You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

[00:00:00] Suzannah: It came up as how do you control your negative reactions if a client is pushing your buttons? And so I explained it by saying, "Well, you just focus on your identity less. You just reduce your focus on that, and you focus [00:00:15] on your feelings of kindness for the client, which would be the meditation of loving kindness."

[00:00:19] Suzannah: And I was told by three separate professors that it was invalidating to other identities over the course of a 48-hour period. I even had one who said that that [00:00:30] would've been okay a few years ago, but it's not okay now. I assumed that I must have really explained it wrong, and that maybe I should point out a little bit more that this was coming from Buddhism.

[00:00:44] Suzannah: I had this [00:00:45] assumption that the professors, they have to understand that there is this strong connection between Buddhism and healthy thinking and therapy because there has been so much crossover in the research in, like, the last 20 years, and I just, I couldn't wrap my [00:01:00] head around the idea that they actually thought that that was bad.

[00:01:06] SKOT: You must be some kind of therapist.

[00:01:10] Stephanie: Today on the podcast, I'm welcoming Susannah [00:01:15] Alexander. She is a whistleblower on counseling education in America today. You may be familiar with her blog, Diogenes in Exile, on Substack. She's also appeared on podcasts similar to my own, like Reality Therapy with Ryan [00:01:30] Rogers.

[00:01:31] Stephanie: Today, we're going to talk about how she got involved in counseling policy and reform, hopefully some new angles on the ideological capture of our field, which we talk about so much on this podcast, and what makes it so difficult for therapists to follow their conscience. [00:01:45] Susannah, so great to have you.

[00:01:46] Stephanie: Welcome to the show. Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. I've heard great things about your work from our mutual friends. Oh, well, they-- I try. I try to do my best. I try to be thorough. [00:02:00] So it sounds like you got started on this path, uh, quite by accident as m- many, many of the most interesting people I've had on this show, uh, and I, I count myself in this category, too, like, found ourselves where we found ourselves quite by accident.[00:02:15]

[00:02:15] Stephanie: I believe you originally were pursuing a counseling degree and, and something happened. Can you tell us that story? Yes. Well, I found myself, you

[00:02:23] Suzannah: know, in need of getting back into the workforce. I had been a stay-at-home parent [00:02:30] for 25 years, 25 years, and, uh, you know, had a difficult breakup and a divorce, and I- You know, a-a-after, after having spent two, two decades at home, I [00:02:45] was a little unsure about getting back out there and, you know, what I wanted to do, and I thought that that would be a good fit for me.

[00:02:54] Suzannah: I had, uh, had, uh, a couple of great counselors while I was [00:03:00] going through my divorce, and it fit very well with a lot of the skills that I had developed being a parent, you know, trying to read my pe- read people and, you know, help them make better choices. Uh, and [00:03:15] certainly the experience that I went through gave me fertile ground to empathize with other people.

[00:03:21] Suzannah: And so it just, it seemed like the right step for where I wanted to go. And I-- my thinking was I, I really [00:03:30] enjoyed making artwork and, you know, I'm kind of an ambivert, and so I thought, you know, it's like, well, I can, you know, work on my artwork part of the time, and then when I get really frustrated with that, I can just, you know, put it over and then I can go talk to people for a while.[00:03:45]

[00:03:45] Suzannah: And then when my social energy runs out, then I can, you know, go back to working on my artwork. And I just, you know, I thought that that would be, that would be a good life. You know, that would be, you know, if you try to optimize your day [00:04:00] to have like a, you know, 70% perfect day every day, that would be it for me.

[00:04:06] Suzannah: Um, and so I looked around. I did a lot of research. I picked the program that [00:04:15] was here in Tennessee that I could go to personally. I, I had looked at several others and, uh, and I knew that counseling was the fastest way that I could get into the workforce. You know, it's a little [00:04:30] bit shorter of a degree time.

[00:04:31] Suzannah: I didn't have to get a whole PhD to start talking to people. Uh, and that was really important to me is, y-you know, I didn't want to spend a lot more time in getting, [00:04:45] going through credentialing in order to start working. I wanted to start working as quickly as I could. And so I got started in the program, and I just, I was not at all prepared for what I found there.

[00:04:59] Suzannah: It wasn't [00:05:00] in line with what I had learned about psychology up to that point. We were taught things like broaching, which is where you angle the conversation. You just kind of work the [00:05:15] conversation around to issues of race and identity, regardless of what the client had come in for. And you evaluate people based on their race.

[00:05:29] Suzannah: [00:05:30] Their-- The, the, the whole concept of identity that they were teaching us was based entirely on superficial differences between people. You know, your s- your skin color, you know, who you were [00:05:45] attracted to, um, if you had, you know, some sort of physical disability, your age, all of these, you know, really hot button things, and not at all about the choices that you made or the [00:06:00] values really that you base your choices on.

[00:06:03] Suzannah: And despite the fact that, you know, this seemed to go against, uh, a lot of knowledge that I was aware of for [00:06:15] what makes people more confident and makes their lives move easier, which usually involves thinking about yourself a little bit less and, you know, focusing on gratitude and, you know, [00:06:30] trying to find common ground.

[00:06:31] Suzannah: It was more about focusing on yourself so much that you were picking up on other things, little, little gestures that people made and, you know, getting upset about that. I mean, it just-- It, it was just-- It [00:06:45] was so bonkers inverted, I, I didn't... By the time I was done with that one semester, I felt pretty confident that anything that you would do based on what we were taught would probably be [00:07:00] malpractice in the field, because we were so focused on people's superficial identity and trying to explore that, whether that's what they wanted to talk about or not.

[00:07:11] Suzannah: Um, it, it was, it [00:07:15] was a very difficult experience, I can, I can say that for sure, because I, you know, I, I didn't fit well in with, with that. It, it seemed like I was, you know, I was definitely the oldest student there, and I had [00:07:30] not gone through the schooling program prior, just prior that, you know, had me aware that I needed to at least pay lip service to that kind of ideology.

[00:07:42] Suzannah: And so when I had [00:07:45] experiences like the Buddhist practice of the non-self, where you don't think about yourself so that you can focus more on the other person, when I was told that that was invalidating to other identities, my reaction was, "Well, [00:08:00] I have obviously explained this really terribly." Because, you know, I mean, this has 2,500 years of people teaching this to each other as [00:08:15] something helpful behind it.

[00:08:16] Suzannah: And you-- they're telling me that, that this is wrong and that this is harmful and invalidating? I just, I You know, it just didn't compute. Like, it made- It doesn't- ... no sense. It

[00:08:27] Stephanie: doesn't sound like they were teaching [00:08:30] psychology at all. I mean, they're teaching about demographics. They're obviously teaching a particular view on cultural issues.

[00:08:40] Stephanie: But what you described as a Buddhist p- practice, that [00:08:45] same principle is a psychological principle. Like, uh, the evidence is there. We know that, um, part of the science of happiness is simply to think of yourself less, right? It's, uh, that's, that's a [00:09:00] fact. It's not just Buddhist. It's a fact. And I have this conversation with people often in my coaching work because I talk all day to, you know, parents of young, young adults who are not well mentally, [00:09:15] right?

[00:09:15] Stephanie: And many of them are spending too much time thinking about themselves, and that's part of the problem. And so for example, you know, I, I had a conversation with a parent this week where they said that at one point when raising their children, they had sort of a rule where you say [00:09:30] one negative thing about yourself, well, you have to ta- say two or three positive things.

[00:09:35] Stephanie: I m- I recommended that instead they direct their kids' attention outward for the exact same reason you just said, right? Buddhism has known it for 2,500 years. Now we [00:09:45] have the brain science to prove it. So I mean, there are many branches of psychology. Understanding how our brains work, understanding the science behind that, that's part of it, right?

[00:09:54] Stephanie: Understanding the philosophy in practice, how you might help a client [00:10:00] with that is a part of it. Um, but I'm not hearing any education in psychology that you received from what you've shared so far. W- were, were all of your classes like this or was it one especially bad class? There were

[00:10:13] Suzannah: varieties of [00:10:15] this all the way through.

[00:10:16] Suzannah: Now, we did, um, in that first semester, we did take a theories class where it was just kind of a sampler and each week we would cover a different theory. Uh, you know, we did, [00:10:30] bringing up Ryan's podcast, we did do, uh, reality therapy theory. Uh, you know, we did cover things like a, a little bit dialectical behavioral therapy which is based in [00:10:45] Buddhism.

[00:10:45] Suzannah: And i- you know, we touched on acceptance and commitment therapy which was the, the variety that really spoke to me the most. And, and it was a little bit surprising to [00:11:00] me. I, I didn't say anything in the class, but there was a sugge- the suggestion that this was, uh, y- you know, this was not a, a great modality because you're asking people to [00:11:15] accept what reality is.

[00:11:17] Suzannah: And, you know, if they're in bad conditions or something, you know, you're not, uh, getting out there in some sort of a way to try and fix things. You're just trying to encourage them to [00:11:30] say, "Well, this is your reality." You know, and like try to, trying to accept the things that are real. And that was the closest that we came really to getting into the nuts and bolts of [00:11:45] psychology.

[00:11:46] Suzannah: You know, we also had, uh, um, the, the class where, you know, we actually did, you know, talking to each other, relational work and that sort of thing. So, you [00:12:00] know, most of that though was dominated by trying to learn how to broach, which is take the conversation around to issues of race, you know, or rather than in how do we, you know, try [00:12:15] to talk to the person.

[00:12:16] Suzannah: In fact, we were- Clinical skills ... Yes. Yes, we were encouraged in that class not to ask questions. And so what we ended up doing was kind of just reflecting what [00:12:30] the person had just said before in a very Rogerian kind of a way. Um, it, it was not my favorite. Even when we were trying to do things that were more clinical, um, it, it just felt [00:12:45] very stilted to me and did not feel authentic to me to try and function in that way.

[00:12:52] Suzannah: But the, the biggest thing that, you know, my takeaway from that class is that, you know, we've got to figure out a way to make these people to talk about [00:13:00] race and, you know, their sexual habits and, you know, things that- Hmm ... you know, I, I just, I didn't, it didn't make sense to me that we were going in those places if that's not what the [00:13:15] client came in for.

[00:13:15] Suzannah: If the client came in for me and said that they're struggling with those issues, you know, sure. You know, let, let's have that conversation. Um, but to me, it was, it was really a perversion of what we were there for. Um, and it was [00:13:30] very much framed as this is essential as part of being culturally competent.

[00:13:38] Suzannah: There was a lot of talk about cultural competence. Uh, like we, we also, that semester we [00:13:45] had-- the other two classes were groups class and, uh, ethics. And groups class, we ended up talking about cultural competency most of the time. You know, we did a little bit of group work, uh, [00:14:00] but it, it always was filtered back through cultural competency.

[00:14:04] Suzannah: I, I later learned- There's so much

[00:14:07] Stephanie: more

[00:14:07] Suzannah: to group dynamics Yeah. Well, I, I later learned that the accreditation stand- standard calls for [00:14:15] That kind of multicultural competency and diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology to be immersive in all of the classes. So that's what- Well, and

[00:14:28] Stephanie: that's- Yeah ... that's what [00:14:30] you discovered, and that's what we're gonna talk about, right?

[00:14:32] Stephanie: But starting with your experience here, um, I do wanna, like, steel man a little bit the, the pushback over acceptance and commitment therapy, because I feel like the [00:14:45] devil's advocate position that you articulated, I wanna say yes and to that. I feel like this is one of those issues that can become so black and white.

[00:14:55] Stephanie: The people who espouse what they call a critical social justice [00:15:00] mentality, uh, y- you sorta neatly summarized one of their principles, um, when you were describing the argument against acceptance and commitment therapy, which is that if someone's in a bad situation, you shouldn't [00:15:15] encourage them to stay and just get comfortable and accept it and commit to it.

[00:15:18] Stephanie: And it's like, fair enough. What kind of bad situation are we talking about? Domestic violence? No, that's a situation where, uh, the role of a counselor might need to be more of a, [00:15:30] an advocate, more of a resource, more, you know, skills for getting out of that situation. Similarly, uh, oftentimes clients come to us in therapy stuck in a dead-end job, um, wasting time in a relationship that's [00:15:45] not leading to a happy marriage, you know, in a variety of situations that they're looking to change, and the role of the counselor is to ultimately help that person discover what is in the way of perhaps changing their external circumstances if [00:16:00] they're not making them happy or if they're not aligned with their values, perhaps.

[00:16:03] Stephanie: Right? Uh, absolutely. Um, but so I wanted to steel man that position because I'm like, "Okay, I get it." Like, I've, I've definitely, you know, both as a, as [00:16:15] a patient and as a therapist, y- you encounter situations where, where change in external circumstances is warranted, and the clinical work is about what is getting in your way of advocating for yourself or taking that next step, right?

[00:16:29] Stephanie: [00:16:30] But that's not what they mean when, like, and I know you know this, but I wanna make sure our audience knows this. They don't mean if you're in a dead-end relationship, get out and find the love of your life. If you're in a job that's not your highest purpose, go [00:16:45] find the one where you can make the biggest impact.

[00:16:46] Stephanie: That's not what they mean. They mean if you're in a capitalist society, you should try to overthrow capitalism, which is like, what kind of, like, life path exactly is that for this person? [00:17:00] And how are they gonna survive? And, and, and how is that, how's that gonna work for their mental health? How are they gonna be able to take care of themselves if all day, every day- They're operating on, on this untested hypothesis that we'd all be [00:17:15] better off if we could change literally everything about how society is structured.

[00:17:19] Stephanie: How does, how does, um, taking up that mantle lead to improved mental health outcomes? Um, you know, one of the principles of good mental health is, like, changing what you can change and accepting what you can't, so [00:17:30] this is more, like, on the, like, what you can't side. I just felt like I needed to articulate that because, you know, the critical social justice worldview, it's so hyperbolic and hysterical, but there's, like, always a grain of truth in their perspective.

[00:17:41] Stephanie: They just go to crazy places with it.

[00:17:44] Suzannah: [00:17:45] Yes. Yes. And, and that is the, uh, that was the frame that, that they were putting on it is it was more of a, a, a blanket sort of frame in that you don't ever want to [00:18:00] accept something that is, you know, if you're, if you're living in poverty, you should go and fight, and that sort of thing.

[00:18:05] Suzannah: Um, a- and, you know, it, it was just- Have you

[00:18:09] Stephanie: met people living in poverty?

[00:18:12] Suzannah: Thank God so much. Which I have.

[00:18:14] Stephanie: So let [00:18:15] me tell you a little bit s- a little something about people living in poverty. They're too busy working, and they're too freaking tired at the end of the day to spearhead your revolution, woke counseling students.

[00:18:29] Stephanie: Sorry, I just... [00:18:30] Try meeting a real poor person. Okay. Sorry. I'm jumping ahead. But, and so how far did you go in this program? How long were you there?

[00:18:39] Suzannah: I went, I'm, I made it through one semester. I had really good grades, [00:18:45] uh, but by the end of the semester, uh, I was experiencing a lot of friction from the faculty and from the other students.

[00:18:54] Suzannah: And they decided be- because I had not renounced the Buddhist [00:19:00] practice, that I was, I had not absorbed their values enough to be safe for practicum, that I would be- Oh, they

[00:19:10] Stephanie: wanted you to give up your Buddhism?

[00:19:13] Suzannah: Yes. And [00:19:15] to- Whoa ... absorb their values. And they have it, I, I, I can't remember if I was aware of this at the time, but in the, in the program handbook that's available now, if you look at their [00:19:30] program handbook, there's a rubric in there where it talks about, uh, how you, how they judge your professional disposition.

[00:19:39] Suzannah: And this is something that comes straight from the accreditation standard. But it, and, and it's, it's [00:19:45] kind of tucked away in the glossary. But it says that they will evaluate your per- professional dispositions, which includes your values, beliefs, commitments, and behaviors, uh, [00:20:00] within a world with marginalized populations.

[00:20:04] Suzannah: And so- When you look at the rubric, it talks about, you know, well, what is your self-awareness? And your self-awareness by their standards should be being [00:20:15] aware of your whiteness all of the time and, uh, you know, recognizing that, you know, you, you have this, whatever that is, whiteness, and that you need to be accounting for that at all times.

[00:20:29] Suzannah: [00:20:30] And because I had not done that, I was deemed to be potentially harmful to clients, and therefore I was not, uh, going to be allowed to move on into practicum. I could come and take the other classes, but it would take a minimum of [00:20:45] an additional year, you know, i- if at some point they decided that I had absorbed their values well enough.

[00:20:51] Suzannah: And I said no. You know, it didn't make sense to me. I mean, it had been-- the, the last [00:21:00] six weeks had been so emotionally, uh, tumultuous, it just wasn't worth it to me to continue. And, you know, I, I-- it was a horrible experience. I mean, I, I was [00:21:15] just, I was, uh, crying regularly because it was so confusing and, and they-- I had been confronted in the small groups class that we had as part of our small [00:21:30] groups by, uh, the other students that, you know, I needed to be more culturally competent, you know, which, uh, looking back on it now, I guess I needed to, uh, like [00:21:45] de-center myself.

[00:21:46] Suzannah: You know, I, I mean, like, even, even though I know better now what they intended with those terms then, it's so nonsensical to me. It continues to be so [00:22:00] nonsensical to me. It's hard for me to just kind of wrap my head around how did we even get here. Um, but yes, they, you know, I, I, I was not doing a good job with apologizing [00:22:15] for my white heterosexual self on a regular basis.

[00:22:18] Suzannah: Oh, yes, cisgender too. That was also bad. Um, and, you know, that I was healthy and, you know, all, all of those things, you know, I should have tried to make [00:22:30] myself smaller and, uh, you know, I, I don't know, whatever counts for centering other people, you know, by saying, "You know, here, you're more important than me."

[00:22:39] Suzannah: Which coming out of the, the marriage and the experience, and what I actually learned in [00:22:45] therapy from, you know, other counselors and professionals was just absolutely the antithesis of what I had been through. And it was just, it was so backward. Uh, and you know, [00:23:00] it, it took me a long time To square the fact that I was being taught to do something that was so antithetical to good mental health that, you know, I, I, [00:23:15] I didn't want...

[00:23:16] Suzannah: I- if I accepted that this is what they were actually teaching, then I had to accept that there's something really, really, really wrong in this university, and maybe with the profession at large. [00:23:30] Because you don't, you don't teach something that is so out of alignment with what good therapy is without there being a lot of structure to support that.

[00:23:44] Suzannah: And [00:23:45] that's when I started to, you know, once I got out and, you know, kind of put myself back together and I wasn't just a blubbering mess, uh, anymore, which I was for several months afterward, um, you know, then I started to dig into [00:24:00] the history and figure out, you know, what is actually going on here.

[00:24:03] Stephanie: And we'll get to that in a moment.

[00:24:05] Stephanie: But just to be with what you've already shared, it's so bitterly ironic. You know, here you were with your own diverse [00:24:15] life experience. Being white doesn't mean that you don't contribute to a diverse society. You had the experience of being a mom, going through divorce. I don't know anything else about your life, but I'm sure there's some [00:24:30] stuff there.

[00:24:30] Stephanie: You're a Buddhist. As a, as a Buddhist, that makes-- that's a minority experience, right? And, and the fact that... Now, I don't know, I'm, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're being real and not exaggerating when, when you say that they, [00:24:45] uh, essentially treated your Buddhism as a problem. But it's so culturally insensitive, right?

[00:24:49] Stephanie: That, that someone comes into a program with sincerely held beliefs in a free society, uh, religious, spiritual [00:25:00] values, uh, whatever that Buddhist framework was doing for you. And then there's a whole history in the psychotherapy field of being influenced by Buddhist practices, even if, you know, some of the practitioners might have themselves been atheist or Christian.

[00:25:13] Stephanie: Buddhism has had a huge influence [00:25:15] in psychology. Mindfulness, like you said, DBT, right? So the- there's so much bitter irony to their lack of respect for your demographics, your background, while saying, you know, [00:25:30] that your role, because of this one demographic, because of your skin color, that that means that your role needs to essentially be masochistic, self-flagellating.

[00:25:42] Stephanie: And I don't know [00:25:45] any patient that wants that in a therapist. Like, uh, I mean, maybe a patient who's sadistic, who's looking to act something out relationally with a naive therapist [00:26:00] Might get something rather perverse out of that type of patient-therapist dynamic. But the, the dynamic that you just described where you perceived all this pressure and, and I don't think you're exaggerating because I've talked to so many [00:26:15] people, and this was brewing when I went to grad school in 2010, 2011, 2013.

[00:26:22] Stephanie: Um, this was brewing back then. I got a taste of it. It's just gotten a lot, lot worse since then. So I mean, who wants [00:26:30] their therapist to hate themselves, right? Who wants their therapist to have no boundaries? Like, you wanna talk to someone who's healthy, right? You wanna talk to someone who respects [00:26:45] themselves, someone who can set the frame for deep work.

[00:26:50] Stephanie: Um, and I, I don't, I don't doubt that what you're saying is true, and if any listeners do, y- there's a lot more episodes of this [00:27:00] podcast that corroborate what this woman experienced. What year was this, by the way?

[00:27:04] Suzannah: This was in 2022, um, the tail end of it, so from August till, uh, January of 2023.

[00:27:14] Stephanie: [00:27:15] And- And you, you were told-- Hold on.

[00:27:16] Stephanie: You were told that you couldn't go on to practicum. They, they, they screened for that that early? After one semester you were supposed to apply to go on to

[00:27:24] Suzannah: practicum? Well, the practicum would have been in the spring semester. So they [00:27:30] were- Would've been your second semester? Yes.

[00:27:32] Stephanie: Mm-hmm. Whoa. That's early.

[00:27:34] Suzannah: Yeah. And but I do want to, uh, you know, I, I guess to be more complete or to be fair, when I initially talked about the, [00:27:45] the doctrine of the non-self, I didn't directly explain it as Buddhist. I had some assumption that they would understand that that's where it came from and that it was healthy. [00:28:00] I presented it as, you know, it came up as how do you control your negative reactions if a client is pushing your buttons?

[00:28:09] Suzannah: And so I explained it by saying, "Well, you just, you know, you focus on your identity [00:28:15] less. You just reduce your focus on that, and you focus on, you know, your feelings of kindness for the client," which would be the meditation of loving kindness. And I just did it in a very, uh You know, non-religious sort [00:28:30] of way, 'cause I was aware that it was the underlying theory, uh, of two different parts of, you know, clinical therapy.

[00:28:38] Suzannah: You know, dialectical behavioral and acceptance of commitment, and, you know, it just is generally seen as a good, healthy [00:28:45] practice. So when I was told, and I was told by three separate professors that it was invalidating to other identities over the course of a 48-hour period, um, uh, yeah, I even had one who said that, "You know, well, that would've been [00:29:00] okay a few years ago, but it's not okay now."

[00:29:02] Suzannah: I assumed that I must have really explained it wrong, and that maybe I should point out a little bit more that this was coming from Buddhism [00:29:15] so that, you know, I, I just, I, I was, I had this assumption that the professors, they, they have to understand that there is this strong connection between Buddhism and healthy thinking and therapy, because there has been so [00:29:30] much crossover in the research in, like, the last 20 years.

[00:29:33] Suzannah: And I just, I couldn't wrap my head around the idea that, that they actually thought that that was bad. And- Yeah,

[00:29:43] Stephanie: okay Let me, let [00:29:45] me recap, make sure I got this correctly. The question was: how do you as a therapist respond when a patient gets aggressive with you? And did they add any stipulations about that the patient is getting [00:30:00] aggressive over a demographic issue?

[00:30:03] Stephanie: No. The patient is- No. So they didn't, they didn't even frame the question as the patient has a problem with you because of your demographics. They didn't put it that way. They said, [00:30:15] "The patient's getting aggressive. What do you do?" Yeah. And you said, you said, "Well, I don't get defensive. I don't think about myself.

[00:30:25] Stephanie: I maintain loving kindness toward the patient." I mean, that's a solid starting [00:30:30] point answer. You know, as you go on in counseling education, there's more that you can do to, you know, understand aggression. Uh, at what point does a therapist actually need to set boundaries depending on the level of aggression and how it's being expressed?

[00:30:43] Stephanie: And working with [00:30:45] countertransference, what can you learn from how you feel about the patient and from how the patient seems to feel about you, their, their transference? Like, those are all layers on top of that foundation. But I think that saying as a starting point, "Well, I would try not to get defensive and try to [00:31:00] focus on my unconditional positive regard for them," that's a really good starting point, Susanna.

[00:31:04] Stephanie: What the hell could they find wrong with that?

[00:31:06] Suzannah: I, I, I think that it was just that I used the word identity, and I said, "You try to reduce your focus- Oh ... [00:31:15] on your own identity so that you can focus on the other person." And-

[00:31:19] Stephanie: And by that you meant, like- M- my me-ness, my like- Right,

[00:31:25] Suzannah: your ego ...

[00:31:26] Stephanie: the part of me that's hurt when someone attacks me.[00:31:30]

[00:31:30] Stephanie: Yeah. Ah, okay. These people are crazy.

[00:31:37] Suzannah: Yes. Yes. And, and that was, like, the, the second week of class maybe. Um, and there was a- [00:31:45] another student there who, you know, kind of snapped back that, you know, it's a privilege not to have to think about your identity. And, like, that didn't compute for me. You know, I, I noticed that it was kind of an irritated response [00:32:00] from this student, but, you know, it's just like that's kinda weird.

[00:32:04] Suzannah: Like, you know, why would you wanna focus on your- Because, because

[00:32:07] Stephanie: some people have- ... because some people have an immutable genetic condition where their brains are [00:32:15] stuck 24/7 on obsessing over identity. That's not how brains work. That's not how genetics work. Sorry, I just wanna poke holes in their arguments.

[00:32:23] Stephanie: I'm really getting ahead. I think I'm in a goofy mood today. I apologize, unless our listeners like it. Uh, let me know in the comments if you like it when I'm in a goofy [00:32:30] mood. Maybe I'll repeat whatever I did today. Um, okay. So, so you got sick of all of this, and, and they... I, I'm also surprised they do practicum so early.

[00:32:41] Stephanie: That concerns me too. I'm like, "Why do they even do practicum [00:32:45] second semester in the first place?" What kind of practicum positions were they offering?

[00:32:49] Suzannah: They had a clinic there at the, you know, inside the, the training center that students could come to for presumably not [00:33:00] difficult problems. But they had placements in different locations around the Knoxville area as well.

[00:33:07] Suzannah: Um, I think initially I was going to be placed in one of those, and then as the semester went on, they decided, [00:33:15] "Oh, no. This one's too, too hot to go there." And they were gonna keep me in the local clinic, and then, you know, just shut out altogether.

[00:33:26] Stephanie: It's like if they hate White people so much, why even let [00:33:30] White people into their programs?

[00:33:31] Stephanie: Why not just, why not just be like, "Sorry, this is only a program for non-Whites. Non-Whites only." Like, there's no, there's no way. There's no way to win, right? Like, you have to be obsessed with identity 24... Okay. So, so [00:33:45] you, you ended up dropping out and doing your research on how this came to be, and now that's what you do.

[00:33:51] Stephanie: You have your, your blog about it. You go on podcasts about it. Tell us the rest of that journey. Your trans-identified kid won't listen to [00:34:00] reason, because reason isn't what they need right now. They need a parent who knows how to communicate in an empathic yet strategic manner ROGD Repair gives you over 120 lessons in the psychology and communication tools that [00:34:15] actually work when normal parenting doesn't.

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[00:34:37] Suzannah: what happened when I came out, I, I was really split when i- initially I came out. You know, I, [00:34:45] I, I was trying to wrap my head around they were really serious.

[00:34:50] Suzannah: You know, like, you know, it's like, it-- I, I just kept going, "You cannot be serious that you really think that this is the right way to be." [00:35:00] And so for the first few months, it was just kind of accepting, no, they really were serious that, that that kind of thinking was bad and that Buddhism was suspect [00:35:15] now as a practice, uh, and that, you know, my immutable characteristics precluded me from being a good therapist if I didn't apologize for them on the [00:35:30] regular and do the work, which, you know, it, it took me a little while to figure out, you know, what that meant, which was just make myself as small as possible and, you know, not ask for anything and, you know, put forward other people's [00:35:45] interests above my own, because that is just such a great way to be in the world.

[00:35:50] Suzannah: Um, and, you know, as I went through that and I, I filed complaints. You know, I, I-- within, you know, just a few weeks of coming [00:36:00] out, I immediately filed a, a discrimination complaint. I didn't think it would go anywhere, and it didn't. They ultimately didn't even follow their, their own policy, and I documented all of that.

[00:36:13] Suzannah: Um, but [00:36:15] I started, you know, a- as, as I got, you know, past a few months, I reached out to different people as I was able to, and I got connected with, uh, Fair For All, and I started [00:36:30] to... You know, I, I-- Initially, when I was still trying to work through this, one of the things that I did is I tried writing some fairy tales, 'cause that's something that I do to just-- I [00:36:45] enjoy writing fairy tales, but it's also a good way to process what you're thinking.

[00:36:49] Suzannah: To

[00:36:49] Stephanie: process

[00:36:50] Suzannah: things

[00:36:50] Stephanie: symbolically through stories.

[00:36:52] Suzannah: Yes. And, and at one point, I, I started to realize, why am I trying to rewrite Animal Farm? [00:37:00] And once I made that connection, it was kind of like- Whoa, you're trying to rewrite Animal Farm. And I started to notice some other patterns in some of the other stories that I wrote, and I'm like, "This is really-- this is [00:37:15] bad, and it is worse than I am currently accepting that it is right now."

[00:37:22] Suzannah: And that's when I started to dig into the history, and I started to-- 'cause I, I had, um, [00:37:30] w- when I, when I stepped away, when I got close to where I stepped away, I had started looking at other programs. You know, it's like, well, you know, I'll just transfer, you know? I'll, I'll go to a different one. I'll go to an online school, you know?

[00:37:41] Suzannah: It's like they can't stop me. But I also had this [00:37:45] competing voice in my head that's like, "Are you sure you really wanna continue in this?" You know, where, where exactly is the problem? Is the problem in just that one program, or is it bigger than that? And [00:38:00] as I thought through it, I, I started to recognize that it's, it has to be bigger than just that one program.

[00:38:10] Suzannah: You know, if for no other reason than at the [00:38:15] time that I was there, it was very much connected with the Chi Sigma Iota, which is the, uh, that's the honor society for counseling graduate students, and that's the [00:38:30] conduit to leadership in the profession. So if you wanted to move into leadership positions as a counseling professor at some point or if you wanted to be an accreditor [00:38:45] or something, you know, you would want to be part of this honor society first, and that gives you the credentials.

[00:38:52] Suzannah: Like, if you wanted to sit on a licensing board, you'd have a much easier time if you were already connected through this honor [00:39:00] society. And the woman who was in charge of the program, I found this out as I did my research, was also the president of the ACES [00:39:15] organization at the same time as I was in that program.

[00:39:20] Suzannah: And so ACES is the professional organization for educators and for supervisors, so it's [00:39:30] a branch of the American Counseling Association specifically for educators, and she was the president. So that kind of set me back for a minute, and I'm like, if this [00:39:45] is the program that is created by the person who is the president of this big group for all of the people that are teaching this- This is much, much bigger [00:40:00] than just this one program, and it's probably much, much worse.

[00:40:05] Suzannah: And it was at that point that I started to accept that this is-- it's a totalitarian philosophy. I, I don't know what else to call it. [00:40:15] Uh, but they want to tell you how to think. I mean, a-and that's what I was, that's what I was dinged on repeatedly, is my Buddhist thinking process. You know, [00:40:30] my thoughts were at issue.

[00:40:32] Suzannah: I was also told that my thinking was too legalistic and, y-you know, a-and, and too concrete at a, at a different point. You know, it was, it was all about I wasn't [00:40:45] thinking right, and that's just wrong. You know, nobody has the right to tell you how to think. And so I, I started to dig into the history, and that's when I started to find out that philosophically [00:41:00] this goes back to the late '80s.

[00:41:02] Suzannah: There's a document called "Counseling Futures" which came out of a convention amongst most of the leadership in the counseling [00:41:15] profession, where they got together and they said, "Well," it's like, you know, "what do we want the future of counseling to be?" And it starts out in the beginning, it's like, "Well, you know, it's usually a bad idea to predict the future, but we're gonna do it anyway because, you know, we have [00:41:30] this under control."

[00:41:30] Suzannah: It's kind of how it's, uh, led in there. But they specifically state in there that diversity is important, we live in a multicultural society, and that the profession needs to [00:41:45] use the profession, the professional space, in order to impress on clients that, you know, we live in a diverse world, and that that needs to be [00:42:00] appreciated.

[00:42:00] Suzannah: And that really set me back because immediately, you know, obviously I recognize, you know, it's like you're not supposed to use the professional space to push your values on anyone. Uh, and clearly [00:42:15] that's what this document was calling for. And when I started to go from there to research the textbooks, you can see it in the textbooks.

[00:42:25] Suzannah: Some of them explicitly say that the profession [00:42:30] needs to be politicized and that it needs to be used in order to impress on clients how to behave. I mean, there, there's a whole book called "Decolonizing Therapy" which is [00:42:45] about using therapy to upend this idea of colonization, and I, I would describe it as fomenting More, ooh, you know, relational [00:43:00] issues over racism, and to very much see other races in an antagonistic way.

[00:43:08] Suzannah: But that book is being used as a textbook in, you know, a, a handful of other [00:43:15] schools across the country, and there are varieties of that in the more popular textbooks that are being used elsewhere. And, you know, once I started to [00:43:30] find these indicators, you know, like i- it started from putting things together and recognizing that my imagination was telling me to write Animal Farm, and then going to look [00:43:45] and seeing what the documents said, what the history said, who was in what position in leadership in ACES and the ACA.

[00:43:57] Suzannah: And the more that I dug, [00:44:00] the more that I saw this material, which was just so out of bounds.

[00:44:05] Stephanie: It's so insulting that all of this is done in the name of diversity, because they really claim to [00:44:15] speak for a lot of people that they have no business speaking for. Like, there are so many people from different ethnicities and nationalities, uh, that would not feel comfortable with this [00:44:30] way of treating people either, who don't wanna be reduced to the stereotypes that they've been reduced to and the expectations that have been put upon them and, and the things that have been said in their name.

[00:44:42] Stephanie: Like, the people who [00:44:45] hold these reductionistic, totalitarian beliefs, they don't wanna accept that, like, a lot of African Americans are deeply religious, for example, right? They don't wanna accept that. [00:45:00] You know? That, that threatens their beliefs, right? Because Black people are oppressed, and Christianity is oppressive.

[00:45:05] Stephanie: You can't have Black Christians according to them. Like, that's just one of many ways in which it's, it's hypocritical, and it's, like, so [00:45:15] daring and so insulting. Ugh. It's like, how many of these people have ever even, like, been outside the country? I, I don't

[00:45:25] Suzannah: know. A- and, uh, like, it's, it was so baffling, and that was one of [00:45:30] the challenges that I had was they were, you know, talking about, you know, this was culture, but what they were defining as culture was all racial differences, and there was no [00:45:45] nuance there for, you know, well, like, if, if somebody has, like, dark skin tones and- Who say they grew up in the United States and, you know, had some connection to whatever historical [00:46:00] issue might cause, uh, you know, might cause them, uh, to, to think about things or struggle with things in a certain way.

[00:46:09] Suzannah: Would you treat somebody who just moved here from, you know, [00:46:15] uh, you know, Madagascar in the same way? Y- you know, uh, somebody, you know, who, you know, had just moved here from the Ivory Coast, or is that the same because the color is the same? You know, are, are, are... I- is, [00:46:30] is that the, the, the fundamental difference between people?

[00:46:34] Suzannah: And the answer is yes, that is how they are defining people or separating them out. So if you're, you know, if you moved here [00:46:45] from Kurdistan and your skin is pale, you're a White person. Even if you just got here this morning, you have privilege, and you need to, uh, check it and, you know, stop oppressing people, even if you [00:47:00] don't even speak English yet or, you know, whatever your situation is.

[00:47:03] Suzannah: I mean, it's just, it's so absurd. It's so absurd. It's hard for me to accept that,

[00:47:09] Stephanie: you know, this is real, but Let's unpack what they're really saying about themselves and their motives, [00:47:15] because the people who sincerely and aggressively believe these things are sadistic. That's the psychological term for this, wanting to see others suffer, right?

[00:47:24] Stephanie: When you have that feeling that no amount of suffering on your part is enough, they just want you to beat yourself up and hate [00:47:30] yourself, you're dealing with a sadist if someone makes you feel that way, right?

[00:47:34] SKOT: Yeah.

[00:47:34] Stephanie: And, and so if they don't want you, a, you know, middle-aged White woman, you know, divorced mother, Buddhist, [00:47:45] if they don't want you to be okay, do they want the average counseling patient to be okay?

[00:47:52] Stephanie: Who gets to be okay? Who gets to thrive? Who gets to be happy? Who gets to be successful? Who gets to be healthy? Who gets to be [00:48:00] wealthy? Does anybody? Is, is anybody allowed to, uh, seek their own flourishing outside of this destructive set of beliefs? I mean, it's, it's incredibly aggressive to patients, right?

[00:48:14] Stephanie: It [00:48:15] presumes that the average patient-- It presumes that all patients, uh, are on board with the same agenda. Um, and, and how, who, who is that serving? You know, my, my field [00:48:30] is marriage and family therapy, and when the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, it was founded in the 1960s, a lot more Americans were married and had families Like marriage and family were a more central part of the culture.[00:48:45]

[00:48:45] Stephanie: Um, so it made sense to have a- an emphasis on m- marriage and family. And also, uh, it's my understanding that, um, it was pretty, uh, progressive to [00:49:00] recognize that an individual's not in isolation, right? The therapy patient exists in a social context, which the social justice, the critical social justice people have taken this concept really to, like, a cr- a crazy level.

[00:49:13] Stephanie: Um, [00:49:15] but something like marriage and family therapy is designed to see the individual in the relational context that can actually be improved, right? Like your relationships with the [00:49:30] people that you know. Right? And these beliefs, like what relationships are improved by them? Like, are you just supposed to hate everyone until they agree to drop all their other priorities and [00:49:45] take up, uh, arms against the system and like...

[00:49:48] Stephanie: Yeah. Oh, sorry. I'm, I'm going on another soapbox. So okay, so you start doing your research. You discovered that it's not, it wasn't a problem of this one institution. It [00:50:00] was something much bigger than that. What else did you discover?

[00:50:02] Suzannah: As I tracked back through the history, you know, there had been this series of meetings starting, you know, with the early one that was written down and [00:50:15] recorded in, uh, Counseling Futures.

[00:50:18] Suzannah: And that, uh, that incident or, or that, that particular convention played out into [00:50:30] another convention about 10 years later. There's like a, a set of meetings. The first one was in the late '80s, and then the next one is in the late '90s. And as they go through this [00:50:45] process of trying to build the profession, so in the CACREP, which is the accreditor, that was new in the '80s, and they were trying to, you know, a- and I understand what they were [00:51:00] trying to do, is they were trying to define what the profession was going to be.

[00:51:05] Suzannah: So, uh, initially you had psychologists, and there was one license, and pretty much everybody [00:51:15] used it. And there were some changes in the law that caused the psychologists to start to lock down their license and exclude people because they wanted to [00:51:30] firm up what, what it would be What it meant to be a psychologist and other professions did the same.

[00:51:38] Suzannah: You know, you said social work doing the same. You have marriage and family therapists doing the same. Uh, [00:51:45] and so you had counselors, and there was a general anxiety about how do we define ourselves, because they came out of guidance counselors and even today, counseling is still-- school [00:52:00] counseling is, is associated with the rest of the counseling establishment.

[00:52:06] Suzannah: They're taught we had school counselors in the same class as us, so K through 12 school counselors, same curriculum. And [00:52:15] they were trying to define and create a space for themselves, and what they landed on was advocacy. The Chi Sigma Iota, the honor society, decided that that [00:52:30] would be the hallmark of the profession, and everybody went along with it.

[00:52:35] Suzannah: And when they got pushback from other people in the groups, they just didn't invite them to the meetings anymore. And the [00:52:45] series of convention became invitation only. And, you know, they decided, well, you know, we're gonna have, CACREP is going to be our accreditor, and they didn't invite other accreditors when [00:53:00] they had further meetings.

[00:53:01] Suzannah: So like there's the other accreditor is NPCAC, and those are for counselors who go through training that's based in schools of psychology in universities, [00:53:15] as opposed to most counselors where their program is based in the school of education at the university. And so there's all of this inter-profession tension [00:53:30] that shaped where it ended up today.

[00:53:34] Suzannah: And like I can understand wanting to define these different things and, you know, set some parameters and try and have some, some [00:53:45] sort of a standard. But I think even with the best of intentions, they just weren't thinking about what's this gonna look like, you know, 20, 30 years down the road. And there was [00:54:00] already an ethical gap from that very first meeting where there was thrown out there as one of their 12 preferred futures that we use the counseling space to impress on [00:54:15] clients the importance of accepting diversity.

[00:54:18] Suzannah: And It seems like, a- a- and I've seen this in some other context as well, but y- you start out with something, you know, like you're, like you're planting a [00:54:30] seed, and it's just gonna go forward from wherever it is that, that you started it. So you need to be really careful about what you include in that initial offering, 'cause it's just going [00:54:45] to, it's just going to explode from there and grow from whatever that position is.

[00:54:51] Suzannah: So if you look at, if you look at the United States as something that was comparable, you know, we start out with [00:55:00] this idea of this Constitution and, uh, social contract and, uh, the rule of law in these other places, and it, it, it mushroomed and grew into something very healthy. [00:55:15] And then you had other in-- You know, with inside of that, you have this growing as a competing idea to it.

[00:55:24] Suzannah: It isn't necessarily, that doesn't necessarily have to have been the intent, but that is how it functions. [00:55:30] And so when they started with those, with those bones, the only thing that really you could build was something that was going to be exclusionary, because that was built in from the very beginning.

[00:55:44] Suzannah: You [00:55:45] know, something that was going to impress on people what they needed to do, and something that was going to function as advocacy, however it is that that was being currently defined. And, [00:56:00] you know, so you get to today, and it's functioning exactly as you would expect from where it was started, and you just have further development of these [00:56:15] same ideas kind of working in ever-tightening loops.

[00:56:19] Suzannah: You know, if you start out with this idea that multiculturalism is definitely a good thing, and that's what we have, and we need to, you know, find a way to [00:56:30] accommodate it without ever interrogating the i- the assumption that this is a good thing, you know, this is, this is where you

[00:56:37] Stephanie: end up. So CACREP stands for the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related [00:56:45] Educational Programs.

[00:56:46] Stephanie: That's CACREP, if anyone wants to look it up for themselves. An organization needs to have a mission, right? And ideally, it has one mission, and any other side missions are [00:57:00] unified as, as part of that larger mission. So i- if CACREP has a mission to serve ultimately the, the people who are supposed to benefit from counseling, the patients, then that should be [00:57:15] the sole mission, and anything that conflicts with that Should be thrown out, right?

[00:57:21] Stephanie: We with each other so far, right? Yeah. I see you nodding. Yep, yep. Like, it's... So the moment-- Okay, I mean, let's, let's use an [00:57:30] analogy. If I go to a doctor for a medical condition that I have, I want to know that that doctor has one job in that moment. In the moment that my doctor's with me, their [00:57:45] job is to help me and my health, right?

[00:57:48] Stephanie: If, if they have, let's say, an incentive to sell a certain drug, if they're being paid by a pharmaceutical company to recommend a certain drug, the moment that [00:58:00] incentive it enters the picture, they have mixed motives, right? Their actions are not completely aligned with what their job description is. Um, all of their decisions should be based on what's gonna help me be the healthiest, right?

[00:58:14] Stephanie: And, [00:58:15] and that's their job in the 15 minutes that they're with me, and then it should be the same for the next person. Um, in therapy, you have one job. Your job is the mental health of that patient, [00:58:30] and I think we know enough about mental health to know that it's not mentally healthy to walk around hating people, like, as a way of life , you know?[00:58:45]

[00:58:45] Stephanie: Like, uh, I mean, it's, it's okay to have hatred occasionally if, if circumstances call for it. Uh, there's, there's a place in life for every emotion, right? But, like, I think there, there are enough kind of basic principles of [00:59:00] sound mental health that are just, you know, pretty practical that themselves are adequate foundations that are, that are connected to the mission of serving the health of that individual patient.

[00:59:14] Stephanie: Like, for [00:59:15] example, it's good for that patient to be on good terms with their family if possible, right? We know that something like going no contact is a last resort. I mean, I wish, I wish, I wish that was commonly agreed on. So there are enough [00:59:30] principles that are tied in with that purpose that there's really no need to invent a second or a third purpose.

[00:59:37] Stephanie: But the moment you say that we need to impress upon the patient, the individual, the importance of cultural [00:59:45] diversity, well, is that connected to their mental health or not? Like, uh, what does that have to do with the mental health of the individual? The therapist having an agenda for them, what does that have to do with their wellbeing?

[00:59:58] Stephanie: What if [01:00:00] that patient is, um, in a cohesive society that happens to be not that diverse, right? What if they're actually happy- [01:00:15] Attending their local church where everyone is not that different from them. Like, is that a problem?

[01:00:24] Stephanie: Okay, sorry, that's my rant.

[01:00:25] Suzannah: Well, I, I definitely think that if you took the current [01:00:30] view of how things are framed, then yes, those things would be a problem. And that was definitely one of the big issues with framing things as microaggressions, which [01:00:45] is something that we were, uh, instructed that we definitely couldn't make, and that we would be watched at all times to see if we were responding correctly, even in terms of our [01:01:00] body language to, you know, make sure that we were not microaggressing against other people.

[01:01:07] Suzannah: But when you put people into that kind of mental space i- and, you know, either you encourage [01:01:15] people to worry that their behaviors and their body language might be misinterpreted all of the time, you know, that's not healthy. And when you tell another group that how somebody moves their body [01:01:30] or some, you know, comment that they might make is them actually, you know, aggressing against you.

[01:01:37] Suzannah: You know, they're telling you that you're, you know, lesser than because they asked you about your hair, or they [01:01:45] complimented you on how you dressed. Y- you know, it, it just totally distorts the way people can try and find common ground and can cooperate with each other, and it makes both sides really [01:02:00] mentally unhealthy.

[01:02:01] Suzannah: I mean, it... F- from my point of view, it's, it's kind of like the, the objective seems to be to teach somebody to think like they have borderline personality, um- Oh, yeah ... because you're,

[01:02:11] Stephanie: you- Make people really hypervigilant and- Yeah ... like [01:02:15] seeing everything in the most negative light. So what would be an example?

[01:02:18] Stephanie: Okay, here's one I can think of that's actually... Okay, I, I will play devil's advocate here. Manspreading. Okay, if a man is physically taking up so [01:02:30] much space that you, as a woman who's not his intimate partner, like can't find a place to sit or... You know, like I had like a male colleague once who would stand in a doorframe, and he was a big guy, and it's like it would be very [01:02:45] awkward just trying to get past him.

[01:02:47] Stephanie: Like, there are occasions in where, like, men not being aware of how much space their bodies are taking up and, like, position where it, to me, I think the charitable interpretation is it's a lack of awareness. [01:03:00] Like, I see how... I, I mean, there, there are situations in which that could be perceived as sexual harassment if a man is kind of like forcing you to squeeze past him or something like that But I, I, I guess I was trying [01:03:15] to, like, that was just the example that popped in my mind, 'cause I was trying to understand what, what is microaggressive body language?

[01:03:23] Stephanie: And I know, I know we're gonna get a lot of angry comments, both from the feminists and from the anti-feminists in the comments right now about what I just said [01:03:30] about man spread. Y'all are gonna hate me, but I'm always in the middle on these things. I'm always like, "Yes, and..." Like, there is, there are definitely times when a man is taking up too much space, and he needs to be more aware of how much space his body's taking up, and whether a woman can comfortably move around the space with him [01:03:45] taking up that much space.

[01:03:45] Stephanie: Like, that's a thing, right? And sometimes it is aggressive, and sometimes it's just lack of awareness, right? And it, and, and it doesn't benefit us to necessarily put on those lenses and interpret everything in that way when [01:04:00] what you could do is say, "Excuse me, can I get past please?" You know? Like, so i- are there other examples that you can think of?

[01:04:08] Stephanie: 'Cause I'm trying to understand what microaggressive body language is.

[01:04:11] Suzannah: Well, so it could be something as small [01:04:15] as if you were looking down, you know, maybe at a laptop or something when one of the other classmates came in, and not, you know, looking up and acknowledging them. You know, it really, it's all based on [01:04:30] their interpretation of whatever it is that you're doing.

[01:04:34] Suzannah: So it could be, it could be anything. It could be

[01:04:37] Stephanie: absolutely anything. It's the framing too that, that it, i- if you were [01:04:45] snubbing them, that it had anything to do with demographics, right? Like, for one, that it had anything to do with anything, because people have a right, if they're sitting in a classroom waiting for class to begin, they have a right to open their laptop and not, like, look up [01:05:00] and smile at everyone.

[01:05:00] Stephanie: They have a right to do that, right? It's not personal. But if it were personal, like, what about that makes it obvious that it's about demographics rather than maybe they just don't like you. Maybe [01:05:15] you're not a nice person. Like, and probably if you've been practicing seeing everything as a racist microaggression, you're probably not a nice person.

[01:05:23] Stephanie: Like, you're probably a pain in the ass. Well, so, like, that would not, that would not be [01:05:30] acceptable in- Oh, yeah ... in- No, I would get, I, uh, I would get raked over the coals in grad school today. It was bad enough in 2010. So I wanna make sure to deliver on the promises I made earlier when introducing you about what we were gonna cover today, [01:05:45] and I realize I'm in such a chatty, bubbly mood today.

[01:05:47] Stephanie: I keep distracting you, um, from some of the main points. And so for those who are still listening, uh, Susannah is about to explain about CACREP and their attempted monopoly. [01:06:00] Um, so first of all, you've already shared a bit about why CACREP exists, that we have this accrediting body With the purpose of creating some standard of what people learn in a counseling [01:06:15] grad program, correct?

[01:06:16] Stephanie: Mm-hmm. That's the purpose? Okay. So, uh, tell us about the CACREP monopoly.

[01:06:22] Suzannah: Well, so what happened after those initial meetings and, and what the intent [01:06:30] was is that they wanted to create a consistent professional identity for counselors. You know, the whole thing is, you know, how do, how, how is counseling gonna show that it's different than being a psychologist or than social work?

[01:06:44] Suzannah: [01:06:45] How does it distinguish itself? And at one of the meetings, the one in the late '90s, they put together a consortium of these major organizations like the American Counseling Association, [01:07:00] CACREP, the Honor Society, uh, the ACES, that was the educators group, and the one that does the exam, the, uh, NBCC, that's the National [01:07:15] Counselors, uh, or the N- National Board of Certified Counselors.

[01:07:19] Suzannah: And they, they just, all they do is run an, a national exam, so you can say, "I've got this national credential." And this consortium went about [01:07:30] trying to firm up this professional identity, and CACREP was charged with creating a consistent body of knowledge that all people who called themselves professional [01:07:45] counselors would know.

[01:07:47] Suzannah: Uh, and that's what they went about doing. And when they tried to put together what was going to be the knowledge base that was going to be [01:08:00] different than counselors as opposed to, say, psychologists or people who were coming at it from a more psychology-based angle, w- was to go in with [01:08:15] critical theories, you know, even before it was maybe known outside as, you know, critical race theory or any of the other names that it's known by that.

[01:08:25] Suzannah: But they focused on what falls under the banner [01:08:30] today of critical social justice, those ideas that were coming out of gender studies or, you know, feminist studies, uh, those sorts of things. And it was that sort of [01:08:45] information that became the foundation of what was the hallmark of counseling in terms of its thoughts and ideas.

[01:08:55] Suzannah: And counseling framed it around the idea of multiculturalism. [01:09:00] But if you look at what they teach in the multicultural counseling textbooks, it, these, these theories are all the same. You know, it, it's tends to have a, a communist kind of feel to it. [01:09:15] It's, you know, totalitarian in that everyone must believe the same thing, and they're specifically talking about beliefs and thoughts as far as counselors are concerned.

[01:09:26] Suzannah: Uh, and that's where [01:09:30] there became a push to make sure that programs were CACREP accredited, and they're-- the, the honor society [01:09:45] is the branch that does most of the lobbying around states and, uh, to a lesser degree, on the federal level to make sure that they are putting forward CACREP as [01:10:00] the gold standard of what makes good counseling.

[01:10:04] Suzannah: But this is all based on just having the same ideology. You know, none of this has been, like, field-tested to see if a [01:10:15] CACREP-graduated therapist actually does better for their clients than somebody who was graduated under a different accreditor. They haven't done that study. All they can say is that [01:10:30] ideologically, everyone is consistent, but that's what they've been going for.

[01:10:34] Suzannah: And as a result, you know, they have not been inviting the other accreditors, and they have gotten to where CACREP [01:10:45] is required for licensure in North Carolina, and it is preferred or you get a fast track through your licensure application in, uh, last I checked, it's about 28 other states. And [01:11:00] then the remaining states, you know, it, it doesn't matter so much.

[01:11:05] Suzannah: But the intent, uh, based on, you know, the internal documents that are written is that they definitely want CACREP to be the only [01:11:15] accreditor. There had been another one which was more associated with rehabilitation counselors, and that was called CORE, and it was absorbed into CACREP about a decade ago.

[01:11:28] Suzannah: And in the [01:11:30] announcement for that, it says, you know, "We are on our way to having the, the single accreditor." And, and the intent is for there to be purity in terms of everyone having this consistent professional [01:11:45] identity, which is this body of knowledge that is accepted As good counseling. And it all just, it all just comes down to this social justice framework, which you can see reflected in the codes of ethics, both [01:12:00] for the American Counseling Association and for the NBCC.

[01:12:05] Suzannah: And they've used these different codes of ethics as a way to try and reinforce the rules. [01:12:15] 'Cause anywhere somebody is going to get a license, the licensing boards have to adopt a code of ethics by which they judge professionals and say, "Well, the, you know, if, if you've done this [01:12:30] thing and the code of ethics that we have says that it's out of bounds, then it's definitely out of bounds, and as the licensing board, we need to do something about it."

[01:12:39] Suzannah: And for the vast majority of licensed professions, these codes of [01:12:45] ethics just come from the professional association. You know, here in Tennessee, they use the ACA Code of Ethics as their standard by which they will judge professionals as being, [01:13:00] you know, within bounds or without of bounds in terms of their licensure.

[01:13:04] Suzannah: And the whole preamble of that is all social justice ideology, you know, talking about, you know, how, you know, you [01:13:15] need to work within, uh, areas that have, you know, marginalized clients and that sort of thing. I mean, that's in the, that's in the CACREP standard. But it's the same sort of language.

[01:13:27] Suzannah: Specifically, as I recall, in the [01:13:30] ACA Code of Ethics, they talk about, uh, social justice in their preamble, and that's something that they are working towards and fighting for. They are currently right now rewriting their code of ethics, [01:13:45] so it will be very interesting to see what that includes when they're done.

[01:13:51] Suzannah: But- Oh, the

[01:13:52] Stephanie: ACA?

[01:13:53] Suzannah: Yeah,

[01:13:53] Stephanie: the ACA. The ACA is rewriting their code of ethics. 'Cause I think their, the standard code of ethics that [01:14:00] has been adopted by so many states, what is it, like from 2013 or so? 2014. 2014, yeah. Um, yeah, I remember reading that a few times and having a few concerns [01:14:15] about it. Uh, yeah, it, it's not often that we have to refer to these things, um, but when you are preparing to ob- obtain a license or when your license is under [01:14:30] investigation or any of these things, you do need to refer to your state's code of ethics and, and that's the experience so many people in so many states have, right?

[01:14:38] Stephanie: Your state's code of ethics is the ACA Code of Ethics, and the ACA Code of Ethics is all [01:14:45] about social justice. Um- I mean, it points to a need for alternatives, doesn't it? I mean, this is a lot to build, but we need alternative training programs, maybe even alternative licenses and alternative accrediting [01:15:00] bodies.

[01:15:00] Stephanie: What would it be like to have some of the thought leaders in our fields to have, you know, friends of ours and, um, the sorts of people who listen to this podcast, maybe the next generation of whistleblowers to step into that [01:15:15] role. So here's a potential job description for anyone who's figuring out what they're gonna do with their life.

[01:15:20] Stephanie: We need to build the future of counseling because this, this is, this is heading for disaster, right? It's like this is not [01:15:30] about psychology. This is not about good counseling. This is not about what helps people be mentally healthy and belong to happy families. Like, none of this leads to that, right? The, the social justice, the critical social [01:15:45] justice perspective's all about revolution, and it's not even about cultural diversity.

[01:15:50] Stephanie: I mean, that's, that's, um, that's a dog whistle. The concept of, of diversity is such a joke the way that they frame it. Like, they have no concept of how people from other [01:16:00] cultures actually think.

[01:16:01] Suzannah: Uh, definitely not. And what, what people should be aware of who are contemplating trying to put together new professional organizations, it, it might be a little bit [01:16:15] more possible right now in counseling, but with the expansion of multi-state licensure compacts, what that has done is that has [01:16:30] instituted these code of ethics on a national level.

[01:16:35] Suzannah: And in counseling, the code of ethics that got installed there was another consortium member. It was the NBCC. [01:16:45] Their code of ethics is the one that is applicable because you have to take the test in order to be able to work under their-- They're under the compact across different state [01:17:00] lines. And their code of ethics specifically says that it is a professional duty that you make sure that your graduate program, their accreditation was [01:17:15] recognized by a group called CHEA.

[01:17:20] Suzannah: Now, this is a lot of minutiae for people to have to worry about, period. But this is specifically written [01:17:30] into the NBCC code of ethics to limit which accreditors people are going to be allowed to- Have come through in order to work [01:17:45] across multi-states. And it, it also creates barriers for any new accreditor that might try to step into the market, because there's only-- if you-- say for example, say for example, you wanna [01:18:00] start a new accreditor.

[01:18:00] Suzannah: You know, let's be a new accreditor. What do you have to do to get that done? So you have to... Y- you can just start one. Y- you know, if you can find, uh, a college or whatever that will accept you, you can put it together, you form your [01:18:15] 501[3], you know, come up with a standard, and you can start accrediting. But eventually, you're gonna need to get recognized, and there's only two groups that recognize [01:18:30] accreditors.

[01:18:31] Suzannah: And you can kinda think of them as who accredits the accreditors to these two groups. One is this group called CHEA, and the other, people sometimes call that one CHEA. Um, the other one is the [01:18:45] US Department of Education. So in their code of ethics, this group that gives the national test has said, "If you're only recognized by the United States [01:19:00] Department of Education, you cannot take our test."

[01:19:05] Suzannah: You, you have a professional responsibility to not go to a program that was only recognized under the [01:19:15] auspice of the US Department of Education. And CHEA, although they have recently changed their standard for accrediting accreditors, has been very, [01:19:30] very vocal and very pro-diversity, equity, and inclusion.

[01:19:34] Suzannah: They had an entire diversity, equity, and inclusion statement on their website, and they had, in parts of their standard, where [01:19:45] they expected accreditors to show how they were going to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion through their standard. So you have this, this top level of [01:20:00] accrediting the accreditors that's already trying to put ideology into the education, and then underneath that, you have CACREP that's already doing it.

[01:20:12] Suzannah: And so [01:20:15] in order to try and build a new licensure to get out from under all of that, all of those multiple levels of pushing for [01:20:30] ideological indoctrination in students, you have to You, you, you really kind of have to start with something completely new because you have all of these licensing boards that have already been established.

[01:20:44] Suzannah: You [01:20:45] have multi-state compacts that have locked this in. I mean, ideally what you'd wanna do is deregulate all of these different little things. Um, that's gonna be, it's gonna take a long time. Um, to start right now, [01:21:00] starting a new profession and building it out first with the ideals that you want it to have, you know, what those should be.

[01:21:10] Suzannah: Like maybe, you know, going with what science says [01:21:15] and, you know, things that we can verify are actually going to be able to help people empirically, and then write that into the code of ethics, into whatever new [01:21:30] standards. You know, find-- I- if, if we have to have state licensure, you know, find ways to do it where, for example, the code of ethics is something that the state legislator has to vote on [01:21:45] every 10 years.

[01:21:46] Suzannah: You know, that would be, that would be a way to change the current situation, which might be helpful. You know, insist that your state licensing board make their own code of ethics. [01:22:00] You know, make it so they can't require just a single accreditor and, you know, have the state representatives vote on whether or not this is a code of ethics we want for our state.

[01:22:13] Suzannah: You know, at, at least that [01:22:15] way, you know, places like, like Alabama or Tennessee, you know, would have to look at this every decade and see, you know, do we really wanna vote for all of this social justice as part of what school counselors are gonna be [01:22:30] bound by for the next decade in our state? 'Cause right now, that's what they have, and there's no, there's no check for that.

[01:22:39] Suzannah: You know, the licensing boards just can do whatever they want. There's [01:22:45] not a, there's not really much direct oversight in most states for those sorts of things.

[01:22:52] Stephanie: Honestly, this is reminding me a little bit about the first time I interviewed Mia Hughes about WPATH. [01:23:00] Um, my second interview with her just came out, and that was also great.

[01:23:04] Stephanie: But I mean, I, I think WPATH still takes the cake, um, for doing the most harm. Uh, but it really feels, like, [01:23:15] incestuous and nepotistic and, like, it feels like there's this, like- secret cabal of people that's, like, getting together and like, "Heh, heh, heh, how are we going to, like, control all the counselors in the worl- in the country?"

[01:23:28] Stephanie: I mean, okay, [01:23:30] I sound like I'm putting on my tinfoil hat again, but it, it really does sound that way. Like, it's such a monopoly. And, um, I was not expecting that answer that you just gave, but that's really helpful information. You know, I just sort of threw that out [01:23:45] there without knowing anything about how would one start a new profession, a new, you know, regulatory system.

[01:23:52] Stephanie: And like, I was just saying, like, "Someone to do it." And you're like- ... "Well, actually, here's what you would have to do in order to pull that off." Okay, good [01:24:00] information. I hope that the right people hear this, uh, people who might be able to know and, and, and do some things. And, uh, I just really feel for all the good people who wanted to become therapists.

[01:24:14] Stephanie: I mean, [01:24:15] you're one of them, right? Like, there's so many casualties that I've interviewed on this podcast, people who wanted to become therapists, people who would've been good therapists, but then they, they encountered these sort of, um, problems. And then there's all the people who [01:24:30] aren't even trying because of this, right?

[01:24:36] Stephanie: And sure, you can maybe do some kind of coaching work if you have a strong social media [01:24:45] presence and a niche, something that a lot of people turn to you as a source of information on. That's, that's what I do, right? I started as a therapist. I'm still a therapist. Um, I'm still, I still have my license, but I don't need it for anything right now [01:25:00] because I have particular expertise which I demonstrate on this podcast and on my blog and on my course, and people come to me for help with that particular issue.

[01:25:08] Stephanie: And they, you know, if the licensing board took away my license tomorrow, they would just have more respect for me because they you know what I've [01:25:15] been through. So like, that's a path that's available to me, but it's not available to people who don't wanna go through all of that, and it's understandable, right?

[01:25:22] Stephanie: Like, most people don't want to go through the trials and tribulations that, you know, those of us who've [01:25:30] gone through this sort of crucible, uh, we have a particular lived experience that not everyone is cut out for. Um, and there, and d- you don't have to be cut out for going [01:25:45] through some sort of, you know, infamy, uh, uh, and publicity in order to be a good therapist.

[01:25:52] Stephanie: I think many of the qualities that make a good therapist also make a person someone who might wanna live a rather [01:26:00] quiet and introspective life, um not, not be in the public eye. So, um, so how are all those people going to build their coaching practices without spending all their time on Instagram? And you know, I mean, and [01:26:15] then And, and what's missing from that too, right?

[01:26:18] Stephanie: Like, there, there is a lot of value in traditional psychotherapy and family counseling methods, and you can't learn that as a self-taught coach outside of [01:26:30] the kind of environment that these schools are capable of creating. So it's just really sad and scary seeing how much the field is breaking down, especially when you know how significant the mental health needs are of people in our community.

[01:26:43] Stephanie: And, um, [01:26:45] you know, something I'll just kind of raise as a topic for future conversation is AI psychosis. Um, I, uh, won't identify the individual, but I recently learned that, uh, somebody I know is [01:27:00] going through a bout of AI psychosis, and this is the first time that somebody I've personally known has fallen into AI psychosis, but I don't feel like it's gonna be the last time.

[01:27:11] Stephanie: And it's really got me thinking about, [01:27:15] holy cow, we are not prepared for this. Like, if, if, if the person I know who is suffering from AI psychosis were to ask me for a therapist referral tomorrow, thankfully I, I would know several trustworthy therapists in terms of [01:27:30] their values on this particular issue, uh, that I talk about so much on the podcast, the, you know, the woke stuff and the gender stuff.

[01:27:36] Stephanie: But is there even such a thing as training in how to handle AI psychosis? Like, uh, does that exist yet? Who's [01:27:45] gonna develop it? What, what s- what preexisting philosophies and theories and techniques can we apply to the problems of the 21st century? And that's what [01:28:00] something you were saying brought up for me, like when you talked about the idea of updating the code of ethics every 10 years.

[01:28:06] Stephanie: I think with the sort of speed of hyper novelty that's unfolding, with the fact that AI psychosis is an issue now that didn't exist 10 years ago, just like [01:28:15] trans is an issue within the last 10 years, it didn't exist, not in, not in nearly the same form a few decades ago when these counseling bodies count- and accrediting bodies were first, um, created.[01:28:30]

[01:28:30] Stephanie: Uh, things are just changing so rapidly, I think that y- your argument makes a lot of sense, that we should periodically update our ethics and training models. And, you know, one reason that I felt good about my choice to sort of embark on this different path and, and [01:28:45] basically invent a new branch of coaching, um, like the work that I do is it pulls together things we already know about psychology and communication and applies them to a novel problem that didn't [01:29:00] exist in the past.

[01:29:00] Stephanie: And, and we're gonna need a lot more of that. Like, what I've done by creating ROGD Repair, by creating a specialized approach to coaching parents through how to help their kids through this, like, there are going to be so many similar problems That we're not equipped to handle, [01:29:15] that it's gonna take pioneers to, like, pull together what we know from related things and apply it to new problems.

[01:29:23] Stephanie: And I don't know how we're gonna let those creative geniuses do what they need to do to serve the [01:29:30] problems of the century if people are walking on eggshells thinking that they're supposed to be hyper-conscious of race 24/7. Like, I-- that's, that, that's a s- I don't know how we're gonna do that, Susannah.

[01:29:42] Stephanie: How do you think we're gonna do it? Are you a free-thinking [01:29:45] therapist looking for like-minded community? The Association for Mental Health Professionals is a sanctuary for holistic, critical-thinking counselors and therapists who want to stand firm in our values and reclaim our profession from ideologues.

[01:29:59] Stephanie: [01:30:00] AMHP offers its members a blog and podcast, monthly webinars, and an annual conference each fall in Texas. Visit associationformentalhealthprofessionals.org to join a growing number of like-minded therapists who want our [01:30:15] profession back. All right, now back to the

[01:30:17] Suzannah: show. Well, I, I think you've actually already hit on it.

[01:30:22] Suzannah: So y- you've developed this pro- this process and your own practice, and [01:30:30] you already have a, a certain idea of some of the problems that new therapists would face, like AI psychosis. And the, the way that we grow [01:30:45] things organically starting right now is, you know, you don't need a license to do what you do.

[01:30:53] Suzannah: You could train an apprentice to do what you do, or you could train two or three apprentices. [01:31:00] And, you know, in the same way that somebody builds a network by getting referrals from a, uh, an established practitioner, new practitioners who are [01:31:15] apprenticed under someone else, or if, say, for example, a handful of people like yourselves get together and say, "We're gonna make a, a new little professional body, and we'll just call it, you know, [01:31:30] Brand New Psychotherapy," you know, "The Good Kind."

[01:31:33] Suzannah: You know, or the t- We could come up with, you know, some, some sort of better itile- you know, title than that. But, you know, and, and do it that way, and then start forming these networks. [01:31:45] You know, start writing an internal code of ethics, and build in the structure so that new people can enter. Um, this is what I'm writing about in, in my Substack, [01:32:00] is how this will work.

[01:32:01] Suzannah: You know, and I'm doing it, you know, going forward and backward. So I'm looking at what- What is currently limiting deregulation or, uh, [01:32:15] competition in things like the licensed field of professional counseling. And, you know, the more that we can see about how that's been locked down, it shows us what we can do if we start something completely [01:32:30] new.

[01:32:31] Suzannah: And, you know, as people come together, you know, like you and I have connected now, and as other people connect, we just have to turn that into a conduit so that as the word gets out to [01:32:45] clients, and that's definitely, you know, who I also want to reach, is people who are looking for someone who is not going to give them affirming care, that is working from a base of knowledge [01:33:00] that at least can be interrogated and there can be some scientific evidence showing, "Yeah, this will probably help you," rather than, "This is what we believe."

[01:33:12] Suzannah: Then you will develop your [01:33:15] client base, and then you can start referring to each other, you know? This is, this is how, this is how we reach people. And, like the only reason that you would even consider [01:33:30] having a multi-state compact right now is because the states control who can do different things in their state.

[01:33:39] Suzannah: But if you're starting with a new profession, and it is not technically therapy, you know, [01:33:45] we have defined it as not therapy, it's coaching or, you know, whatever. You know, it doesn't matter where you are, it just matters that, you know, you have been referred, you know, from a client's point of view from somebody [01:34:00] who, you know, is well-known.

[01:34:02] Suzannah: And, you know, it's, it's really going back to an old style personal network. You know, this person told me that this person does a good job. And, you know, as time [01:34:15] goes by, you know, you can start to do studies to identify what-- This is, this is something that, you know, really kind of gets me in general about accreditation.

[01:34:25] Suzannah: It's like, how, how do we write a standard for what good [01:34:30] education looks like? Do we know what good education looks like? Are, are we sure that we understand what, what tools you need to put in to a person's education to make sure that they're good on the other end and are actually [01:34:45] competent with clients?

[01:34:46] Suzannah: And right now, none of the accreditation focuses on how somebody does at their job when they're done. All they look at is, well, what textbooks do you have? You know, do you, you know, is there a, [01:35:00] a, a space? You know, i- is, if this is an online program, you know, is there- You know, good output in terms of your Wi-Fi and that sort of thing.

[01:35:09] Suzannah: You know, it's like it's not the, it's not necessarily what actually [01:35:15] creates good results in the field because we're not tracking that. You know, we're not really putting in the effort to follow somebody's clients. You know, even people that would opt into that to say, you know, "Can we figure out which part of this [01:35:30] therapy is good?"

[01:35:31] Suzannah: They're, they're, we're just not doing that. So, you know, just, just getting away from all of that and just starting from the standpoint of, you know, I know this person and they've done a good job and I've seen them [01:35:45] do a good job in this other situation. And, you know, you're gonna take-- I- if you're a client, you're gonna take a risk either way.

[01:35:52] Suzannah: You know, if you go to a regular licensed therapist, you know, who knows what you're gonna get, you know? Maybe they're gonna talk to you. Maybe [01:36:00] they're gonna broach the subject of race with you in the first 30 minutes of your appointment, you know? Maybe it's gonna be all affirming. Maybe they're gonna tell you you're great the entire time and not ever really challenge you in ways that will be helpful.[01:36:15]

[01:36:15] Suzannah: So, you know, if there's risk either way, you know, clients could choose which risks they wanna take. Do they wanna risk going to therapists [01:36:30] who have done the licensure work? You know, and, and to be fair, there are definitely good people who are doing that and, and some of them are trying to buck what their licensure or their professional groups tell them to do.

[01:36:43] Suzannah: Um, but [01:36:45] they are working under those restrictions in terms of what the code of ethics say, in terms of what their licensing board says, you know. Or do you wanna take the risk of going to somebody who, you [01:37:00] know, somebody you know has said, you know, "Hey, I've worked with them. They do a good job." You know? It, it, that's what people have to think about.

[01:37:10] Stephanie: I think a lot of what you've just shared is actually really hopeful [01:37:15] and I, I hope these messages inspire the right people. And I think you've also raised an important point about, you know, how do we, we identify actual clinical skills that make for good outcomes [01:37:30] and how do we teach those effectively and keep the focus of counseling education on that?

[01:37:37] Stephanie: Um, and I will add one little thing to that which is it's, you know, it's not PC to talk about gifts [01:37:45] but I think at the end of the day some people have a gift for counseling, for helping people, for transformation or for listening. I mean, within the counseling [01:38:00] field there are different gifts Like, some people have a remarkable gift of listening.

[01:38:06] Stephanie: Some people have a remarkably soothing presence. Um, you know, I think some of my gifts are, [01:38:15] like, I'm incredibly precise with language and with mapping the psyche of another person. Um, and I'm good at inspiring [01:38:30] transformation, and I've seen counselors who have something that I don't, but it's like, oh, you can really tell that they're a good therapist, right?

[01:38:36] Stephanie: Um, so that's the other part, right? There's the part that can't be taught and, um, you know, [01:38:45] earlier I was just sharing how, how it brings me down when I can see the people who have those gifts and they don't have the right outlet for them in today's society. Um, but I think the hopeful message is, is the combination, right, of recognizing that we all [01:39:00] have certain gifts.

[01:39:01] Stephanie: Um, I believe they're God-given, um, and I, I personally believe they're given to us at birth and then it takes a lifetime for them to unfold, and that a big part of our mission in life is to discover them and to hone and, and [01:39:15] refine them, um, to manifest them. And so that's, that's sort of the, uh, the right hemisphere of it, I guess, right?

[01:39:26] Stephanie: And then the left hemisphere is like what is the actual art and science [01:39:30] of good counseling that is focused on helping the individual and their family thrive, reflecting what we do know about psychology within the structure of our current society, knowing that a, a small [01:39:45] number of people, their gift, their purpose, their mission will have to do with creating social change or getting into politics or working for a nonprofit.

[01:39:56] Stephanie: Yeah, there's always people for, for whom that's their calling. [01:40:00] But the rest of us, like, we can still make a huge difference within the context of our lives, our chosen professions, and, and our, and our gifts. So, um, seems like s- in terms [01:40:15] of your gifts that, uh, you originally chose counseling psychology thinking that that was going to be the avenue by which you get to express them.

[01:40:22] Stephanie: But now you've, you've ended up here, and it seems like the path that you're on has really kind of honed your gift of [01:40:30] research and exposing hidden information. Um, what's next for you personally? At

[01:40:38] Suzannah: the end of, uh, last summer, uh, I started working with the National Association of Scholars. Uh, [01:40:45] and what I do for them is organize some of their legislative issues in terms of trying to get A lot of the research that they put together and model [01:41:00] legislation and ideas to reform higher education, and we're working to get those in the hands of lawmakers.

[01:41:09] Suzannah: Uh, hopefully, you know, to solve some of the problems of [01:41:15] this in higher education and to support different means by which people can be educated. It's, uh, I, I mean, it's-- What, what we're seeing in higher education right now [01:41:30] is, I hate to use this language because it sounds hy- so hyperbolic, except for that I've seen it, but it's a perversion of what education should be.

[01:41:40] Suzannah: It, you know, it, it has become focused entirely on [01:41:45] credentialing, and the credentialing is locked down in a way that limits or eliminates innovation in different ways to, to teach or even think about how people can learn things, or, [01:42:00] uh, as you pointed out, people have gifts. There is a, a bit of research on that, and there's a...

[01:42:07] Suzannah: They, they call them, uh, super therapists or, uh, super, super shrinks, I think is the name of the article. [01:42:15] But there's a researcher who has done that, you know, followed some people who their clients tend to do better far and away more often than others, and he's tried to quantify what that [01:42:30] difference is and to try and teach other people that as well.

[01:42:35] Suzannah: And, like, there needs to be more of that, and that that research wasn't embraced immediately and [01:42:45] acted on. You know, why wasn't that put into the accreditation standards? And i- in any case, those are the things that I am working on with the National Association of Scholars in terms of general higher [01:43:00] education and then through Diogenes in Exile, I focus more on the issues in therapy and some of the cultural issues as well.

[01:43:12] Suzannah: I-- For me, one of the things that, [01:43:15] uh, helps me to blow off some of the tension from all of this, 'cause when, when you read these documents and, and you're going through and you're like, you know, like, "So what you're saying is, like, white people are bad, and that if [01:43:30] you're not white, you could never do it unless, you know, white people got out of your way."

[01:43:36] Suzannah: You know, it's like, it's just, it's so bonkers insulting to everyone. Uh, one of, one of the ways that I blow off steam from, [01:43:45] from that sort of thing is I write satire, and- Oh, nice ... that's, that, it is so much fun. Um, you know, I've, I wrote a post, uh- I guess it's been like a year ago about new, uh, DSM, [01:44:00] DSM-6 diagnoses, some potential, uh, things.

[01:44:04] Suzannah: And, uh, people have liked that one quite a bit. Um, you know, just, you know, taking some of the absurdity that we're seeing already and, you know, making it a [01:44:15] diagnosis. You know? Mm-hmm. Like, you know, post-tweet, uh, stress disorder, where, you know, you tweet something and- Oh, I

[01:44:22] Stephanie: have that. You tweet something and then your, uh, cortisol keeps surging, like, "Oh, no- Yep

[01:44:28] Stephanie: the critics are coming." Oh, I [01:44:30] have that. Shh. Um, AI psychosis- Uh-huh ... that's a real thing now. Um, o- a- and how can people

[01:44:35] Suzannah: support your work? Well, they can come and subscribe to my Substack. Um, you know, I have-- I keep my things open because I want people [01:44:45] to, uh, know what's happening. Uh, but, you know, anyone that, you know, feels like they could support me through there, that would be great.

[01:44:54] Suzannah: Um, I have linked on there, I have a, a Gift Send Go [01:45:00] campaign. Um, a- and, uh, another thing that I'm doing, and I'm really just getting started with this right now, is I want to put together a documentary about students like myself, uh, and [01:45:15] to tell some of these stories, not only so that as the general public can be more informed about what's going on, but, you know, to document what's actually happening to the therapy professions.

[01:45:28] Suzannah: It, it [01:45:30] concerns me greatly that there are no basis in scientific fact in what people are being trained to do, that people are being trained to manipulate the conversation to talk about race, or to affirm whatever [01:45:45] you say, especially in terms of gender, where you're gonna have medical consequences from that, and, and people don't know.

[01:45:53] Suzannah: As far as making a documentary, man, I have no idea what I'm doing. Um, I, I do have a friend [01:46:00] who is a cinematographer, and he's worked on a production, uh, who, uh, w- which won an Oscar, "The Cove." And right now we're trying to raise some funds to make a trailer, and then hopefully make- [01:46:15] a real documentary

[01:46:17] Stephanie: So, uh, it sounds like people can visit your blog and everything there is public information, but that's also a place that they can donate and support your work.

[01:46:26] Stephanie: Uh, Susannah, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure to have you. Oh, [01:46:30] thank you. Thanks for having me. 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. [01:46:45] And of course, please remember, podcasts are not therapy and I'm not your therapist.

[01:46:51] Stephanie: Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for this awesome theme song, Half Awake, and to Pods by Nick for production. For help [01:47:00] 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 [01:47:15] links below.

[01:47:17] Stephanie: Rain or shine, I hope you will step outside to breathe the air today. In the words of Max Ehrmann, "With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful

[01:47:29] [01:47:30] [01:47:45] [01:48:00] world."