. It's still giving your energy. It's still hearing the stories. It's still a lot of that. And I get enough of that right now in my day job. So it's, it's not something that I, I have a bunch of clients on the side as a, you know, my podcast is my side thing, really. And I'll take on a client here and there. But yeah, I guess that's what I would throw out there.

Stephanie Winn: I appreciate that, because I do get those questions. So it's good to hear it from your perspective. Oh, good. Is there any thread that we left that you want to tie up?

Lisa Mustard: I don't think so. I, you know, I was telling Stephanie earlier how much I appreciate you and what you're doing and your voice out there. I think you're one of the best therapist podcasters out there. Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, I listen to your show and I'm just like, man, I hope I'm as good as she is one day. So good. So yeah, I just hope everybody, I just hope everybody, you know, listening to your show I hope they realize what we do is very intimate and it's very personable, but it's also very energy consuming. If you are in therapy and you're not getting what you need, then seek out a good therapist. There are really good therapists out there. And I just want to encourage people to find the right fit and don't stay with somebody just because you've been going to them forever. If you're not growing in your therapy, then get a new therapist. That's how I want to end it.

Stephanie Winn: Thank you. Well, I think that's great advice. And so where can people find you? Sure.

Lisa Mustard: My website is lisamustard.com. You can find me over there. You can connect with me over there. You can email me, lisa at lisamustard.com. I am on social media, but I try not to be on social media because I'm really burnt out on social media. But you can always email me or connect with me that way.

Stephanie Winn: Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Lisa. It's been a pleasure. Oh, and let's recap. Your pod courses are at, what, lisamustard.com slash pod courses? That's it. You got it. And you can use my code SUMTHERAPIST to take $5 off of her already low price of $49 for the whole bundle of 27 courses. All right, Lisa. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you for listening to You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly take a moment to rate, review, share, or comment on it using your platform of choice. And of course, please remember, podcasts are not therapy, and I'm not your therapist. Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for this awesome theme song, Half Awake, and to Pods by Nick for production. For help navigating the impact of the gender craze on your family, be sure to check out my program for parents, ROGD Repair. Any resource you heard mentioned on this show, plus how to get in touch with me, can all be found in the notes and links below. Rain or shine, I hope you will step outside to breathe the air today. In the words of Max Ehrman, with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.